Dog War

by Anthony C. Winkler

  Milling with swarms of black-garbed mourners, the gingerbreaded house looked like a rookery of fretful crows. Breeze blew, and low clouds scudded over the mountain ridge and frothed up a gray drizzle that edged the proceedings with a shudder of gloom.

  Then the funeral procession of cars undulated down the rough mountain road like some disjointed beetle humping its sluggish path to a dreary burrow.

  Precious was heartbroken. Caring for the throng of mourners, having to endure sympathetic scrutiny for days on end, was all that saved her from utter collapse under the weight of her grief. She could not cope with the idea that Theophilus was gone, really gone forever, and the one time the awful truth struck her was when she was thankfully shielded from prying eyes by the bathroom walls. She crumpled over the sink and wept inconsolably. Someone tapped softly on the door, and Precious muted her wild sobbing, dabbed her eyes with a towel, and regained her composure.

  Just before Theophilus was hoisted on the shoulders of friends and neighbors and borne away in the hearse, Precious stole a quiet moment to whisper her final goodbye.

  She was staring at the buffed body splayed out in the stylized pose of death and reeking of the undertaker’s powdered fondling when, on an impulse, she reached down and stroked for a last time the white gloved hands entwined in a mound of doughy fingers atop the unmoving chest and whispered, “Goodbye, Brutus.”

  “Who’s Brutus?” she heard someone hiss in her neckback. She glanced behind and saw that her daughter had overheard.

  “No one,” Precious said stonily, turning back to the coffin.

  “But who’s Brutus? That’s not Daddy’s name! Tell me?”

  “It’s private.”

  “Private? I want to know who’s Brutus and why you calling me daddy Brutus when his name was Theophilus!”

  Precious backed away from the table and stared helplessly as the pallbearers hoisted the coffin and shuffled with it toward the hearse parked on the front lawn.

  “You goin’ tell me ’bout Brutus?” Precious felt the daughter’s breath pelting the crease of her neck.

  “No,” she shot back over her shoulder.

  The mourners slow-marched out of the house and across the creaking wooden porch.

  “That’s why I turn police, you know dat!” the daughter whispered angrily. “Because you and Daddy always kept things from me. Always!”

  Overcome by the senseless futility, the dizzying absurdity of the moment, Precious stumbled vainly after the coffin. Hands reached out and brushed at her with sympathy. Behind her sulked the fiery daughter, scowling with resentment and insistently hissing, “Why can’t you tell me who name Brutus?”

  The first three or four nights after the burial were oppressive but bearable. Family and friends gathered around and filled the threatening emptiness of the mountain house with the patter and prattle of ordinary life. The daughter slept beside Precious. The son occupied the room next door and made the wooden house quiver with the healthy footfalls of a preoccupied man. Friends came and went, bringing with them a train of petty affairs, gossip, and neighborhood stories; and the unrelenting silence that stalks every widow was kept at bay for a week.

  But then the friends drifted away, one by one, and the visitors dropping by with a cake or a pot of stew peas came less and less often. The son disappeared for longer and longer stretches, and finally one morning he packed up and returned to his own household in Kingston.

  Shirley lingered in the mountain house for another week. She slept every night with her policewoman’s gun under the pillow, snoring and gnashing her teeth something fearful. One night she sat upright slowly like an uncoiling spring, extended her finger, took sinister aim, and cocked her thumb as if it were the hammer of a revolver. The dream gun went off noiselessly in the shadowy room, and each time it recoiled and jerked in her hand as if it had actually spat deadly bullets.

  “Me God!” Precious breathed fearfully as Shirley crumpled beside her in bed.

  The daughter replied with a nasty snore and rumbled over on her belly.

  Awake early the next morning to a dawn still creamy with curdled mists and swirls of nighttime fog, they sat in the drawing room drinking breakfast tea.

  “Mummy, what you goin’ do?” Shirley asked earnestly. “You can’t stay here by youself. Look at dis place!”

