Vaughan was a serious, studious, prim and proper sort of fellow, and we only ever saw him in this mould. He had it all together and nothing ever seemed to surprise him. A good husband, a good father, a good worker, and when you needed him, a good friend.
There was only one time that we ever saw him a little rattled, and on reflection, it was the only time we could ever remember him blushing and not being in complete control of his world. It happened this way…
The children were toddlers at the time and because the neighbors all had pets and ‘everybody’ (as they called the vast hordes in their attempt to persuade) had pets, they put in their request for one too. Of course, Lynette referred them to their father (her husband) and told them categorically that she could not make that decision on her own. No one, and least of all Vaughan, would concede that her urging, hinting and prompting, in bed, at the dinner table, in the car and everywhere else in fact, added to the weight of persuasion he was subjected to. In the end, however, he succumbed to the combined pressure and capitulated. They would get a dog.
Not just any dog would be right for this perfectionist father though. It had to have ‘papers’ and had to be of ‘good breeding’. The neighbors across the street had black Labradors and Vaughan just knew that the highly pedigreed puppies would be just what the children needed. He crossed the road, introduced himself in his formal businesslike manner and bought the last puppy for the children.
Now the fine print on the unwritten contract between father, mother and children stated clearly that father would not, under any circumstance, and for whatever reason, be responsible for the messes and for the feeding of said “Boris” as they called the little acquisition to the family. But, as we all should know, no one ever reads the fine print on any contract. The fact of the matter was that Vaughan even started enjoying the feeding and training of the little fellow that was really starting to get, not only under his skin, but also right into his heart as well.
A wall was built right around the property to keep the puppy in; a fence was erected around the pool to keep the puppy out, and a host of doggie toys were bought to keep the puppy happy.
One little piece of information is necessary, though, in the telling of this tale, and that is that Vaughan (the ultimate perfectionist, remember) believed in and dispensed his own ‘old fashioned’ brand of discipline wherever and whenever it was called for - children and puppy not excluded. Nothing irritated him more than a plan going awry and things not panning out the way he had meticulously planned for their progress.
Now all went well for the first month, and it became habit for Boris the pup to wait at the driveway gate in the late afternoon to greet Vaughan when he arrived home from work. The latter was pleased to see the fruit of his ‘training and patience’ and the fact that the pup had learned so quickly pleased him far more than he let on in his facial expressions. Remember that we hinted that he was not the expressive, spontaneous type – not by a long shot. Whether he was annoyed or whether he was pleased could really only be hinted at by his actions rather than by his deadpan expression. Probably the ‘stiff upper lip’ gene pool he inherited from his British father and his grandfather.
It was one Friday when the unimaginable happened…
He had been delayed at the office where he had been forced to redo work that one of the partners had done incorrectly - and that of course had delayed his homeward journey. The domino effect of this delay was that it had slotted him right into the mad peak hour of traffic that he normally avoided by leaving half an hour earlier than the general rush. In itself, no reason for mirth.
Although the face was deadpan as usual, the fingers were drumming sharply on the steering wheel, signaling that all was not well in the engine room of emotions. The occasional sniff confirmed the mood and the excessive use of the horn (twice in fact) put the caustic demeanor beyond question. In good old Texan slang, he was ‘as mad as a rattler’. This again was compounded by the traffic jam where some “idiot” had stalled his car “that should have been on the scrap heap years ago” and everyone was forced to wait for the “darn fool” to push the said “wreck” towards the curb to let everyone pass. By the time he turned the last corner into quiet suburbia, his behind would have been chewing holes into the car seat if it were not for the redeeming fact that he had on a $500 pin stripe suit that separated the two seats; his agitated anatomical one and the car’s leather one. The Texans know just how to say it: “Mad as hell.”
