Dog War (2 page)

When Theophilus came home after the first day that Precious had spent alone in the new house, he found her ready to move. She complained that she had taken vows to love, honor, and obey, but none required her to be slaughtered in a Godforsaken house just so a selfish husband could gaze upon mountain peak. They had a row about it, which meant that Theophilus tried to browbeat his wife into believing she had suddenly gone mad.

“Is it mad not to want to be murdered in your own house? You bring me up here so you can live among peak. Suppose a criminal come when you’re at school. Suppose he bite off me little toe.”

Theophilus glared at her with exasperation.

“Why would a criminal want to bite off you little toe?” he bellowed.

“Because dat’s how criminal brain work! He might want to bite off me little toe, yes! He might want to do worse! What help would come? None, dat’s what! None! He could take his own sweet time and gnaw off each toe even if he didn’t have a tooth in his mouth.”

“You just make me feel like I want to bite off you little toe meself! And maybe you two foot, too!”

“So now I must stay up here in this lonely house and be murdered just so dis man can see peak when him wake up in de morning!”

And so it went back and forth. Theophilus screamed and banged furniture and spoke longingly of how it would just sweet him to throw a woman off the side of the mountain. Precious rolled her eyes and said that she would gladly submit to being murdered by a heartless self-centered wretch of a husband, but please to carry her to a St. Ann’s Bay lawyer so she could at least make her will and provide for the grandchildren. Night fluttered erratically around the house like a ratbat while the argument raged.

Finally they reached grudging agreement. Precious would get a job that would take her away from the despicable desolation in which she had been transplanted against her better judgment.

And for her protection Theophilus would buy two bad dogs.

Theophilus went out and bought two dogs. One was a big white dog; the other, a big red dog. When Theophilus had first brought the dogs home, neither he nor Precious could think of what to call them no matter how hard they rummaged through their stock of dog names. Precious suggested “Fido,” which Theophilus said was damn French foolishness. Precious countered with “Poochie,” which struck Theophilus as stupid (to prove his point he ran around the house bawling, “Here, Poochie! Come, Poochie!” and looked so ridiculous that even the fool-fool maid had to laugh). “Rover” was as American as rampaging gunman and just not suitable for a Jamaican dog. Precious suggested naming them after old-time Jamaican money, calling one “Thruppence” and the other “Sixpence,” but Theophilus balked, saying that he was not prepared to name any dog of his a penny less than “Hundred Dollar.” Precious said that such an exorbitant name for a dog would make people think they were secretly rich and draw gunmen.

After much back and forth over dog name, Theophilus declared that he wasn’t going to get brain fever over it, and why didn’t they just call the white dog “White Dog” and the red one “Red Dog.” Precious agreed, remarking that since one dog was white and the other red their names had a sensible truthfulness.

From that day on the white dog was called “White Dog,” and the red one “Red Dog.”

Both White Dog and Red Dog proved to be hearty biters. White Dog loved to bite cow shank; Red Dog loved to bite human foot. White Dog would frequently go charging into the pasture whenever he spotted a cow that wanted a biting. Frequently the cow would disagree that it wanted a biting and would kick at him or try to buck him, but White Dog was usually too quick and would dart out of reach, circle, and get in a good nip on the shank of the beast, causing the terrified cow to stampede into the thicket, mooing.

Red Dog thought cow biting was infra dig and senseless teenaged fad. Human foot was what he loved to bite. Of course, there was little or no human foot in these remote parts, and what foot occasionally trampled the hillside was usually armed with a machete it was more than willing to use on a biting dog. Red Dog discovered this for himself the first time he tried to nip the heels of a drover in the pasture and got chopped for his trouble. He next tried to foot-bite the postman who had trudged up the hill to deliver a telegram and very nearly got his brains bashed out with a stick.

For a while after these misadventures Red Dog moped around the hilltop pasture looking forlornly on while White Dog frolicked about contentedly biting cow shank. Then one day, like a godsend, Red Dog spied the fool-fool maid trudging down the driveway and realized that all along right under his very snout was a human foot for biting. Red Dog catapulted off the cut-stone steps in an explosion of snarls and barks and hurtled at the foot of the maid, who was daydreaming about buying a new frock. The maid turned, glimpsed Red Dog thundering down on her, his fierce eye determinedly fixed on her foot, screamed, and flew up a tree. She sat clinging to a crook in the trunk, screaming bloody murder while Red Dog leapt and snapped at her dangling foot.

