Why Man Is Boss

by Jo Neace Krause

My mother was different, she didn't want me to fit into some splashy picture like Tude's mother. Tude's mother thought having a paper route transformed him, like Tude was now part of the real America, like he was traveling the river with the boys. Going into a real part of America. She made me sick. I don't know why it makes me sick to see a mother concentrating on her son like that. "I want him to do right," she would say, standing there in her church clothes, and those glasses that were just a glare of light that hid her eyes. "This little job will build character," she would close her lips with satisfaction. "Do you know how many astronauts were paper boys? How many of our leaders?" How many of our leaders, like she owned a bunch of leaders. Had them in a drawer somewhere. I don't know why I hate people like that.

My own mother had no dreamyland mind. In her way of thinking everything should come back to me, not to America. "It'll help you learn to take care of your money, son." That was all she said. There was a little meeting one day a week for mothers of the "boys who delivered". Then there was a picnic with free food given by the newspaper staff in the park by the river. We played baseball and went over by the bushes along the bank and smoked. Just a puff from the same cigarette. "Don't let Tude puff," I said. I don't know why. I just liked to see him left out.

We did the paper route for south Parkersburg. Five of us boys aged nine to eleven rode our bikes to the top of the hill, got our loads and dropped back down into the town slinging the rolled papers at the porches. The dogs knew the time we'd pass and waited for us. Up at this one crossroad they waited. There were five of them, a shampooed, pampered posse, looking entitled to excitement. They came out from a bushy corner near this housing development where no one was ever seen, and took out after the bikes in a wild yelping display of teeth and rolling eyes. You couldn't pet dogs like this. They already claimed the center of life, they held it in the drum beat of their feet and stretched throats.

However, one day only two of us proceeded down the hill into the road where the dogs were standing while the other three of us waited behind, above the scene. These dogs made one mistake—they never looked back after they rushed the two front bikers, never knew they were being followed from the rear until the feet in tennis shoes were upon them, kicking the hell out of them from every direction. Gravel and flying fur and rolling eyes is what I remember. That and how the next time we went down the hill ... how the dogs stared up at us and walked back to the houses and laid down on their paws.

Copyright © Jo Neace Krause 2003