White Dogs

By Dr James T. Baker

White Dogs is the story of a young woman and the six men who know her in six different ways. It is the story of how the way men see women affects both men and women. James Baker has created an astounding commentary on the human condition, discovering universal truths in a few grains of sand along the side of a rural road. Mary Charlotte Lafferty's life is molded by these six men: her father, whose suicide leaves her to grow up with a brother; her brother whose innocence involves the two in the world's oldest taboo; the boy preacher who falls in love with her and loses his innocence as he learns the truth and strips her of her own innocence; the Mexican who helps her escape her prison and by worshiping her destroys himself; the man who uses his wealth to make claims on her that result in the deaths of two men; and the boy who starts out to kill her and what she means to him and ends up loving her as none of the others did or could do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grave Distractions Publications
• Release date: Jan 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452436425

Dr James T. Baker

James Baker developed his passion for history and religion while in high school, during his days as a Bulldog. He is a graduate of Baylor and Florida State Universities and has for many years taught at Western Kentucky University. Throughout his career he has been a prolific writer, authoring 22 books and over 60 articles. His articles have appeared in such places as Christian Century, Commonweal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The American Benedictine Review. His creative talents and his unique points of view and insights have also made him a highly sought after speaker. He has delivered addresses and papers in the United States, Italy, Korea, Taiwan, China, and other Asian countries. He often appears in a one person show-presentation of industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. In addition to his teaching duties, James directs the Canadian Parliamentary Internship Program.

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White Dogs Website JPG

White Dogs

James T. Baker

Green Hills Press

Nashville, Tennessee

© 2010 James T. Baker

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Smashwords eBook Edition

eBook ISBN 9781452436425

Published with the services of Grave Distractions Publications

Cover, Interior Layout, and eBook Coversion: Brian Kannard;

Original Cover Art by: Alanna Ralph of Blush Studios

For more information about Ms. Ralph's art visit her website at this link.

Table of Contents

Other Books By James T. Baker

Delbert

Jack

Delbert

Norwood

Terry

Delbert

Mike

Delbert

Harry

Delbert

About the Author

Other Books By James T. Baker

Dogs to Men

Faith for a Dark Saturday

Good for the Soul

Holidays with Sundae

Peter Peacock Passes

Prior Knowledge

Sex and Bondage in Three Colors

Quest

Other Books You're Sure to Enjoy

Steinbeck Citizen Spy by Brian Kannard

Mission to Seoul by Thomas Wood

Hippocrates Wept by William F. Quigley, M.D.

Delbert

The boy picked his way carefully through the ground cover that spread sullenly between the dry trees, avoiding fallen limbs that might crack and bushes that might sway. He stalked his prey with the expertise of an experienced hunter, skilled in the arts of silence, concealment, and sudden attack. Although he was the hunter, he was himself haunted by the fear that he would make a mistake before he reached his target: that woman.

He had walked from his home, five miles away, up the dirt road from his granddaddy’s place to the highway and down the highway for two miles, then into the woods where he made a wide circle to come up behind her house. It had taken him two hours, the last part of it crouching and creeping his way along to avoid being seen or heard; but excitement kept fatigue at bay. This was at long last the day.

The Day of the Lord, he recited to himself the words they read from the Bible in church, The Day of Judgment when God will punish the wicked. He was the agent of the Lord’s justice, the strong arm of the Lord’s wrath.

He came to the edge of the woods, to the verge of the pasture that surrounded her house, and crouched behind a row of bushes. He squatted on the balls of his feet, left knee higher than the right, elbows on thighs, hands dangling between his legs, the way he had seen the men squat in town when they discussed weighty matters, the way he always crouched as he waited for deer or rabbits to kill. Only this time he had no gun, only his wits and the lumps in his shirt and trousers. He looked across the pasture that he would have to cross, calculating how and when to do it.

He had come this far many times, at least once a month for four years, since he was twelve years old. He had come when it was so hot he had to gasp for breath and when it was so cold he shivered with pain. He had come when warm drizzle matted his thick black hair to his scalp and when sleet turned to mushy punks as it hit his coat sleeve. He had come at sunrise and sunset and once in pitch darkness, when the dots of light from her back windows were his only points of reference.

