They were standing in a whitewashed room that looked as if its walls had been repeatedly hand-scrubbed. The air smelled acridly of antiseptic like a hospital’s toilet. Before them was a metallic door posted with a sign that said, Do Not Enter. Crouched at the entrance to the dingy room, which served both as the cousin’s reception area and personal office, was a dog coiled to spring friskily up at visitors. Precious had shied away from him when she first timidly followed Mannish into the room, but the cousin assured her that it was only a display to show off the results of the freeze-drying chamber, which was vastly superior to taxidermy. He was very proud of his machine, purred the laughing cousin, inviting Precious to stroke the dog’s head and see if she could tell death with her touch. Precious shuddered and declined.
“I am now very curious,” pressed the cousin. “How did this animal die?”
This was to be her punishment, her burden, her personal cross; Precious made up her mind that she would shoulder it uncomplainingly and not put aside the bitter cup.
“He tried to rape me,” she said with statuesque dignity. “I-threw him off. He hit his head. It was an accident.”
The cousin exploded in a burst of laughter and spittle.
The American continent was slipping past the Rolls Royce as they continued their drive to the airport, with Precious gazing wistfully out the window. She was feeling bitterness and spite toward everything American, and if she had had a flag and a match, she would definitely have started a constitutional fire.
“Precious,” Mannish softly interrupted her reverie, “would you like to stop here for breakfast?”
She nodded sullen assent. The Rolls Royce, substantial and smooth as a rolling house, purred into the driveway of a McDonald’s and pulled up incongruously next to a battered pickup truck plastered over with bumper-sticker American flags.
“I wonder what dis patriot would have to say about what dat American dog try to do to me?” Precious asked bitterly as they stepped out of the Rolls.
“I would not ask questions of American patriots, Precious,” Mannish advised softly, holding the car door open for her. “Their abstractness of thought makes them dangerous. They are likely to shoot at querulous immigrants.”
They had a glum breakfast. Precious picked at her food with no appetite and sighed frequently as she glanced around the crowded dining room.
“Now I know how a man feels when he is wrongly hanged,” she muttered.
Mannish shook his head sympathetically and chewed with feeling on his sausage biscuit. He had never been hanged in his earlier lives, he declared, although once he came so close that the noose was around his neck before the unfortunate mistake was discovered.
“Up to last night,” Precious muttered, “I felt like the world was sane.”
“The feeling will return shortly, Precious. I am confident.”
“I hope you right. I’m only forty-eight. Living in a world I-thought was mad could drive me mad.”
They finished breakfast on this uneasy note and headed for the car.
Bustling through the front door as they exited the restaurant was a brisk young woman clad in the rind of a snugly tailored business suit. Mannish held open the door for her with a deferential smile.
“You don’t have to hold a door open for me,” she snapped. “I-have a hand of my own. After you.”
Mannish was in the parking lot when he staggered, whirled, and gaped after the woman. “It’s Beulah!” he gasped.
“It is not!”
“Precious! It is her! Oh, if she ever heard such grammar. I-mean, it is she. Wait here!”
“Come back here at once!” yelped Precious, but the chauffeur had already darted back into the restaurant and disappeared.
Precious stood melting in the warming sun before she made a moan of despair and went back inside to search for the chauffeur. She spotted him standing beside a table in a corner engaged in earnest conversation with the woman, who was staring at him suspiciously.
Precious tramped over and parked her bulk conspicuously near his elbow.
“Before I call the police on your friend,” the woman asked her crossly, “tell me, how did he know that my name is Beulah?”
Chapter 23
Precious ended up taking a cab to the airport and boarding the plane with not even a life insurance salesman to wave her goodbye. She sat at a window seat and as the aircraft began to rumble down the runway, she silently begged it to crash. It did not comply but lifted off and roared into the heavens, retracting its wheels with a bone-jarring crunch that trickled through the flooring.
