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James W. Fried
You’re wanting to know how it all came to this, so I’ll break it down for you, starting with my wife and the dogs.
ReNada isn’t much of a talker. Neither am I. You’ll usually find us each night camping out in the living room, letting our inner thoughts substitute for meaningful conversation. That’s what we were doing a couple weeks back.
“I’m going crazy just sitting here,” ReNada said, breaking an hour’s worth of silence. “let’s get out and do something,” I yawned in reply, and she threw a “Humph,” in my direction, then switched the TV channel to another of her lousy sit-coms. I know it’s a boring scene, but here’s the point: that night was just like all the other nights before it.
Our two-bedroom house is on the edge of a post-WWII neighborhood that’s being modernized. They call it gentrification or something like that. It just seems like another way to push a lot of people around, if you ask me. Anyway, the few blocks that remain of the original neighborhood are filled with lower-income families like ours. There are lots of kids, old cars, chain-link fences, and streets that host football and baseball games. We’re the ones being squeezed out to make room for some genius’s idea of progress.
I’ve got a job at Little Jim’s, a run-down convenience store with iron bars over the doors and windows. The pay is enough to cover our rent and most of the bills, but not much else. I guess you could say I lead a predictable life because each day seems like the last. But I like to think that I’m a good citizen. I pay my taxes on time, mind my own business, and never bother anyone, least of all our neighbors. An elderly Mexican woman and her invalid husband live in a pink house on our left. A young white couple occupy the house on our right, and they are childless, But they’ve more than filled that void with a yard full of big beefy mutts. Breeding and selling, that’s our neighbors’ thing.
Their dogs hang out close to our bedroom window, and I can always count on their yelping and barking to startle me from a peaceful slumber. Think it’s easy trying to catch a wink with all the racket? You try it sometime. It’s murder. ReNada could sleep through an earthquake, so she’s completely unaware of the noise. Not me. I’m a light sleeper, and the lack of rest wears me down. Anyway, for the past two weeks the dogs had been more restless than usual, so I’d been considering my options. That’s what I was doing that night in the living room while ReNada watched her TV show. Considering my options
“I’ve made a decision,” I blurted out. “I’m going to raise hell about the dogs again.”
“Yeah, right,” ReNada said without taking her eyes off the TV. I don’t think she believed I’d ever said anything to the neighbors in the first place, but I had. I’d tried to make a joke about the dogs to the neighbor’s wife, but she’d ignored the comment and walked right past me, carrying her sack of groceries into the house, shutting the door.
~ ~ ~
This is probably as good a place as any to tell you about the boy. I’d stood at the kitchen window a few weeks back and watched Little Howard—he’s a ten-year-old that lives behind us—throw a rubber ball against the back of his house. He fielded grounders, line drives, pop-ups, that sort of thing. Then he put a little too much effort into one of his throws, and the ball sailed over his head, back over the fence that separates our yards. I watched him look this way and that, then walk timidly to the chain-link fence, peering over like he was wondering if he should climb it. I laughed and decided to help him out.
I found him in our yard picking up the ball. Just then his mother screamed through their kitchen window, ordering him back to his own property. Little Howard scampered over the fence, and she came out to apologize.
“I don’t mind him coming over,” I said, and I meant it. I liked the kid. And I liked talking to her. She has long bleach-blonde hair and a first-rate figure. And my black skin didn’t seem to bother her at all.
“I don’t want him climbing fences is all,” she said. She flashed a warm smile. I smiled back.
A few days later, a dreary dark day, Little Howard and I stood on each side of the fence and tossed the ball back and forth. We had a great time until I noticed the lights of the house next door come on. I told him I had to go, sucked in my breath, and headed to the neighbors’ place to talk about their dogs.
I wasn’t looking forward to the visit, but I was determined to solve the dog barking problem, so I put my head down and marched onto their porch. I rapped my knuckles on the front door, and the wife answered. I’d say she’s twenty-five, twenty-six, with wrist-to-shoulder tattoos and long stringy brown hair in need of a good washing. A cigarette hung from the side of her mouth. No sign of her husband.
