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93 CAUSE OF DEATH: UNKNOWN 6 Death was introduced to me by a hamster. The Millstone was home to many hamsters over the years—so many we had a nickname for the species. The word hamster, when spoken as if you had a stuffy nose, was “habster.” We shortened it to “hab.” The hab I loved the most was Mama Hab. Mama lived in a small cage on my desk, which filled my bedroom with the comforting smell of cedar shavings. It was here she bore six babies that looked like pink kidney beans; and it was here I watched in horror as she ate them. I wasn’t familiar with the species’ natural tendency for infanticide when they feel unsafe, and so I was angry with Mama Hab for a while. After a successful litter, however, I came to forgive her and the little wheel in her cage spun regularly every night for a year or so until one morning I discovered her paws-up. Using the funeral of JFK as a model, I immediately chose a room in the Millstone where my hamster could lie in state—the quiet of my mother’s Tower Library seemed fitting for the rites. To fashion a coffin, I emptied a box of the large wooden kitchen matches and with a little toilet paper serving as bed and pillow, Mama Hab was respectfully displayed for viewing on the ornate desk in the middle of my mother’s oval library. Though Mom and all five brothers were invited to pay their respects, attendance was low. So I set the burial date back a week, extended the invitation to neighborhood kids, and waited for the lines to form. With time running out and the crowds somewhat thinner than expected , my agenda shifted from crowd control to odor control. A liberal application of my Dad’s Old Spice would have been the preferred mortuary science, but I was unable to locate the bottle and settled for spraying half a can of Right Guard antiperspirant onto my ex-hamster. It took about five days before my mother discovered my aboveground pet cemetery and told CAUSE OF DEATH: UNKNOWN 94 me to commit the critter to the elements. Mama Hab was finally buried in the pine grove near the garden with only myself in attendance. Death came next for our most beloved pet, the family collie, Caesar. But this wasn’t just death—it was murder. Caesar was part of our family long before I was. He’d been with us since the family lived on the farm, when the oldest boys—Kip, Jeff, and Chris— were toddlers. He was a beautiful collie and to us looked prettier than Lassie (and she was on television). When we moved into the Millstone, Caesar inherited a dog’s kingdom of four acres to find sticks and six boys to throw them. Then came the morning I found Caesar dying on the front lawn. It was long before his time and there were no apparent injuries, but there he lay. By the time the family had all gathered around his fallen regal form, he was gone. Caesar was no hamster. He was our dog, our guard, our angel, the one you met coming home from school, waiting for you by the mailbox. His sudden death changed everything. JFK’s assassination hadn’t happened yet, nor had our parents separated; we’d never felt loss before. All of our little-boy lives had been about addition; new little brothers arriving, Grandpa and Monnie pulling into the driveway bearing Florida oranges, big homes being bought, Christmas following Christmas. And now something was taken. Loss was new to us. It was just minutes after my father’s graveside pronouncement “Cause of death: unknown” that the rumor began of Mrs. Hartman and her “orange dog food.” Mrs. Hartman, who lived over the fence to the south of us, had been known to complain about Caesar from time to time. Caesar would dig the occasional hole in her garden. She’d shoo him off and then mention the trespasses to Mom at every opportunity. Our grief turned to anger and, needing an outlet, we chose her. It seems one of us (today nobody recalls exactly who) remembered seeing Mrs. Hartman “feed Caesar some orange dog food.” Of course this was nonsense and Mom did her best to disabuse us of the notion, but the conspiracy theory took. Mrs. Hartman officially entered the family shit list...

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