She glanced around the crowded aircraft, took in the usual motley collection of women and children, and withdrew her wish for a crash as selfish. But then she remembered reading about a woman in an airplane whose window had exploded, sucking her and her alone out into the sky to splatter 35,000 feet below on a farmer’s soybean field, and she asked for this to be her fate. She was right by the window and could be siphoned out without taking any unwilling passengers along. But the aircraft held intact; the window refused to shatter, and the flight was depressingly boring.
Over Cuba a nervous higgler sitting beside her mumbled that she always had nightmares about crashing on Cuban soil and being forced to learn Spanish, a foreign tongue she detested. Precious assured her that she had nothing to fear, for this was an unreliable, headstrong world that did exactly what it wanted to do for its own petty pleasure. It was very much like this airline, she added, which if it ever crashed you could be sure would crash only when it pleased. The higgler looked uneasy and mumbled that she had never heard anyone talk-about the world or an airline in such a way but that it was-true,-the world was really devilishly perverse. Then remembering that she was not on the earth but perched 35,000 feet above it, the higgler lapsed into a nervous and morose silence during which she fidgeted with the airsickness bag and flicked apprehensive glances around the cabin.
Beside her sat Precious with her eyes closed, intermittently requesting a crash, a sucking-out of the window, and assorted other calamities—she would even have settled for a heart attack—but as per usual life merrily bubbled inside her and the plane landed with a willful, provoking smoothness.
When Harold shook himself loose from the swirling crowd and elbowed a path across the pavement to greet her outside the airport, Precious had one flat answer to give to his babbling questions about why she had so abruptly returned from America: “Harold, I am a changed woman.”
Precious was a changed woman. She had no fear. She knew no anxiety. She suffered no dread. She did not know why she felt as she did, but she was a woman definitely changed enough to be styled eccentric or, at best, new. Harold chose to say “new” because Precious was his mother and he couldn’t bear to think that the belly out of which he had squirted onto this earth had grown eccentric. Mildred chose to say “eccentric,” arming herself with that damning wifely comment, “You mad just like you mother!” for use in future marital spats.
Precious was so new that she stayed with Harold for only two nights before she began clamoring to go back to her house in the mountains. Harold protested that she could not stay up there all alone, but Precious insisted that that was just what she wanted to do, and she was backed quickly by Mildred, who argued that a woman could do exactly what she wanted to do, this being modern Jamaica and not your slavery days, and if a mother-in-law wanted to move out of her adult son’s house where she was always welcome but definitely didn’t belong, she was entitled to do so without opposition.
Harold gave in with a tired sigh.
The next day he drove Precious back to her house in the mountains where he insisted on staying with her that first night, but Precious showed him the shotgun in the closet and the two-big dogs, one of which lunged at his ankle, and sweetly reminded him that she was the said woman who had once wiped his batty.
“Look at dis place, Mummy,” Harold pleaded, his hand brushing at the crumpled mountains like a disgruntled storekeeper gesturing at unsold
goods.
“Kiss me,” Precious ordered, presenting a chubby cheek. “Then go home to you wife and family.”
As soon as her son had grudgingly driven away, Precious tromped into her bedroom and slid on the cold wooden floor under the bed.
“I know you must be under here!” she called to Jamaican Jesus in a voice so loud that it made the dogs stir on the veranda. “Things need explaining!”
She waited for the explanation.
Chapter 24
She got no explanation, of course, for Massah God does not have to explain His ways to creatures who amble over His earth, whether they walk on foot, fly through air, swim in water, squirm through mud, hang from tree limb, or crawl on dirt. He-did not explain to Job and He certainly wouldn’t stoop to-explain to a disgruntled country widow who dared criticize the Divine Plan. As Precious was not even a lance corporal in the army of righteousness, it was most out of order for her to batter down the tent flap of the commanding general and demand strategic explanation.