The maid remained stuck in the crook of the tree until Precious came home and threw stones at Red Dog and drove him off. As soon as she clambered down from the tree, the fool-fool maid spat out her notice and stalked off angrily. Precious chased after her and offered a dog-bite bonus of two hundred dollars if she would only change her mind and stay.

“I stick up inna tree for two hour because of dat dog and you-want give me two hundred dollar?” the maid scowled. “Is-two hundred dollar just fe climbing de tree?”

“Five-hundred-dollar bonus, den!” Precious countered. “Two fifty for de climbing, and two fifty for de near biting.”

The maid scowled ever darker and scuffed at the gravel of the driveway with her toe.

“Is shoulda five hundred for climbing, five hundred for de time up dere, and a thousand for de near bite!”

“Lawd, Maud! How you so wicked, eh? I tell you what. Five-hundred fe de climb, five hundred fe de time, and five-hundred fe de near bite. A fifteen-hundred-dollar bonus.”

Maud wrinkled her nose and grudgingly accepted.

That had happened months ago. Since then, Maud had collected two more fifteen-hundred-dollar bonuses because of Red Dog. One payment had been earned; Red Dog had really charged and treed her again. But the other episode had been a bogus vote. She needed a little extra money for her boyfriend, so she climbed the tree, straddled the crook with her bony rump, and hollered for Red Dog. When he ambled over to stare up at her with a puzzled expression, she threw him down a soup bone attached to a coarse string. Red Dog sniffed at the bone and settled under the tree to contentedly gnaw at its knobby end. At the sound of Precious’s car approaching, Maud yanked the halfchewed bone out of his mouth, stuck it down the front of her dress, began blubbering for mercy and help, and so pocketed her bogus pay.

Even though Red Dog had proven himself useful for extra-spending money, Maud still hated him with a passion. She saved all the choice morsels from the kitchen for White Dog, giving Red Dog nothing but gristle and scraps. One time she even stuck a bird pepper in his bowl of cornmeal. Red Dog took one greedy chomp on the pepper, exploded in a bewildered howl, and took off for the river.

“What happen to Red Dog?” Precious wondered, watching him tear down the hillside.

“Him don’t like de cornmeal, mum.”

Sometimes Maud would serve Red Dog bush mixtures in his food that would bind his bowels for at least a week. Then she would add a herb and give him a thorough washing out.

Precious had noticed Red Dog’s peculiar bowel habits, and this morning she broached the subject with Theophilus while both dogs slumped on the cut-stone steps and covetously eyed their masters’ breakfast.

“Dat dog don’t doo-doo de whole week, you know dat, Theo?”

Theophilus looked stunned. “You follow de dog around all day to watch him doo-doo?”

“I don’t follow de dog around, Theo. But I know how dat-dog stay. You watch. One week he don’t do anything at all. Not a lump. Not even a little dumpling.”

“Lawd Jesus, woman, I eating me breakfast!”

“Sorry.”

Maud had sauntered onto the porch during this exchange.

“Him goin’ go this evening, mum,” she promised inscrutably, collecting the dishes and trudging off toward the kitchen.

Precious shook her head in amazement.

“Theo, I swear dat girl is a prophet. She is always right. When she say Red Dog goin’ doo-doo, is better dan money in de bank!”

Theophilus glared at his wife, a fork laden with green banana poised halfway to his mouth.

“I don’t want to talk ’bout dog doo-doo when I eating me breakfast!” he thundered.

“Sorry,” Precious said meekly.

Theophilus departed for school to preside over standing committees, blanch unruly bottoms, and teach Norman Invasion. As he clambered into his car, he took in a deep draft of the surrounding mountain scenery and joyfully bellowed with a magisterial sweep of his arms, “Now, dis is what man call peak! Dis is peak, Precious! See peak dere, and dere, and dere.”

With Theophilus gone, Precious went into her bedroom, latched the door, and, before dressing for work, crawled under her bed to have a heart-to-heart chat with Jamaican Jesus.

