Rocket tipped his head and stared at him. Those big ears turned and quivered.
“That’s Killer Hill over there,” he said, pointing downstream, under the bridge. “We used to go sledding there, me and Beau.”
The dog whined.
“Yeah, it makes me sad,” said Danny. The cars hummed by above them, rumbling on the bridge. Birds pecked and whistled in the branches of the chestnut trees. Down the creek, on the golf course, he could see men moving along, and sometimes the flash of the sun on the shaft of a golf club.
“You want to go swimming?” said Danny. He nodded toward the water.
The dog didn’t move. It just sat and stared at him.
“It’s not too deep. I’ll show you,” said Danny. He took off his shoes. Then he took off his socks and stuffed them into the shoes, and he hiked the legs of his jeans into bundles round his knees. He stood up and waded into the water, feeling the mud ooze between his toes. He walked out to the middle, with the brown creek surging past his legs. The pool was speckled by shadows—from the branches of the chestnut trees, and the streaks of the cars going by.
He turned around to call for the dog, and saw that Rocket was already swimming behind him. The dog paddled along with its ears floating, the tip of its tail poking up like a periscope. “That’s good,” said Danny. He walked backward across the pool, watching his dog, and he could feel in his heart that he was falling in love with Rocket.
They walked farther down the creek that day than Danny had gone in many weeks. They kept in the shallow canyon of the creek, and Danny watched for garter snakes in the tufts of yellow grass. He kept looking back at Rocket, worrying that he was going too far or too quickly. Each time, at the sight of the dog there behind him—his dog behind him—he felt happy and proud.
He had gone so often with Beau this way that he imagined Beau was with him. He could almost feel his brother there, as though his ghost was walking with him. He felt that Beau was happy, too.
thirty-six
When Old Man River drove down to the Hollow that evening, trailing smoke from the stacks on the big pumper truck, Danny was waiting in the garden. The boy and the dog were playing tug-of-war with a bit of rope.
As soon as the truck came to a stop, the dog dashed away to meet the Old Man. He leapt up at his front and up at his back, jumping so high that he jingled the keys on the Old Man’s hip. Round he went, like a tetherball around a pole, and the Old Man didn’t even push him away.
“Okay, good boy,” said Old Man River.
“Hey, Dad,” shouted Danny. “He’s got a name now. We’re gonna keep him.”
“That’s great,” said the Old Man as he came toward Danny. The dog ran ahead of him in tight little circles.
“Yeah,” said Danny. “I’m calling him Rocket.”
“Oh. Rocket, huh?” said the Old Man. He nodded, then tugged his cap. “Rocket. Yup, that’s nice,” he said, but he sounded disappointed.
“Don’t you like it, Dad?”
“Sure, it’s great. Course, it doesn’t have to be permanent,” said the Old Man. “You don’t have to stick with it, Danny, if you find something you like better.”
“Like what?” asked Danny.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the Old Man with a huge shrug. “Like, um—oh—maybe Nelson?”
Danny shook his head. “I like Rocket.”
“Well, that’s settled, then,” said the Old Man. “That’s the end of it, isn’t it?”
But it wasn’t. Not quite.
After dinner that day, Danny took Rocket out for a walk. He meant to go to Killer Hill, but Rocket led him a different way, through the maze of trails behind the creek. They went up and down, and east and west, and little Rocket went zooming all over, sniffing at bushes, at tree trunks and bottles and garbage. Danny just followed along.
They went high up the slope, and back to the creek. Rocket wagged his tail and started digging in the dried mud. He scrabbled at the riverbank, flinging the dirt behind him. Then he barked in a way that sounded like a little shout, and pulled from the dirt a pair of old gloves.
Danny knew them at once. Long ago, they had belonged to his father. Then Beau had taken them and painted them with aluminum paint. They were the gloves that Beau had worn on Halloween night, when they’d come to wash a bucket in the half-frozen creek.
Rocket dragged one of them over the ground, then looked up at Danny with a bright gleam in his eyes. He barked again before taking one glove in his mouth and shaking it hard. He shook it furiously. The glove slapped his nose, and his own ears slapped the sides of his head, and in his throat he made little growly sounds.
Watching this, Danny didn’t know what he felt. It was funny to see the little dog attacking a glove. It was strange that he’d found it. But mostly it was sad to see the gloves again, to remember that night and what they had done, to remember the feud in the Hollow. That was pretty well over now, the feud. Danny figured the Colvigs had won.
He took the glove from Rocket. He held it to his nose like an oxygen mask and smelled for the scent of Beau. But it was only dirt he smelled, and worms. So he stuffed both of the gloves back in the hole that Beau had made. He thought how his fingers were doing exactly what Beau’s had done. Rocket, lying down in the dirt, watched without moving.
“It’s okay,” said Danny. When he was sad, Rocket was sad—that was what he noticed then. They both had been so happy, and now both were so quiet. Rocket was peering up as though he felt guilty for what he had done.
