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him.
    “What’s he doing out there, Arthur? If he lets that dog hurt that kitten…”
    “I don’t know what he’s doing just yet. Why don’t we wait a minute and see?”
    “I don’t know if I want to see or not. Don’t you know they train those dogs to fight by letting them kill kittens?”
    “I didn’t know that,” Arthur said.
    “Why, hell. They’ve outlawed them in England because they’ve killed so many children. Don’t you know that?”
    “It’s news to me,” Arthur said. She was getting kind of mad. She got kind of mad easier when she was drinking. She got kind of mad sometimes when he couldn’t get it up, too. She’d yelled at him once. Then left.
    “Don’t you ever read the papers?”
    “Just the funnies mostly. I like ‘Snuffy Smith.’ And ‘Dear Abby.’”
    There was a flurry of motion at the corner of the house and the dog dove at something. The young man was yelling, pulling at the leash, his breath coming out in a white fog, and when Arthur glanced at Helen she had raised a hand to her horrified mouth. She set her drink down and turned away.
    “I can’t watch this,” she said. “Not in front of my own house.” She had her fingers over her eyes.
    “Look,” Arthur said, pointing.
    “How could you do such a butthole thing?”
    “It’s not what you think. Look.”
    “No. I’m not.”
    “You’d better. He’s caught your cat for you.”
    Helen sniffled and turned slowly. She took her hands down from her face. The young man was leading the pit bull toward their front door, and the dog had the kitten in his mouth similar to the way a pointer retrieves a downed quail. The kitten was writhing in the dog’s mouth and frantically scratching its muzzle with all four feet, but the old dog just ignored it and kept limping forward. Arthur could see that the kitten was yowling, because its mouth was wide open and he could see its teeth. Once they got closer, he could also see that the kitten was going to the bathroom all over the place. Then the young man stopped next to the steps out front and said something to the dog and the dog stopped and sat. Its muzzle was bloody from where the kitten had scratched it, was still scratching it. Its face was a mask of old cuts, and healed stitches of leathery-looking skin, but its eyes were bright and in them Arthur could see what he thought was a kind of love. It made him feel so good he smiled. The young man lifted his hand and waved at Helen and Arthur and smiled. They waved back. It was starting to snow again.

11
     
     
    I n an old building on Front Street, just above the river, a guy named Domino D’Alamo read a work order and then took some fresh meat out of the walk-in cooler that was next to the lion-meat freezer. He was wearing gloves and he had a coat on over his apron. The radio in the back was turned up loud since he was hard of hearing. A pimply prison guard had fired a twelve-gauge shotgun right next to his ear one day just for the fun of it, one beautiful April day down in Mississippi, when spotted orange butterflies were out on the roadside daisies while they cut the tall grass with sling blades, and the free folks just drove on by all day long.
    He was cutting meat at night in this little shop now, by himself, which suited the shit out of him, since he didn’t like people very much. The lion-meat freezer had a big sign Mr. Hamburger had written out with a thick black Magic Marker: “Lion Meat Only.” Nobody else ever messed with the lion meat because nobody else wanted the stinking job. The weed Domino kept hidden in there was high grade, worth $100 on the street for a quarter ounce, or $6,400 for a pound, which was his usual load. He kept it in a box stamped PRIME RIB that he marked for his own identification with a single slash of a red Magic Marker.
    He unwrapped the fresh meat from the cooler. Sometimes the lion meat was old beef. Sometimes it was old mutton or pork. He was sure the lions didn’t care what it was. He