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to—sneaking outside after dark to pick up
these pieces of crap and then freezing them so that they could be thrown—did occur to me at a few odd moments. Luckily, I
was usually able to slough off such attacks of conscience. If this was a war—and it was—would a real soldier—like Steven Sugar—be
able to worry about a couple of crap-eating toy dogs who weren't even smart enough to have their own names? Somewhere along
the line, probably in a Vietnam movie, I had picked up the term "collateral damage," and it seemed to apply quite nicely to
the situation at hand.
    I even had a line I wanted to use on Dr. Vic, and I imagined myself saying it like Gil, with a wink and a smirk, punctuated
by a big, jolly armpit fart. "Seems to me that there's nothing worse than a shit-eating dog," I would wryly observe, and then
wait a moment before adding, "except maybe two shit-eating dogs."
    After a few tosses the frozen turds inevitably began to soften, and I quickly worked through the bag, chucking the shit into
the high grass until my shoulder started to click. The dogs were relentless, though, tumbling off in pursuit and returning
with wild foaming grins, the hard black biscuits clamped in their jaws.
    Somewhere around the twentieth throw, one of them limped back, dropped a turd, and collapsed at my feet. The dog gave a few
strangled retches and panted heavily. Its eyes slid anxiously back and forth; the dog coughed, and seemed to pant harder.
    Sensing his brother's weakness, the other Laddie darted in and snatched up the crap, then bolted into the grass to hoard his
prize.
    The sick Pekinese flopped onto its side. I knelt down, feeling my stomach give a twist. "Shit poisoning," I thought to myself,
unsure if such a condition even existed.
    I laid a hand on the animal's flank, and he lurched up. He looked up from beneath his mop tassel bangs and grinned. The dog
licked my palm. I let him for a moment before realizing where his tongue had been. I slapped his snout. The dog jerked away
and yipped in protest.
    "Jesus, okay," I said. "Okay, I'm sorry."
    Leading them inside, I reminded the dogs that I didn't feel sorry for them. "You don't even know any better," I said.
    My mother watched me grab a handful of dog bones from the cookie jar. The Laddies started crunching happily. She blew a strand
of dark hair from her eye and nodded questioningly at the oven mitt still on my hand. I shrugged and crumpled it back in its
drawer.
    I'm thirty-three years old and I can damn well do what I please, my mother wrote.
    As a form of nonviolent protest I had stopped speaking to her. Not deigning to explain the nature of my demonstration, or
even that it was a demonstration, I simply started carrying around a yellow legal pad for those occasions when communication
was unavoidable. Maddeningly, my mother had responded by refusing to speak to me as well, and purchased her own yellow legal
pad. Now, instead of yelling at each other, we argued by shoving our legal pads back and forth across Dr. Vic's dinner table.
    This particular argument started with the oven mitt. What had I been doing with it, my mother wanted to know, and why did
it smell so funny? My evasions quickly led to the inevitable destination of all our arguments these days, to the real heart
of the matter. That is: Why are you doing this to me? Have you looked at the man sitting across the table? That foolish-looking
man over there? The roly-poly one with the American flag tie thrown over his shoulder? You're going to marry him? That guy?
Him?
    How can you be so stupid? How could anyone be so stupid?
    I've done a lot of stupid things in my life, George Claiborne, not the least of which was giving birth to a child at the age of nineteen. However, that particular error in judgment has turned out to be the greatest joy of my life , in spite of your current behavior. A lot of people called me stupid when I kept you. Stupid and I have a pretty fair track record.
    I knew I was vulnerable on the