Read Online Dog War by Anthony C. Winkler - Free Book Online Page A

the sidewalk of a street, she could not help but stare, for she had never before in her life seen a white man even carry a pickaxe in broad daylight, much less raise one to dig a hole. Of course, one knew from books and the cinema that white men did such things abroad, but schoolbook knowledge was simply not the same as seeing with one’s very own eyes.
    She had been strolling with Shirley and Henry and the two grandchildren toward their car in the parking lot of a shopping mall when she spotted the white man digging the hole in the sidewalk pavement. Beside him leaned a big-belly black man who peered captiously down the hole and bellowed criticism and commentary over the digging. Precious stopped and stared, her mouth agape, at this scene from a movie.
    “What you looking at, Mummy?” Shirley asked, edging closer and licking an ice cream cone.
    “A white man digging a hole in de sidewalk,” Precious mumbled.
    “Damn lazy brute dem,” Shirley groused. “Dey work for de government. If it take a normal man an hour to dig de hole, it take dem five.”
    “But digging a hole!” Precious mumbled, confused. “I never know white man could dig hole.”
    “Who say dey can dig hole? They’re damn lazy! You want to watch?”
    Precious muttered that she did not, for she felt vaguely queasy at the thought of sticking her nose into another’s business, but Shirley had already seized her firmly by the elbow and was half dragging and pushing her across the striped parking lot toward the edge of the road where the men were working, all the while whispering to the children that Grandma had never before seen a white man dig a hole and wanted to see such a wonder up close for herself.
    “Is that true, Grandma?” Cheryl-Lee asked in a whisper, excitement shining in her eyes. “You’ve never seen a white man dig a hole?”
    Precious tried to mumble something in defense of this embarrassing shortcoming in her upbringing, while doing her best to shake off the official police death-grip with which Shirley steered her across the parking lot.
    “Sometimes our garbage man is a white man, Grandma!” Henrietta blurted, skipping merrily at her side.
    They were within earshot range of the digging men now, and Precious could even hear the big-bellied black man complaining about the depth of hole.
    “It got to be deeper, I tell ya!” he was twanging to the white man, who was so deep down the hole that only his blood-gorged neck blazed above the ragged rim. “I know the line’s down there someplace! You just gotta keep digging!”
    The white man hoisted the pickaxe and drove the blade into the earth with a porcine grunt, while the black man slouched with his hands resting heavily against his knees and peered attentively into the hole.
    “This is fun!” Cheryl-Lee announced. “Watching a white man dig a hole!”
    “How come we never did this before, Mommy?” Henrietta asked peevishly in a tone that implied maternal neglect.
    “Lawd Jesus, Shirley!” Precious muttered, tugging at her daughter’s sleeve. “Dey goin’ see we watching dem. Come, make we go back!”
    Shirley kissed her teeth in an expression of contempt.
    “I am a taxpayer,” she growled. “I have the right to watch any man dig any hole so long as is my taxes paying for it. I am sitting right here and watching my taxes at work.”
    She sat down stubbornly on the curb, licked her ice cream cone, and watched the white man dig. The children plopped down in an arc of silence and studiously peered. Henry leaned against the trunk of a tree and looked amused.
    Before long they could hear the white man groaning that the sun was too hot and the work too hard, and he and the black man withdrew under the shade of a nearby tree and lolled against its trunk, chatting and swatting idly at the swarms of hovering gnats and flies.
    “See what I tell you!” Shirley said triumphantly. “And you say white man can dig a hole! Dig an inch and him take a half hour break! Damn lazy