“Yo,” I said. “My name’s DeMarco…from next door? Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to stop by and say hi.” That got no response. “And I wanted to talk to you about your dogs.”
She cocked her head and sucked deeply on the cigarette. Then she slowly removed it from her mouth and blew smoke into my face. “Our dogs?” Her voice was raspy, and her posture was one of defiance.
I nodded toward the side of the house. “They stay over there outside your garage door, right below our bedroom window.” I drew in my breath and checked out her reaction. She had put the cigarette back between her lips, with a smirk that seemed frozen in place. “Anyway, they’re right there at the window, and the thing is they always bark in the middle of the night when I’m sleeping…you know, keeping me awake and—”
She took the cigarette out of her mouth and flicked it into my chest. Then, taking one step back, she slammed the door shut while I stood there in an awkward silence, my words half spoken and my eyes opened wide. I considered knocking again but quickly thought better of it. The woman was obviously having a bad day, and I saw no reason to add to it. Instead, I walked slowly back to the house, running the conversation over in my mind, wondering how I could have handled the situation better.
My doorbell rang an hour later while I was lying on the sofa and thoroughly enjoying an old Chester Himes paperback. It was the husband—someone I’d seen many times across the front yard but never spoken to. He had always looked big; up close he looked huge. With his scraggly red beard and upside-down smile, I instantly nailed him as a true MAGA man.
“Hey, bro,” I said, trying to sound upbeat. “What’s shaking?”
“What’s shaking?” he repeated. “There’s a lot shaking.”
I hesitated. “Is there a problem?”
He swung the screen door open and moved so close I could smell the scent of his tobacco-stained teeth. “The problem is my wife tells me you came to our house and busted her chops.”
“No way, bro! I just wanted to talk about your dogs because they’re keeping me up at night.”
His nostrils flared and he jabbed a fat index finger into my chest. “You calling my wife a liar?”
“No, man, I’m not calling her anything. Look, I don’t know what this is all about. I only wanted to—”
“Keep your skinny black ass away from my wife,” he said, punctuating each word with more jabs to my chest. “And don’t mess with my dogs.” With his eyes still locked on mine, he backed down the steps of our porch, pivoted, and stomped across our lawn before I could stammer out a weak reply.
The dogs were already singing in howling harmony by the time I crawled under the sheets beside ReNada that night. And to add to my misery, the neighbors outside floodlights were now on. ReNada turned on her stomach and snored. I tossed from one side to the other for over an hour before giving up and moving to the sofa, where I managed to get two fitful hours of sleep. Mostly, though, I just stared into space and thought about things. Then I came up with the idea of the gun.
~ ~ ~
One day last week, after I had finished my shift at Little Jim’s, I went to my favorite place—a hill overlooking the San Francisco Bay. I lay on my back with my hands under my head and debated myself over the decision I’d made. “What do you know about using a gun?” I said out loud. “You’ve never owned a weapon in your life.” My thoughts were on a BB or pellet pistol. I’d get the gun and use it to train the mutts, like that dude Pavlov did with his dogs. Driving to a local sporting-goods store, I picked out a cheap BB pistol, happy to have a plan at last.
Like clockwork, the dogs started barking that night—it was about three in the morning—and I scurried into the bathroom and eased up the small window over our bathtub. I rapped on the windowpane with my knuckles until the dogs stopped barking and looked my way. When they resumed their howling, I put the nozzle of the gun through a tiny hole that I had notched in the screen earlier in the day and pulled the trigger. The gun made a muted popping sound, and the mutts yelped and ran. Mission accomplished.
For the next three nights, I followed the same routine, pounding on the window, and then pulling the trigger. The mutts finally got the idea. I’d rap on the window, and they’d know a BB was coming their way. Like magic, they’d shoot around to the back of the house. That accomplished one goal, but it hardly solved the problem. My pounding on the window, shooting the pistol, and going back to bed produced results, but I had to stay awake to let the process play itself out. I still wasn’t getting any sleep.
Then, to make matters worse, the neighbors brought home three more monster dogs. The whole thing put me on the edge of insanity. I tried talking to ReNada about it, but she was too engrossed in her TV programs. So I drove to the ocean, sat on my hill, and talked it over with myself again.