  She waved her hands at the slabs of dour mountains and scowling ridges jutting through the mists.

  “You shoot a man in me bed last night.” Precious tried her best not to sound as if she were complaining. “Me nerves not used to dat.”

  “Dat’s what Henry always tell me,” Shirley grinned.

  “You mean you sleep-shoot all de time?”

  The daughter shrugged. “According to him, one of dese nights is him I goin’ shoot.”

  There was a delicate pause. “You not getting along with you husband?”

  “We get along all right, Mummy. Him is just too .-.-. too-.-.-.-if you know what I mean.”

  “Just too-too. Well, dat’s not so bad. At least him don’t carouse at night and beat you.”

  “Beat me? You want me kill his rass! I tell you de God truth, Mummy, I only keep him because of de children. Dey just love deir too-too daddy. If it wasn’t for dem, I’d pitch him right out de front door.”

  Precious put her foot down and delivered maternal homily. “You too Americanized! A woman must respect her husband.”

  “Respect his rass! He can kiss my batty!”

  “Mercy!”

  Shirley leaned over the small tea table in the drawing room around which they were huddled in bathrobes against the morning dampness and stared hard at Precious.

  “Why you don’t go live wid Harold in Kingston, Mummy? Lock up dis Godforsaken house and go where you have company around you. Do it, Mummy!”

  Precious looked dubious. “Two woman under one roof,” she muttered lamely.

  “Den come to Miami and live wid me! I would love to have you under my roof!”

  “But would your husband like dat arrangement?”

  “Him either like it or lump it! No too-too man goin’ tell me whether or not I can have my modder in my house. I goin’ apply for you paper when I go back.”

  Precious felt so helpless and befuddled that she could only gaze idly around the room picking out familiar objects and pieces of furniture, her eyes roaming over nook and cranny and corner as she vainly tried to think of what to say, what to do. In-her momentary confusion she could not even think of where to put her hands or rest her elbows, and all her upper limbs suddenly struck her as having been maliciously glued on in the wrong places overnight. She counted the fingers on her right hand, found them to be five, and then counted the ones on her left hand, and was briefly startled that they were the same number. Everywhere she looked she saw the signs and treasures of a living, breathing Theophilus—his favorite chair, table, couch, cushion—but no Theophilus. She imagined that she could even smell Theophilus in the room and had a feverish notion that if she could only glance about her quickly enough, she would glimpse him hurrying down the shadowy hallway or leaning against the kitchen doorjamb.

  But the room was full only of wisps and memories. It was hideously empty of Theophilus.

  As if she had read her mother’s despair, Shirley reached over-consolingly and patted her hand. “Never mind, Mummy. And as long as I draw breath, you will always have a roof over you head.”

  Then Shirley was gone back to Miami, leaving behind a fearsome silence that made Precious feel like she constantly needed to scurry to the bathroom. Maud stayed two nights after that on the mountain to keep her mistress company, but on the third night she abandoned Precious to the bush. There was just too much croaking lizard up here for her taste, Maud grumbled. She never knew that night could be so long and dreary, that wooden house could crack and pop so much. It sounded like gunshot in her weary head. She had not slept a wink in two nights and would rather dead now and get it over with than suffer through another night of croaking lizard and
popping wooden house, she was very sorry.

  Precious stood on the veranda and watched the maid trudge determinedly down the hill that third evening. White Dog came nuzzling up, begging a pat on the head. Red Dog watched the maid’s foot wistfully as it pistoned out of reach down the marl road.

  “I see you early in de morning!” Precious yelled as the maid rounded the corner.

  “If life spare, mum,” drifted the dour reply from around a hump in the hillside.

  There is city night and there is country night. City night is leaky with light from houses and apartments and noises from the street; but even in the thickest slab of darkness, there is always at least one insomniac fearfully counting his daytime sins by a bedside lamp.

