One.
“It’s a necessity of life,” he said,
“Something you have to do as a guy.
And you probably could have spit
in that gas tank and gotten enough gas.
But my timing was off and
I wasn’t quite quick enough
and…why? Why’d I do it?
My motorcycle needed gas.
The camper was just sitting there…
so it was obvious, I guess.
Well, my timing was off and
I wasn’t quite quick enough and
I swallowed a whole lot…
leaded gasoline.
For a week afterward—
a whole week,
my farts smelled like gasoline.
Burping hurt, too, it came
right up my nose and
burned as it went.
Did I do it again?
Course I did. Lots of times.
A motorcycle needs gas, after all.
It’s just a necessity of life.
Two.
“The ranch was across from Tall Oaks Restaurant.
I worked there when I was a kid—
The guy had fourteen lions and a
tiger. Two leopards. A black bear.
Must have kept him in the house—
never saw that bear much.
I went to feed the lions one day.
The door was low so I crawled through
after I poked the lion back
from the bars.
He looked at me hard and
sized me up.
I stared him down.
Well, he turned right around and
put his paws on the cage bars.
His side was facing me,
and to this day I’ve never really
figured it out,
but that lion turned and looked at me
and shot a stream of urine
about six feet
and hit me square in the face.
And to this day I still
haven’t figured out how he
managed to do that.
Three.
“Well, that tiger,” he tilted
back in his chair
and stared up at the ceiling tiles, “that tiger…
was two years old and
some two hundred and fifty pounds.
A strong cat.
We wanted to have fun one day,
just like boys will,
so we let him out of his cage.
We swatted him around
for a while. Jumped
and ran around in circles, but
then, then he started
to bite a little too hard.
The other guy ran—he ran away,
and that tiger was getting mean.
I turned and ran too, and I could
hear him behind me—those big
paws thumping against the ground.
I reached a wall of hay and turned and
he stopped.
That cat reared up and put his
paws on my shoulders—he was just
as tall as me—and opened his mouth.
He had a huge mouth and
big white teeth.
I pushed him away, off to the side,
and he bit down on my thumb,
and I turned and climbed up on those hay bales.
Climbed really fast, all the way up
to the top. Fast as I could.
