The dog was the problem. It was always there, next door, sometimes on a chain, always behind the hurricane fence, but it seemed to hate young Patrick Hurley with a fury that made both leash and fence doubtful deterrents. When he left for school and when he returned, when he ventured into his own front yard for any reason, the animal hurled itself against the woven wire, teeth bared, saliva flying, snarling like death's last warning. A year earlier, when they had first moved to their new home, Paddy's fear was so great that he frequently wet himself as he stood, paralyzed, eyes closed, even his vocal cords frozen, halfway to the perceived safety of his porch, until his mother, summoned by the dog's rage, came out and rescued the boy. It was only when he was safely indoors that the shame of having peed in his pants would hit him.

"He can't really get at you," his mother would say. It was small comfort to a boy of eight.

"I know."

"He's just, I don't know, excited. He's never that bad with anyone else."

But then no one else was quite as terrified as he, Patrick thought. The dog was a bully and recognized weakness in his victims.

"I know."

"I've spoken to Mr. Gault." Gault was the neighbor, the dog's owner, scarcely less intimidating to the boy than his dog itself. The boy had watched with wonder as the man had stood at the length of the dog's chain and waved a rag just beyond the animal's reach. On his knees, snarling and taunting the dog as it lunged and snarled at him, Mr. Gault had seemed to be of a kind with the beast, vicious, dangerous, ravenous for something he could not quite get at.

"He's certain the dog won't hurt you," his mother said.

His mother was also certain there were no ghosts in the closet, no goblins under the bed. Such certainties from an adult were worse than useless; they not only made him feel foolish for expressing his fears but also cast all grown-up assurances in doubt.

The dog became a phobia, a waking nightmare from which even his mother could not release him. Although he was one of the blessed children who liked the structure of school and whose mind eagerly absorbed transmitted knowledge, on his worst days he would feign illness just to avoid passing by the fence, the sudden, explosive rush of fury, the rage for his blood that strained, always, only a split second from his throat. At night the dog pursued him in a thousand venues and hurled itself at him in a thousand ways, but never did it transmogrify into spectral shapes or other horrors of sleep. It was always just the dog, the same dog, as if the demonic maker of his dreams could manufacture nothing more horrifying than the beast that lived next door.

On the worst of nights his mother took him into her bed, cuddling him and stroking his head until he fell asleep. As both of them became accustomed to the new arrangement, Patrick's "worst" nights became more frequent until he would routinely start the night in his own bed and within an hour snuggle up against the warmth of his mother's body.

This was before his father returned to them. He had been gone during Patrick's earliest years, away on assignments that took him all over the country for extended stays; and then there were the months in the hospital when Patrick and his mother would travel three hours each way to Omaha to visit him in his hospital bed. The older man's greeting was often little more than a weak smile for the boy, once or twice a tousling of his hair, with scarcely more animation spared for his wife.

"He's getting better," his mother would say on the long ride home. "Every time he's a little better than before. You can see that, can't you, Paddy?"

He could not, but said he did to please her. The lengthy absences had rendered his father a stranger and whatever had consigned him to a hospital had also made him a sad, moribund specimen of the half living. He reminded Patrick of the drained, depleted victims he had seen in vampire movies, or the lethargic zombies who moved in slow, impassive motion on their quests through the grave yard-except his father never left the hospital bed.

"He'll be back home with us again real soon," she said often. "Don't worry."

"I'm not worried."

She looked at him sideways.

"He's a very brave man, you know. He's a fighter. He's going to make it back."

Patrick didn't know what foe his father was fighting, his mother was never specific, and he was not worried because he didn't really care if the weary man from the hospital came home or not. He was an alien being to the boy, promoted by his mother as an idealized notion of courage, nobility and power, but not anyone Paddy could really concern himself about. But his mother cared. Tears would fall silently on the drive home and he could hear her crying in the night although her attitude was always positive and her expression, even as she wept, was twisted into a brave smile for her son.

