Dog War (21 page)
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.
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.
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.
“Lawd Jesus,” Maud moaned, withdrawing into the order and sanity of her kitchen, “dey freeze-dry dog in America! I-must see dat place wid me own eye before I dead.”
Steeling herself for bad news, Precious nervously tore open the envelope.
Inside was a note written in a neat hand on personalized stationery with the letterhead inscription:
From the kitchen of Mannish Chaudhuri.
It said:
Dear Precious,
I am taking the liberty to post you Riccardo from Montego Bay where Beulah and I enjoyed a delayed honeymoon and to which I carried him in my suitcase, to spare you difficulties with Customs. (My cousin is right: A freeze-dried dog is very portable.) Beulah says that dog fur makes her sneeze. Plus, she thinks this dog particularly ugly. Rather than throwing him away, I thought it only right that you should have him.
Your troubles with the mistress are past. She has completely accepted my explanations for the dog’s disappearance. You were too hasty to leave, for you are utterly forgiven.
Love,
Mannish
p.s. Good news! I have been with Beulah only seven months, but already I have repaid one camel.
There was a noisy row that night between Precious and her pastor, who objected to the display of a freeze-dried rival in the respectable drawing room of the woman he was courting. Precious tartly reminded him that it was her drawing room, that no collection had been taken up in church to pay her mortgage, and grumbling bitterly the pastor walked over to where the lifeless dog crouched in a solitary diorama, turned it over, and blared out an accusing “Aha!” as he pointed an indignant finger at a quarter-inch extrusion of raw dog hood. Precious blinked and heard the cousin’s mocking laugh.
“De only rightful thing to do with this dog,” the pastor declared huffily, “is to make him a burnt offering. We can build a funeral pyre in de backyard and fire up de dog with a prayer. Like Abraham wid him lamb.”
“I don’t want to do dat.”
“Why not? Why you want dis stinking dog in a respectable drawing room?”
“I just don’t feel to do dat.”
“Why?” thundered the pastor.
Precious stumbled about trying to think of a reason, but she could utter none to appease him. He pressed his case for making the dog a burnt offering. They were in courtship, and he was a man of the cloth who knew what vile liberty the dog had attempted to take with his future wife. As a Jamaican national, not to mention an ordained minister, he was deeply offended that his wife-to-be would wish to retain a replica of a rapist American dog in her drawing room, the scene of his own warmhearted wooing. Precious stuck to her guns. They had a furious quarrel that ended with the pastor stomping out of the house and roaring off into the night.
The pastor stayed away for three nights. On the fourth he returned complaining of her heartlessness. He sat on the veranda and begged her at least to please shift the dog effigy to a spot where he did not have to endure the animal’s faultfinding stare. Precious tucked the dog behind a stuffed chair.
Clearing his throat as if he was about to deliver a eulogy at the funeral of a known crook, the pastor renewed his courtship.
A few evenings later, they were basking contentedly on the veranda in a cool breeze with the pastor trying to persuade Precious to feel up the gabardine hillock over which his zipper zigzagged when they heard a car rattle deep in the throat of the-long driveway and saw splinted headlight beams stab the night sky.
Soon the throb of an engine and the squeals of springs grew louder and a car roared up the final gradient and spurted onto the level apron of lawn.
They sat still on the porch and stared while the dogs hurtled from under the house and eddied around the car with a fierce barking. Precious turned on the outside lights, peered into the glare, and heard a familiar voice cry, “Precious, it’s Lucy Johnston!”
“Lawd Jesus,” Precious gasped, digging her nails into the arm of her pastor. “Is Mistress Lucy!”
“Is your soul cleansed? Have you fear of secret sin?” the pastor scoffed. “Buck up and trust in de Lord, Precious.”