‘And so that’s the philosophical component of his fear. Whereas the emotional component…’

‘Oh sure. The emotional component is this very discrepancy. All the guilt he’d feel. That the woman, standing there and weeping over the retriever, thinks MacDougall is killing Duke. Good old Duke: Duke who licks her grandkids, Duke who chases after a soggy tennis ball in the dog park, Duke who can roll over and writhe like in a Western when you make a finger-and-thumb gun at him. She thinks poor Duke has attacked MacDougall, inexplicably, and that MacDougall is killing him. Whereas actually Duke stopped being Duke the moment he attacked. The state this retriever is in, he’s not going to be fetching tennis balls or playing dead, to say the least. He’s forgotten all that. So MacDougall is technically killing everything that isn’t Duke: he’s being attacked by what’s-not-Duke inside Duke. And the heartbreaking part is that the woman can’t know this, she just can’t know. Watching and weeping like that, in the fantasy.’

‘Presumably wild dogs dodge these philosophical and emotional complications by dint of—what?—they don’t have owners or names?’

‘There’s no dilemma there.’

‘But with a dog on a leash, every time MacDougall sees one, this is what’s going through his head.’

‘Well he’s weighing it. What his mind is doing when it executes the thought experiment is deliberating. Could I fend off this dog awhile? Or is this a dog I would have to beat to death immediately? Is there a tree nearby I could climb? Or is this a dog that could outrun me to the tree?’

‘Could I hide in the station wagon with my kid, like this mom here, or would Cujo just stalk around the car slobbering the windows?’

‘And the owner, too. She’s part of the fantasy’s what-if algorithm as well. Is this owner a person who would understand? If I killed her dog, would she know why I had to do what I was doing? Or would I break her heart by doing it? In short, he’s asking himself what the worst that could happen is. The thing you have to remember, it’s the dilemma that frightens him. Its twin horns. More I mean than any physical danger posed by the dog itself. That’s why a yapping Chihuahua freezes him up just as much as some foaming Doberman type.’

‘Even as a kid, this fantasy.’

‘His whole life! I couldn’t believe it. But when I ask him about it in high school, he tells me that for as long as he can remember he’s been conducting the fantasy. All those times in grade school, at all our sleepovers, that was what was scaring him. When the Boston terrier barreled at him and he burst into tears, and when he yelled out for someone to get it off him, get it off him, it wasn’t being bitten that he was afraid of.’

‘He was afraid—’

‘He was afraid of what he might do to it! Afraid he might snap the little rat’s neck, right in front of all of us. Even as its owner was standing there, yelling its useless, unavailing name.’