HOW WE CELEBRATE: The girls use scissors and cut out shapes in paper bags and then put candles in the bags and place them on the driveway in two lines, one on either side of the driveway. When I drive home with Sam our driveway looks like a runway instead and Sam says, “Either we’re coming in for a landing or we’re taking off.”
WHAT WE EAT FOR DESSERT: Ice cream sundaes, the sprinkles hard and like sand between our teeth. The children are too excited from all the sugar to sleep at bedtime and so we play charades, propping Sam up in an easy chair and piling blankets around him and Nelly laying on the part of the blanket that trails on the floor. With her powerful large head at his feet she reminds us of a lioness content to have her pride back up to its original numbers. The girls act out snakes and elephants, and then move on to acting out teachers at school. After charades, I carry Sam up to bed. It’s a full moon and the eerie white pours itself on his pillow, lighting it up, as if waiting for him to lay his head down right onto it.
CALL: The woman who works at the checkout wants to know if I’ve seen her horse.
WHAT I SAY: Your horse?
WHAT SHE SAYS: Yes, I put an ad in the paper to sell the horse and these people called and they said they’d come over to buy the horse. Well, I got back from doing errands to meet the people and the horse was gone. The horse has disappeared, and I thought maybe, if you were visiting other farms and you spotted my horse, you could tell me, because I could really use the money, she says, and then she sniffs and I wonder if it is because she is crying or because she has a cold.
WHAT I SAY: I haven’t seen your horse. If I see it I’ll call you. By the way, I say, how is the job at the market? Are you still learning unusual things about people from what they’re buying?
WHAT SHE SAYS: I quit that stupid job. Bad people buy baby diapers and good people buy knives, you know. You can’t learn anything about people from what they buy. I was all wrong about that, she says.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: That’s strange, don’t you think? A horse just disappearing into thin air?
WHAT I THINK: Not so strange, no stranger than a hunter shooting my son and never fessing up.
WHAT MIA SAYS: I think the spacecraft took the horse.
WHAT I THINK: Maybe the spacecraft took the hunter, too. Maybe all bad hunters are locked inside the spacecraft and made to float around for eternity, looking in the windows of homes at all the lives they destroyed.
WHAT WE WATCH ON VIDEO THAT WE BORROWED FROM THE LIBRARY, NOW THAT WE DON’T SPEND MONEY AT THE VIDEO STORE: A Christmas Carol.
WHAT I REALLY LIKE: How Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge’s partner, moans horribly while holding his chains and presenting his ghostlike form to Ebenezer on Christmas Eve.
WHAT MY WIFE WANTS TO KNOW: Whatever happened to Ebenezer’s wife, and did she die from some awful lung ailment from working so closely with those people in the poorhouse after he divorced her? And it wasn’t really a happy ending at all, was it? my wife says, except for Ebenezer Scrooge being kind to Tiny Tim and his family, and giving them a huge turkey bigger than Tiny Tim himself, and Scrooge being reunited with his niece and nephew, and giving a coin to a beggar on the street. It’s a terrible ending, because where is the wife? The one he hurt so much? my wife asks. And it’s true, there’s no more mention of the wife, the one he stopped loving in lieu of money, and it’s a terrible ending. I agree and thank God, I think, it’s not Christmas that we’re watching this, because it would really put a damper on our holiday spirit.
WHAT THE WIFE COOKS FOR DINNER: Salmon baked with butter and paprika, and green beans cooked with chopped-up bits of bacon and couscous cooked with broth and bits of green olives stuffed with pimentos.
WHAT MY WIFE IS CRAZY ABOUT: Green olives. She puts them in bean burritos and she puts them in tuna fish salad and she puts them in ham and cheese sandwiches and she puts them in stir-fry. Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t all the bits of green olives that first raised my levels.
WHAT SAM HAS STARTED READING OUT LOUD AFTER DINNER TO IMPROVE HIS SPEECH: The Count of Monte Cristo.
WHAT SARAH SAYS ABOUT DANGLARS: That man is pure mean, and I think how maybe the hunter who shot my son could be as mean as Danglars.
WHAT THE RABBIT DOES WHEN SAM READS: She goes into his lap and starts biting the pages.
WHAT THE WIFE SAYS SHE COOKED FOR DINNER: Flounder breaded in panko and fried.
WHAT I SAY: What’s panko? Panko is bread crumbs, she says. Then why didn’t you just say bread crumbs? I said. Because they are different bread crumbs, she said.
WHAT I THINK: What’s happened to the world? How could a thing like bread crumbs go from being simple to complex?
CALL: I just wanted to know, a man says. I just wanted to hear your voice, he says, and then he hangs up.
CALL: A goat can’t deliver her kid.
ACTION: I asked my wife to ask Mia and Sarah if they wanted to come with me on the call. Wouldn’t they love to see a kid delivered? I said to Jen. Jen said the girls were tired and that they should stay home. All right, I said, and I drove to the farm alone. The farmhand was there, standing by the pregnant goat. His hands were bloody. I have tried, he said. I have been trying for hours, he said, but the baby does not want to come out. I put my hand inside the goat. The first thing I can feel is how the uterine lining is ripped. The farmhand had pulled too hard. He had been too rough.
RESULT: This baby is dead and the mother will die from the ruptured uterus, I said. The farmhand looked at me. Do me a favor, I said. Tell Marie, the owner, I have to put the goat down. Tell her I have to shoot it. The farmhand nodded, wiping his hands on his pants as he walked toward the house where I could see Marie standing in the doorway with the door open and with her oxygen attached to her nose, the clear tube trailing behind her, attached to her tank standing somewhere in one of her darkened rooms. She reminded me of an astronaut, the tubing keeping her from floating off while out on a space walk. I knew Marie would be okay with me shooting the goat instead of giving it an injection. Marie was poor, and she knew the bullet was free and the euthanasia solution cost money. Marie was always thankful when I saved her money. I reached into the goat again, wanting to be sure my diagnosis was right. I could feel the tear in the uterus easily, because it was so big. The goat screamed in pain. It sounded like a woman’s voice. I took my hand out and I patted the goat’s back. I told her the pain would be gone soon. When the farmhand returned he nodded his head. “I told her,” he said. I looked at Marie in the doorway and she was also nodding her head, giving me the okay to put the goat down. I took the goat to the back of the barn, where no one driving by could see. I had my.38 and I put it on her forehead and then I pulled the trigger. The bullet must have entered her sinuses, because smoke from the gun blew out through her nostrils, swirling up toward the sky.
WHAT MARIE DID: She waved me into her house. It seemed like I was an astronaut, too, the way I floated across the ground to get to her doorway. I floated because shooting the goat and having the smoke blow out through her nostrils was surreal, and it all seemed like a dream. Marie had me come into her house and she closed the door behind me, letting the farmhand take the goat away in the cold. You want me to pay you in veal or mutton? she said. I could have my pick. The meat would be ready in a few weeks. I’ll think on it, I told her. I was dizzy. I wanted to sit down, but I didn’t. Marie hobbled over to the window and looked out at the farmhand carrying the goat in his arms. I don’t like him, she said. Something inside her oxygen tank clicked, and I wondered why. Was that a signal it was running low? Then I looked and realized it was one of her black and white border collies’ tails that was hitting against the tank; it was happy to see me, and had come into the room to meet me. He walked over to me and fit himself right up under my hand. I think I leaned on him a little. I was thankful to have him there, taking on a little bit of my weight, lightening my load.