THE HEART OF THE PARK
"Stop here! Stop here!" Enoch cried.
There was a long shining row of steel cages over to the left
and behind the bars, black figures were sitting or pacing. "Get out,"
Enoch said. "This won't take one second."
Haze got out. Then he stopped. "I got to see those people," he
said.
"Okay, okay, come on," Enoch whined.
"I don't believe you know the address."
"I do! I do!" Enoch cried. "It begins with a two, now come
on!" He pulled Haze toward the cages. There were two black bears
in the first one. They were sitting facing each other like two matrons
having tea, their faces polite and self-absorbed. "They don't do noth–
ing but sit there all day and stink," Enoch said. "A man comes and
washes theseyer cages out ever morning with a hose and it stinks
just as much as if he'd left it." Every animal there had a personal
haughty hatred for him like society people have for climbers. He
went on past two more cages of bears, not even looking at them, and
then he stopped at the next cage where there were two yellow-eyed
wolves nosing around the edges of the concrete. "Hyenas," he said.
"I ain't got no use for hyenas." He leaned closer and spit into the
cage, hitting one of the wolves on the leg. It shuttled to the side,
giving him a slanted evil look. For a second he forgot Hazel Weaver.
Then he looked back quickly to make sure he was still there. He was
right behind him. He was not looking at the animals. Thinking about
them police, Enoch thought. He said, "Come on, we don't have to
look at all theseyer monkeys that come next." Usually he stopped
at every cage and made an obscene comment aloud to himself, but
today the animals were only a form he had to get through. He hur–
ried past the cages of monkeys, looking back two or three times to
make sure Hazel Weaver was behind him. At the last of the monkey
cages, he stopped as if he couldn't help himself.
"Look at that ape," he said, glaring. The animal had its back
to him, grey except for a small pink seat.
"If
I had a ass like that,"
he said prudishly, "I'd sit on it. I wouldn't be exposing it to all these
people come to this park. Come on, we don't have to look at theseyer
birds that come next." He ran past the cages of birds and then he
was at the end of the zoo. "Now we don't need the car," he said,
going on ahead, "we'll go right down that hill yonder through them
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