And then one day his father was home. The patterned hospital gown had been exchanged for the pale brown of an Ashford policeman's uniform and he stepped out of a squad car, miraculously whole and healthy. Only a complexion pale as the daylight moon and a certain hesitancy in his stride remained as reminders of the man who had lain in bed for a year.

The uniform was a happy omen. Policemen were good, Patrick had always been told, policemen were his friends, policemen would protect him. If ever he was lost, his mother said, he should tell a policeman.

Even more amazing than the reincarnation of his father as a policeman was the gun he wore on his hip. His father was a hero after all, just as his mother had always said, a giant who had returned from the hospital, armed and more than an equal to Gault and his beast. A gun could relieve Patrick's life from fear and shame. A gun could kill the dog.

Monster? Puh-leeze. Me, the Monster of Mayfield? Hardly. The title is nothing more than some half-witted headline writer's attempt at alliteration. Like the Beast of Buchenwald. A couple of indiscretions do not a monster make. I am as human as anyone, the difference being I'm not afraid to act like one when the time requires it.

I'll tell you what a monster is. A man who invades a nation without provocation and instigates the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the ensuing wars. That's a monster. There's no blood dripping from his fangs, just a politician's shit-eating grin. He doesn't hide in a cave, he doesn't stalk by night, he doesn't transmogrify into a creature with talons or wings or bay at the moon. He just smiles and lies and connives and makes deals. That's a monster. Who am I talking about? How many wars have we been in during the last 65 years? How many of them were to defend our shores? Take your pick of monsters.

Me, I'm a pacifist. World view. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for violence in society, but limited and specific. Do onto others what they've got coming to them but don't go slaughtering everyone else in the neighborhood. Mass murder is just plain sloppy and barbaric and I'll have nothing to do with it. On that scale.

Three people in Mayfield spread over five years. Come on. That's pinpoint accuracy. Nothing excessive, nothing massive about it. And each one fully justified, believe me.

Anyway, the whole community is panting like a pack of dogs eager to be unleashed. A death here, a death there. A hastily buried corpse discovered in a corn field-slipshod work in that case, I accept the blame, early days, live and learn and so forth-and suddenly everybody in town is acting like it's an epidemic of premature demise. Well, I don't think it was premature, but never mind. Paranoia in the streets, everyone watching everyone else's every move. Not a pleasant atmosphere. Time to move on. Fortunately my good old Dad has had a bit of a health crisis. Time for me to go back to Ashford and take care of him. Everyone understands that, hate to see me go, I've been a valuable member, etc., etc., but family comes first and blah-blah.

So I'm off to tend to matters in my old hometown where peace and security reign. I have some mild ambition for when I get there. A man must have his dreams.

For several weeks Patrick studied the older man, this wan Lazarus who usurped his place in the warmth of his mother's bed and snored through the night with ripping, startling noises that Patrick thought must surely wake them both yet rose again each morning to appear in the kitchen in his crisp uniform, the fascinating weapon riding on his hip. His mother seemed very happy as she poured his coffee, buttered his toast and generally catered to him with a doting attention that Patrick thought rightly belonged only to himself.

Patrick watched with a welter of emotions, jealousy, awe, caution, pride, curiosity--and always with envy of the pistol. He imagined his father wielding it like Excalibur, striking down his son's mortal enemy, protecting his only child as his mother always said he would.

Spying on his father without detection was easy enough. When her husband was present, his mother had eyes only for him and for his part he scarcely seemed to notice Patrick at all, as if his son were part of the new ambience to which he was accustoming himself, of no more real interest than the squirrels scampering across the yard from tree to tree, or the invalid patients that had shuffled past his room in the hospital.

"He's still getting used to you," his mother explained. "Remember, he hasn't really known you for a long time. And you're still getting used to him, too, aren't you?"

"What's wrong with him?"

"There's nothing wrong with him," she said sternly.

"Why is he so white?"

"He was sick, you know that. His color will come back."

"He moves funny."

