Carla remarked once that it would have made more sense if the hills had been bulldozed and the houses built back away from the street to maximize the larger portion of each parcel. Howard pointed out that it was probably prohibitively expensive and, if that were the case, then this particular dream of suburbia would have been way beyond their affordable means.
To which Carla could have responded that this was his dream and not hers. However she had learned long ago that her opinions had little or no value to her husband, and when they actually contradicted him she was begging for more trouble and abuse than the satisfaction of expressing an opposing view warranted.
When little Leo was born it was the happiest day of Howard’s life and he thought it would be important to memorialize the occasion for both his wife and the newborn. Before the sweat was even off of Carla’s brow and the blood wiped from the child’s squalling face in the delivery room, Howard presented his wife with a Timex watch picked out with loving care from Timex’s economy collection at the local K-Mart.
Little Leo, on the other hand, when he arrived home swaddled in blankets, was greeted by the terribly wrinkled and mournful countenance of a pedigreed Shar Pei puppy, which Carla thought was by far and away the ugliest thing she had ever seen.
“It’s important that a boy grow up with a dog,” Howard said, unaware of his wife’s view that the dog’s wrinkled skin was positively disgusting. “It teaches him responsibility and gives him a companion to count on until I get home each night.” Carla intentionally neglected to point out to her husband that Leo would have plenty of companionship with his own mother until Howard arrived home with stories of the additional sales he was now required to consummate to continue providing her with the luxury of their new house in the suburbs.
Carla was a good mother. She knew now that she no longer had to go out and fight for a position in the world of secular ambition, that this is what she had been cut out for all of her life. She threw herself into the whole process of raising her child with the most advanced techniques of every book she could find on the subject, as well as the good old tried and true methods, which every child rearing support group she contacted was happy to recommend.
“You should see the woman,” Howard told his sales force.
“She’s got her damned teats hanging out all day. And he latches
right on there! You’d think the kid already appreciated what those things are really for.” The leer on Howard’s face left no doubt that he didn’t consider nursing the female breast’s primary function.
Carla wanted only the best for the child so she promised that, until he was six months old, nothing would pass his lips but the sweetness of her own milk. She even joined the La Leche League in an effort to learn everything about the art of providing Leo with the best nutrition possible. Howard thought it hilarious that a woman would have to join a club to learn how to suckle a child. But in a magnanimous gesture of liberal parenthood he tolerated her membership as long as he wouldn’t have to be subjected to lengthy discourses on the subject and, most important, little Leo continued to show sustained growth and physical development on the “watery blue stuff.” Much to his father’s chagrin, he did. The Shar Pei also thrived with a steady diet of food, which the local pet store assured Howard, was well worth its costly price tag. “After all,” Howard justified, “the animal is pedigreed and it is important to protect our investment,” and keep him a fit companion for his son.
As he took most of his meals at work, and business luncheons were an integral part of his marketing budget, Howard seldom went without the delights of his favorite cut of steak or shellfish platter. And since his need to eat at home was limited to one or two meals a week, he saw no point in allocating too much personal finance to unnecessary grocery shopping.
It had taken quite a bit of education and training, but somehow Howard managed to help Carla live within her budget by making the shopping lists for her and then reviewing her purchases with a critical eye toward improving her technique. Naturally, while she went out to do this shopping, he took advantage of the time to play with his son and prove that he was indeed a conscientious father. His only requirement was that the child was cleaned and fed before she departed the house. And if this condition usually put the child into a torpor which brought on a nice long nap, Howard would gladly sacrifice his quality time with the boy to insure he received his proper rest.
Carla missed the hubbub and turmoil of the city. Never before exposed to the bucolic advantages of living in the country, she found this semi-gentrified existence, where open spaces consumed civilization at the end of their backyard, extremely uncomfortable.
Howard, as occupied as he was with factory rebates, vehicle inventories and flooring financing, appreciated the occasional opportunity to relax on the back patio and see nothing but green shrubbery rapidly turning brown with the new summer’s heat.
Lying beside her husband at night with the window open, instead of the hum of tires on the road, sirens or other traffic noise, Carla now heard the wind rattling the elm tree by the side of the house.
Off in the distance, the sorrowful lamentations of coyotes accompanied the darkness of the night with unrequited yearning.
“What is that?” she asked the first time she heard the wailing cry as she tucked little Leo in closer to her warm body.
“Coyotes”
“This near to the house?”
“Sure. We’re in the country now - sorta. I suppose you’ll see raccoons, ‘possums, skunks, and snakes up here too.” “Snakes?”
“Yeah... uh, I meant to warn you. Don’t go out back beating the brush. You could run into a rattler.” “A rattle snake?” Carla asked, her incredulity matched only by sudden fear.
“Uh-huh. They’ll start coming out now with the hot weather.”
