Dog War (16 page)

While the mistress murmured to her deceased dog, Precious and Mannish stood somberly in the shadow of a nearby granite tomb atop of which another stone dog looked up from a marble bone. Precious read the gilded inscription chiselled into monument:

Monument erected to
Ranger,
who fell overboard somewhere-in the South Pacific off the motor yacht
Laffer,
on 24th-September, 1982. Sadly missed by Mommy
.

“De dog drop off de boat,” Precious whispered to the factotum, who was dug into the topsoil against the frenzied struggles of leashed Riccardo, driven berserk at the endless vistas of unstained monuments and tombstones. Mannish nudged her in the ribs as she was about to add that if she owned a motorboat no dog on earth would ever set foot ’pon it so there would be no dog to drop off and feed the fish, and she peered and saw that the mistress was leaning against the stone monument, quietly weeping.

On their way home, the mistress asked Precious for a Christian opinion of what happened to a dog when it died. Before she had seen the mistress weep over Barbarosa, Precious would have crisply answered, “Evaporation.” But now she did not have the heart to expose the grieving mistress to the brutal truth of scripture. She swallowed and said through her teeth that only the Almighty knew. The mistress opined, after a thoughtful pause, that she felt quite sure in her heart that all flesh was doomed to rot into the nothingness of dust. But she was also convinced that if it were improbably otherwise, Barbarosa would be with her in the afterlife, as would Riccardo, as would her childhood hamster and every other pet she had ever known and loved. Precious told herself grimly that in the heaven to which Jamaican Christians were bound she was certain she would not buck up White Dog and Red Dog, for in the promised land no woman would ever have to worry about fending off Spot, Fido, or Rover who wanted to jump up all over her clean frock and nasty it up with pawprint and dog slobber. Maybe there was an American section, however, where dogs and hamsters were kept in clean cages. She did not know. God moved in mysterious ways. It was not for her to question, only to give praise, obey, and reap salvation.

The decowed Rolls Royce hummed its way back to the mansion, each of its occupants cocooned in their own thoughts. Curled up atop the mistress’s lap, his nose dug into her crotch and sniffing its vapors, Riccardo fell into a drugged sleep as if he had huffed a pot of glue.

Mannish, however, when they dissected the visit, saw nothing disgusting about the cemetery, and he revealed this opinion privately to Precious later. He admitted feeling that way the first time. But like everything else, he had gotten over the initial horror and now regarded these trips as comedy.

“Americans are mad,” Precious kept insisting, while Mannish equivocated against this extreme view. Finally, he allowed, “It is healthy and necessary for them to be mad to permit opportunity for recent immigrants, for between a poor sane immigrant and a rich mad American, there is no true competition. My cousin, for instance, has started a business to freeze-dry dead animals. He is assured of prosperity.”

“Freeze-dry dead animals? How he do dat?”

“He has a special chamber into which he puts the dead animal for some weeks. It removes all the moisture and leaves the animal lightweight and lifelike. After freeze-drying, you can carry the animal everywhere you go, on vacation in your suitcase, if you wish. You can place him on display on the bureau of your hotel or motel room. Since he is waterproof, you can also take a bath or a wash with him. He is perfectly preserved, like a statue.”

“Freeze-drying animals! What next, oh Father Above? What is dis, if not American lunacy? As soon as I have enough money, I am leaving dis place and returning home.”

Mannish shook his head gloomily. “I will never go home. I-will die here. Beulah will cremate me. I will leave Beulah with two children for American culture to madden. It is a heavy price to pay for stealing five camels. But God is nothing else if not thorough.”

Precious bristled at upcoming blasphemy. “God is good and kind,” she declared piously. “He loves us all.”

“Yes, perhaps so, but he is also thorough. For example, there was a soul who was afraid of water. So what does God do to teach him not to be afraid of water? He places him aboard an Eskimo kayak, causes it to capsize, and drowns him. Then he reincarnates him in Russia, and drowns him again, this time in a river. He brings the poor frightened wretch back again, puts him aboard the
Titanic
, and drowns him a third time. He then puts him aboard a German submarine during World War II, causes it to be depth-charged, and drowns him two hundred feet below the surface. He has drowned this poor man, who is afraid of water, fifty-four times. He has drowned him in rivers, streams, brooks, seas, oceans, bathtubs, and vats. Once he drowned him as an infant in a toilet bowl. Why? Because he wants to teach this soul to be unafraid of water. I think that is too thorough.”

