The Orphan Read Online Free Page B

a tamed and ordered look, I slip out as usual, leave Robert’s nightshirt in the barn, and relax. It is always a relief to shift back after a long time in changed form. The world springs back into its real shape, night sounds take on their old meanings, my spatial sense fills me with confidence as I perceive each living shape and movement around me, and I feel my eyes dilating with predatory efficiency. My claws are sound in their sheaths, and my hide prickles with joy under the fur. I am fast and gleeful, and nothing can stand in my way or escape my grasp. I feel like singing, or killing something, or running a fox to ground and telling her my secrets while I hold her neck tightly, staring into her bulging red eyes, then setting her back on her feet and tweaking her tail to make her run. How complete is the freedom of the natural body and its perceptions, its beautiful muscles that coil and spring, leap and bunch, and hold the bones in their trance of motion and speed.
    I am trailing a female fox, sneaking through the hedges, crossing the creek twice, until I am almost to the railroad bridge south of the town. The fox scent crosses the creek again and seems to head toward the darkness under the bridge. But then it is blotted out by the odor of people, very dirty people. I crouch in the weeds along the creek to scan the area under the arch of the bridge. The smell comes from there. Human excrement, old and new, alcohol, canned food spoiled and fresh, dirty skin and clothing. The mounds are human forms rolled up in rags to keep warm. People asleep under the bridge. Tramps. They walk the highways and railroad tracks, have no place to stay, no way to dig burrows for themselves, and they sleep in places like this. There is a camp for these people in the town. I have heard the farmer and his wife talking about it. It is called a “Roosevelt Roost,” a name I do not understand. I wonder why these people are here in the dirt when they could be roosting with Roosevelt in a dry building? Perhaps they are outcasts.
    I step warily through the weeds, keeping low, wondering at such filth. How can they stand to sleep so near their own excrement? Even dogs ... but suddenly, not able to sense much because of the powerful smell that is blocking out part of my mind, I step down on a human hand.
    “Sonuvabitch!”
    I leap sideways and drop into the weeds where I land, startled half out of my skin. It is always humans who remind me of my limitations. They are always surprising me in surprising ways. I flatten, hoping the person will go back to sleep, but the man has gotten up on his hands and knees and is feeling around in the grass near me. I will have to get away without hurting him, and I cannot shift into Robert’s form, for it would be too dangerous to him. His hand blunders into my fur.
    “What the goddamhell?”
    I sense his every movement, the direction of his gaze in the darkness. I know he cannot see much, and I wait for the moment when he is off guard for an instant. It comes.
    “Hey you gays. There’s something like a ...”
    At the moment his head turns slightly to look in the direction of the sleeping forms under the bridge, I throw my weight up and against his belly, digging in my back claws, and push him over backwards into the creek. I leap the creek as his form hits the water under me, and I am a hundred yards up the railroad ditch in the tall weeds before he can get out of the water. I lie quiet, controlling my panting, listening to the man’s curses and screams as he wakes the others under the bridge.
    I creep back along the opposite side of the railroad tracks to the other side of the bridge opening. The shapes are sitting up now, three, no, four of them. They are passing cigarettes around, the glowing ends momentarily lighting up the faces, bearded and stubbly, one old man, three younger ones, but all with a common haggard look, as if they might be from the same sickly litter.
    “Dumb shit,” the oldest one says,