“Where is he?”
“Upstairs,” she said. “Brushing his teeth as best he can. Calvin? Coffee?”
“I would love some. Thank you.”
“I’m going to give you a job this morning, Pete,” she said. “It’s not a very pleasant one. But I know you think of that wolf-dog as more or less yours, so I expect you’ll agree to take it on.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. I’d do anything for him. I don’t know that he’s mine but he’s more mine than anybody else’s. What should I do?”
“If you go back in and look at his cage you’ll see he’s lying on a wire mesh. And under that there’s some space for . . . things to drop down. And there’s a tray under that. It slides out and I lined it with old newspaper. It’s so he can relieve himself without having to get up and out of the cage. I’d like you to slide that tray out and clean up after him and line the tray with nice fresh paper. And put the soiled paper in the outside trash.”
“I’ll do that for him. I don’t mind.”
“Good. And rinse out his water dish and give him some clean water.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And . . .” She paused, and reached down into a cupboard under the kitchen counter. “Give him this can of dog food. He’ll like that. There’s a can opener in that drawer under the sink.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He found the can opener and carried it and the can of dog food out of the kitchen. But he didn’t get far. He stopped in his tracks just a few steps into the living room. Because he heard his name spoken. But quietly, in conversation. Not as if he were being called back.
“Pete seems like a nice boy,” Mr. Bell said.
“He’s actually . . . amazing,” Dr. Lucy replied.
Pete moved a step or two closer to the kitchen. That owl was staring at him. And the pig, too, which was more unusual. Pete put a finger to his lips, as though they might understand that gesture. As if they’d been just about to blow his cover but a shushing motion could change their thinking.
“I worry about him, though,” Dr. Lucy said. “I don’t think he comes from a very good home. And somehow he’s managed to convince himself that everything bad that happens in the world is his fault. He takes on too much.”
“Better than taking on too little,” Mr. Bell said.
“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“I think that’s why I like him.”
“I like him, too,” Dr. Lucy said. “Which comes as a bit of a surprise.”
Then silence. Pete waited, nursing a warm feeling in his belly, but nothing more was being said.
When he was pretty sure that was all he was going to hear, he trudged off to the examining room to take care of Prince.
Just as he did, he heard Mr. Bell say, “And he calls me ‘sir.’ I don’t get that a lot.”
He was coming back from carrying the old papers to the outside trash. When he stepped back into the examining room, he saw Justin. Justin was standing at the far end of the room, in the doorway closest to the kitchen. He was dressed in yesterday’s clothes, but the blood was mostly gone. But they looked partly wet, those clothes. One side of his head was swathed in bandages, which Pete was more or less used to seeing. But an angry bruise protruded from under the bandages now, spreading out along Justin’s temple.
Justin smiled but it was a weak little thing. Weak and unsure of itself.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Pete said back.
Then no words. Just awkwardness.
“How’re you feeling?” Pete asked when he couldn’t stand the silence another minute.
“Better.”
“Must hurt like the devil, though.”
“The doctor gave me a pill. It helped.”
Another murderous silence, much longer and deeper and more intractable than the one it followed.
“You’re awful quiet,” Justin said.
The short sentence felt freighted with worry. As if he might be about to find out the “why” of Pete’s silence. As if the why might hurt him.
“I thought you’d be mad at me,” Pete said.
With that, Pete broke his feet loose and walked back to Prince’s kennel cage. He was pleased to see that the wolf-dog had finished the whole can of dog food and licked the bowl clean. He wanted to call to Dr. Lucy and ask her where the fresh papers were kept, but then he saw them stacked on top of the cage where it touched the wall at the back.
“Why would I be mad at you?” Justin asked.
The worry was gone. Possibly replaced with something else equally unfortunate. Maybe some brand of sadness.
“I figured it’d be pretty obvious.”
“Well, it’s not.”
Justin stepped in close to Pete and squatted down, gingerly, bracing his hands on the linoleum for balance. He watched Pete line the gigantic metal tray with papers and slide the whole thing back into place.
“Hi, boy,” Justin said directly to the wolf-dog, who looked back with calm eyes.
“His name is Prince.”
“Hi, Prince.” A pause. “He doesn’t answer to that much better than ‘boy.’”
“I didn’t say he knows it’s his name. Just that it is.”
“Why would I be mad at you?”
Pete hadn’t realized, until that moment, that he had been battling to hold back tears. The minute he acknowledged that battle, he lost it.
“Because I got you in all this trouble,” he said, swiping tears away with the back of his hand. As if he could hide them. As if Justin weren’t crouching right there, wouldn’t see, and so would never have to know.
“That wasn’t your fault, though.”
“It kind of was, though.”
“How do you figure? I mean, I know they were mad we were walking down the street together like regular friends. But it’s not like you told them to think that way.”
“But I knew it would be a problem.”
He dropped to his knees because it still hurt too much to sit. Justin settled cross-legged on the floor. Their heads hovered close together, like Dr. Lucy and Mr. Bell. But different, too. There was that connection, that sense of leaning into a greater trust. But it was simpler when Pete and Justin did it. More of an everyday thing. Less shocking than Pete had found the scene in the kitchen.