Precious sat gaping through this heresy. When she finally stirred, it was with a subterranean bellow of indignation from deep inside her diaphragm, the same resonant place out of which “Rock of Ages” unfailingly blasted. “First of all,” she snapped, “tell me how you know all dis about dis man.”

“This man was my brother. He drowned when we were children swimming in the Krishna River. A holy man told me at the funeral. He says that my brother will be reborn in California for additional drowning in a hot tub. He says the only way God will cease drowning my brother is when my brother’s soul loses its fear of water.”

“Who created your brother?” Precious bellowed like she was witnessing in church. “Who blow de spark of life into dat worthless soul? You? De Prime Minister of India? It was God! If-He create de soul, He have every right to drown it. Drown me, oh Lord,” Precious howled to the ceiling, arms outstretched wide enough to engulf crystal chandelier. “Drown me not fifty-four times, but three thousand score. Drown me again and again, for when I walk wid de Lord, I have no fear.”

“He won’t drown you,” Mannish replied coolly. “He only drowns those who are afraid of water. This is altogether too thorough.”

Later that night Precious asked Jamaican Jesus what he thought of the factotum’s opinion. Jesus scoffed and said she shouldn’t listen to Coolie man, because they were harum-scarum and had no brain. Nevertheless, Precious was not appeased.

It was a good thing for that Mannish that she was not God, she grumbled as she snuggled down to sleep, for if she had her own way she would drown the blasphemous wretch this very night in his own mouthwater to teach him the difference between Almighty God and an earthbound Coolie.

Chapter 18

Precious was under strict orders to bathe the dog three times a week, and the mistress would occasionally comb through his stubby body from head to toe and raise the dickens if she found even a comatose flea clinging half-dead to a tuck of fat. She would stomp into the presence of Precious and fling the flea on a nearby table with a sneering, “Look at what I found on Riccardo!” as if she expected flea deadweight to shatter the glass tabletop and make Precious’s malingering eardrums ring. After two such admonishing incidents, Precious began to carefully bathe the dog.

During the first days of bathing, Precious tried to maintain a carefree banter with the animal, but was soon exhausted in her search for appropriate topics. Then she had an inspiration: While bathing the dog, she would recite scripture. Since dog couldn’t tell scripture from a jingle, if she used a conversational rather than a homiletic tone, dog soothing was bound to result while giving her upliftment from the recitation. So the next time Precious knelt down to scrub the dog, she began reciting the Old Testament book of Leviticus, which she knew by heart. The dog whimpered and stood stock still, hypnotized by prophecy.

Precious murmured, “These are the living things which ye may eat among all the beasts that are on the earth. Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is cloven-footed, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that may ye eat. Nevertheless, these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that part the hoof: The camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.”

Leviticus or not, Precious still didn’t like the idea of having to bathe a dog hood. Every dog she’d ever known had always bathed his own hood with his nasty tongue, and she didn’t see why this dog had to be any different. But the mistress was emphatic that the bathing of the dog must include a good scrubbing and rinsing of its hood, and Precious carried out lawful command. But she was never so out of order as to recite scripture while bathing such a worldly part.

Anyone standing outside the door of the bathroom would have heard muttering of scripture followed by an interval of grim silence punctuated only by the sound of sullen scrubbing, a loud wheeze of relief, and then rinsing. And occasionally the eavesdropper might even hear a fervent “Thank God!” breathed behind the closed door, signifying that the bathing of dog hood was once again accomplished.

So the bathing was going well and had even taken on an encouraging Sunday piety. But one day during his bath the dog rolled moonstruck eye at Precious and proceeded to unreel several inches of raw hood meat as if he expected a Jamaican Christian to rinse that, too. Precious scowled. “Draw in you hood, dog!” she commanded in her best headmistress tone. The dog growled a defiant “nay”; hood oozed out of its sling, bucked, and began bobbing head gravely like a chanting bishop.

