we had to **** many animals.  my father, every month, cursed a pig its lack of horns and cursed the out-of-town buying of dogs.  I took my sister once into the basement.  I blindfolded her with a black sock and told her careful there’s a pin in your hand.  mother would come from that basement pulling at her shirt and I’d nip it at the neckhole with my teeth and I could feel each nerve around them firing.  the whole of our ordeal was indeed terrible but people would talk as if they knew what they’d do or knew what they’d not.  talk as if they’d know it if they saw.  it come up for awhile and tried to live with us and I can’t say it wasn’t nice having something to put your finger on that wouldn’t thieve your sins.  I fed to it lemonheads and it seemed happy but even I admit one can overdo it on the lemonheads.  it was father made it go back in the basement because he’d tired of telling people it was his brother and pretty soon his real brother would be coming to visit.  was a visit would last the length of his brother’s life but we didn’t know it then.  the devil went its own way at some point during my uncle moving in.  we were all of us pretty clumsy and it could’ve been the noise we made.  I remember being grateful for my uncle’s heart of gold and how he wouldn’t accept our apologies saying it’s just a bunch of stuff I don’t even know I have.