~ ~ ~
This may sound crazy but the thought of building a bomb didn’t seem all that strange. I mean I wasn’t talking about much of a device—not a major explosive—just something to send a message. I visualized the whole thing: I’d toss it beside the garage door, one of the dogs would bite down, and bam! it would go off, the dogs would run away, and maybe they’d be afraid to come back.
Its construction was a piece of cake. It’s amazing what you can learn by surfing the Internet. Two nights later I followed the instructions in an article I had found and constructed the homemade device, one that was said to be a perfect remedy for trespassing raccoons and skunks. It was smaller than I’d imagined, but it promised a sufficient punch. I stuffed sand and some extra BBs inside, then covered it with duct tape, and for an added incentive, I wrapped a couple of strips of bacon around it.
There was a problem, though. I didn’t want us to be anywhere nearby when the bomb exploded. I’d have to figure out how to get away from the house before I could set the thing off. That’s when I thought of buying the weekend package at a bed-and-breakfast along the coast. It would give me the perfect alibi.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” I told ReNada a few nights later during dinner, when I surprised her with the idea of a trip down the coast. “We’ll make it a mini-vacation.” Her mouth erupted into a wide smile.
On the morning of our trip, I tossed the bacon-wrapped explosive into the neighbors’ yard right before we left. The dogs were sunning themselves along the back fence. I would be fifty miles away by the time the dogs set off the bomb.
I charged the trip on our only credit card, the one with payments already two months overdue; but what the hell! I had my alibi, and if I let my imagination run wild, I could even see a silver lining. Maybe ReNada and I would rekindle the fire that had once burned between us. Our relationship hadn’t always been in the deep freeze. In fact, there’d been a time when we were like two rabbits in heat, although the memory seemed to come from a previous life, back before I got bored and ReNada grew tired. Lately I’d become resigned to the fact that our days of romance were over. Maybe I was wrong.
All the way down Route 101, I imagined what might be happening in the neighbors’ yard, and the more I analyzed it the more I realized how silly the whole idea had been. By the time we’d checked into our small cottage outside Santa Cruz, I was convinced the strategy was doomed to failure. I mean, what were the odds of the bomb detonating? And even if it did, how was it supposed to harm every dog in the yard? Maybe it would get one or two, but the others would be none the wiser. What bothered me more, though, was the thought of the neighbor putting two and two together, figuring it all out. I cursed myself for coming up with such a pathetic plan.
Those thoughts were on my mind as ReNada and I made our way to bed. At least I got a good night’s sleep, and when I awoke a little before noon the next day, I felt more refreshed than I had in weeks.
Then a strange thing happened. ReNada’s racy disposition came out of hiding, and she couldn’t keep her hands off me. After a day at the beach, we visited the motel’s cozy lounge for a few beers before staggering to our table in the restaurant.
It was like being in the middle of a fantasy: ReNada laughing at my drunk talk and me spewing out one-liners like a stand-up comic. I was on fire by the time we got back to our room. I found a radio station that played uninterrupted light jazz, and we began to dance, holding each other close, swaying along with the rhythm of the tunes. ReNada was a tease, laying her head back, playing hard to get, both of us knowing that it was all an act, neither one of us caring one bit. We crawled under the sheets a little after midnight, wrapped our arms around one another, and made love like two oversexed teenagers. Afterward, I enjoyed the slumber of a victorious warrior.
I jogged beside the Pacific shortly after sunrise, gliding blissfully over the warm sand. The sensation of freedom was intoxicating, but underneath the mantle of joy, I felt a pang of irony about the dogs I’d left behind. After all, they were partially responsible for my newfound excitement with ReNada.
As we drove home in the afternoon, I had to laugh at the change in my attitude. Just two days before, I’d constructed an explosive device and placed it in the neighbors’ yard in hopes of decapitating one or more of their mutts. Now I felt a kinship with the very animals I had intended to maim or kill. So I felt a sense of relief when we finally got into our own bed, turned out the lights, and heard the dogs barking outside. My clumsy attempt to construct a bomb had obviously failed. The dogs were fine.
