Pete stepped back, feeling the blood drain from his face.
“I ain’t going near that dog,” Jack said. “No chance, no way. I’m going fishing. You coming or not, Petey?”
“We can’t just leave him here.”
“I can.”
“Well, I can’t.”
“Damn. I hate fishing alone. Well, okay, Petey, if that’s the way you want it. But gimme your hook and line at least, so I can have two hooks in the water. I’ll catch more that way.”
One eye on the dog for safety, Pete pulled his “poor man’s fishing pole” out of his pocket. At least that was what Jack’s daddy called it. It was really just an old empty beer can with the line wrapped around it, so you could reel back in by rewrapping line around the metal can.
“Yeah, okay,” Pete said, “but you have to give it back to me when you’re done. My dad doesn’t drink beer.”
“I know you always say that, but everybody’s dad drinks beer,” Jack said.
“Not mine.”
“What does yours drink?”
“Bourbon. In those heavy bottles with the square sides. Not the same at all.”
Jack took the makeshift fishing gear and stuck it in his shorts pocket, so that he bulged comically on both sides instead of just one.
“I can’t believe you’re missing out on fishing over this dog. It’s not even your dog. It’s not even friendly. First day of summer, too. How much of it you gonna waste?”
Pete shrugged, beginning to feel uncomfortable. Like maybe Jack was right.
“Not sure. Long as it takes, I guess.”
“Well, if you get done, come out to the lake.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Jack shook his head and walked away. Then he stopped after just a few paces. Turned back and scrunched up his face at Pete.
“You’re gonna get bit. You know that.”
“I’ll be careful,” Pete said. Because he didn’t know what else to say.
He stuck his head into his father’s bedroom, relieved to see that his dad was still fast asleep.
He tiptoed out to the garage.
Pete found his old Radio Flyer wagon immediately. Finding it was not the problem. Laying his eyes on it was not hard. It was laying his hands on it that would prove challenging.
On top of the wagon his dad had stacked two big bundles of National Geographic magazines tied up with twine, a taped-up carton of the good china, which they had not been allowed to use since Mom left, two old lamps with no bulbs or shades, some of those milk cartons you can stack, and a coiled hose that—Pete knew from memory—leaked.
He quietly pulled the items down one by one and arranged them in the opposite corner of the garage. When he finally reached the rusty wagon he lifted it up and lugged it through the house, knowing that any movement of the garage door would wake his dad.
He set it down in the front entryway and opened the door, slowing his actions at the point where he knew the hinges squeaked. Then he carried the wagon to the concrete front walkway.
He pulled the door closed behind him and he was gone.
The sun was high by that time, the day already warm. It was a good three-mile walk between the spot where the dog lay waiting and the only vet in the area. Unless it was farther. And that was only the one-way trip. He’d still have to get home.
But Pete couldn’t take the time to think about that. He had gotten himself into this thing, and it seemed to have no exit.
He’d once overheard his mom telling her best friend, Judy, “Almost everything is easier to get into than it is to get out of.”
He hadn’t understood her words at the time.
The wagon followed along behind him with a distinctive squeak on each revolution of the wheels. It became a monotonous focus for Pete. Something in which to submerge any thoughts and lose himself, if only for the moment.
When he got to the spot where the dog had been hit, Pete was sweating heavily, and he could feel his own face radiating heat.
There was no dog.
At first he looked up and down the highway, feeling the shocking and sudden wind of cars racing by his back at intervals, flapping his shirt around. He assumed for a moment that he was in the wrong place. But he’d paced it off carefully from the mileage sign, and he didn’t want to do it again. It was hot and he was tired.
He looked down at the empty highway shoulder and saw what looked like a trail of disturbed dirt. It looked the way dirt looks when you drag a burlap sack of something along because you don’t feel like spending your back to lift it.
Pete followed the trail to a spot under a scraggly tree, towing the wagon along behind.
