by Harry Mazer
Jake stared at the dead thing lying on the floor. At this thing that had once been Big Boy, but wasn’t anymore.
Connie wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry for you, Jake. You tried so hard to be his friend. If he hadn’t died, you would have succeeded. I really think so.”
His eyes filled. They were tearing and he had to blow his nose. He looked around for a tissue.
“You know what?” Connie said.
“What?” He blew his nose.
“You’re really crazy, Jake!” She’d been feeling so sorry for him, but now she was pointing her finger and chanting, “You froze a dead dog! You—”
“I know. Not too smart,” he admitted.
“No, don’t say that! I would say it was supersmart.” She ran around to the other side of the table so she wouldn’t have to look at the dog. “This is something new, Jake, a real discovery, something for the whole world. Freeze your dog when it dies! Freezer Dog. This is the greatest discovery since Newton got hit in the head with an apple.”
When Connie got going this way, she couldn’t stop herself. “Frozen Freezer Pet. Keep him next to Kool Kat. Want an instant pet? Take Freezer Dog out and thaw him. You never have to feed him or take him to the toilet. Just defrost your pet and play with him. When you’re done, put him back in the freezer.”
She circled the room. “You outdid yourself this time, Jake. This is not eating a banana with your mouth open. This is number one, top of the line, supervomit. What’s next? What do we do now?”
Jake got the aluminum foil from behind the stove and unrolled it completely. The truth was, he couldn’t stand looking at the dog either.
Connie watched him closely. “Are you going to cook it, Jake? Is that your plan? Have a special treat for your mother when she comes home. Are we all going to get a chance to taste it? Then are you going to sell the bones to a scientific supply house? You could make yourself a tidy sum.”
He rolled the dog up in the aluminum foil. It wasn’t a dog anymore. It was something stiff and hard, like a piece of iron. He wound the aluminum foil around it till it disappeared and looked like a shiny silver mummy.
In the hall closet he dug out one of his father’s old Syracuse University sport bags, orange with black letters. He put the dog into the bag, stuffed newspapers around it to keep it from bouncing around, and zipped it shut.
“Now what, Jake?” Connie said.
He didn’t know exactly. First he had to get it out of the house. Then he’d think of something. They went out into the hall and Jake locked the door.
“Where are we going to go? You can’t just walk around the city with a dead dog. Are you going to throw him in a Dumpster?”
“No.” He was never going to “throw” the dog anywhere, he was sure of that. “I’m going to bury him,” he said, pressing the elevator button. That’s what you did with dead things. You buried them.
“Oh, good. I hate it when people flush their pets away. Even a little goldfish or a mouse. Animals are human in a way, every living thing is human.”
Jake nodded. Sometimes Connie said things he really liked.
“But where are you going to bury it? You can’t even bury a person in the city. They go to New Jersey or Long Island. Have you been to a dog funeral in New York lately?”
“I don’t go to funerals,” he said. “My mom says they’re not for kids.”
“Mine, too,” Connie said. “Mom says it’s a part of growing up I can do without.”
• FIFTEEN •
Pet Rest
They went upstairs so Connie could get a jacket. Mr. Martinez was sitting at the table reading the papers. “Dad, can I wear your jacket?” Connie said. She already had it on. It was a Washington Redskins jacket.
“Where you going?” he said. “Your mother went over to see your sister.”
“Going for a walk.”
“Maybe your father’s got an idea,” Jake whispered. He motioned to the bag. “But don’t tell him.”
“Dad, I want to ask you something.” She went over and started examining her father’s hair. “What are we going to do when Nelson dies?”
He looked up. “Why? Is there a reason we’re talking about it now?”
“Nelson’s going to die someday; we need to think about it. Are we going to bury him?”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, where?”
“Where? I don’t know where. I haven’t thought about it. Do I have to give you an answer this minute? Where is Nelson, anyway?” He looked at Jake. “Did you kids do something to that dog? What’s going on?”
