Here are a couple of excerpts from the book. The first is from Edwina.

 

Some of you ladies out there will understand me when I say that a “thong” is a type of slide-on-your-foot rubber sandal, not something to be worn as a substitute for underwear. Panties were meant to cover your fanny, and if you are lucky enough to find a brand that consistently fits you, they will never, by design, lodge in the crack of your derriere.

Now, I adore my husband, Mr. Parker, and when we got married, on that very day, I took my granny’s advice to heart when she said, “honey, if you want to make this marriage last forever, keep him well fed and happy in bed,” even though it shocked me at the tender age of nineteen to hear this kind of language coming out of my grandmother’s mouth. As I said before, I adore my husband and certainly want him to be happy and I am perfectly willing to wear most of what he buys for me out of the Victoria’s Secret catalog, but I had to draw the line with the thongs. I am also very happy that after twenty years of marriage and two kids, he still likes to see my bare fanny and the sight of me parading around in next-to-nothing still makes his blood flow vertically where it ought to go, but the only kind of thongs I will ever wear are on the floor next to the back door.

That being said, I found myself in the silly position of owning a lingerie drawer full of nothing I was willing to wear because the elastic bands on all my regular stuff was pretty much worn out, so I headed out for my favorite little lingerie shop at the mall. Bob was in his office upstairs on the phone tying up some shipping details on an order of marble (we import marble for flooring) and was trying to keep up the pace of the conversation on his end with his Rosetta Stone Italian, so I didn’t want to interrupt him. I just shouted up the stairs on my way out

“Going to the mall…”

“Okay,” he shouted back down.

My Jeep was backed up to the fence with the big gate into the backyard, which is a whole other story having to do with unloading an antique dresser I found at an estate sale, so, in order to get out and on my way I had to get past Biffie and Boom Boom, the Beasts of the Backyard, two otherwise adorable and wonderful chocolate Labradors, my husband’s prized Huntin’ Dawgs, not to be confused with Hunting Dogs, which reside in other parts of the country where their owners consider themselves to be patrician gentlemen. Well, I suppose I could have gone out the front and hiked around but it had rained a little the night before and the yard was full of wet, sticky, unraked leaves which I did not want to squish my shoes into and drag with me into my vehicle. There is a nice little cobblestone path from the patio to that east fence gate. By otherwise wonderful and adorable dogs I mean, not when I am dressed to go out and have to get past them without getting whined at, slobbered on, or jumped up on because they are happy to see me and want to play. If I had parked in the garage it wouldn’t have been a deal (or an ordeal), but I had to navigate past them.

Come September, with duck season around the corner, Bob spends a little bit of time every day working with the dogs, making sure that before he gets to the lodge with all his huntin’ buddies, he has settled them into good behavior and “soft” mouths (the dogs, that is, the buddies are on their own, “soft” mouths or not).  That means time spent at daybreak in the backyard with dummies and decoys, Bob training, or re-training in this case, the dogs to go still and quiet with hand signals before he whirls bird-feathered things on strings above his head and then lightly whistles his “fetch” command to the two of them as he lets go of that string and those faux avians go flying dead into brush and bushes into which Biffie and Boom Boom rush, their wiggling hind quarters disappearing ahead of their wagging tails until a moment later when they emerge in triumph, trotting out with heads held high and eyes shiny and bright, noses twitching and mouths itching to drop the faux prey at Bob’s boots. This work they do, to prepare for the hunt, is all great fun for Biffie and Boom Boom, who get a little more alert and a little more juiced up each season when the winds shift from south to north, sifting scents of wood smoke and winter wheat through the cool air, so my task was doubly hard that day. They couldn’t wait to hear a doorknob turning of a morning.

And from Earl

Life is a constant state of readiness. Ready. Not ready. I’m reminded of that each and every day because I’ve made it my life’s study to examine evil in its most common and mundane forms. Not red-skinned, pointy-devil-horns evil, but real evil. The kind that most people will meet without ever realizing that they are staring straight at it, or how it can bloom right in front of them in an unexpected instant like some time-lapsed nature film of a tiny bud opening up into a sudden and spectacular flower whose petals are red, whose thorns are poison, and whose scent promises danger, warning us to stay away.

That’s why I live on the second floor of my apartment building. Above the easy temptations of first-floor life, where a night’s kicked-open door brings fear to groundlings and bounty to those who kick. That’s why I’m sitting in a dim room, illuminated by the soft glow of a monitor, invisible behind the brighter lights outside, shining down into the wide yard of closely cut grass. I want to see. I want not to be seen. I want to see what comes before it sees me. I want to be ready. Because I know that some are not. I lean back in my office chair, prop my feet up on the computer desk set up in my nearly empty living room and scan through some archived security video from an old client.

