Killing Everybody

by Mark Harris

  Phone in! thought Lala, bomb his ass, the bastard. His office was “in.” The house was “out.” She was his prisoner; he came and went while she was stuck, and he wouldn’t be there if she did phone “in.” He never was on Tuesday especially — he was all over town; she couldn’t keep track of him although it was easy enough for him to keep track of her. Imagine if he called home and she was gone! “We should have kept him in the house,” she said.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” said Harold, behind his wheel now, his voice inaudible to her, but his mouth moving against the sound of his motor. He was unaware that he could not be heard except by himself. “He didn’t bark. He was alert. Nobody warned us of nothing. A dog in the house goes soft.” He drove down Eagle Street, left on Yukon, out of Lala’s sight in his sleek vehicle, and out of our sight, too, forever, although we will hear his voice this afternoon under unusual circumstances.

  He had promised to vote before leaving for work, but now he wouldn’t vote, he was gone, although he’d tell her tonight he had voted; he’d throw voting in with bowling in the big lie that was Tuesday. And how would she break the news to the girls? You tell them. They’re girls. There would be tears, a scene, and awkward questions about God — why does God let such things happen? — although thank God Louisa had somewhat outgrown God, and Catherine soon would, and after God came horses, and after horses came boys, whom Lala herself believed in, for she could survive quite well without God or horses, and here came Christopher on his bicycle, having been expelled from his house. He was on his own now for fourteen hours. Presumably, after some years of “danger pay,” his parents would have achieved a sufficient fortune to reopen their house to their child.

  “Paprika’s gone,” Lala said to Christopher, greeting him in the driveway.

  “Where?” he asked. He leaped from his bicycle to stoop for her morning Chronicle.

  “We don’t know,” she said.

  “He escaped?” he asked.

  “It looks like that,” said Lala. “If you find him I’ll give you a big reward.”

  “I wouldn’t take a reward,” said Christopher. “Not from you I wouldn’t. Finding him would be enough of a reward from you,” by which he meant she was reward enough, this kind lady in her pink robe. He was thirteen years old.

  “Could he be crouching in a corner?” she asked. She went again to the garden fence, but Paprika was gone, no doubt of that; but how or why she didn’t know and might never know, for life was filled with mysteries never answered. She had received another barking telephone call last night, and she had received an anonymous letter regarding Paprika some time ago, and with newspaper enclosures, too, one from Oregon, another from Saugus in California.

  Cherry A Horsman, of 3303 N. Vancouver Avenue, has pleaded innocent to killing a small poodle May 12.

  Mrs. Horsman is accused of slitting the throat of the dog during a feud with a neighbor woman which ended with Mrs. Horsman being shot in the face.

  The neighbor and poodle owner, Othella M. Etheridge, 55, of 3722 NE Cleveland Avenue, is charged with assault with intent to kill.

  Police reports said Mrs. Horsman entered Mrs. Etheridge’s home May 12 while Mrs. Etheridge was away and killed the animal with a kitchen knife.

  Mrs. Etheridge, who has pleaded innocent, is charged with shooting Mrs. Horsman the next day after discovering the dog’s death.

  From Saugus the news was this:

  Dogs may be man’s best friend, but do not always foster friendship, as two women in Canyon Breeze Mobile Home Park learned Monday.

  When Frances A. Anderson, 53, of 28504 Sand Canyon Rd., asked her neighbor, Shirley Reiner, 34, to quiet her barking dog, Mrs. Reiner allegedly became irate and struck Mrs. Anderson in the face with her fist.

  Mrs. Anderson then went into her trailer and called Sheriff’s deputies. She returned to her porch when Mrs. Reiner reportedly approached her and hit her in the head with a sandal-type shoe.

  Mrs. Anderson was taken to Inter-Valley Hospital for treatment of a one-inch wound on her head.

  Mrs. Reiner was arrested by deputies and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

  “I’ll look for him and come back for breakfast,” Christopher said.

