Shirley

What a Man Can’t Do This time we were on our way to town, not coming home, the wife captive in the passenger seat. Not yipping and howling at all, just being a regular man, my husband wanted to talk about his hen, the one from Stacie, our dentist. I’d been along when we got this hen, months ago. Even to walk into the chickens’ cage to catch her and the other bird Stacie didn’t want, her spare rooster, Stacie’d had to put on special clothing to keep from getting gored. The other rooster—Stacie’d intended to hold on to that one, don’t ask me why—had a terrible vicious streak. And then, of course, when my husband put his new acquisitions in with his longtime flock, the hen had gotten pecked and ostracized by the ladies. That’s just how chickens act. And now my husband was telling me about a weird thing he’d just seen. She still runs to the stone pile, said my husband. (These rocks in the pasture, a hefty distance from the coop, heaped like a burial mound, are from long before our...

Wolf Husband Ha. I was right and didn’t even know it. All those long-ago magazine ads I cut up, aiming to paste our grandchildren into the arms of the wolves—why, the one is really him. Here’s evidence: We were driving home from town the other day. All I wanted was to get into the house and drop my stuff, but heading up the lane, instead of turning into our driveway Paulson continued on. He wanted to show me something. He’d mowed down the stiltgrass the whole way up to the property line. (Sorry, but telling you about his despised multiflora roses and honeysuckle and all , I failed to mention the stiltgrass.) Now, I could understand him not wanting any aliens all the way up our length of the lane which we share with the neighbor. Evil weeds edging the gravel, either side they’re on, can waft their evil seeds across. But he’d mowed beyond our turnoff. We don’t drive past the turnoff. We turn in, toward the house, at which point our dog goes nuts. He hears us coming all right, but o...