Amy Gustine - You Should Pity Us Instead

Cory tried to take precautions. Their upscale neighborhood has its own police and fire departments. Their house and the enormous pines on either side completely conceal the backyard from any passing sickos. The low-lying area at the back of their lot — thick with woody shrubs and large trees for a mile — discourages visitors with twig-sharp snow in the winter, boot-sucking mud in the spring, and poison ivy mosquito flats come summer. To be sure there are no tells, Cory refused to buy a swing set. When Scott mocked her, she snapped, “Why don’t we just put an advertisement in Pedophilia Monthly .” He doesn’t hold the patent on sarcasm.

Then, less than a month after they moved in, Cory heard a piece on NPR about the West Nile virus. Suddenly that swampy area didn’t seem like such a benign shield. It took some doing, but she convinced Scott to add the screened porch and buy carbon-dioxide traps. She knew enough not to mention West Nile by then. Instead she talked about bug-free outdoor meals, the way a porch balanced the architecture of the house, the possibility of making love on a hammock during hot July nights.

For a while Cory believed this would be enough. She hadn’t taken into account predators with fur. They were not scouting from the street and the boot-sucking mud and dense underbrush would do nothing to dissuade them.

In April Cory sees two coyotes just inside where the trees begin at the back of the lot. She’s at the kitchen table typing another letter to the utility people. Since they bought the house she’s been filing complaints about the sagging utility lines entangled in wild grape that run along their property’s west side. Alec’s three now. How long before he can reach them and electrocute himself?

Scott rolled his eyes. “He can’t get electrocuted. That’s phone and cable.”

It’s a flash of something tall and long-legged that draws her attention away from the letter. Then, behind the adults, two smaller creatures — rust-red fur, long snouts, and low-slung tails between. The adults are in pursuit of something. Cory tries to see what, but the woods are too thick and all she can catch is the black puff of their tails moving quickly away.

She does some research. Coyotes aren’t native to Ohio, but have spread across the state and favor woodlots in urban areas. According to one map, Cory and Scott live in a “light-density” area, but there is a “heavy-density” area immediately to their south. One source claims that coyote sightings during the day indicate they’ve lost a fear of humans. She finds a documented killing of a three-year-old in California.

To deter coyotes, experts recommend cleaning up around your grill and making sure there’s no pet food left outside. Coyotes feed on anything they can — even fruits and grasses if small mammals aren’t available. In the winter they eat deer excrement. Cory has seen the black pellet-like droppings under the pines, near the deer-ravaged hostas.

She gives away their grill and calls the administrator of their village. Yes, he admits, the stray cat problem seems to have gone away. “I don’t know what we can do, though. Coyotes are hard to trap, and we can’t have people running around shooting at them.”

Soon the local paper runs an article. Cory’s name in it annoys Scott.

“You’re going to incite panic. A dingo ate my baby .” He mimics an Australian accent.

“Sure, it’s all a big joke to you, the guy who nearly killed my son.”

Scott has no smart-aleck reply to that. A year ago Cory went for a bike ride. On the way home, along a busy street, she came over the bridge and there he was, her two-year-old. For several seconds it hadn’t registered. She attributes the delay to a horrified disbelief. Her brain calculated Scott must be beside him — he simply had to be.

But he wasn’t. Alec stood at the corner, hundreds of feet away from her, looking at the traffic whizzing by. Cory sped up and literally threw the bike out from under herself, lunging in front of her son just as he stepped off the curb. She’d have surely been crushed except that the car coming up was stopping anyway. What she didn’t know was that Alec had pushed the button to turn the light red. He must have seen her and Scott do it.

Turned out Scott was home watching baseball, sure Alec was in the kitchen eating a snack. She hasn’t left him alone with the baby since.

At the Memorial Day block party Cory finds out a neighbor’s Pekinese was killed. “I heard a yelp, so I went looking and she was behind the garage. I saw the thing running off, going down your way.”

Cory has a fence put up. She didn’t get a permit because it’s ten feet, four over the limit, and she was afraid they’d turn her down. Scott isn’t happy. “Seven thousand dollars! Do you know how much the average coyote weighs? For Christ’s sake, Cory, he’s not a mountain lion.”

“Thirty-five pounds. And they can jump a six-foot fence.”

Someone in the neighborhood complains about the fence. This woman doesn’t have any children and her dog, who lives outside, is at least seventy-five pounds. Cory leaves her a phone message. “I’m trying to protect my child’s life. What’s your excuse for that outsize mutt who never shuts up?”

The village council make her take the fence down to six feet, so she finds a rolling bar sold out of New Mexico that mounts to the top and keeps animals from scaling it. Another two thousand. She puts it on the backup credit card, which Scott doesn’t check. When he notices the bar, she lies. “That came with the fence. They just got around to putting it on.”

For Alec’s fourth birthday Scott brings home a Big Wheel. Outside for the inaugural ride, Cory catches Scott standing at the top of the driveway instead of the bottom, where he could block the street.

“What are you doing!” She runs out, startling Alec, who thinks it’s him who’s made a mistake. He turns the bike, riding across the grass and into the neighbor’s driveway. The neighbor, Mr. Prout, is backing out of his garage. He stops, smiling amiably. No big deal, your son’s life, his grin implies.

By dinnertime Scott is red with anger.

“Stop it!” he yells at Cory, throwing down his fork. “He was only smiling! Of course he thinks it’s a big deal if he runs over our kid. You’re the one who scared Alec into going off the driveway.”

Cory can barely keep from slapping her husband. “You almost hit Alec with that fork, you fuckhead!”

Alec begins to cry and Cory immediately repents. “I’m sorry, oh honey, I’m sorry. Mama’s not mad. Mama’s just pretending. Smile for Mama.” She kisses his hair, his cheeks, each soft eyebrow, glancing sheepishly at Scott.

“Sorry,” he says, kissing her on the head, then his son. She’s right. The fork did bounce close to Alec’s face.

Midsummer the Prouts retire to Arizona, replaced by a middle-aged couple prone to parties, usually cookouts. The guests who arrive look just like them — thick black hair, dark eyes, olive skin. Some of them look young enough to be the couple’s children. Maybe they’re all family, but Cory can’t tell because they speak a foreign language. On Saturdays she sits in the screened porch or takes Alec outside to play, finds reasons to linger at the fence line listening to their musical chatter. Googling their last name, she discovers it’s Persian, another word for Iranian, almost certainly Shiite Muslims. Muslims usually blow themselves up in busy places. They don’t kill single little boys, right? And Alec’s not going to be taking the bus to school. But what about in school? The neighbors have no small children. She’d feel better if they did. They wouldn’t blow themselves up in their own kids’ school, would they? Of course, they seem very nice. They always smile and wave. Cory knows she’s being ridiculous.