  “I’m sure,” said Lala, but softly, for she never mocked a child. She took hope. Maybe Christopher would find him, and she’d give him a reward. A kiss. He’d settle for that. Two kisses. She’d thrust her finger inside his shirt against his skin. Suddenly his whole body appeared to her mind’s eye, and she tried to dismiss it by thinking serious thoughts: maybe Paprika would just stroll back in; how had he left in the first place? Certainly he didn’t unlatch the gate himself and stroll out (latching it behind him, too). If Paprika was gone for good, Harold would only get another dog to protect his women from mad rapists wandering the neighborhood, prowlers and peepers whom Harold feared, although he was somewhat of a peeper himself with his binoculars up there in the drawer with his socks and his handkerchiefs. He thought she didn’t know. But her question was, “Why doesn’t he take me in on it, why don’t we peep together if it’s fun (which it is) or if it sets you up for thrills of your own?” He’d get another dog louder than Paprika. “I’d rather be raped,” she said to herself, entering the house again, dropping Harold’s bowling shoes on the floor, first one, then the other, and then the newspaper.

  She turned on the television in the living room and disconnected the electric coffee-maker in the kitchen. Disconnecting the coffee-maker was a bit like disconnecting Harold himself. Her symbolic mind was growing. When the barking person telephoned, all Harold could say was “Who’s this? . . . Who’s this?” but the voice simply barked, and Lala tried to explain to Harold that it didn’t matter who it was, it was the message that mattered, it was the symbolic meaning of it, but Harold didn’t believe it, or couldn’t, or wouldn’t. “Who’s this? Who’s this? I’ll call the police,” Harold kept saying, and when he telephoned the police and described the anonymous annoying call the policeman said, “You probably have a barking dog in your possession that somebody wants you to make stop barking,” but Harold couldn’t believe the policeman any more than he could believe Lala. “They can be bought off,” he said.

  Having unplugged Harold in the kitchen she returned to the television in the living room, keeping the volume low, not to wake the girls. She liked to watch the gentleman exercise. It was as if he were fucking, lacking only a partner to fuck with. Suppose she could fuck someone on national television! Would she accept the unusual opportunity? She’d need to think it over — she couldn’t give a prompt answer. It depends on whom with, she thought. “With me,” said the exercising gentleman on the television, although nobody could hear him but Lala. “With you, yes,” she replied. “On prime time?” he asked.

  “You bet,” she replied, rising from her chair almost before she had settled into it, having forgotten to prepare the girls’ lunches. “That’s not like me,” she said, “but then it’s not like me to fuck on prime time on national television, either.” Where could Paprika have gone? Once upon a time she had thought that everything had an explanation, that all our acts or deeds were found out by the proper authorities, but lately she had begun to realize that the authorities don’t really find everything out, that the authorities may scarcely exist, or exist without power, like a powerless king. “The King of Bavaria is actually only a figurehead.” She learned such sentences at James Lick Junior High School, not far away. Look at those people down the street, neglecting Christopher. When Lala was a girl she had certainly heard from her own mother and from everyone else she respected that mothers simply took care of their children, and that was all there was to it. You protected your child. You defended your child. If someone threatened your child you fought back. No doubt under certain circumstances you killed for your child. Thank God Lala had no boys to be taken away and slaughtered by the military-industrial complex, she just wouldn’t let them, tha
t’s all, running upstairs now, hiking her pink robe a little, to awaken her daughters, up and down these stairs all day on numberless errands, thinking now how she could break the awful news to them that Paprika was gone without implying, on the one hand, that he was gone forever, and yet without raising the hope, on the other, that he had merely strolled down the street and would soon return. You might as well get used to the certain end of certain things, certain people. Some people cease to exist. A year ago her father ceased to exist, and so it must be with dogs, too, now you saw them, now you didn’t, all dogs were mortal.

  Her daughters were Louisa and Catherine. If Lala named them aloud she named them in the order of their arrival, to show no partiality; Louisa the older. The name Louisa was Lala’s own. People were sometimes confused, expecting that the name Lala would belong to the child, Louisa to the mother, or else Louisa and Lala to the children, Catherine to the mother, for Catherine had dignity, whereas Lala and Louisa ended girlishly, jinglingly. Well then, people shouldn’t go around seeking consistency, they were wasting their time, they’d never find it.