“Oh, there you are,” he said when he saw the dog. “Good.”
The dog growled at Pete from deep in his chest.
Pete sat down in the dirt and sighed.
He looked at the dog and the dog looked at him. For whatever reason—maybe because Pete was sitting down—the dog did not threaten him again. They stared at each other for an extended time.
The dog’s small eyes were a golden color. Almost yellow. He had a mask of markings on his face like a sled dog, and a massive ruff of fur at his neck.
“I got no idea what to do,” Pete said.
The dog seemed to listen. To follow the words almost as though they had meaning to him. He seemed to be carefully gathering signals from Pete. Probably because his life depended on the boy’s intentions.
“I’m scared of you. I’ll just say it straight out. I got no idea how to get you on this wagon. If I can get you on it I can get you to the vet. But I don’t figure you can get on it by yourself, things being what they are with your hip. And I can’t imagine how to get it through to you to try on your own anyway. And if I pick you up and put you on it, I figure you’ll bite the hell out of me, sorry for the cuss. Or maybe you don’t care about stuff like that. Well, of course you don’t. You’re a dog. You don’t understand English. I guess I’m just used to apologizing for any little cuss. My daddy cusses all the time, and he doesn’t have to apologize. Grown-ups can get away with that. If I tried to do it like they do I’d probably get my mouth washed out with soap. That happened to my friend Jack. Our teacher did it. Washed his mouth out with soap. He went home and told his parents, thinking maybe he could get the teacher in trouble, but they were all for it. ‘We applaud her.’ That’s what they said. They applauded her for it. I didn’t know what that word meant but it turns out it means clapping. Like when you enjoyed a show.”
Pete fell into silence. He looked into the dog’s face again. Again their eyes locked.
“I’m gonna move just one step closer,” he said.
And he did. He settled in the dirt on his left elbow and hip. The dog rose into a sit and tried to move away.
“No, it’s okay. Don’t hurt yourself. I swear you got nothing to worry about from me. Wish I knew how to tell you that so’s you’d understand.”
Pete stayed still as he spoke, and the dog stopped short of any painful evasive action. He just sat, staring at Pete, prepared. For what, Pete hated to think.
“I’m mad at my friend Jack,” Pete said. “So mad I’m not sure I want to be his friend anymore. I guess I always had some things about him I didn’t like so much. But, I don’t know. He’s my friend. I guess I figured that’s just the way things are when you have a friend. But I’m not so sure now. Looking at a poor hurt dog by the side of the road and then saying you just want to go fishing. And complaining how he hates to fish alone. Like his problems are worse than anybody else he met this morning. I bet he never gave you another thought after he left here.”
He looked at the dog again. The dog looked back. Then, slowly, almost daintily, the dog settled all the way back down to the dirt with a sigh.
“See, that’s good. You trust me more already. I swear I only want to get you somewhere. I couldn’t bear to just leave you here all hurt and scared. Now that I seen that look in your eyes, if I didn’t do what I could to help you, I’d never stop s
eeing that look as long as I lived. I’d be lying in bed at night trying to get some sleep and when I closed my eyes all I’d see was that look. I bet you defend yourself real good when you’re not hurt. I bet this must be real different for you, feeling like you can’t defend yourself hardly at all.”
The dog’s face seemed to soften. He blinked his eyes once, which Pete couldn’t remember seeing him do before. Maybe he had, but Pete didn’t remember. Maybe he just blinked them differently this time. Left them closed for a fraction of a second longer. As if he trusted he could do so without paying a price.
Pete thought the dog might be more comfortable if Pete stopped staring at him as though just about to make a sudden move. So he rolled over onto his back, laced his hands behind his head, and stared up through the leaves of the scraggly tree. Pete liked to look up through full, leafy trees on windblown days. It was one of his favorite pastimes. But there was not so much as a whisper of a breeze on that hot summer day, and this tree was not so abundantly leafy as trees go. Pete figured you just have to work with what you’re given.