All this and more was counselled to Precious by the pastor of her church, who had himself become a widower while Precious was in America and to whom the story of her migration adventures was gradually revealed over the course of the following months. The tale about the attempted dog rape came out one night on her veranda after the pastor impudently christened Precious the juiciest sister in his congregation. At-this comment, Precious had very nearly run him off her mountaintop. She blasted him in no uncertain terms that he was out of order to come call her juicy on her own veranda. He-apologized and said that he meant no disrespect, adding sulkily that most women would love to hear that a man thought them juicy.
“So what if a dog think me juicy, too?” Precious raged. “What I supposed to do with dat?”
The parson was stunned. He could not comprehend how a dog dared think a Christian woman juicy and said so bluntly.
With this opening, the story of Precious and the unruly American dog, couched in half-truths and euphemisms, wriggled out bashfully on the veranda like mortal sin in a cramped confessional. Naturally, one or two small details—her intimacy with Mannish for one, her naked parading through the mansion for another—remained unrevealed.
Once he had a semblance of the whole story, the parson sat erect in his chair and addressed himself to the faultfinding query implicit in it: how such a scandal could have befallen a-decent, well-groomed sister. The answer was, he declaimed in-a tone better suited to a pulpit than a quiet veranda, was “NE-N,” which was theological shorthand for “No Explanation Necessary.”
Precious was not an angel; she was not a saint; she was not even dead; yet she was already demanding explanation of Divine Mystery. Indeed, why bother dead at all if you could get such clarification during your lifetime? When she was good and dead the Master Plan would be duly clarified, the mystery and role of the out of order dog solved. Until such time it was her duty to tidy up her corner of the world and hush up with the questions before Massah God got fed up with the nagging and flogged her with a pox.
The pastor had similarly glib explanations for everything that had befallen her. For example, it was quite clear to him that Jamaican Jesus had really been Satan in disguise and that all along Precious had been crawling under her bed to hold chummy chat with Lucifer. He inferred the true identity of Jamaican Jesus from Precious’s account that the imposter often used raw patois. According to Precious, this bogus Jesus would sometimes greet her under the bed with the patois, “A wa a gwan, Precious?” meaning, “What’s going on, Precious?” But everyone knew that only ignorant ole negar and uncouth Lucifer talked patois and that Jesus would sooner climb up back on the cross than garble, “A wa a gwan.” Moreover, real Jesus was not a bed bug; He did not rendezvous with His congregation under a filthy mattress.
“My mattress is not filthy!” Precious shot back angrily. “I air it out and beat it at least three times a year!”
But really, Precious had no good argument to refute the pastor’s theories. She was not at all convinced that “N-E-N” was the right answer and suspected that she was being bullyridden with argument on her own front porch. Nor could she explain why Jamaican Jesus had vanished or why she felt certain He would never come back. But because she could think of no clever rejoinder, she could only fidget and listen dumbly.
As the months passed the pastor became such a regular visitor that it was only natural that he should also unburden himself on Precious. One night, for example, he wearily confessed to her that he possessed a hood improperly colossal for a man of the cloth; so grossly endowed was he—this handiwork of Satan daily weighting down his drawers—that his dead wife had screamed and locked herself in the closet the first time she saw him naked.
Precious jumped at once to her feet and ordered him off her veranda. The pastor scolded her for treating a fellow pilgrim’s cross with un-Christian harshness, but Precious was unyielding. She was not smart, she declared, but she knew vulgar boasting when she heard it. She ran him off the porch and went to her bed, fuming.
But they made up a few days later after the pastor apologized, saying that he misspoke because of depression over his burdensome cross. Precious did not know whether to box his face or pat him on the back, but because the apology was whispered after services as worshippers in their Sunday best trickled around them in a stream of bobbing heads and murmured greetings, she acknowledged his contrition with a grim nod and a murmur to the effect that, “We are all gunmen, criminals, and sinners.”