She didn’t want to ask where the snakes had been laying in wait during the previous cool months as winter slipped unnoticed into Southern California’s spring. She wanted to tell her husband right then and there that it was never her idea nor desire to move to the sticks! Instead, she shuddered, fixed the nipple, thrust between two steadying fingers, firmly into her son’s eager mouth and listened to the wild canine cries coming from the nearby hills.
Howard didn’t mind Leo’s presence in their bed. In fact, he insisted on it. He took comfort in the boy’s slight bulk between his wife and himself, and frequently during the night reached out to feel the gentle rise and fall of the child’s life before he could go back to sleep knowing that all was right with his world. This was his heir. Leo Allwood, in all the glory of his regal name, would carry on the family line and insure Howard’s eventual place in the pantheon of a fickle and forgetful universe. There was a certain amount of contentment knowing that his own immortality was a hand’s breadth away. If this diminished the opportunities for intimacy between Carla and himself, then so be it! The woman was much too demanding anyway; and somehow, Howard admitted candidly to a male confidant, the thought of rooting around in an enlarged birth canal was less than stimulating. The small fleshy buffer zone between them was an appreciated relief from marital duties, which Howard planned to postpone as long as possible.
Carla anticipated the puppy would be a lively - if ugly - addition to their home. But the Shar Pei, named “Wrinkly” in a bust of unimaginative creativity by Howard, always seemed to move quickly and methodically uunderfoot when least expected There was no doubt in Leo’s mother’s mind that the inclusion of the dog into their household was greatly premature if it was meant to be a companion for the boy. But Howard justified his purchase, exclaiming how wonderful it would be to see the two smallest members of their family unit develop parallel lives into a magnificent friendship. This was all well and good for Howard, who was seldom present to witness the growth process, clean up the messes, and had yet to trip over the damn animal with an armful of laundry, dishes or even the child himself.
Carla found it was much easier to rele
gate Wrinkly to the backyard, rather than pick her way across an ever-moving minefield, which could unexpectedly tangle itself in her legs and cause irreparable damage to either herself or whatever precious bundle happened to be in her arms at that time.
When Howard got home each night his first priority was his progeny. Leo was immediately subjected to a number of nonsense language inquiries as to his well-being and present health and happiness.
Assured that all was right with his son, Howard would then attend to the child’s pet and enjoy some of the puppy’s undisciplined exuberance which neither little Leo nor his mother were able to appreciate.
This was the normal state of things when Howard came home slightly early one night to discover that it had been Carla’s habit, when her he was at work, to keep the dog in the backyard. Rather than immediately scold his spouse for this insensitivity toward his son’s companion, he decided to look after the puppy and reserve his rebuke until the quieter moments of the evening at which time he could concentrate with enthusiasm on an appropriate reprimand.
Much to his chagrin, the dog was nowhere to be found. Where normally the puppy would come wriggling and snuffling, leaking urine in unbridled excitement to flop over on his wrinkled back at Howard’s feet, this time there was no such familiar response.
Feeling slightly foolish, and wishing that he had named the dog something more masculine and noble, such as “Rex,” Howard walked around the length and breadth of his yard - at least as far as the brambles in the back allowed - yelling:
“Wrinkly! Wrinkly!”
He broke off his futile search when his next door neighbor leaned over the back fence to inquire as to the problem. “Coyotes,” the neighbor said, nodding his head knowledgeably when informed that the puppy was missing from the enclosed yard.
“What do you mean coyotes?” Howard asked. “It’s been a hard winter. They come down from the hills,” he pointed at the rolling prominences rising in back of their houses. “And they’re too hungry to be scared anymore. They’ll come right over the fence and get the pets. Lost two cats myself until I wised up!”
“Howard shook his head with disbelief. “The dog weighed at least fifteen pounds.”
“No problem for a couple of coyotes. They hunt in packs. Probably more than a couple. Dog wouldn’t stand a chance, even a larger animal.”
“But this is the city!”
The neighbor nodded at the tangled brush in the back of both of their yards and the hills beyond. “Not out there, it ain’t.”
Howard couldn’t believe that this is what happened to the Shar Pei. Even though he fought his way through the brambles and found a spot on the fence smeared with fresh blood and small patches of crimson-soaked short brown hair, he still refused to admit that the animal was the victim of coyotes. While he changed his burr-filled trousers and foxtail riddled socks, he sent Carla out into the street, door to door, to ask the neighbors if anyone had seen the SharPei. After all, the small dog with the rumpled skin would be easy enough to spot. Not particularly fond of exercise on foot, Howard placed Leo in his car seat, and the two of them drove around the tract and up and down the roads in the hills above - all to no avail. The dog was gone, and Howard had to concede to himself and to his now well-reprimanded wife that the local coyote population had been treated to a meal - a very expensive meal! The only consolation appeared to be that Leo was not the bit least aware that his pet had provided sustenance to the local wildlife population. His mother, however, was made very much cognizant of the fact that her unconscionable transgression was akin to that of a homicidal maniac or at least the culpable equivalent of negligent manslaughter.