Coming this far was easy compared to going the rest of the way, across the pasture, into the house—that would be the hard part. Doubts assailed him. That one time, when he had left the safety of the bushes and ventured as far as the grave site, when he had read the words on that stone, performed that foul deed, and gone back into the woods, made him wonder whether he could go any farther than that. His heart was beating fast, there was a throb in his temples, there was a drumming down in his testicles. He took a deep breath and told himself to be strong.

Do it. Do it this time. Do it today. It can’t wait. This is the time, this is the

Day of the Lord, the Day of Judgment.

The pasture stretched eighty yards from where he squatted to the house and two hundred from side to side to the surrounding woods. It was covered with grass that was knee deep but burned brittle and blond from the summer sun. There had been no rain for weeks, and every day the temperature was above a hundred. The house was as still and scorched as the grass. There was no sign of life, no movement at all. Now and then the leaves of the big Oak tree behind the house swayed softly, carelessly, meaninglessly; but there was no real wind, and there was no sound. He was surrounded by complete silence.

The house needed paint. It leaned slightly to the right. Give it ten years, and unless someone made repairs, it would go down, like the abandoned barns that littered the deserted farmlands. Without her there to keep it up, it would sink slowly into the earth, and at long last there would be no trace of it—or her. Then he would be free, then his shame would be buried for all time.

He frowned. Beside the house he spotted her old pickup truck, faded, dented, where she always parked it. He had hoped she would be gone by now. It was Saturday, and she always went to town, to shop, this day at this time. Dontchu dare be sick, not today, he hissed. With her gone he could cross the pasture and get into the house without being seen, and there he could wait for her to return, to take his vengeance. With her there, everything would be different; all of his plans would be in jeopardy.

He couldn’t go back home. That would mean spending another week like this past one, trying to act natural while he carried on his shoulders the burden he had to deliver. It was like having his leg in a cast or poison in his belly. To keep his mission in mind but not share it with anyone for another week would kill him. His eyes wandered, slightly crossed, as he tried to think what to do.

He could go up to the door and knock, like he was one of those men they said visited her to satisfy their craven desires. No, he looked too young to be a customer. He could say he was looking for work or was down on his luck and needed a handout, then push his way in and do what he had to do. If he had to do it that way, he would have to act quickly, before dark, because no woman alone, even a depraved one like her, would open her door to a strange boy after dark. He had never seen her with a gun, but old Norwood must have left one when he died. All men had shotguns. A woman alone would keep a gun like that, loaded, for protection. She wouldn’t have to be a good shot to bring a boy down with it.

She don’t know who I am. Act like I’m a hobo. Ask for a handout. Get inside. Make her suffer.

He realized that no matter what his ploy he couldn’t approach the house from the back side if she were there, that he would have to circle back through the woods and come in from the highway, across the rail road tracks, to the front door. If he did that, he would have to start now because the light was beginning to fade. Uncertainty gripped him and threw him into a rage. Damn it, he hissed. His thick black hair hung down over his ears and damp forehead. Across his chin grew patches of incipient beard. His shirt was open down to his navel, and his jeans hugged his legs tightly. Clearly visible were the two lumps. The fat lump, too big to go into a pants pocket, made his shirt hang low. The long one looked like a salamander resting between his hip and his knee.

He touched the round lump with his thumb and forefinger, pinching it carefully, then nodded with grim satisfaction. It was meat to poison her dog. He might not need it if he had to go to the front door, but he would keep it just in case. He caressed the long lump that reached down his trouser leg, then put his hand into his pants pocket and pulled it out. It was a long knife, the blade slightly curved, with a tortoise shell handle. It had belonged to his daddy. The week after his daddy was killed, he went to the tool shed, took it down from the rack, and hid it in the hollow of a tree. The men who came and auctioned off his daddy’s things never knew about it, nor did his two little brothers or his mother or his granddaddy, whose house became their new home. He took it with him when they moved and found a new hiding place for it in his granddaddy’s barn. It was justice that the one remaining symbol of his daddy’s manhood would be the instrument to avenge his death. He held it up and looked at it. He would tell her, while she was suffering, whose knife it was.