“Dad, relax,” Connie said. “Nelson’s by the TV having a snooze. Jake and I were having a little discussion, and all I want to know is, when Nelson gets old and dies, what do we do with him?”
Connie’s father sat back and laced his hands behind his head. “Connie, when the old dog dies, we’ll do right by him. We’ll have a funeral…a procession…maybe twenty, thirty cars. One car just for flowers, and a motorcycle police escort. We’ll cross the East River and go to the Pet Rest out past Long Island City. Father Reo will pronounce ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust.’ The whole family will be there. You, me, Mom, your sister. Do you want to invite Jake? Jake can come, too. Everyone will get a free embroidered handkerchief to cry into.”
Jake stared at Mr. Martinez. It was just like listening to Connie, the same sense of humor.
“The grave will be covered with flowers, and in time, a nice stone will be bought and put into place. The kind of stone a dog would appreciate. It will be shaped like a dog bone and it will be six feet tall. It will say ‘Nelson, Beloved Dog, Beloved Friend, Beloved Pet, Rest in Peace Always.’ ”
“Dad, you’re hopeless.” Connie bumped Jake toward the door. “Let’s go.”
• SIXTEEN •
A Football Pass
Going down, the elevator stopped at the fifth floor and Mr. Kleiner got on. Connie gave Jake a look. He pushed the bag back behind him, but it was too late: Mr. Kleiner had seen it. He was looking right at the bag. He pointed, pinning Jake to the spot. “That bag!” he said, fixing Jake with his deep, penetrating X-ray eyes. Jake was sure he saw the dog through all its wrappings.
“The bag!” Mr. Kleiner repeated.
Jake stood rigid as a pole. Next, Mr. Kleiner was going to say, Open that bag! He’d make Jake take the dog out and carry him in his arms down to the basement, where he’d make Jake put him back where he’d found him. Then make him throw him in the furnace. Then throw Jake in after him.
“Who went to SU?” Mr. Kleiner said.
Jake’s throat was jammed. He shook his head.
“Syracuse!” Mr. Kleiner sneered. “Their basketball team is pitiful this year. Their coach should be working in Kmart. If they’d hire him.” Mr. Kleiner laughed. His mouth opened, his forehead wrinkled and cracked like the sidewalk. “You’re the newsboy, aren’t you? I didn’t get my morning paper. And don’t tell me you delivered it, because it wasn’t there. You got a paper in that bag?”
Jake shook his head again. He knew he was going to be killed.
“Don’t expect me to pay for what I don’t get,” Mr. Kleiner said.
The elevator reached the lobby. The doors opened. Jake waited for Mr. Kleiner to release him from his stare.
“You kids getting off,” Mr. Kleiner said, “or do you want to come to the basement with me?”
Connie grabbed Jake by the arm and they darted out through the lobby and into the street. “Close call!” Connie said.
Jake still couldn’t talk. They were around the corner when Connie said, “Where’s the bag?”
Jake looked down, dumbfounded. He’d left the bag on the elevator. With Mr. Kleiner.
He ran back, with Connie right behind him. The elevator doors were shut, and the indicator pointed to the cellar. They went down the stairs, but when they got to the cellar the elevator had gone up again and they ran back again up to the lobby.
Mr. Kleiner was standing by the doorman’s stat
ion. The bag was on the desk. Jake tried to fade away. He wanted to sink into the wall.
“You, boy!” Mr. Kleiner pointed a thick, paralyzing finger at him. “You have trouble remembering things, don’t you?” He picked up the SU bag and held it like a football. “Here,” he said, and sent it spiraling across the lobby.
Jake caught it, wrapped both arms around it, and ran for the door. Five yards. Ten yards. Not exactly a touchdown, but his father would have been proud of him.
• SEVENTEEN •
Simple Arithmetic
On the street Jake kept looking back, half expecting to see Mr. Kleiner coming after him. They were on a side street, out of sight of their building, a quiet street with not much traffic. Trees grew out of squares of dirt cut in the concrete. Some had tiny fences around them that said KEEP OUT. All he wanted was to dig a little hole and put the dog in and cover it over. But where? There were warning signs everywhere. CURB YOUR DOG…SCHOOL ZONE…NO PARKING…TOW AWAY ZONE…No sign that said BURY YOUR DOG HERE.