Justin wasn’t talking. Just waiting for Pete to go on.
“Night before last my dad gave me a whipping because somebody told him they’d seen me walking with you.”
“So when you said he whipped you for being out so long, that wasn’t true.”
“No! It was. I didn’t lie. I never lied to you. He gave me a whipping for being late. And then another one for being with you instead of the guy I told him I’d be with. And he told me not to hang around with you. And I just didn’t tell you that second part, because . . . well, I hope you know the because. What a terrible thing to have to tell somebody. So I left it out. But I swear I never in a million years thought it would get you in trouble. I thought it would get me another whipping. I never thought anybody would go and take it out on you.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Pete braced himself for blame. For all friendship and caring withdrawn. In other words, for the very worst life could deliver. He had only one friend left. He felt himself poised on the brink of none.
“You let me come out and walk with you, and you’d just had two whippings the night before, and you thought it would get you another one, and you did it anyway?”
“Well . . . yeah . . . ,” Pete said, as if there were more to the thought. But there wasn’t.
“Why?”
“Because you’re my friend.”
“Huh. Wow. So we really are friends, then, aren’t we?”
“I thought so.”
But in the silence that followed, Pete was engulfed in a terrible thought. And Justin’s silence seemed to lead in the same direction. Granted, you can never know what somebody else is thinking. Pete understood that well enough. But the cloud over Pete’s bra
in was so obvious and unavoidable that he couldn’t imagine Justin’s head being anyplace different.
What did it mean to be friends in a world where just walking down the street together could get someone viciously beaten? In what ways could that friendship be expressed? Or even exist? Though inside Pete it was a thought with no words. More a clutch of fear.
“That doesn’t make it your fault,” Justin said after a time.
“Feels like it does.”
But Pete breathed deeply and realized it felt less like his fault now that he knew Justin didn’t blame him.
Dr. Lucy called in from the kitchen.
“Pete?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
Justin winced at Pete’s volume so near his ear.
“Sorry,” Pete said quietly.
“Will you feed the horses and the dogs before breakfast?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Justin’s eyes grew wide.
“There are horses?” he asked Pete.
“You didn’t see them?”
“No. When would I have seen them?”
“I figured you’d see them out the window.”
“I’ve been mostly lying down.”
“Oh. Well, there are eleven of them. And they’re racehorses.”
“I’ll come with you. I want to see the racehorses.”
“You sure you feel good enough for that?”
“I think so. I can try, anyway. I want to see the racehorses.”
They stood leaning on the pasture fence together, elbow to elbow. Except Justin had to reach up so high to get his elbows on the rail it was almost funny. That is, if anything could have been funny right about then.
“Dr. Lucy says I can ride them,” Pete said. “You know. Later. When I get to the point where I can sit down again.”
“Think I could ride one, too?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. When you’re feeling better. Only one thing, though. She says she can’t guarantee they won’t buck me right off again. Would you ride a horse that might buck you off?”
“Not sure,” Justin said. “I’d have to think about that.”
While he thought, Pete stared at the bandage on the side of his friend’s head. It was so huge. Justin seemed lost in the vastness of the injury and its treatment.
“How did you end up with that big old deep gash on your head?” Pete asked, almost without knowing he was about to do so. “Unless you don’t want to talk about that,” he added quickly.
“Bottle,” Justin said.
He pantomimed the act of bringing a bottle crashing down on some invisible head.
“Ouch,” Pete said. “Sorry I asked.”
“And now my dad and I are going to stay longer because there’s a little bit of blood when I pee, from getting kicked in the stomach. Are you going to be here, too, Pete?”
“Yeah. I’m staying a while.”
“Good. I was hoping you’d be here, too.” Then, just as Pete was basking in the warm bath of being wanted by someone—by everyone, now that he’d overheard Dr. Lucy and Mr. Bell speaking well of him when they thought he couldn’t hear—Justin added, “Won’t your dad be mad?”
“Oh, hell yeah,” he said, trying not to think it out much beyond that.
“Won’t he come get you and do something terrible?”
“He doesn’t know where I am. He knows I’m going to be gone, but not where.”
“Oh,” Justin said.
He didn’t say, But you have to go back there eventually. He didn’t need to.
“Well, I better get to feeding these horses.”
But just then he heard Dr. Lucy call to him again.
“Pete! Justin! Come in for breakfast.”
Pete turned to see her standing in the back doorway, looking . . . Pete wasn’t exactly sure how to describe her expression. Looking a way he had not seen her look before. Lighter somehow. Almost . . . happy.
“I still need to feed the horses and the dogs,” he called. “I’m sorry. I was slow. Justin and I got to talking and I didn’t do what you said I should do. I mean, not fast enough.”
“Come eat your French toast while it’s hot. You can feed them right after breakfast.”
“Okay.”