  But country night is a lidded pot into which light and sound do not drip. When there is no moon to softly yellow the land, when there is only the gravel of stars glowing in the immense darkness, a widow cowering alone in her house sees country night as abandonment by God, as the end of all hope and dreaming. And so the night seemed to Precious the first time when she was truly alone, when she turned off the lights in the hilltop house and took to her empty bed.

  She went to bed at 9:00 and woke up at 9:15, feeling as if she had just crawled out of the bottomless crack of sleep into which she had fallen. Night fluttered blue and silken over the pastures and the hilltop house as she lay still and suffered demented visions about a rapist.

  In her fretful imagination, she saw the rapist get off the bus at the bottom of the hill and clamber up the rutted marl road in the darkness, pausing once to sharpen his butcher knife.

  She crawled under her bed to fearfully consult Jamaican Jesus about what she should do, but He had nothing to say and she-gathered from the silence that He had gotten fed up with her ’fraidy-’fraidy nature and taken a minibus into town. She grudgingly muttered, “Thy Will Be Done,” and crawled back out from under the bed nursing grievance and feeling like an old cow Jesus had chained to a tree and left in the bush. Of course, she would show Him once her throat was cut and her body fluids spilled over the polished floorboards. He would hurry apologetically to her side to escort her into paradise and rue the day He had left her defenseless among desolate peak. But if that’s the way Jesus wanted it, bring on de rapist and madman! And with this wordless invitation, she peeled back her bronze neckbone to the starlight, spitefully longing for two necks, nay, three, to be cut twice and thrice and prove once and for all who among the flock was truly a fearless, unwavering, and obedient sheep.

  When the mad rapist did not immediately oblige, Precious thought better of it, turned on every light in her bedroom, and put on six extra panties. Then she turned off the lights and slunk back in bed and waited, hearing the brute panting and blowing and complaining grouchily to himself that the hill was long and steep.

  With the elastic band tourniquet of seven panties choking off the blood supply to her liver and kidneys, to say nothing of her belly, she lay still but could hardly breathe much less sleep.

  At 10 o’clock she grasped that she was a ridiculous fool and a brainless idiot, lurched angrily out of bed, and defiantly shed the extra panties.

  She stood by the dark window and gulped several lungfuls of sweet nighttime mountain air through the burglar bars before crawling back to bed and tumbling once more into a troubled sleep.

  She awoke an hour later, stared groggily at the face of the bedtime clock and glimpsed that it was now 11:00, that the night was not even half over, and began to suffer another deranged nightmare, this one about her murderer.

  Lowly bus was not good enough for the murdering beast of her fevered imagination. Nothing but a cab would do, which he rode to the bottom of the hill, quibbling over the fare and leaving no tip as you would expect from a heartless wretch. Trudging up the hill, he paused to cut a hefty tree limb, good for bashing a defenseless woman’s brains out. She saw him pulverize a coarse rockstone on the roadway with one swing of the club before being satisfied that it would well crack a skull and starting again up the hill in the starlight.

  While he stomped brazenly in the darkness toward her house, Precious jumped up and rashly turned on the light, muttering to herself that if she had to be murdered in her own bed among wilderness and peak, she would at least be murdered in a decent dress. After all, she reminded herself deliriously as she scuttled about the bright room looking for just the right outfit, a woman got to be murdered only once in her life and certainly had no excuse for not being properly groomed for the occasion. When the police found her body, they would know right away that she was a respectable victim and not some common Butu. She would wear such a fine dress that the Homicide sergeant would just feel to take off his hat and bow his head with respect upon finding her black-and-blue corpse.

  Trussed up in her best white frock like she was at Easter Sunday service, she settled back in bed and patiently awaited the killer while staring sightlessly at the dark ceiling and dreaming of the gallows and the last long walk the murdering wretch would have to take down a sooty hallway to the waiting hangman. She consoled herself just before dozing off fitfully that at least her torso would be well dressed for her death picture in the Gleaner and, although she would really prefer if the nasty newspapers did not show her to the whole world with her head bashed in, she supposed that there was no gainsaying modern photojournalism.