  Catherine lay awake looking at the ceiling and smiling slightly, reflecting upon a pleasant dream. Her hands were folded upon her breast. Her mother, sitting on the bed and kissing Catherine, seized the child’s hands, unfolded them and held them, as if holding them had been her intention, although actually her intention was to alter the posture of death Catherine’s folded hands suggested. Across her left cheek, from her ear to her mouth, she was scarred by a bite of her beloved pet dog, Paprika. “You had another nice dream,” said Lala.

  “I always have nice dreams,” said Catherine, who had been praised by her grandmother Iris McCoy for having nice dreams, as opposed to sad or dismal dreams.

  “You don’t always have to say you had a nice dream,” said Lala, “because sometimes you might have bad dreams. There’s nothing wrong with having bad dreams. I personally dream very wicked dreams.”

  “Such as what?” asked Catherine.

  “We haven’t time to talk about it now,” said Lala, “but you’ll probably dream the same dreams as you grow older.”

  “I dreamed about Paprika,” said Catherine, who hadn’t at all. No. But she had been awake for an hour, she knew that Paprika was gone, and she wished to give her mother an easy opening into the subject.

  “I see,” said her mother. “What did you dream about Paprika?”

  “I dreamed that he wrote a poem,” said Catherine. “Is that all right?”

  “Certainly it’s all right,” said Lala, watching Louisa awaken in the other bed. “Don’t worry too much about what your father says.” Harold had recently ordered Catherine not to dream unrealistic dreams, and he would certainly have condemned a dream about a poetry-writing dog. “Did we wake you?” Lala asked Louisa.

  “You meant to wake me,” Louisa said. “I could have gone on sleeping for hours. I wish you’d stop pretending.” Louisa was less agreeable than her sister, sometimes slightly surly or contrary. “One thing I hate is loud jabbering in the morning.” Louisa was eleven years old. Catherine was nine. Louisa was also, in an accepted sense, prettier than her sister.

  “It’s time to get up anyhow,” her mother said.

  “I’m not getting up for anybody,” Louisa said.

  “That’s up to you, see if I care,” said Lala, rising from Catherine’s bed, drawing apart the drapes at the window, remarking upon the beauty of the day, and looking thoughtfully down upon Paprika’s deserted space in the yard. “People are voting in Mr. Maxim’s garage,” she said, wondering if she ought to blurt it out and get it over with — dog’s gone, girls, don’t be surprised if he’s dead, face the music, dogs do die — get all the crying and all the God-hating done and over with. She could kill Harold. “You tell them. They’re girls.” She said to her girls now, “Daddy took Paprika to work with him.”

  Both girls were astonished. Catherine knew that her mother was lying, and Louisa wondered if her mother was telling the truth. “You’ll be all alone,” Louisa said. “Who’ll guard the house? I wonder if you’re telling the truth. Did you have a fight? He’s punishing you. He’s depriving you, leaving you alone all day without protection,” knowing her father’s passion for depriving people of this, depriving people of that, depriving you of privileges, depriving you of pleasures, depriving you of sweets, and now depriving Lala of Paprika because of some displeasing thing Lala had done.

  Lala glanced once more into the yard to see if by chance Paprika had returned. How could he? Could he have jumped back over a fence he couldn’t have jumped forward? “I’m going to leave the gate open so he can walk in if he comes back,” she said.

  “Then you were lying,” Louisa said.

  “I was lying, yes,” said Lala. “I often lie.” It would be interesting to know where he is, she thought. If only she knew where he was she’d be satisfied: she’d settle for the knowledge of it, never mind the dog himself. This is the direction in which her mind was lately going. She no longer cared so much about the possession of things as the knowledge of things. She had become careless of mere having, mere title, mere safety, of peace-keeping, self-containment, and little white lies. This was a strange thing to be happening to a mother of two, wife of one, soon filling her daughters’ breakfast bowls with cereal and creamy milk and raisins and brown sugar, and packing their lunch-pails with goodies of every sort. She was the victim of a quest for knowledge. So she felt. Perhaps she should see a psychiatrist. Was she being fair to her daughters? Pour on sugar. Heap it up. There went her symbolic mind again.

  “I don’t see him anywhere,” said Christopher, who had entered in time for breakfast, and so Lala gave him, too, cereal, raisins, brown sugar, milk so rich it was almost cream, and a sack lunch filled “with goodies of every sort,” just as the girls demanded.