“Really, it’s okay,” said Danny. “Don’t worry. You didn’t know about the gloves. You didn’t know what they were.”
Rocket barked. He got up when Danny did, and they both arrived home covered in mud and thorns. They arrived to find the Old Man in the kitchen, with his big green box from the attic.
After the gloves, seeing the box now was almost too much for Danny. He felt a hotness in his eyes, an itching in his throat.
The picture of Nelson was lying on the table beside the box. The sailor’s shirt, the crushed hat, and the trousers were piled on a chair, and the Old Man had the album of big, thick pages in his hands, opened across his lap.
“Ah, Danny boy,” he said. “I wanted to show you a picture of Nelson. I thought maybe you might reconsider and name your dog in his honor, so I went up and got this.” He touched the cracked picture, sliding it toward Danny. “But you’ve already seen it, haven’t you?”
Danny nodded. There was never anything gained by lying to a septic man.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” said the Old Man. “Here I’d thought you’d found the spitting image of old Nelson, but they could hardly be any different. They’ve both got four legs and a nose. They’ve both got a tail and—well, that’s where it ends.” He let out one of his little chuckles, but it didn’t sound like a laugh. “I never should have looked, Danny boy.”
Rocket had settled right under the Old Man’s chair. Danny could hear the television in the living room, and the creaking of a chair as his mother turned in it. She would be trying to hear what they were saying, trying to ignore the television.
“There was this in the box,” said the Old Man. He lifted the album from his lap and brought out from underneath it a bit of rusted metal, the name tag of Billy Bear. “This was in there with the string hanging out.”
Danny touched his throat, as though he still might find the tag hanging there.
“Now, I won’t ask how it got inside here,” said Old Man River. “That doesn’t matter now. But tell me, Danny. Did you and Beau look at everything? Did you go through all the pictures?”
“No,” said Danny in a squeak that he could hardly hear himself. He shook his head.
“But did Beau figure it out?” said the Old Man. His hand was shaking, and the thick pages knocked together. “He must have, didn’t he? He figured it out, why I’m a septic man today.”
“No, Dad,” said Danny. “He thought it had something to do with the war, that’s all.”
U
nder the chair, Rocket whined. Danny wished he could bend down and pet him. He wanted to feel the dog’s fur.
“You sure about that?” The Old Man turned the pages in the book. Danny saw pictures of people and beaches, of trucks and trees, but they were all upside down to him.
“Danny, do you know what I did in the war?” the Old Man said. “I went out to Pearl Harbor in a ship. From San Francisco. I was seasick all the way. Didn’t see anything except the inside of a bucket. I was so sick that they put me in the hospital when we got to Pearl, and I never went to sea again. They found me a job that kept me on shore. Danny, they sent me out to pump the septic tanks. I drove all around Hawaii, pumping tanks at Pearl Harbor, at Hilo and Wakeham Field and…The war killed my ambitions, Danny. When I came home I found a job doing the only thing I knew how to do. It wasn’t supposed to be forever.” He closed the book. “So there’s your big navy hero, Danny. A seasick swab pumping septic tanks. Did Beau know about that?”
“No, Dad,” said Danny. “You were always his hero.”
“Come here, son.”
Old Man River put the album on top of the jacket and trousers. He put Billy Bear’s name tag on top of that. Then he brought Danny to his side and hugged him in his arms. Rocket looked up from the floor.
“Was Beau proud of me, Danny?” asked the Old Man.
“Sure he was, Dad,” said Danny.
Rocket came to his feet. He stood on his hind legs, trying to force himself between Danny and the Old Man. He was whining.
“What about Gus Grissom? Did he ever say he wanted to go and live with Gus Grissom instead of me?”
“Why would he say that?” asked Danny. “Heck, Dad, why would he want to do something like that?”
Mrs. River called out from the other room. “Charlie? What’s going on out there?”
“Oh, we’re just shooting the breeze,” said the Old Man.
“Why’s the dog crying?”
“He wants up, I guess,” said the Old Man. “He feels left out.” So he patted his knee, and Rocket jumped onto his lap.
Danny rubbed the dog’s head, and the Old Man rubbed its back, and Rocket seemed happy then, practically grinning at the two of them.
“Rocket’s a fine name,” said the Old Man. “He’s your dog, sure enough. He was born to be with you, I think.”
Old Man River put his album and jacket and the rest of his things back into the green box. He gave Danny the name tag. “I don’t know what you want to do with this,” he said.
Danny could still see, and feel, the letters stamped into the metal. “I think I’ll bury it with Billy Bear,” he said. “Maybe Billy Bear wants it more than me.”
The Old Man said that would be fine, and he gave Danny a hug. “Maybe Rocket will help you,” he said.
“Yeah, he’s a real digger dog,” said Danny.
Rocket sprang down to the floor, sliding on the tiles in a hurry to keep up with Danny. The Old Man chuckled. “He loves you already, Danny,” he said. Then he added, in a moment of unthinking, “Before you know it, the two of you will be closer than brothers.”
