and the other nurses had been parking on the road since the snows had got so deep. Alecto’s four-wheel drive lifted us over the snow and he backed out onto the long country road toward Highway 6. He flipped on the radio and I didn’t talk because he couldn’t write and drive at the same time.
He pulled up to a hotel called The Coronation at the corner of the highway and Safari Road. We jumped down from the warm truck into that peculiar bite of late-night cold. We pushed through the door and the tangles of our own frozen breath, stamping our feet, shedding our coats in the overheated, stale air. There are two kinds of drinking in these small hotel bars—the quick drink of a pass-the-evening traveller and the long reiterating drink of the local regular. We took a small pedestal table with a couple of wooden chairs, and before we were settled a skinny waitress in tight jeans and a red ribbed sweater dropped a pitcher of draft and two slim draft glasses on the table.
“I guess we’re having draft,” I said.
“He always does,” she answered, nodding toward Alecto. “You want something different?”
I shook my head, Alecto handed her some bills and she didn’t bother to make change. The place was coated with a film of smoke and the smell of stale beer, the kind of place where toilet doors don’t stay closed and the graffiti in the stalls is scratched in. I’d had my first sip of beer, heard my first country and western band, played my first game of shuffleboard in a bar like this. When I was younger I never left hotel bars until they turned the lights on.
Alecto held up his glass briefly heavenward and scribbled quickly, “Cheers, to our first drink together, and to the decor.”
I held up my glass and drank too.
“Isn’t it cold. It’s a bit obscene to bring tropical animals to a climate like this, isn’t it?”
Barroom banter has an insistent pace that was slowed by Alecto writing. I settled in for a little debate, tossing out the subject like a bowl of peanuts with the beer.
“No more obscene than you visiting the arctic,” he wrote.
“And being put on display?”
He shifted happily. “The animals make do, they have leisure, an easy life.”
“They make do. They have no choice.”
“Who has choice? If you had a choice wouldn’t you be in Africa? Is duty a choice?”
Point.
“But I came out of love.”
“And what is the love that brought you, duty or choice?”
I paused. Both? Neither?
“I don’t know, but the fact is animals have no choice once they’re put in these places. They get depressed or they get domesticated.”
It was fertile ground for a good drinking night. Animal rights. Animal intelligence.
“Do you think if they could talk it would make a difference?”
He stared at me, challenging, a dangerous debater, not afraid to use my discomfort with his muteness to win, not afraid to use anything to win. I decided not to temper myself tonight. If my advantage was my voice, I’d use it.
“It was the serpent’s speech that tempted Eve, much more than the fruit. And it wasn’t what the serpent said but that he could talk at all. She was amazed by his ability to talk. If animals spoke we might be tempted to many things.”
He smiled and wrote, “So it was speech, not knowledge, that led to the Fall?”
“It was animal speech that led to knowledge and freedom.”
“And it caused the Fall?”
“It led to knowledge.”
“And freedom?”
“Fallen freedom. ‘Without choice, what profits inward freedom?’”
“God has perfect knowledge, therefore perfect prescience. If he knew what would happen why did he allow the serpent speech?”
It was a dance we’d both danced before and we enjoyed it. Banter, cheap talk of rights and freedoms, providence,foreknowledge absolute. I enjoyed reading his side. It made me feel quicker, smarter.
Alecto drank fast. I thought of my baby and slowed down. The waitress picked up our pitcher, expertly dripped its last drops into
He pulled up to a hotel called The Coronation at the corner of the highway and Safari Road. We jumped down from the warm truck into that peculiar bite of late-night cold. We pushed through the door and the tangles of our own frozen breath, stamping our feet, shedding our coats in the overheated, stale air. There are two kinds of drinking in these small hotel bars—the quick drink of a pass-the-evening traveller and the long reiterating drink of the local regular. We took a small pedestal table with a couple of wooden chairs, and before we were settled a skinny waitress in tight jeans and a red ribbed sweater dropped a pitcher of draft and two slim draft glasses on the table.
“I guess we’re having draft,” I said.
“He always does,” she answered, nodding toward Alecto. “You want something different?”
I shook my head, Alecto handed her some bills and she didn’t bother to make change. The place was coated with a film of smoke and the smell of stale beer, the kind of place where toilet doors don’t stay closed and the graffiti in the stalls is scratched in. I’d had my first sip of beer, heard my first country and western band, played my first game of shuffleboard in a bar like this. When I was younger I never left hotel bars until they turned the lights on.
Alecto held up his glass briefly heavenward and scribbled quickly, “Cheers, to our first drink together, and to the decor.”
I held up my glass and drank too.
“Isn’t it cold. It’s a bit obscene to bring tropical animals to a climate like this, isn’t it?”
Barroom banter has an insistent pace that was slowed by Alecto writing. I settled in for a little debate, tossing out the subject like a bowl of peanuts with the beer.
“No more obscene than you visiting the arctic,” he wrote.
“And being put on display?”
He shifted happily. “The animals make do, they have leisure, an easy life.”
“They make do. They have no choice.”
“Who has choice? If you had a choice wouldn’t you be in Africa? Is duty a choice?”
Point.
“But I came out of love.”
“And what is the love that brought you, duty or choice?”
I paused. Both? Neither?
“I don’t know, but the fact is animals have no choice once they’re put in these places. They get depressed or they get domesticated.”
It was fertile ground for a good drinking night. Animal rights. Animal intelligence.
“Do you think if they could talk it would make a difference?”
He stared at me, challenging, a dangerous debater, not afraid to use my discomfort with his muteness to win, not afraid to use anything to win. I decided not to temper myself tonight. If my advantage was my voice, I’d use it.
“It was the serpent’s speech that tempted Eve, much more than the fruit. And it wasn’t what the serpent said but that he could talk at all. She was amazed by his ability to talk. If animals spoke we might be tempted to many things.”
He smiled and wrote, “So it was speech, not knowledge, that led to the Fall?”
“It was animal speech that led to knowledge and freedom.”
“And it caused the Fall?”
“It led to knowledge.”
“And freedom?”
“Fallen freedom. ‘Without choice, what profits inward freedom?’”
“God has perfect knowledge, therefore perfect prescience. If he knew what would happen why did he allow the serpent speech?”
It was a dance we’d both danced before and we enjoyed it. Banter, cheap talk of rights and freedoms, providence,foreknowledge absolute. I enjoyed reading his side. It made me feel quicker, smarter.
Alecto drank fast. I thought of my baby and slowed down. The waitress picked up our pitcher, expertly dripped its last drops into
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