The pastor said, “Amen, sister,” and soon afterwards resumed his regular nighttime visits.
The new Precious slept fearlessly well in her lonely mountain house. When she laid her head down at night it was in a pool of thin mountain air scented with nighttime fragrances and burbling with the background chirrups of insects. Cool breezes soothed her slumbers, and though she occasionally started awake in the deep night with a fluttering heart, she would merely roll over in the bed and mutter philosophically, “Lord, drop de tin can if it please you.” In the morning she sometimes added yet another dollop of resignation to the Divine Will, “Bring on de nasty dog, too, if dat is you pleasure.”
She took driving lessons, got her license, and bought a secondhand car. She got back her old job at the hotel and had plenty to occupy her weekdays.
An unfulfilled emptiness haunted her weekends, however, especially on Saturday nights. But with the pastor cautiously circling, she had vague prospects of betterment to come. Lately he had begun to passionately kiss her goodnight, and as the weeks passed both the night visits and kisses grew deeper and longer.
Maud still shuffled every day around the lonely house, casting a wary eye on Red Dog and muttering dourly about domestic slavery on a steep and lonely mountaintop. For her part, Precious had come to love the fresh and cooling airs enough to tolerate the loneliness, the clutter of peaks. Indeed, if she must be murdered, she would prefer murder in a cool and breezy place rather than in an airless lowland. And if she must be tied up and raped, she preferred that it be done on her own-bed.
Migration to America and the nasty experience with the American dog had taught Precious a lifelong lesson: She now understood that the head of every pilgrim on this earth lay bare and defenseless against the tin can; that neither grooming nor Christian piety was enough to fend off the perverse dog of fate out to wee-wee all over an innocent earthling’s foot. In life no woman had final say over outcome or effect. She could choose to wear a certain hat or to walk bareheaded, but it made no difference to heaven’s tin can. Whether her foot was naked or shod in leather pumps did not count with heaven’s capricious dog. That being the indisciplined nature of this unruly earth, one might as well take to the road bravely without undue fretting.
This was the philosophy of the new Precious.
Chapter 25
Several months after her return, Precious received notice from the village post office of the arrival of a package addressed to her. She immediately drove into the village to get it.
/> “What a big box you get!” the postmistress announced to Precious over the counter of the dingy shop that also served as a makeshift post office. “Beg you a little help wid it.”
Precious walked around the grimy counter and into the smelly back room of the shop, where she helped the postmistress wrestle a cumbersome box through the small side door and into the trunk of her parked car.
She drove home and bellowed for Maud to help. Together, the two of them struggled with the box over the rocky lawn and onto the front veranda.
“Go get a knife for me, Maud,” Precious ordered.
Maud returned with the knife and stood peering curiously while Precious carefully cut open the box.
“What could come in such a big box?” the maid wondered aloud, glad for the respite from humdrum cleaning and scrubbing.
“We soon find out now,” replied Precious, slitting through the remaining tape.
Craning to stare into the box as Precious opened it, Maud-suddenly emitted a piercing squeal of astonishment and jumped backwards.
“Lawd Jesus, mum!” she cried. “Somebody mail you a-dog!”
Inside the box, wedged snugly between clumps of styrofoam worms and crumpled newspaper, his snout pasted with the impudent expression he always wore when he squirted Mannish’s pants or played woodpecker with Precious’s shinbone, crouched freeze-dried Riccardo.
Maud retreated another several feet until she was poised at the edge of the drawing room, ready to bolt into the sanctuary of the kitchen.
“Him dead, mum?” she asked timorously.
“Of course he’s dead!” Precious said irritably. “Dey freeze-dried him in America.”
“Freeze-dried? Dey can freeze-dry a dog?”
“You don’t have any work to do?” snapped Precious, exasperated, reaching into the box and lifting out the dead dog, which was surprisingly light. From the bottom of the box she retrieved a hand-addressed envelope.
Dog War Page 16
