ิBetween her teeth. Edward sat down at once. ‘He doesn’t take you seriously,’ she said.
‘well, know that,’ Macon said crossly.
His broken leg was aching, but the lesson went on, and Muriel went on talking and asking questions. She told Macon how lucky he was to get to travel to all kinds of places, like Paris, how wonderful, and write guidebooks about them. She herself had never even been on an airplane, did he realize that?
When she had gone, leaving a new leash with a special training collar for Edward, Macon and Edward practiced for the rest of the day. By suppertime, Edward had learned to sit and stayed there, complaining and rolling his eyes, while Macon clucked in Praise A cluck was now part of the family language. Charles clucked over Rose’s baked potatoes. Porter clucked when Macon dealt him a good hand of cards.
During the evening Edward chewed a pencil to pieces, stole a bone from the kitchen, and was sick on the sun porch rug. But now that he could sit on command, everyone felt more hopeful.
*********************************************
‘When I was in high school,’ Muriel said, tapping her foot at Edward, ‘My teachers told me I should go to college. But, Well, I didn’t. That was because of Norman, mostly. My ex-husband. He was just dying to marry me, you see, but we were awful young to get married. I was seventeen. He was eighteen. ’
On the second lesson they had done walking to heel, and now in the third lesson Edward was supped to be learning to lie down and stay. It was not going well. Edward just looked away when Muriel gave the command, which was two taps of the foot. In between telling Macon about her ex-husband Norman, Norman’s dog, Norman’s mother, and Norman’s mother’s car, Muriel had keep pulling Edward’s front legs out from under him and forcing him to lie down.
When it was Macon’s turn to do this, he had to use the hall table to pull himself back on his feet. ‘This is very difficult. I didn’t suppose you ever broke a leg,’ he said accusingly.
‘I broke an arm once,’ Muriel said.
‘An arm is no comparison.’
‘I did it training dog, in fact. A big German guard dog. He knocked me off a porch, and then stood over me, showing all his teeth. But only one of you can be boss. So I tell him, ”Absolutely not”, and hold out my left hand and stare into his eyes.’
‘Jesus,’ Macon said
Muriel had lots of stories about her dog-training experiences. ‘I’ve had no failures yet. And Edward’s not about to be my first,’
She told Macon. ‘You keep practicing and I’ll be back Saturday.’
All that afternoon Edward refused to lie down. Macon tried everything. Rose and the boys edged around the two of them, politely avoiding any involvement in this private argument.
The next morning Edward attacked the mailman. ’We’re not solving the real problem, ’ Macon told Edward . He tapped his foot twice. Edward did not lie down.
In the afternoon Macon told called the Meow-Bow. ’May I speak to Muriel, please? ’ he asked.
‘she’s not working today,’ a girl said. ‘Her little boy is sick.’
He hadn’t known she had a little boy. It changed the way he thought of her; she was a different person from the one he’d imagined.