There had to be a place to bury a dog. The best thing would be somewhere close, a place he could pass and know that Big Boy was there.
“How many animals do you think live in the city?” Connie said. They were standing at the corner waiting for the light. “Just start by counting the animals in our building,” she said. “Not even the little things people keep in cages like mice, gerbils, and canaries. Just dogs and cats. Give me your best estimate.”
“Fifty.”
“Not enough. On our floor alone”—she counted off on her fingers—“there’s Nelson, and next-door Pal, and Mrs. Bernstein’s two miniature bulldogs, and Casey, the Doberman in 5A. There are twelve apartments on each floor, and I bet at least six of them have dogs or cats.”
“That’s true.” But he wasn’t really listening. Where to bury the dog? Everywhere he looked, all he saw was concrete and cement.
“Okay?” Connie held him by his shirt. “Let’s say ten dogs and cats on every floor. I’m not counting fish, snakes, turtles, and I still get about two hundred animals. Are you with me, Jake? If there are two hundred animals in our building, and the same number approximately in every other building—”
“The point?”
“The point is, there’re a lot of animals in the city. Living animals and dead animals. Did you ever think about it?”
She had her face in his. Big glasses and two unblinking, chocolate brown eyes. He got it. She didn’t have to give him a lecture. Too many people. Too many animals. Too little space. Overpopulation. Blah, blah, blah. What he wanted wasn’t that complicated. He just wanted to put a little dog in a little hole and cover him over.
Give Big Boy his own little place where he could sleep peacefully. Eternal sleep—that’s what some people said dying was. But others thought it was just temporary. And who could say who was right? If there really was reincarnation like Lucy said, maybe Big Boy would have a better chance of coming back if he wasn’t burned up into nothing in an incinerator.
A corner lot where two streets came together caught Jake’s eye. It was just a fenced wedge of dirt. Nobody could ever do anything with it. It was nice loose dirt. It wouldn’t be hard to dig a hole. He found a place to squeeze through between a wall and the end of the fence.
Connie worried. “A fence means stay out. It means private property.”
“I know what fences mean.” Fences were just something in the way to get over, around, or through. He was almost all the way in when he got stuck. Connie tried to pull him back.
“No, push me in,” he said.
“What if you get in and you can’t get out?”
A woman across the street, behind the window of a little restaurant, banged on the glass, yelling something Jake couldn’t hear. She wore a white apron and an orange cap.
“Pull me out,” he said.
Connie pulled. She was breathing hard.
Now, there was a man next to the woman. He wore a white apron and an orange cap, too. He came running out, holding a stick. “Private,” he yelled. “Private! Private!”
“Pull!” Jake said.
Connie grunted, pulled, and he came free like a cork coming out of a bottle. They both fell down.
The man was still yelling. Jake held up his father’s sports bag. “No problem,” he yelled back, “no problem. Mistake, mistake. Sorry.” He walked away fast.
• EIGHTEEN •
Construction Site
“You guys want a free dog?” Connie said to a couple of boys walking by.
The boys went wide around her with a look that said, Nobody gives anything away for free in this city.
“Lost the chance of a lifetime,” Connie called after them.
“Cut it out,” Jake said.
“What?”
“I don’t want you to say anything about the dog.”
“Who are you to tell me what to say?”
“The dog’s not a joke.”
“Who says he is?”
“You do. You’re always making jokes.”
“Well—that’s true, I do joke a lot. I can’t help it.”
A loaded dump truck shedding dirt and bricks came slowly up the block. “I thought you loved dogs so much,” he said. He followed the truck, kept it in sight.
“You know I’m sorry the dog died, Jake, but dogs are dying all the time.”
“Don’t start that again.”
“That’s me—I never know when to stop. I know how you feel. I’ll cry about Nelson if he ever dies. But it is sort of funny when you think about it. My father says everything’s got a funny side.”