When Carla questioned the application of such a term as “manslaughter” to the disappearance of a dog, she was on the very verge of drawing Howard’s physical wrath, and would have been subjected to it, had she not had the baby in her arms while she moved across the room just as the man realized that he might strike the child instead of the bewildered woman. After all, Howard Allwood told himself, if nothing else, he always knew how to control his temper. Which is really to say that he was tempted, but Carla probably moved too fast for him to react.
Finally, all he could do was shout across the length of the living room at his wife: “Why? Why? Why the hell did you put the dog outside?”
She thought about that for a moment and simply said, “I thought it would be nice if he had some fresh air.” “Fresh air! Fresh air! Fresh goddamn air! What are you, stupid or something? Fresh fucking air?” “I thought it would be nice.”
“You thought it would be nice,” he mimicked, the sarcasm seeming to drip from his lips with the saliva of his incredulous anger.
That was just the beginning of it. For days he attacked her whenever he had a chance, reminding her that her feeble-minded, inconsiderate actions had cost him an expensive pedigreed dog and their son a good companion - certainly one he would be able to count on more than his dimwitted mother!
During the slow days well before quarter’s end, Howard managed to come home by seven o’clock each night and there, after dinner, took up a defensive position on the patio with a newly purchased .22 rifle and his infant son in his lap. The hot-blooded need to extract some kind of revenge on something other than his wife was rampant in his veins. But no matter how late he waited patiently in the darkness, the coyotes refused to come down, and only the taunt of their crying chatter reached the backyard.
Howard took his frustration out on other wildlife. Two ‘possums, five ground squirrels and innumerable birds, but nary a coyote meandered into his wavering sights. “I don’t think you should have Leo out there with that gun,” Carla ventured. She objected also to the weapon itself, but knew better than to voice this concern. Howard would never tolerate any challenge to his judgment; but hopefully, in relation to his son, he might be a bit less authoritarian and willing to recognize the potential for danger to his pride and joy.
“Nothing is going to happen to the boy. It’s never too
early to learn that it’s a dog-eat-dog world - as I am sure you
have noticed,” Howard said, stroking the thin barrel and plastic stock of the cheap rifle. “It’s kill or be killed out here. A man has to protect his territory.”
He looked at the sleeping child in his lap. “The sooner Leo finds that out, the better off he will be.”
“But he’s only six months old.”
A smile of staggering determination suffused Howard’s face. “If I have my way about it, the boy’s going to grow up to be just like his dad: a man’s man.”
Carla realized that there was nothing she could do against such adamant masculine theology and resigned herself to watching through the sliding glass doors at the rear of the house with unabated apprehension.
But her concerns were unnecessary, and as the warm summer nights drifted through the phases of the moon nothing untoward happened except to small rodents and other wild vermin that had the misfortune of wandering into the yard whenever Howard was on duty.
Without the dog to occupy part of his time at home, Howard lavished even more attention on Leo. He instructed Carla on everything from what clothing the child should wear to the brand of baby wipes and diapers. And when she proposed to begin feeding the little rascal a bland mixture of mashed fruit and rice cereal, Howard flatly refused to allow it. There was no sense fixing something if it wasn’t broken. “The teat’s been good enough up to now; I see no reason to change a good thing. Unless, of course, you’re starting to shrivel up like an old hag and can’t suckle your son properly anymore.” “Of course I can.”
“Then keep at it until I tell you different.”
The important quarterly adjustments to flooring and the balancing of the dealership’s books came upon Howard faster than expected. Reluctantly he abandoned his post in the backyard and turned his attention toward the business and disposing of old inventory which would make room to accommodate the new models soon due.
r /> Never one to shirk his responsibilities to the business - his
support and sustenance - Howard allowed his busy days to
stretch to twelve and fifteen hour marathons of sales, invoices, bookkeeping and accounting magic to pacify the bank as well as the factory.
But nothing prevented him from frequent calls to Carla, insisting that she place the small ear of their son to the receiver of the phone so that he could proffer absentee endearments to the most precious thing in his life. He also took advantage of these opportunities to obtain progress reports on everything from poop and pee to rash treatment and teething trauma. Carla listened patiently and obeyed all of her husband’s instructions with the knowledge that somehow he would know what she did or did not do for the child, and hopefully his nightly critique of her care giving would not escalate into a tirade regarding her inadequacies as a parent.
The books finally balanced, surplus inventory marked down, and a healthy initial order for new models faxed to the factory, Howard arrived at home exhausted.
A slight chill in the air foreshadowed the coming of fall and he thought that he was about ready to be done with the heat of the Southern California summer and in need of the more temperate clime of winter. It was time to abandon the occasional trip to the beach and anticipate a foray into the peaks near Big Bear when the first of the season’s storms came to the local mountains. He couldn’t wait to see Leo’s face light up when the child discovered the icy fluff of fresh-fallen snow. The soft yellow lights of the house were a welcome relief from the fluorescent fixtures of the office; and the smell of soup on the stove beat the hell out of cigarette smoke and ashtrays full of stale butts.