~ ~ ~
My contentment remained until I scanned the next day’s newspaper headlines and a jolt of electricity shot through my body. An article on page one told of a little boy who had been playing in his backyard when his ball sailed over a neighbor’s fence. He had retrieved the ball and apparently triggered some type of explosive device. The explosion had sent dozens of metal objects into his face. The boy was in the hospital, where a team of doctors fought to save one of his eyes. The picture accompanying the article confirmed my worst fears. There was Little Howard staring back at me.
I was shaken further the following day by the sight of two police cars, sirens blaring, screeching to a halt in front of our neighbors’ house. I peered out through the blinds in our front room and watched four officers race inside. They emerged thirty minutes later with the husband and wife in tow, their hands cuffed behind their backs.
The evening news told the story. Material that “could have been used in the construction of an explosive device” had been found in their garage. No actual bombs had been found, a young female reporter said, but a police spokesman theorized that the devices could have been destroyed prior to the raid. The latest reports from the hospital said that Little Howard’s condition had deteriorated.
~ ~ ~
And that brings me to today. Little Howard’s mother arrived on my doorstep late this afternoon, standing on the porch as if in a trance. Her hair was tied in a messy bun, and her skin was covered in a red rash. Through her tears, she said that a month earlier my neighbor had come to her house just as he had come to mine and threatened Little Howard, warning him to stay out of their yard.
“He’s an animal,” she said through her sobs. “How could someone be so cruel?” My eyes filled as well, and my arms and legs shook.
We talked for a few more minutes before I watched her shuffle slowly back down the front steps, her shoulders sagging, her eyes studying the pavement. As she trudged along the sidewalk, the neighbors’ dogs broke into a chorus of high-pitched shrieks and deep-throated barks that seemed like a hideous taunt.
My body grew rigid, and my head throbbed. Then I felt ReNada move up beside me. She slipped her hand into mine and gave me a reassuring squeeze.
I turned toward her and focused on her soft eyes. I had no problem letting her in on my secret. “I’ve made a decision, baby,” I said in a voice brimming with confidence, “I’m going to use the poison.”
James W. Fried
You’re wanting to know how it all came to this, so I’ll break it down for you, starting with my wife and the dogs.
ReNada isn’t much of a talker. Neither am I. You’ll usually find us each night camping out in the living room, letting our inner thoughts substitute for meaningful conversation. That’s what we were doing a couple weeks back.
“I’m going crazy just sitting here,” ReNada said, breaking an hour’s worth of silence. “let’s get out and do something,” I yawned in reply, and she threw a “Humph,” in my direction, then switched the TV channel to another of her lousy sit-coms. I know it’s a boring scene, but here’s the point: that night was just like all the other nights before it.
Our two-bedroom house is on the edge of a post-WWII neighborhood that’s being modernized. They call it gentrification or something like that. It just seems like another way to push a lot of people around, if you ask me. Anyway, the few blocks that remain of the original neighborhood are filled with lower-income families like ours. There are lots of kids, old cars, chain-link fences, and streets that host football and baseball games. We’re the ones being squeezed out to make room for some genius’s idea of progress.
I’ve got a job at Little Jim’s, a run-down convenience store with iron bars over the doors and windows. The pay is enough to cover our rent and most of the bills, but not much else. I guess you could say I lead a predictable life because each day seems like the last. But I like to think that I’m a good citizen. I pay my taxes on time, mind my own business, and never bother anyone, least of all our neighbors. An elderly Mexican woman and her invalid husband live in a pink house on our left. A young white couple occupy the house on our right, and they are childless, But they’ve more than filled that void with a yard full of big beefy mutts. Breeding and selling, that’s our neighbors’ thing.
Their dogs hang out close to our bedroom window, and I can always count on their yelping and barking to startle me from a peaceful slumber. Think it’s easy trying to catch a wink with all the racket? You try it sometime. It’s murder. ReNada could sleep through an earthquake, so she’s completely unaware of the noise. Not me. I’m a light sleeper, and the lack of rest wears me down. Anyway, for the past two weeks the dogs had been more restless than usual, so I’d been considering my options. That’s what I was doing that night in the living room while ReNada watched her TV show. Considering my options
“I’ve made a decision,” I blurted out. “I’m going to raise hell about the dogs again.”
