Spencerville

Cliff trundled down the back steps and howled at their four dogs in the backyard. The dogs broke into excited barking and pawed at their chain-link enclosure. Cliff howled again, then laughed. To his wife he said, "Make sure you give them the scraps and let them run awhile."

Annie didn't reply. She watched him get into his chief's car and back out of the driveway. She closed the kitchen door and locked it but did not bolt it.

In truth, she reflected, there was no reason to even lock the door. Spencerville was a safe enough town, though people certainly locked their doors at night. The reason she didn't have to lock the door was that her husband had assigned police cars, nearly around the clock, to patrol Williams Street. His explanation: Criminals know where we live, and I don't want nobody hurting you. The reality: Cliff Baxter was insanely jealous, possessive, and suspicious.

Annie Baxter was, in effect, a prisoner in her own house. She could leave anytime, of course, but where she went and whom she saw came to the attention of her husband very quickly.

This was embarrassing and humiliating, to say the least. The neighbors on the neat street of Victorian homes — doctors, lawyers, business people — accepted the official explanation for the eternal police presence with good grace. But they knew Cliff Baxter, so they knew what this was all about. "Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater," Annie said aloud for the millionth time, "had a wife but couldn't keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well." She added, "You bastard."

She went to the front door and looked out the leaded glass into the street. A Spencerville police cruiser rolled by and she recognized the driver, a young man named Kevin Ward, one of Cliff's favored fascists. She fantasized now and then about inviting Kevin Ward in for coffee, then seducing him. But maybe Cliff had someone watching Kevin Ward, probably in an unmarked car. She smiled grimly at her own paranoia, which was becoming as bad as her husband's. But in her case, the paranoia was well founded. In Cliffs case, it was not. Annie Baxter was sexually faithful. True, she didn't have much choice, but beyond that, she took her marriage vows seriously, even if her husband didn't. There were times, however, when she had urges that would have made her mother blush. Cliff's lovemaking came in spurts, followed by longer intervals of disinterest. Lately, she welcomed the disinterest.

The patrol car moved up the street, and Annie walked into the large living room. She sat in an armchair and listened to the grandfather clock ticking. Her son, Tom, had gone back to Columbus early, ostensibly to find a part-time job before school started, but in reality because Spencerville, and Williams Street in particular, had nothing to offer him for the summer, or for the rest of his life, for that matter. Her daughter, Wendy, was up at Lake Michigan with the church youth group. Annie had volunteered to be one of the chaperons, but Cliff had remarked smilingly, "Who's gonna chaperon you, darlin'?"

She looked around at the room that she'd decorated with country antiques and family heirlooms. Cliff had been both proud and sarcastic regarding her taste. She came from a far better family than he did, and at first she'd tried to minimize the dissimilarities in their backgrounds. But he never let her forget their social differences, pointing out that her family was all brains and good manners and no money, and his family had money even if they were a little rough around the edges. And brainless, Annie thought.

Cliff liked to show off the furnishings, show off his stuffed and mounted animals in the basement, his shooting trophies, his press clippings, his guns, his trophy house, and his trophy wife. Look but don't touch. Admire me and my trophies. Cliff Baxter was the classic collector, Annie thought, an anal compulsive personality who couldn't differentiate between a wife and a mounted deer head.