CHAPTER 21

I went for a walk around the block. I met a neighbor who was walking his dog and I stopped to pet it. It had three legs.

“I got it from the Humane Society,” he said. “Nobody wanted the little fucker and he’s as good on three legs as any dog on four.” The dog was small and black and shy. I remembered a dog that a cousin of mine had, a three legged dog named Skippy. The cousin lived on a farm. When they mowed a field, the pheasants and rabbits gathered in the unmowed center, and then the dogs rushed in, flushed them and the farmers, who had brought their shotguns, downed the birds. But Skippy rushed in too soon, got his leg cut off by the mower that hadn’t shut down yet. He recovered, and was as lively as this dog in front of me. “What’s his name?” I asked.

“Bailey.”

“You’re doing OK, Bailey,” I said as I scratched his ears. A dog with three legs doesn’t need an artificial leg. It hops about as if it were born with three legs. But Winslow wouldn’t be able to hop about. If he lost a leg it would require months of rehabilitation and an artificial leg, something he would have to unbuckle every night. I scratched Bailey’s ears once again

“You’re doing OK, Bailey,” I said. The rest of the walk was the usual, crows croaking from the trees above me, the light filtering through the trees. I thought about Skippy, my cousin’s dog. He had been a dog that was fiercely protective of the house and outbuildings. Anybody who showed up uninvited risked that three-legged dog’s attack. Maybe a dog like that would be a good thing to have around my house. A dog that would bark and rush at the door if anyone came near the house, as they had already done. I could do as Bailey’s owner had done, stop at the humane society and see if there was a dog that was territorial. A dog that I could leave in the house when I was gone.

Now I was filled with eagerness to find out how to construct an IED. And when I did, I would fashion one and Earl Anthony Winslow would be the recipient. He would not know what hit him and when the confusion settled he would know that I was the one. That the egret had struck, its long yellow beak had pierced him and there was no way that he could remedy this, no way that he could buy his way out of his predicament.