“I’d get somebody to help put you on the wagon if I could. I got to say . . . I hate to let on when I’m scared, but I’m telling it now. Even if I am only telling it to a dog. I think you’re gonna bite the hell out of me when I try to pick you up. But I don’t know who to get. Jacky’s a big coward and I don’t think he rightly cares. And his dad works at the plant days. Hell, everybody’s dad works at the plant. Except mine. Mine used to. But then there was the accident. So now he’s home, but he can’t help. Because of the accident. Not that I think he would have anyway.”
He glanced over in his peripheral vision. The dog had set his chin down on the dirt, eyes still wide open.
“Well, that’s some progress,” he said. “You’re getting to know me some.”
Pete had no idea how much time had gone by. Only that the sun was more or less overhead, and he had a good start on a sunburn on his face and his bare arms and legs. The tree was too scraggly to provide much shade.
He stood up and dusted off his shorts.
The dog followed him with wide eyes, but did not lift his head or otherwise try to move.
“This is stupid,” he said. “I been here for hours, telling you practically my whole life story. If you don’t know me by now, I guess you never will. I’m just putting it off ’cause I’m scared. I’m tired of being scared. I’m just gonna get it over with. But before I do, I’m gonna tell you something important. So listen real good, okay? I promise you . . . if you go with me, you’re gonna be okay. And that’s a cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die promise. I know you don’t really know the words I just said but I hope you can tell something by the way I said ’em. You’re in trouble out here. Come sundown if you’re still here the wild animals’ll come and get you. Don’t know if you’re smart enough to know that or not.”
Pete looked deeply into the dog’s eyes again. He was smart, that dog. Pete couldn’t tell what he knew about wild animals. But the dog knew he was in trouble. Life-or-death trouble. That came through.
Pete took hold of the handle of the wagon and pulled it around close to where the dog lay sprawled in the dirt. Moving with exaggerated slowness, he lifted out the wagon’s wooden railing on one side and set it on the ground. The dog watched his movements with what looked like curiosity more than anything else.
“I guess the trick is gonna be to lift up that back end of yours. You can lift the front on your own. If you couldn’t, you’d still be up on that highway.” He stalled, both in his speech and his movements. “Yeah. That’s the part I’m scared about right there.”
Pete took off his belt, which almost caused his shorts to fall down. He instinctively looked behind him to see if anybody on the highway was about to get a glimpse of his underwear, which would have been mortifying. But he could see only the roof of the two cars he watched speeding by.
He hitched up his shorts until he could use his elbow to clamp the waistband in place.
He began to contemplate how to get the belt under the back of the dog’s body. Without losing his life.
“Hmm,” he said.
He located a stick, or at least the opportunity for one. It was actually a complex network of dead, bare branches in the dirt on the other side of the tree. He broke off one that struck him as the right size. Then he carried it back to the wagon and the dog, pulling his penknife out of his shorts pocket.
“I’m going to get this real nice and smooth,” he said to the dog. “You know, so’s I don’t poke you. I cross-my-heart promised I wasn’t gonna hurt you and I’m not about to go and make a mistake with that right outa the gate.”
He sat cross-legged in the dirt and worked the stick with his knife until it had no side branches, no sharp edges—nothing that could hurt as he slid it under the dog’s body. He whittled down the end of the stick until it was narrow enough to wedge into the last hole of his belt.
“Okay, here goes,” he said to the dog. “Remember that promise I made. I stand by that promise.”
He walked around behind the dog, who followed Pete with wary eyes. Pete crouched down and began to slowly, gently, slide the belt under the dog, just in front of his hips, with the help of the stick. He kept the belt on top, the stick underneath, to further ensure the dog’s comfort.
The dog struggled to his feet. Three of them, anyway.
“Okay, now,” Pete said. “We’d best do it now.”