A yellow crane was stretched out along the sidewalk next to a big construction site. In the pit, diesel shovels were scooping up dirt and bricks and loading waiting trucks. The air was filled with dust and noise. Men in yellow helmets were everywhere. “This is it,” he said. “It’s perfect.”
“Too many yellow helmets,” Connie said.
“We can come back when they’re gone.”
“What if there’s a watchman?”
He’d figure out something. He watched a driver climb up on the cab of his truck to direct the shovel operator. They signaled back and forth like a couple of ballplayers. The driver raised both arms, and the shovel operator released a bucket of rubble into the back of the truck. The truck shook. A cloud of dust rose.
The driver jumped down into the cab and drove slowly up the incline. Jake waved as he came by, and the driver waved back. Jake hopped on the running board and hooked his hand through the open window. “Hi.”
“How you doing, kid? No rides. Sorry, company rules. How about a doughnut?” There was a box of glazed doughnuts on the seat.
“No thanks,” Jake said. He looked at the driver. “I need some advice. I have a dog.”
“What kind?”
“Mixed breed, I guess.”
“That’s the best kind of dog to have. What’s his name?”
“Big Boy.”
“Oh, a big one.”
“No, he was little. He died.”
The driver shifted gears. “Well, don’t worry about it. Take a doughnut. Go on, take one. You feel bad now, but the good part is, you get another dog, and you’re going to like that one just as much.” He released his brakes. “Gotta go. I see my boss coming. Hop off, kid. Quick!”
Walking along the street, Jake shared the doughnut with Connie. “That place wouldn’t have worked anyway,” he said. “Even if I buried him there, they’d just dig him up tomorrow. I’d never know where he was.”
• NINETEEN •.
Dead Dog Diddly
Jake was hungry as a bear. It was the pizza smell, and the smell from the bagel shop next to it. Plus the Japanese takeout, and the bakery with trays of giant golden muffins in the window.
“Peach muffins—ummm,” Connie hummed.
Pizza or muffins? Which one? He couldn’t make up his mind.
“Whichever way I point when I open my eyes,” Connie said, “that’s what we get.” She sp
un around.
“What’s she doing?” a woman carrying two shopping bags asked Jake. Connie fell against the woman. “Watch it, buster,” the woman said.
Connie buried her face in Jake’s shoulder. “Pizza,” she whispered. They went in and ordered. “I’ll pay,” Jake said when the slices came. Jake, the workingman, had money in his pocket. But as he reached for it, he realized he’d left the bag on the street. “The bag!” He’d done it again. “It’s gone.”
“Gone,” she said. She bit off the drippy end of her pizza. A smile started to form on her face. “That’s awful.”
He ran out and saw two little kids walking away with the bag. “Hey,” he yelled. He caught up to them. “That’s my bag.”
“We found it,” one said.
“Oh, yeah?” Jake gave them a fierce look.
“Yeah,” the kid said, but he dropped the bag.
When Jake returned, Connie was holding his pizza for him. “You got it back.” There was a joke coming on her face. “Too bad. I was just going to call into the six o’clock news. Headline! ‘Kid Dognappers Snatch Dead Dog, Demand Huge Ransom.’ ” She gave him a sideways glance. “Oops, sorry, Jake. Bad joke.”
• • •
They passed a man sitting on a stoop. There was an open can in a paper bag on the step beside him. “How you kids doing?” He had a blue bandanna around his neck. “You kids from around here?”
Connie kept going—kids weren’t supposed to talk to strangers. But Jake stopped.
“What you got in the bag?” the man said. He had a gray, bristly chin and dark, bulgy eyes.
“Nothing. It’s a dog.”
The man took a sip from his can. “Your dog. Now that’s cool. You got your dog in a zipper bag.” He rubbed his golf ball eyes.
Connie sat down a couple of stoops over.
“How come you got your dog in a zipper bag all zipped up?” the man said. “How’s he supposed to breathe?”