Precious immediately ceased all washing and scripture reciting and sat down on the bathroom floor. Averting her eyes, she began to hum a hymn, intending to crush nasty dog hood with a psalm.

The first verse of “Rock of Ages” caused hood to tremble and shrink, Precious noted smugly, since lewdness must ever withdraw before the hymns of heaven. She had observed the same effect on rural libertines who would sometimes parade into church hoping to corrupt a sister, only to suffer smiting by the Holy Ghost. She remembered one wooer who had strutted in boastily and who ended up fluttering between the pews, babbling in tongues, and eventually becoming an elder. It was the same with earthly dog—the beast was discovering that hood did not hold sway over grace. Soon she would have him barking in tongues. She took in a deep breath, ready to bellow out “Nearer My God to Thee,” when she observed that not even a wink of hood meat showed.

Precious clambered up from the floor and resumed the rinsing with a grim satisfaction. She could have gloated, and had the dog been a man, she certainly would have closed out the incident with a moral. However, she would not waste Truth on a dog, so she merely muttered the countrywoman’s triumphant “Ahoa!” and got on with the bath.

But the victory was short-lived, and the bathing became more and more of a struggle. The dog persisted in exposing himself to her, though she repeatedly made clear her preference for a hood-free tub. Singing it down had become impossible. After that first time, not even the Mormon Tabernacle Choir hymning at point-blank range in the dog’s ear could have shrunk his hood. Precious steeled herself to endure the provocation.

One day as Precious was drying him off, the dog exploded in a lecherous growl, seized her right leg with its front paws, and began to violently chisel her shinbone with its pointed hood. Precious shrieked bloody murder and tried to scramble down the corridor, but the lustful dog hung onto her leg and savagely pumped.

“Dog grinding me foot!” Precious bellowed loud enough to bring down the gates of heaven.

Mannish burst out of his room and bounded along the hall toward them. Mistress Lucy peered down the hallway at the commotion.

With a violent kick, Precious flung the animal off her leg and scrabbled atop the dining room table.

Mistress Lucy rushed into the room. “What did you do to Riccardo?” she snapped, eyes blazing as-she knelt beside the dog, groggy from being hurled against the wall.

“De dog try to grind me foot!” Precious babbled, nearly hysterical with disgust.

“What’s wrong with that? The greatest love a male can give a female is to fertilize her!”

“Breed me with puppy,” blubbered Precious, shuddering at the appalling prospect.

“Impossible!” the mistress raged, as she cuddled Riccardo protectively. “Screwing another species is the best birth control in the world! Riccardo loves you, Precious! Can’t you get that through your stupid head? You could have hurt Riccardo!”

“Riccardo could have grind me!”

Mistress Lucy gently picked up her dog, slathered a row of wet kisses up and down the lining of his dripping jaw, and started down the corridor with the animal slung over her shoulder. Riccardo peered longingly at Precious from his shoulder perch and whimpered.

“Tomorrow, I am gone from dis nasty place!” Precious screeched. “Away from dat nasty beast dat have de nerve to try and grind a Christian woman!”

“Go tonight,” the mistress spat, disappearing down the corridor. “Don’t wait until tomorrow.”

“Can I help you off the table, Precious?” Mannish asked, extending his hand.

“No!” Precious snapped. “You would sit by and let a dog grind me and do nothing! You’re a worthless man!”

She had a good mind to kick him, but, controlling herself, she allowed him to help her down.

So Precious should have departed that next morning, and she would have, too, except that Mannish undertook shuttle diplomacy. He shuttled into the mistress’s room and worked his guileful tact, and then he shuttled into Precious’s room, sat on the edge of her bed, and begged her to stay. He promised that he would do anything she wanted, anything. He sweetmouthed her while she lay obdurately on her bed and stared stonily at the ceiling. He reached over and stroked her hair, and then, after pouring honey down her ears for at least a half an hour, he kissed her softly on the lips. She replied with a properly discouraging Christian elbow, but he persisted and was soon kissing neck and caressing bosom and gnawing on her earlobe, suffering full and unmistakable rebuff only when he tried to wriggle tongue down her ear.