He took one end of the belt in each hand and lifted until he was supporting the dog’s hind end. Now all he had to do was lift the back end onto the wagon. And hope the front end would somehow take care of itself.
“Please don’t bite me, please don’t bite me,” he chanted.
He lifted.
Truthfully, despite his pleas, he expected to be bitten. In a flash of images and intention in his brain, he geared up to finish the movement with teeth sunk into his flesh. Maybe right down to the bone. He would heal later. He had all summer to heal. But he would finish the action regardless.
A sharp cry of pain seared through Pete’s insides, but it was not his own.
Then the dog’s back end was resting on the wagon. And Pete was unharmed.
“Good dog,” he said, gently pulling his belt out from under the dog’s body.
The dog was bigger than the wagon. His hips sat inside, but with almost all of both back legs sticking out. Pete figured the weight of the unsupported leg must be painful to the dog, but he had no idea how to fix that.
And another thing that would be a good trick to fix: the dog’s front paws were still firmly planted in the dirt beside the wagon. On the same end as the teeth.
Pete looked at the size of the wagon and the size of the dog, then pulled the wooden rail section up and out of the front, above where the handle attached. He wedged the end of the stick into the last hole of his belt buckle again, and slid it under the dog’s chest, which was easy and unthreatening with the dog more or less in a standing position.
As he moved in to grasp both ends of the belt, his new mental image was far more disturbing. Now it was his face he was presenting to those flashing teeth. His throat.
He froze a moment, and felt like it was all too much. Too much of a risk to take for anybody or anything. But then he imagined what it would mean to abandon the plan now. He would have to tip the poor dog off his wagon and walk away. And leave him out here, helpless. After everything they’d shared. After his solemn promise.
“Please don’t kill me,” Pete said, and lifted.
Then the dog was on the wagon, at least the main body of the dog, and Pete had his belt back, and he was alive and unharmed. And his shorts were down around his ankles.
Red-faced, he pulled them back into place and secured them with the belt.
“Well, come on,” he said. “We got a lot of walking to do.”
He hauled the wagon up the steep incline, puffing and sweating, and going slowly. Painfully slowly. Because he knew any bumps would jostle the dog’s in
jured leg. Then he set off along the smooth tarmac of the highway, just outside the traffic lane.
As he walked toward the vet’s, pulling the wagon, Pete could feel a shakiness at the cores of his thighs that almost made it hard to stay on his feet.
“The vet is with a client,” the woman said.
She was one of two women assistants, and she was the younger one, the one Pete didn’t like. Pete hated to think thoughts like that about anybody, but it was a hard feeling to get around. Her eyes were cold and her voice was brusque. The whole woman was like a wall made out of bricks and spikes and razor wire. How could you like her when she was clearly asking you not to?
The older lady looked nice, but she was putting a label on a tube of ointment, and so was too busy to talk to Pete at the counter.
Pete wanted to ask if he could have a glass of water. He’d intended to ask first thing. It was all he’d been able to think about for the whole last mile. But somehow this young woman had knocked those words out of his mouth unsaid.
“We can wait, I guess,” Pete said. “But it’s kind of an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?” she asked, as though she’d already decided it couldn’t be much of one.
Pete wanted to know how people got to be like that, and why, but he didn’t have time to ponder. And he sure didn’t dare ask.
“He got hit on the highway.”
“Let me talk to Dr. Morton,” she said.
She walked a few steps and opened the door to the examining room—Pete knew it was the examining room because it said so right on the door—and called in to the vet.
“There’s a boy here with his dog and he says it got hit on the highway.”
The vet came to the door and then stepped out into the waiting room and stood a few steps from Pete and his wagon and the dog. He was a huge man, both tall and wide, and Pete thought being underneath him felt like standing in the shadow of a small mountain or a fully grown tree. The vet had a look in his eyes similar to the woman Pete didn’t like—a look that said he wasn’t buying any of it, whatever he thought Pete was selling.
Say Goodbye for Now Page 2