  “He’ll be back by the time you’re all home,” said Lala.

  “You have no way of knowing that,” said Louisa coolly.

  “Was he in love?” Catherine asked, for she had heard that love produced restlessness in animals.

  “We don’t know,” said Lala.

  “You can tell easy,” said Christopher.

  “Well, we haven’t time to talk about that now,” said Lala.

  “He’s lost,” said Louisa. “He’s gone forever,” and she began to cry, and Catherine cried, too.

  Somewhere was a person who had made Lala’s daughters cry. She’d kill him if she could. In time to come her daughters would cry a good deal, for girls do cry, and persons make them, and that was to be expected; but for someone to have begun so soon to trouble her daughters by stealing their dog — that was hateful, despicable, unspeakable, and Lala clenched her teeth, grinding her enemy to pieces, and her daughters cried into their cereal, and Lala said to Christopher, “I bet you never saw so much crying,” to which he replied, “My mother and father cry all the time,” thus presenting Lala with a picture of his parents not heretofore developed in her mind. She had thought of them as bestial and neglectful, greedy for “danger pay” at the expense of their son, only to hear now that they “cry all the time.”

  “I can be in the middle of crying and not pay any attention to it,” said Christopher.

  “I see that you can,” said Lala, watching him eating, and once more imagining his body naked, flashing upon him crying naked into his cereal, then shaking such a vision from her mind, trying to dismiss it by thinking pleasant thoughts: how happy they had all been only last night! No, not last night but the night before, because last night they received the anonymous barking telephone call again, and that had upset them all. Whoever barked on the phone is the one who stole Paprika, she felt. Fortune swerved madly back and forth! How happy they had been only the night before last! No, that was Sunday night. How happy they had all been Saturday night. At any rate, they had not been unhappy, as far as she could recall.

  “Telephone Lost Dog,” Ch
ristopher suggested.

  Believe it or not, such a number existed. People were insane for dogs. Not only did L-O-S-T-D-O-G exist, but the telephone number L-O-S-T-S-O-U-L-S existed, too, although a recent tabulation by the Telephone Company showed that Lost Souls received only a fraction of the inquiries received by Lost Dog. As Lala’s mother said, “The city is covered with five inches of dog shit.”

  Christopher dialed L-O-S-T-D-O-G on the kitchen telephone, receiving a reply from a recorded voice. Lala could see by the boy’s face that no dog resembling Paprika had been found. Possibly a miracle would occur. The case of lost Paprika would arouse the indignation of the nation. It would become a cause célèbre. They would all be photographed, her daughters especially, and be seen, too, by important persons, and offered contracts — to do what? At the end of all of Lala’s old paths of imagination lay a new skepticism. To be beautiful? But beauty vanishes. Then where were you? For their keen minds? Yes, that was more like it, although it was clear at this moment that in Louisa’s mind her body was uppermost, for she was emptying her Campus Queen lunch-pail and repacking her lunch in a brown paper sack, to be like Christopher and to distinguish herself from her sister, whispering in Christopher’s ear, saying certainly, “Let’s run away from Catherine.” Bitch! The two of you. Bastard! So Lala ruminated. If that boy caused trouble between her girls she wouldn’t have him around, that’s all. To settle the problem, thought Lala’s vagrant mind, she’d keep him for herself. To pay for his board he’d be her personal servant; her body servant — now, in this instant, she understood all slavery from Greece to Carolina. Ladies loved having boys around. Thus far it had certainly been an educational morning. Study at home. She called to her daughters, who were departing the house with Christopher, “Walk together, girls, wait for your sister,” but this had no effect upon Louisa, who continued at a swift pace to remain abreast of Christopher. Now Catherine hurried to overtake her sister, but now Louisa increased her pace and seemed to be gaining on Christopher, who was throwing his sack-lunch high into the air and catching it when it came down. Now he began to run. Now Louisa began to run. Now poor little Catherine stopped at the corner and called after them, “Wait for me, I hate you,” swinging her Campus Queen lunch-pail, but Louisa and Christopher ran forward down Yukon until they were gone from Lala’s sight.