Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
what about the vegetables in Ruili? Were they sweet? Didn’t blood
taste sickly-sweet?
H EIDI HAD SEEN pooled blood from a dead man, one of her house-
mates. That was ten years back, when she was a freshman at UC
Berkeley. The six of them lived in a ramshackle house in Oakland.
The newest was a guy who had answered one of the “Roommate
Wanted” signs pinned on the bulletin board at the Co-op grocery
store and Cody’s Books. He was a twenty-two-year-old guy from
Akron, Ohio, nicknamed “Zoomer.” She had enjoyed a few philo­
sophical discussions with him late at night. One night, the house-
mates went to a Pearl Jam concert, all except Zoomer. When the
concert was over, some wanted to go to a bar. She elected to go
home. She found the door unlocked when she got there, and this
made her angry, because somebody or another was always careless
about that. And when she walked farther into the living room, she
was overcome by a terrible odor. It was not blood, but sweat, the es­
sence of animal pain and fear. She did not remember seeing the body,
calling the police, or their arrival, the investigation, the removal of
the body. The next day, she saw only the pool of blood, the yellow
tape at the front door, and she smelled him. How bizarre that his smell
hung in the air after he had died. It was like a lingering message, as
if he were still begging for his life. She saw in her mind’s eye his last
moments, the intruder’s gun pointed at his face.
Heidi had known him for only a few months, so no one thought
she could be too affected by his death. It was ghastly, everyone
agreed, her finding the body like that. And she had every right to be
freaked out for a while. But she seemed very calm when she told
people what had happened. “I could tell he was already dead.” She
did not go into detail, and people dared not ask, although they were
curious to know. Roxanne cried when Heidi told her what had hap­
131