Take these guys, for instance, stumbling into some mall in Chile on grainy mall security video while bystanders look on only long enough to see what’s up before running away. First guy in the doors stumbles down on his hands and knees, losing a gout of blood on the white tile floor while sneakers squeak and kick, trying ineffectively to get him up and going again, but there’s a guy on his heels who stands over him, points a gun, seeking to put more bullets in that guy on the ground. The video feed is fuzzy, grainy, and there’s no sound. But in that hard silence of one guy kicking like mad to get to his feet, blood dropping out of his torso like rain, you can just imagine what that second guy says, the one in the white hoodie, the one with the gun: Shit! And that’s because his gun jams.

Not ready.

He just stands there, fooling with the jammed gun, while the shot guy who can’t get back on his feet reaches for a gun in his waistband.

Ah. Ready, he is, that already-shot-guy on the ground.

But life’s not that easy, see. Here’s where that flower’s scent befuddles action, bringing with it all the odors of doom, of decay, of fear. Already-shot-guy can’t get his gun out of his pants. He tries and tries and tries, but he just can’t get it out. Maybe the hammer has snagged on something. (It’s a revolver.) Maybe he hasn’t cleared his cover garment. (There’s a white t-shirt under that hoodie.) Thirty seconds of life go to waste before white-hoodie-guy sees what he’s up to, falls upon him, wrestling for that gun. For a moment the single weapon is the sole focus of each man’s universe, finally out of the pants and in two hands. Well, four really. Two attacker’s. Two victim’s.

At this moment you might think this: already-shot-guy should grab a backup weapon. He has one, right? He’s smart enough to tote a gun, so he’s smart enough to have depth of preparation, right?

Well. Like I said. Ready. Not ready.

Already-shot-guy is not ready. There is no backup weapon. But his assailant has an accomplice. That accomplice enters the mall and together he and white-hoodie-guy make short work of their victim.

It ends quickly, and without drama, as accomplice shoots and wounds already-shot-guy four times, causing him to lose his desperate grip on his own gun. White-hoodie-guy then shoots the victim in the head a couple of times, the body a few times more. Then he lowers the gun. For just a sec he stands hovering over the multiply shot guy while blood leaks out, pooling around his head, his neck. Finally satisfied, he and his accomplice exit the mall.

The victim remains immobile, almost in a fetal position, dead or dying.

And it’s worth noting that no one comes to his aid, just as no one intervened when he stumbled inside this cold white place. He is more alone now than the day he arrived on this planet, kicking and squealing and naked with new life and hope and wonder and potential bubbling in every vein and cell.

It’s all gone now. Everything taken from him in a moment.

Not ready.

So I consider my conversation a little more carefully with Bob and Edwina, the two finest people I know, and I can’t help but get a little angry and a little upset about what happened to her. Assaulted in broad daylight in a mall parking lot by a couple of punks who spend their lives in dormant states till opportunity, that blackest of light, makes them bloom with danger, poison, violence.

What punks like that need is weed killer.

And I’ve got just the thing.

The trick, however, ever so very much the trick, is to get to what Edwina needs so that, next time, should there ever be a next time, she’ll be ready.

And that’s the hardest lesson of all.

Mindset.

You’ll never be ready if the mind is not properly prepared.

Just look at that dead guy on the screen. He was prepared — had a gun, after all — but he was not ready to use it. Was not ready to cope with failure. Was not ready to deal with his own unplanned disaster.

Not ready because his mind, that most potent of weapons, had not been sharpened.

So I sit back a moment, staring at the image lingering on screen, tell Goldie this will be a hard one. Minds can be like steel, so hardened to their own ideas you’ll never sharpen them, or soft enough the edge that takes never lasts.

Goldie simply floats in her little bowl, twirling side fins like an aquatic Bhudda, goggle eyes twitching left and right at bubbles coming up from the aerator on one side, the little plastic green bushes on the other.

I note the eye twitch. First at those bubbles, rising to the top of the tank, bursting in open air, then at the plastic trees that aren’t really trees. It gives me an idea.

“Thanks, Goldie.”

Goldie blinks. Twirls away in her bowl.

I turn off the computer.

Boil water for a last cup of tea before bed.

Watch a little evening news.

Fall peacefully asleep, dreaming of bubbles and hammers.

 

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