She had talked to Jesus since she was a child, usually holding pious conversation with him in the open air as she walked down a quiet parochial road after church. But since her braining she just felt better about confessing sin when her head was shielded from blowing tin can by bedspring and mattress. So she took up talking to Jamaican Jesus while hiding under her bed.

In the beginning, she spoke to Jesus as if he were a foreigner to whom a Jamaican could not pray except in standard English with proper use of “who” and “whom.” But then she attended a revival meeting one Sunday in which the evangelist proved that Jesus was indubitably a Jamaican for Jamaicans just as he was an American for Americans and Trinidadian for Trinidadians, for the reigning power of Jesus defied all earthly nationality and pettifogging borders. If a sinful sheep in Timbuktu called out to Jesus it was Jesus the Timbuktuan shepherd who appeared. How could it be otherwise? What would it be but errant colonialism for Englishman Jesus to appear unto Jamaican sheep?

It was a profoundly enlightening sermon to Precious and convinced her from then on to talk Jamaican patois to Jesus under her bed as if he were a street-corner higgler.

This morning Precious crawled under the bed and confessed to Jamaican Jesus that sometimes she was a little short-tempered with Theophilus, but he often drove her crazy with his constant yapping over peak without considering rape and murder of isolated wife. Jamaican Jesus said he was getting sick of all the gobbling about peak, too, and felt like giving the brute the tin can. Precious suggested that this Saturday night when Theophilus came to her for his weekly conjugal ride she would withhold pum-pum from sinful Brutus and teach him to hush up the infernal chatting about peak, but Jamaican Jesus said that for a wife to impose such a burden on a hard-working husband was slack and out of order.

Precious said yes, she supposed so, but added that not a day passed when she didn’t feel put out with Theophilus for dropping her among wild mountain peak like an abandoned bird egg.

Whether all this was nothing but forehead gossiping with neckback or one sleepless neuron in the unlit occipital lobe whispering in tongues to another, it did not matter much to Precious. What mattered was that when she talked to Jamaican Jesus she always got a sensible answer and felt as comforted as a materialist with his martini.

A few minutes later Precious emerged from under the bed to work on achieving the flawless appearance that suited a Christian sister whose self-appointed mission was to serve as a-human monument to piety and upright living for the backsliding riff-raff. She said goodbye to Maud and set out for the main road.

Because she did not have her own car and did not drive and Theophilus left too early for her liking, every day Precious had to tramp down a rutted marl driveway wearing her best work frock and meticulously manicured face because she lived in the Godforsaken bush, but never mind, she told herself grimly as she daintily avoided spiking cow pat with her high heels and pricked her way down to the asphalt road, wilderness was the price she paid to make her husband happy, the heartless wretch.

The thought of a happy Theophilus cheered her spirits so much that she began to warble a hymn as she walked down to the main road. It was not a vengeful hymn about slaughtering sinners and tossing them into burning pit—those were not hymns for a woman of her sunny disposition. Rather, it was a peaceful hymn about taking a boat trip across placid waters and reuniting with long lost friends on the far shore. Cows looked up at her as she walked past humming this hymn, because, as she noted to herself with quiet satisfaction, even an insensible bovine was drawn to melodically sung words of salvation.

She finally arrived at the main road, paused to apply one or two quick repairs to her grooming, before unfurling her umbrella and taking up roadside post to await a minibus.

This was another inconvenience that country dwellers had to suffer in silence—striking ridiculous poses on a desolate roadside while waiting for a rickety bus that followed no set route, came at no predictable time, and was frequently so crowded that a few unlucky passengers often had to ride with the top half of their trunks swaying giddily out the window.

After much baking in the hot sun while looking and feeling-like a buffoon, she finally got a ride in an overstuffed country bus and arrived at her workplace, which was a hotel in Ocho Rios.

Being busy made the day fly by quickly, and soon Precious found herself waiting for Theophilus at her customary pickup spot just outside the hotel gate, through which a steady stream of waiters, gardeners, and maids poured out into the evening. He finally picked her up and they rode mainly in silence up to the remote country house.

It was Friday and traffic was heavy, the roads being clogged with lumbering trucks travelling between Kingston and Montego Bay. Theophilus drove too fast and several times she warned him about dangerous overtaking. He asked her if she wanted to drive, knowing fully well that she didn’t know how.