Then there was movement, up in front of him, at the house. He crouched lower and squinted. He hid the knife behind his back and balanced forward on the knuckles of his left hand. Her. The woman. Charlotte Lafferty. She was coming out her back door and stepping off the porch into the yard.

Witch! You damned old witch!

He had called her that a thousand times: whispered it every time he took up the knife and checked to make sure it was still sharp, mumbled it every time he woke in the night with his bad dreams and couldn’t go back to sleep; shouted it when he was in the woods. It poured out of his mouth like vomit, but the poison that spawned the vomit remained in his stomach, the rage that kept it flowing remained in his heart.

Now he felt that something was wrong. The tension he always felt when he thought of her, the anger he always felt when he saw her, they were weakening. He took a deep breath. He had to have that tension, that anger, to do what he had to do, to be God’s instrument of vengeance. He hissed the words again, Witch, Charlotte, and the tension, anger, rage, venom returned.

She moved a barrel, holding the rim with both hands, wheeling it in semicircles as she maneuvered it closer to the back porch. She walked across the yard, scattering a trio of cackling hens. Two of them scurried away, their heads bobbing, while the third flew to a safe tree limb and complained indignantly.

She was going to town. She was just later than usual. She wore the same outmoded black dress she always wore to shop. She crossed the yard to the privy. She opened the door and went inside.

Witch! Damned old witch! You nasty old woman!

When finally she came out of the toilet, she stopped for a moment and looked out at the pasture, directly toward the spot where he crouched. The setting sun caught the wire rim of her glasses and threw a golden glint toward him. It was almost like a wave, a signal of recognition, and he shrank back before he realized how foolish that was. She could not possibly see him.

He had always observed her from a distance, either in her yard or in town; and she always wore those glasses, often with a scarf on her head, often with a high collar. Her clothes were from the past. He wondered how men could find her attractive, how she could hold such sway over their emotions, how she could make men kill for her. But a whore didn’t have to be beautiful; she just had to give men what they wanted.

She moved across the back yard to her smoke house, opened a window, and looked inside. She lowered her chin to look over her glasses, the way all old people did. His hatred bore down on him like a winter cold, clogging his throat, making his legs and arms heavy, enraging him. He knew this had to be the day.

Go on, witch! Get gone!

She let the smokehouse window drop back into place and went toward her truck. He stood up, exposing his upper body, raising his knife to his chest, letting the sun reflect off it. He no longer cared whether she saw him. He was thinking about his mother, slaving away until she died. He was thinking of his little brothers, living there in that cramped house with their granddaddy, hardly enough food to eat, let alone good shoes in the wintertime. He was thinking of his granddaddy, burdened with a family to raise in his old age. All that woman’s fault. He heard her motor grind, cough, sputter, die. Finally on the third try it shuddered to life and sat gasping. She gunned the engine, and it knocked furiously.

Today, witch, it’ll be today. You’ll get yours.

She backed slowly in a semicircle, turned, and moved noisily down the lane, through the gap in the front hedge, and toward the highway. She slowed down to cross the railroad tracks, passed under the highline wires, and turned west toward town. From previous observations he knew he had an hour to get inside the house and get himself ready before she returned. It would be easy now.

Yet when he tried to move forward, out of the protection of the bushes, to cross the pasture to her house, he felt he was encased in a membrane, a transparent but tough mucous wall, with the red and gold sunlight reflecting off it. He stopped for a moment, afraid to go on, but then he thought about his father and mother and his brothers, and he lashed out at the membrane with his knife, again and again, until it began to thin. He raised both arms and waved them in front of him as he plunged forward. He began to run, waving, stretching, ripping, tearing, until with an almost audible pop he forced a hole large enough for him to escape into the pasture, dragging damp pieces of the membrane after him, leaving most of it to blow and dissolve in the hot air.

Jack

God looked out upon everything he had made, and behold, it was very good.

Hooey Long-ga-ga? he said, feigning shock, stepping back, spreading his arms, his eyes wide, his mouth open. "Hooey