“Yeah, right,” ReNada said without taking her eyes off the TV. I don’t think she believed I’d ever said anything to the neighbors in the first place, but I had. I’d tried to make a joke about the dogs to the neighbor’s wife, but she’d ignored the comment and walked right past me, carrying her sack of groceries into the house, shutting the door.
~ ~ ~
This is probably as good a place as any to tell you about the boy. I’d stood at the kitchen window a few weeks back and watched Little Howard—he’s a ten-year-old that lives behind us—throw a rubber ball against the back of his house. He fielded grounders, line drives, pop-ups, that sort of thing. Then he put a little too much effort into one of his throws, and the ball sailed over his head, back over the fence that separates our yards. I watched him look this way and that, then walk timidly to the chain-link fence, peering over like he was wondering if he should climb it. I laughed and decided to help him out.
I found him in our yard picking up the ball. Just then his mother screamed through their kitchen window, ordering him back to his own property. Little Howard scampered over the fence, and she came out to apologize.
“I don’t mind him coming over,” I said, and I meant it. I liked the kid. And I liked talking to her. She has long bleach-blonde hair and a first-rate figure. And my black skin didn’t seem to bother her at all.
“I don’t want him climbing fences is all,” she said. She flashed a warm smile. I smiled back.
A few days later, a dreary dark day, Little Howard and I stood on each side of the fence and tossed the ball back and forth. We had a great time until I noticed the lights of the house next door come on. I told him I had to go, sucked in my breath, and headed to the neighbors’ place to talk about their dogs.
I wasn’t looking forward to the visit, but I was determined to solve the dog barking problem, so I put my head down and marched onto their porch. I rapped my knuckles on the front door, and the wife answered. I’d say she’s twenty-five, twenty-six, with wrist-to-shoulder tattoos and long stringy brown hair in need of a good washing. A cigarette hung from the side of her mouth. No sign of her husband.
“Yo,” I said. “My name’s DeMarco…from next door? Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to stop by and say hi.” That got no response. “And I wanted to talk to you about your dogs.”
She cocked her head and sucked deeply on the cigarette. Then she slowly removed it from her mouth and blew smoke into my face. “Our dogs?” Her voice was raspy, and her posture was one of defiance.
I nodded toward the side of the house. “They stay over there outside your garage door, right below our bedroom window.” I drew in my breath and checked out her reaction. She had put the cigarette back between her lips, with a smirk that seemed frozen in place. “Anyway, they’re right there at the window, and the thing is they always bark in the middle of the night when I’m sleeping…you know, keeping me awake and—”
She took the cigarette out of her mouth and flicked it into my chest. Then, taking one step back, she slammed the door shut while I stood there in an awkward silence, my words half spoken and my eyes opened wide. I considered knocking again but quickly thought better of it. The woman was obviously having a bad day, and I saw no reason to add to it. Instead, I walked slowly back to the house, running the conversation over in my mind, wondering how I could have handled the situation better.
My doorbell rang an hour later while I was lying on the sofa and thoroughly enjoying an old Chester Himes paperback. It was the husband—someone I’d seen many times across the front yard but never spoken to. He had always looked big; up close he looked huge. With his scraggly red beard and upside-down smile, I instantly nailed him as a true MAGA man.
“Hey, bro,” I said, trying to sound upbeat. “What’s shaking?”
“What’s shaking?” he repeated. “There’s a lot shaking.”
I hesitated. “Is there a problem?”
He swung the screen door open and moved so close I could smell the scent of his tobacco-stained teeth. “The problem is my wife tells me you came to our house and busted her chops.”
“No way, bro! I just wanted to talk about your dogs because they’re keeping me up at night.”
His nostrils flared and he jabbed a fat index finger into my chest. “You calling my wife a liar?”
“No, man, I’m not calling her anything. Look, I don’t know what this is all about. I only wanted to—”
“Keep your skinny black ass away from my wife,” he said, punctuating each word with more jabs to my chest. “And don’t mess with my dogs.” With his eyes still locked on mine, he backed down the steps of our porch, pivoted, and stomped across our lawn before I could stammer out a weak reply.