  She fell into another mire of sleep, jumped awake at 12 o’clock to sleepily wonder what on earth she was doing in bed wearing her best dress. She got out of the frock and back into her nightgown.

  Darkness held the wooden house in a death grip. The night stalked around her bedroom like a thief, tapped fingers against her window, popped and cracked ankle bones in her ear. It-made her start; it made her heart lurch and race, her eyelids twitch and jump. She saw many horrible visions and suffered fretful nightmares of creatures and beasts seen only in dreams. Jamaican Jesus was nowhere around.

  She sprang out of bed, padded to the closet, scooped out every shoe box and knick-knack that had accumulated on the bottom shelf, packed three pillows inside and clambered in, pulling the closet door firmly shut behind her. She was encapsulated in an airless and unimaginable blackness where not even the most cunning and bloodthirsty murderer would think to look for her. It was the same closet where Theophilus kept his shotgun propped up in a corner, and her big toe brushed against the cold wooden gunstock. Here she settled, cocooned in a womb of blackness like an enormous grub, and finally fell asleep.

  But just before she dozed off, she muttered angrily, “Theophilus, you see how you leave me! You and you peak!”

  The next day when Harold stopped by the house and perfunctorily renewed his offer for her to come and live with him in Kingston, she did not utter a peep about “two woman under one roof,” she did not hesitate over her job; she just knew that as long as she drew breath, she would never willingly spend another night alone in that house.

  She packed up a few belongings and rode into Kingston with her son.

  Chapter 5

  Mildred, the woman Harold called “wife” and under whose roof Precious now lived, was queen of a Kingston household in which cockroach dared not venture, fly met sudden death, and even the fleeting glitter of the joyful firefly was extinguished with aerosol spray. She served no custard at her table, harbored no pudding, tolerated no tambrin balls, no bullah cake. She was a woman with an unbridled appetite for discipline and scrimping.

  In this household maid and helper came and went like summer rain. Those who stayed took fiendish delight in female ruff and rule, suffered mouth crimp, and sported the bony batty of deep-water fish. Antiseptic, enema, and washrag were inflicted routinely on the children. Man was forced to walk the straight-and-narrow path and encouraged to wallow in guilt over bad habit. Belly did not grow luxuriant and demon rum was never drunk except after funerals.

  Into this tundra of temperance, frugality, and prudence came-to live Precious, creating the turmoil of two women under one roof.

  Two women
under one roof: One loves pudding, the other loves bone. One has shaved off her batty with gruesome American aerobic exercise and diet, smiles only with a squint, and always chews with her mouth closed. The other is carefree and roly-poly, boasts the succulent and good-natured rump of a heifer, takes sweetened condensed milk in her tea, and is ever ready to forgive backsliding. One talks fast with words that hiss out between her teeth, the other chats slow with mouth open wide and well-fed tongue wriggling sinuously over moist lips. One makes music by drumming fingernails on tabletop, the other hums and warbles as she blusters through the house spreading sunshine and cool breeze. One the wife, the other the mother. Between them, Harold the husband, who wants only to live in peace and quiet and pull teeth. But war has broken out in his household between the woman who bore him in her belly and the one who rides him.

  Household war number one.

  Mildred does not like the way Precious slouches. She has read in a book about the insidious nature of bad posture, which can encourage criminal tendency, to say nothing of wreaking injury to backbone. She says the mother-in-law is always leaning against door frame, sagging against wall, slouching against couch and cushion, and the children are beginning to grow lean and crooked from bad example. Precious is hurt that she is thought to lean and sag when in her heart she feels sure that she stands straighter than church pillar and post. Mildred explains that spinal injuries are permanent and disabling; that American doctors say bad posture caused the fall of Rome; that Japanese children, who are the brainiest anywhere, stand straight as chopsticks, which just went to show you. Not because she lived in Jamaica did Mildred not keep up with American pediatric thinking. It was nothing personal, but please do not always tilt like faulty watchtower and hold up the doorway when the children are around.