She stood in the doorway and reached an arm out to each of them as they approached, and touched them each on the shoulder. Physically ushered them through the door. Which seemed odd to Pete, because normally she seemed to brace silently—or sometimes vocally—against anyone entering her private space.
He wanted to say, “You sure are in a good mood today.” But he thought it might be better left unsaid. A lot of things were, he’d found.
“I’m sorry I was slow.”
“Pete, you don’t have to be sorry about everything.”
“I don’t?”
“No. You don’t.”
“Oh. Well. Okay. Thanks. That’ll be a hard habit to break, though.”
“Jam or syrup?” Dr. Lucy asked, seemingly to no one of them in particular.
“Jam, please,” Pete said.
“Jam for me, please, ma’am,” Justin said.
“I’m a syrup man,” Mr. Bell said. “If you don’t mind putting out both.”
She set a bottle of syrup on the table near Mr. Bell’s right hand. She set the jam in front of Justin—which Pete found mildly disappointing, but also more than reasonable, because Justin was hurt, and she couldn’t give it to both of them at once.
“What kind of jam is that?” Pete asked Justin, leaning closer to try to take in the smell.
“I don’t know. I’ll taste it and tell you.”
“It says right on the jar,” Pete said, because he couldn’t read the label at that angle.
“I don’t have my glasses.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
They both looked up into the face of Mr. Bell, as if on cue. It was a face quickly falling.
“Your glasses,” Mr. Bell said. “Of course. I was so worried about everything else I never thought to notice. Any idea where they are?”
“We could look in the side yard,” Justin said.
“That’s where this happened? The side yard of our house?”
Justin nodded and handed the jam to Pete, then took his first bite of the French toast and sighed with pleasure.
“This is real good, ma’am,” he said. “Thanks for making this for us.”
“Wait,” Pete said. Before she could even reply. “You got beat up in the side yard of your house?”
Justin nodded, apparently not wanting to talk with his mouth full.
“Then how did you get not two miles from here?”
“Didn’t know I did,” he said, swallowing quickly. “Is that where you found me?”
“Yeah. It was under a tree in a vacant lot less than two miles from here. You walked all that way? Hurt as you were?”
Justin set down his fork. As though the utensil prevented clear thinking.
“I guess I must have,” he said. “But I don’t remember. I just remember I didn’t have money for a phone to call my dad. And I didn’t know where there was a phone, anyway. I remember thinking there was a doctor where you were. But then I thought I shouldn’t go there because I wasn’t even supposed to know about her. That’s really all I remember.”
“I know where his glasses are,” Pete said to the table at large. “But they’re ruined. If they hadn’t been smashed to bits I’d have put them in my pocket and brought them along. But they’re no good to anybody now.”
Mr. Bell only nodded blankly. Dr. Lucy sat down with her own plate.
“Wait,” Pete added in Justin’s direction. “You walked that whole way down our street and then along that highway a spell, and you were all bleeding, and not one person stopped their car to help you?”
Justin had gone back to eating, which seemed amazing to Pete, because this was appetite-killing stuff.
“Heck, there were cars going by our house while we were out in the side yard and while they were kickin
g me in the stomach and nobody stopped or did anything or said a word.”
A long, ringing silence. Pete did not spoon jam onto his French toast or in any other way move to eat it. Which said a lot about the content of the talk, because Pete was hungry. The doctor had made sandwiches the night before, but it hadn’t felt like enough.
“Let’s talk about better things while we eat,” Dr. Lucy said.
“I’m all for that,” Mr. Bell added.
But they talked about nothing. Until the moment that, out of nowhere, Mr. Bell startled Pete with a sudden comment.
“Maybe we should go back to Philadelphia,” he said, seemingly to no one.
And that’s who answered him. No one.
“Hey, Pete,” Dr. Lucy said after a long silence. “You’re sitting.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Does it feel okay?”
“No, ma’am,” Pete said.
Chapter Eleven: Dr. Lucy
“Were you serious about going back to Philadelphia?” she asked.
They were in her car, on the way back to Calvin’s house, so he could fetch a toothbrush and change of clothing for himself and his son. The windows had been rolled down for air, and the wind blew her hair around. It made the world seem fresh somehow.
Dr. Lucy had been nursing an odd but pleasant sensation in her chest all morning. A kind of buoyancy. It made it harder to breathe, but she wouldn’t have traded it away for anything. It felt like a brand of enthusiasm for the simple fact of being alive. It had been too long missing from her world.
“I’m not sure yet,” he said.
“Is it really so much better there?”
“It’s far from perfect. But nothing like this ever happened.”
“Could Justin have a white friend in Philadelphia and no one would care?”
“Well, that’s a good question,” he said. “I’m not sure. We never happened to put that to the test. There’s the house. Right there.”
She pulled over to the curb in front of one of many tiny, carefully tended brick homes.
A woman in her housecoat was walking a white poodle, curlers in her hair. She glared at them as Calvin got out of the car. She watched after Calvin as he walked to the house and disappeared inside. Then she glanced back at Dr. Lucy in the driver’s seat.
Say Goodbye for Now Page 11
