I quit drinking because it made my gut throb with butterflies, which convinced me to commit crimes against myself incompatible with living or befriending cats, dogs, and horses who sensed my disease. Even the fire ants in my backyard didn’t bite when I passed out in the dirt twice a week, warranting visits with Dr. John. Dr. John liked statues of bucking broncos and sipping tea loudly while I described my appetite. He prescribed me Jesus and meetings with sober men who invited me to flip monster truck tires inside a warehouse. I didn’t take to Jesus or the meetings, though I did adopt a senior tortoise from a farm. The tortoise’s name was Jim, which was nonnegotiable. Jim smiled when I fed him kale and showed him reality television. I think he liked the sound of people yelling. I made a tracing of his feet, which looked like a series of swollen hearts. I framed the tracing with wood I found in the wash by my apartment, where bats congregated before migration. I wished someone asked me why I was collecting gnarled twigs in a bucket. A tortoise saved my life, I would’ve said, but nobody was around. My disease was not of interest to the greasewood or the bats, twitching under the bridge that connected my neighborhood and the chi-chi part of town.