He’d Rather Fight a Dragon Than His Wife

He’d Rather Fight a Dragon Than His Wife

Tom vs. Dragon

Every sunset Tom hunts the dragon in his backyard. On an unknown day in the recent past, the dragon climbed from the canal on the eastern perimeter of Tom’s property and made a home in his lake, where it eats the koi fish Tom and his wife Jeanette purchase from the pet store. With the credit card swipe comes a vow to give the koi a good life. But inevitably, they are to be eaten by a dragon. It isn’t fair. 

Tom’s means of hunting involves a revolver and a golf cart. The golf cart, he’s driven often. He and Jeanette rode it to and from the bars along the Intracoastal before they moved to this ranch house with a backyard lake. The move was necessary. Jeanette enjoyed the bars too much. 

The gun is a gift from a neighbor. He lives in a state like that. For all his fifty-five years, Tom has been staunchly opposed to guns and – with the exception of a singular weekend trip in the nineties to impress the brothers of his first wife – hunting. The revolver is not loaded. He hopes the dragon implicitly understands the threat of a gun.

Tom cannot patrol the lake all day, what with his job and his wife and the demands of his wife’s condition. One afternoon, he installs a trap. The trap is a box built of steel fencing, and beneath it Tom buries raw meat to attract the dragon. The idea is that, when the dragon enters, the contraption will snap closed and the dragon will be humanely disposed of in the Everglades. 

Jeanette doesn’t give a shit about the trap. He drives them in the golf cart to show her what he’s made, but she’s distracted. Wine sloshes from her glass onto her foot as they tread the uneven terrain of their yard. Her Santa Margherita is precious to her, she explains, and doesn’t he know the price has gone up? 

Maybe that’s your sign, he suggests. 

She asks to be taken home before seeing the trap. The dragon circles beneath the lake’s surface. The water drags. 

Tom hasn’t slept through the night in months. Now, he leaves bed before sunrise to discover the trap has shut. Inside: no dragon. Only a scowling racoon, angry about his predicament. Tom frees the racoon and sits on the golf cart to take in the day. Cicadas buzz. It’s a cotton candy sunrise. At the beginning of their relationship, after nights spent talking until daybreak, one freewheeling conversation toppling into another, a giddy-giggly-headfirst romance known best by people who don’t know better, Tom and Jeanette would take the Zodiac out on the Intracoastal and idle there to name the shapes in the sky. Tom couldn’t believe his luck. His first marriage died emotionally two decades before it died legally. The kids and all. There was so much loneliness there. Jeanette was a deep breath after being underwater. This morning, one cloud looks like a duck. Another, a tornado. 

Later, after his nightly patrol, Tom senses it before he hears it. Then, he hears it. Jeanette stands in the kitchen, tumbler in hand, yelling into her phone. An empty bottle of Pinot Grigio sits on the counter behind her. She’s moved onto vodka. Usually he hopes that seeing him will help her come to and remember. But alcohol makes her mean, and alcohol decays her memory, and Tom left his optimism somewhere in the buried meat of the dragon trap. She hangs up the phone. 

Can you believe it! Olivia won’t come to her own mother’s birthday unless I promise not to drink. 

Tom knows this already; he had arranged the ultimatum. Jeanette knows this, too, but has forgotten since he told her that morning, when she was still sober and agreeable, after he finished naming the clouds. 

He crosses the living room into the kitchen and drains the bottle of vodka into the sink. It gurgles as it goes. She swats at his back and kicks at his calves. 

Jeanette, I noticed the alcohol I got rid of is back. 

Am I a child? Because you treat me like a child.

OK, he agrees. He disposes the empty bottle in the trash, then moves to the refrigerator to see what else she bought. 

You’re an asshole. You know that?

Why don’t we watch the sunset? It’s still going. 

She mimics him, echoing his words petulantly. I’m done with this! I’m done! 

She marches out the back door and slams it so it shakes. Tom follows Jeanette outside and watches as she descends the patio stairs toward the lake. I’m done, she yells into the air and tugs the wedding band off of her finger. She flings it into the water, indifferent as skipping stones. Her necklace goes next. These items are in good company with her other jewelry, Tom’s wedding band, her last two cell phones. Then go her shoes, which Tom finds funny, thinking of the mud and how quickly she’ll regret the move. He remembers the music festival, when the rain came down suddenly in sheets, and they both laughed as he carried her through the crowds and dirt to the car. Neither of them cared about umbrellas or ruined hair or money lost to a rain-or-shine policy. He remembers feeling like two teenagers. Not even a year has passed since then. Now, Jeanette stomps toward the golf cart parked next to the lake. She takes the revolver and chucks it, then sits in the driver’s seat and fumbles through the cup holders for the keys. 

Where are the keys, she yells. The fucking keys, Tom!He expects to find the keys when he pats his pocket. He doesn’t. And then: the quiet roar of a golf cart engine and a drunk woman’s woo! Tom looks up to witness the slow-motion lurch of Jeanette crashing into the lake. Across the yard, the dragon climbs out from the water and stares in their direction. Tom swears he can see the white feathered tail of a fish dripping from its mouth.