Rising and sitting down his father exercised a caution the boy had seen only in the elderly, and he negotiated his way around the house as if the furniture could not be trusted to remain stationary, touching the backs of chairs, counter tops, the sides of tables and doorways, before easing past them. In the open there was a slight list to his walk and a hesitancy that suggested he was learning the process anew.

"He does not move funny," she said with annoyance. "He's your father. He was in bed for a long time, that's all. Now stop this silliness. He loves you and you love him." After a pause, as if to herself, she added, "Everything's going to be fine."

Patrick knew that he loved his father because his mother had been telling him that all eight years of his life. He knew that his father loved him because of the same, insistent, maternal message although he had yet to feel the warmth, the affection, or even the interest that he associated with his mother's love.

The warmth and affection never came, but the paternal interest arrived in a sudden, life-altering blast.

Well, I'm home again, hippety-hop.

Back in the bosom of my family, such as it is. And as it is, it's good old Dad, confined to a wheel-chair, chomping his gums and drooling onto his bib...Not very dignified, Dad. Not a very good way to end up, especially after the riotous life you've lived. Makes you rather exposed, makes you vulnerable to your enemies, of which I could name a few. Well, one, at least. I could certainly name one. I knew him well, Horatio.

Good old Dad's in my old room, tucked under the eaves. Not very convenient for the nurse who has to drag her obese frame up all those stairs, but then, when you get right down to it, who cares about the nurse? Well, maybe Dad does, but who can say since he can not communicate in any way that anyone has yet discovered. A stroke can do that to you. Cruel thing, a stroke, a mild electrical disturbance, nothing strong enough to kill you, just to reroute the circuitry a bit, burn out a few sensory areas of the brain, erase the odd memory byte here and there and leave your noggin a mess of pottage, to be Biblical about it, while your determined old heart just keeps pumping away, oblivious. They call it a vegetative state, but that does discredit to a vegetable. A flower can lean towards the sun, a tree can re-route its branches, a plant can release toxins to fight off invading insects, ooze sap to encapsulate them in amber for history's edification which is actually jewelry making if you think about it. Pretty good for a vegetable. But old Dad can't do any of that. He's got plenty of toxins in his system, god knows, but no way to get them out now. The only thing he's oozing is spittle and the odd tear or drip of mucus. Not very attractive, Dad. Not the kind of thing I want to look at, so god bless the big fat nurse and her daily labors up the stairs.

Naturally I hurried home as soon as I heard the news. Or at least as soon as I verified that his incapacitation was complete. He's a very dangerous man, old Dad, no matter what his age, and at 58 he could still break my bones if he could get hold of me. He used to do a thing with just his thumb that would paralyze me with pain and dissolve my bowels to water. Oh, he was good, he was skilled, and he never left a mark. Nothing to show the doctor, nothing to get the school authorities excited, nothing to bring the social worker on the case. Smack somebody on the head with a phone book and there's nothing to betray the blow except your scrambled brain and bright lights and stars in your vision. And pain, of course. Smack him on the chest and you'll induce fear of a heart attack and impending death. A rolled up newspaper will do the trick almost as well if the phone book isn't handy. There's a good reason your pet cowers when you rattle the paper at it. Dad knew a good many more tricks than those, of course. That's bush league stuff and Dad was a major league pro. You can dislocate a finger or a shoulder and then snap it back into place after it has served its purpose, if you know what you're doing. And who's going to believe good old Dad could, would, or did do that to some sniveling pre-teen? Nobody. Or at least nobody I could find. Good old Mom didn't believe it, or so she said. But then I didn't believe good old Mom most of the time, either. After all, she was the one who kept trying to reassure me that good old Dad really loved me and that if he was a mite hard on me now and then, it was for my own good.

Well, I'll say this. It might not have been for my own good, but it was certainly for my edification. I won't say that everything I know I learned at my father's knee, but I learned everything he had to teach. The rest I've picked up on my own. It's my turn to instruct the master.