The dogs were already singing in howling harmony by the time I crawled under the sheets beside ReNada that night. And to add to my misery, the neighbors outside floodlights were now on. ReNada turned on her stomach and snored. I tossed from one side to the other for over an hour before giving up and moving to the sofa, where I managed to get two fitful hours of sleep. Mostly, though, I just stared into space and thought about things. Then I came up with the idea of the gun.
~ ~ ~
One day last week, after I had finished my shift at Little Jim’s, I went to my favorite place—a hill overlooking the San Francisco Bay. I lay on my back with my hands under my head and debated myself over the decision I’d made. “What do you know about using a gun?” I said out loud. “You’ve never owned a weapon in your life.” My thoughts were on a BB or pellet pistol. I’d get the gun and use it to train the mutts, like that dude Pavlov did with his dogs. Driving to a local sporting-goods store, I picked out a cheap BB pistol, happy to have a plan at last.
Like clockwork, the dogs started barking that night—it was about three in the morning—and I scurried into the bathroom and eased up the small window over our bathtub. I rapped on the windowpane with my knuckles until the dogs stopped barking and looked my way. When they resumed their howling, I put the nozzle of the gun through a tiny hole that I had notched in the screen earlier in the day and pulled the trigger. The gun made a muted popping sound, and the mutts yelped and ran. Mission accomplished.
For the next three nights, I followed the same routine, pounding on the window, and then pulling the trigger. The mutts finally got the idea. I’d rap on the window, and they’d know a BB was coming their way. Like magic, they’d shoot around to the back of the house. That accomplished one goal, but it hardly solved the problem. My pounding on the window, shooting the pistol, and going back to bed produced results, but I had to stay awake to let the process play itself out. I still wasn’t getting any sleep.
Then, to make matters worse, the neighbors brought home three more monster dogs. The whole thing put me on the edge of insanity. I tried talking to ReNada about it, but she was too engrossed in her TV programs. So I drove to the ocean, sat on my hill, and talked it over with myself again.
~ ~ ~
This may sound crazy but the thought of building a bomb didn’t seem all that strange. I mean I wasn’t talking about much of a device—not a major explosive—just something to send a message. I visualized the whole thing: I’d toss it beside the garage door, one of the dogs would bite down, and bam! it would go off, the dogs would run away, and maybe they’d be afraid to come back.
Its construction was a piece of cake. It’s amazing what you can learn by surfing the Internet. Two nights later I followed the instructions in an article I had found and constructed the homemade device, one that was said to be a perfect remedy for trespassing raccoons and skunks. It was smaller than I’d imagined, but it promised a sufficient punch. I stuffed sand and some extra BBs inside, then covered it with duct tape, and for an added incentive, I wrapped a couple of strips of bacon around it.
There was a problem, though. I didn’t want us to be anywhere nearby when the bomb exploded. I’d have to figure out how to get away from the house before I could set the thing off. That’s when I thought of buying the weekend package at a bed-and-breakfast along the coast. It would give me the perfect alibi.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” I told ReNada a few nights later during dinner, when I surprised her with the idea of a trip down the coast. “We’ll make it a mini-vacation.” Her mouth erupted into a wide smile.
On the morning of our trip, I tossed the bacon-wrapped explosive into the neighbors’ yard right before we left. The dogs were sunning themselves along the back fence. I would be fifty miles away by the time the dogs set off the bomb.
I charged the trip on our only credit card, the one with payments already two months overdue; but what the hell! I had my alibi, and if I let my imagination run wild, I could even see a silver lining. Maybe ReNada and I would rekindle the fire that had once burned between us. Our relationship hadn’t always been in the deep freeze. In fact, there’d been a time when we were like two rabbits in heat, although the memory seemed to come from a previous life, back before I got bored and ReNada grew tired. Lately I’d become resigned to the fact that our days of romance were over. Maybe I was wrong.
