Mrs. Alfred Packer had been the oldest child, the oldest daughter, in a large family created by a decent honest hard-working laboring man and his equally-decent and devout wife, in urban Ohio. She had been the apple of her father's eye and the pride-and-joy of her mother, which was perhaps a little too strong to be healthy for her.
Considered a princess, in childhood she had acquired the notions and bearing of a princess.
As a little girl, imitating the robust religiosity of her mother, she had dressed up her Barbie dolls in nun's habits, but at about the age of seven years, she had discarded that extensive wardrobe in exchange for one in which Barbie had tiaras and long gowns; more tiaras than Imelda Marcos had ever had shoes.
When a teenager, she had met and fallen into puppy-love with Johnny, the darkishly-handsome Italianate son of another decent hard-working laboring man and his equally-decent and devout wife. For a teenager, Johnny was strikingly gentle and considerate and well-mannered, solicitous of her every need and want, having a sense of courtesy that would make Amy Vanderbilt look coarse and crude, and both sets of parents had beamed upon the prospective match.
But the association was severed when they were both 18 years old, because Johnny wanted to work at the local tire factory, so as to buy a four-bedroom bungalow to cram full of children; to live a modest retiring unassuming sort of life inevitably culminating in a healthy and well-financed retirement, and to treat his hausfrau as she was to him, a queen.
That was not good enough for Mrs. Alfred Packer; she was a princess and deserved a prince, not a tireman.
* * * * *
Mrs. Alfred Packer wearily picked up another dead rabbit and chopped off its ears, using one of those long heavy cadaver-cutting knives Wild Bill had gotten her at a surplus-property auction of the county coroner.
She sighed.
The years had gone on, and former beau Johnny and his second choice had indeed prospered and flourished, in a modest four-bedroom bungalow crammed full of children. The children all were grown and gone on in life, and Johnny was now getting grey and stoop-backed, and his wife fat and pleasant.
Just last Christmas, Johnny had sat down with pen-and-paper in hand, scanning various financial documents; his retirement plan had ballooned during the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush prosperity, but there was a dark cloud hovering on the horizon. Having put 35 years into the tire factory, Johnny decided to cash in those investments and retire, to putter around the house and dote on his wife.
The devoted children however had other plans for the couple; one was an attorney, another a judge, a third a physician, a fourth a college professor, a fifth an anesthesiologist, a sixth a bishop, a seventh a dentist, an eighth an abbess, a ninth a well-known literary figure out in Hollywood. Only the tenth, who had become a ward-heeler, and then a state representative, for the Democrat machine, had turned out badly.
No one had the slightest idea why that had happened, but it had happened.
The older nine children, grateful to their parents for the love and care and attention they had given them, had pooled their resources and bought for Johnny and his wife a retirement place down on the Gold Coast of Florida, once owned by a Harkness, complete with a private nine-hole golf course.
* * * * *
Mrs. Alfred Packer sighed again, chip-chopping off the feet of dead rabbits.
Since no man was good enough for her, a princess, she herself had remained a spinster until reaching middle-age.
Feeling the pressure of the years, she began looking for a mate; any mate would do.
On the internet, she had met Wild Bill, from the trees and mountains of rural northeastern Oklahoma near Tulsa, and as he was a man and she was desperate, she eagerly romanced him.
What Mrs. Alfred Packer had not known at the time was that Wild Bill was illiterate--he didn't do Christmas, and spent the day listening to "talking books" from National Public Radio; only the blind and the illiterate did such a thing, not being able to read actual books. And Wild Bill was not blind.
And so actually it had not been Wild Bill making all those written expressions of raw animal passion during their internetizing; rather, it was Wild Bill's sister.
Mrs. Alfred Packer oftentimes wondered why Wild Bill's sister, her sister-in-law, gazed at her in a way most women usually do not look at other women, and it discomfitted her considerably.
But at any rate, hippywife had married hippyhubby, who made it clear from the start that she was to adopt his own tastes, his own preferences, his own opinions of things, his own prejudices and loathings, his own hostility towards all that is good and decent in people, and in life.
If she didn't, he would wreak physical damage upon her, so she did.
