Dog War by Anthony C. Winkler Page A

America for the rest of her life, but she had had to get away from Harold’s house with the perpetual fussing and turmoil. Now that she was under a bed in America, she could plainly see that Mildred was wrong to snoop on Harold’s tooth-box and begrudge a hard-working man his hobby. But Harold was also wrong in his scheming to pull Mildred’s teeth. Yet Precious also had a sneaky feeling that Harold wanted to pull Mildred’s teeth because Mildred was being a Dog in the Manger with the pum-pum. Long experience had taught Precious that when a wife starved her husband of pum-pum, the husband was likely to plot to pull out her teeth.
    Her reverie was interrupted by a creak of her bedroom door. She glanced over the cobwebbed floor and glimpsed a small brown face peeping inquisitively at her from the edge of the bedspring. The face melted in the bedside gloaming and, after a flurry of pattering feet, a child’s excited shriek of discovery rang through the house, “Grandma’s under the bed! Grandma’s under the bed!”
    Precious hastened to wriggle out from under the bed just as-there was a rap on her door and the pasty face of Henry swivelled around the jamb.
    “Precious,” he asked solicitously, “are you feeling all right?”
    “I feel fine,” Precious declared with dignity.
    “Cheryl-Lee said you were under the bed.”
    Precious brushed herself off, opened her mouth to make an indignant denial, but resolved that migration and green card would not turn her into a liar.
    “Dat is where I do my best thinking,” she sniffed.
    Henry, looking scientifically interested in this new thinking technique, cocked his head and approached.
    “I better make sure I dust and vacuum under your bed, if that’s the case. You might be spending a good deal of your time under there.” He bent down on his knee and peeked under the bed. “I’ll get the vacuum right now,” he announced.
    “You don’t have to vacuum-.-.-.” Precious started to protest, but it was too late.
    A few minutes later he returned and vacuumed thoroughly while Precious sat on the edge of the bed, twiddling her thumbs and feeling like a fool. He scurried down the hall and returned with a throw-rug, which he placed on the floor, saying that it would be easier for her to slide under the bed if she first lay with her back on the rug. He demonstrated by sliding smoothly under the bed with his back flat on the throw-rug.
    “It’s rather snug under here,” he said from beneath the bed, his voice taking on a slight metallic bedframe echo.
    He slid back out, stood, and carefully arranged the rug with his foot. “I must try thinking under a bed sometimes,” he chirped. “Maybe it’ll help me clear my head.”
    Precious tried to make some noncommittal reply but managed only a disgruntled growl.
    Cheryl-Lee stood in the doorway solemnly bearing witness to the whole proceedings. “Daddy,” she asked quietly, “can I think under Grandma’s bed, too?”
    “I don’t know,” said Henry, looking nonplussed at Precious. “I think you better ask Grandma.”
    “Grandma?” the child asked piteously.
    Precious sighed, thinking that she had never before in her life met a man that she would rather thump down on the spot more than her American son-in-law.
    “I suppose so,” she grumped.
    The child giggled, lay on her back on the rug, and shot under the bed. “It’s dark under here!” she squealed.
    She scooted back out and propped up her elbow on the rug. “Grandma, will you come under here with me?”
    So Precious reluctantly had to get down on the floor and slide under the bed with the grandchild. Soon Henrietta popped in and demanded to think under the bed with Grandmother, and before long Precious found herself pinned under the bed between two squirming children while Henry bent down and shouted encouragement and thinking technique at them.
    “Did you find a lizard for Timothy Pigeon?” Precious asked in a whisper, propped snugly on each side by the