All the way down Route 101, I imagined what might be happening in the neighbors’ yard, and the more I analyzed it the more I realized how silly the whole idea had been. By the time we’d checked into our small cottage outside Santa Cruz, I was convinced the strategy was doomed to failure. I mean, what were the odds of the bomb detonating? And even if it did, how was it supposed to harm every dog in the yard? Maybe it would get one or two, but the others would be none the wiser. What bothered me more, though, was the thought of the neighbor putting two and two together, figuring it all out. I cursed myself for coming up with such a pathetic plan.
Those thoughts were on my mind as ReNada and I made our way to bed. At least I got a good night’s sleep, and when I awoke a little before noon the next day, I felt more refreshed than I had in weeks.
Then a strange thing happened. ReNada’s racy disposition came out of hiding, and she couldn’t keep her hands off me. After a day at the beach, we visited the motel’s cozy lounge for a few beers before staggering to our table in the restaurant.
It was like being in the middle of a fantasy: ReNada laughing at my drunk talk and me spewing out one-liners like a stand-up comic. I was on fire by the time we got back to our room. I found a radio station that played uninterrupted light jazz, and we began to dance, holding each other close, swaying along with the rhythm of the tunes. ReNada was a tease, laying her head back, playing hard to get, both of us knowing that it was all an act, neither one of us caring one bit. We crawled under the sheets a little after midnight, wrapped our arms around one another, and made love like two oversexed teenagers. Afterward, I enjoyed the slumber of a victorious warrior.
I jogged beside the Pacific shortly after sunrise, gliding blissfully over the warm sand. The sensation of freedom was intoxicating, but underneath the mantle of joy, I felt a pang of irony about the dogs I’d left behind. After all, they were partially responsible for my newfound excitement with ReNada.
As we drove home in the afternoon, I had to laugh at the change in my attitude. Just two days before, I’d constructed an explosive device and placed it in the neighbors’ yard in hopes of decapitating one or more of their mutts. Now I felt a kinship with the very animals I had intended to maim or kill. So I felt a sense of relief when we finally got into our own bed, turned out the lights, and heard the dogs barking outside. My clumsy attempt to construct a bomb had obviously failed. The dogs were fine.
~ ~ ~
My contentment remained until I scanned the next day’s newspaper headlines and a jolt of electricity shot through my body. An article on page one told of a little boy who had been playing in his backyard when his ball sailed over a neighbor’s fence. He had retrieved the ball and apparently triggered some type of explosive device. The explosion had sent dozens of metal objects into his face. The boy was in the hospital, where a team of doctors fought to save one of his eyes. The picture accompanying the article confirmed my worst fears. There was Little Howard staring back at me.
I was shaken further the following day by the sight of two police cars, sirens blaring, screeching to a halt in front of our neighbors’ house. I peered out through the blinds in our front room and watched four officers race inside. They emerged thirty minutes later with the husband and wife in tow, their hands cuffed behind their backs.
The evening news told the story. Material that “could have been used in the construction of an explosive device” had been found in their garage. No actual bombs had been found, a young female reporter said, but a police spokesman theorized that the devices could have been destroyed prior to the raid. The latest reports from the hospital said that Little Howard’s condition had deteriorated.
~ ~ ~
And that brings me to today. Little Howard’s mother arrived on my doorstep late this afternoon, standing on the porch as if in a trance. Her hair was tied in a messy bun, and her skin was covered in a red rash. Through her tears, she said that a month earlier my neighbor had come to her house just as he had come to mine and threatened Little Howard, warning him to stay out of their yard.
“He’s an animal,” she said through her sobs. “How could someone be so cruel?” My eyes filled as well, and my arms and legs shook.
We talked for a few more minutes before I watched her shuffle slowly back down the front steps, her shoulders sagging, her eyes studying the pavement. As she trudged along the sidewalk, the neighbors’ dogs broke into a chorus of high-pitched shrieks and deep-throated barks that seemed like a hideous taunt.
My body grew rigid, and my head throbbed. Then I felt ReNada move up beside me. She slipped her hand into mine and gave me a reassuring squeeze.
I turned toward her and focused on her soft eyes. I had no problem letting her in on my secret. “I’ve made a decision, baby,” I said in a voice brimming with confidence, “I’m going to use the poison.”