Danny stopped in the kitchen doorway. He turned around slowly.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.” The Old Man was slumped in his chair. “I don’t mean you’ll forget about Beau. I don’t want you to even try to do that. You’ll always have Beau with you now, you understand?”
Danny nodded, and went out. Rocket came with him, down the three steps and over the grass toward the place where Billy Bear was buried. The crosses that Danny had made still stood above the little graves, but Billy Bear’s had fallen sideways.
Danny buried the name tag, and that was that. It felt to him that something had been finished, like a short chapter in a long story. It was as though Billy Bear had come awake for a while, just to teach him things about his father and his brother, and now was sleeping again, in the shade of the old gray house.
thirty-seven
Saturday was the day that Danny dusted Beau’s models and books, the day that always made him feel sad. As he went from one thing to another, dusting and remembering, Rocket watched him from Beau’s bed.
He didn’t mind anymore that Rocket slept there. He would have liked it better if the dog had slept with him, but Rocket was happiest wedged between the pillows on Beau’s bed—most often sprawled on his back, his eyes moving with the slow turns of the airplanes hanging above him.
This was the first time that Rocket was in the room as Danny dusted. The dog had always been locked out, left to scratch and cry at the door. Danny had wanted to be alone with his memories, but now he shared them with the dog.
“This was the first model he made,” said Danny, dusting a Spitfire with a crooked wing. “See, he put the decals on upside down.”
The dog whined.
“Yeah, he felt pretty stupid about it,” said Danny. He moved on to the next model, a Mustang that seemed to be soaring from a little pedestal shaped like a claw. “I gave him this one. He always said it was his favorite, but I don’t know—he never hung it up with the others. See, those are his best ones hanging up there.”
Rocket barked.
“Sure, he liked it okay,” said Danny.
He worked his way along the shelf, and the dust that he swept away glowed in the morning sun. It swirled in silvery shafts and made the room churchlike and peaceful. The balsa-wood biplanes turned ever so slowly, and their strings sparkled in the sun. A feeling came over Danny that Beau was there with him, in the silence and the glow that floated around him.
He studied each thing he picked up, then returned it precisely and gently to its place. When he moved from the shelves to the desk, Rocket jumped down to the floor and stood by the closet. Tail wagging, nose thrust out, he barked at the door.
“I don’t like looking in there,” said Danny. But the dog kept barking, so he turned the handle and opened the door, and Rocket tried to press through it, howling into the darkness.
Danny looked into the closet. On the floor was the big Rocket Base USA, and that was what the dog was barking at. For once, those huge ears lay flat on the dog’s head, and Rocket bounced back with each bark, hopping clear off the floor on stiff little legs.
“Hey, stop it,” said Danny. “Quit it, Rocket.” He was bothered by the barking, a crazy sort of noise. He grabbed the dog, and it shook in his hands like a little motor. “Look, Rocket,” he said. “Look, it’s just a toy.”
But it was a big, hulking sort of toy, and Danny could see why it might frighten a dog. In the closet’s gloom, its missile launchers pointed in four directions. The black helicopter sat on its pad, and the white astronauts lay toppled on the platform at the top of the turret, as though they’d fallen asleep at their places.
“You better go on now, Rocket,” said Danny. He pushed the dog away. “Go on,” he said, and Rocket went running from the room. Danny heard him scamper down the hall, then turned to tidy up the Rocket Base.
He didn’t touch the dials and gauges and levers. They were still set just where Beau had fixed them on the day of his accident. But Danny stood the astronauts on their feet again, and made sure that the missiles were fitted into the launchers. He regretted not doing it before, when he’d first carried the base in from the garden. He wished he’d restored it to the way it had been. But even now, as he worked, the memories that came out of the Rocket Base weren’t happy at all. They weren’t even happily sad, like the ones glued up in the plastic Mustang. He could still see himself running after the little rockets, and Beau crouched over to aim them and fire them. It occurred to him now that Beau might still be alive if they hadn’t played with the Base that day. And the worst thing of all…it had been Danny’s idea to use it.
He was crying as he put the missiles into place, in the launchers on the top and the silos on the sides. There once had been eight, but now there were only six. One was hidden in the grass where Beau was buried, but Danny had no idea where the other was. He imagined that the yellow machine had
churned it into the ground, and that it wouldn’t show up again for thirty years, like the bones of Billy Bear.
The feeling of the church in the room, and of Beau being with him, was gone. He felt small and pitiful as he sat hunched on the floor, the tears trickling over his lips. He sniffled and swallowed as he worked on the toy.
He hadn’t quite finished when Mrs. River called him away. “Danny!” she shouted. “Come and see your dog!”
He went running to the kitchen. She pointed out the window and showed him where Rocket was standing at the edge of the street.
“He came to me in a terrible state,” said Mrs. River. “He was hopping around, barking like mad, all anxious to get out.” She rapped on the window and shouted at the dog. But Rocket didn’t move. “Now he won’t come back, Danny. If I go out there, he moves away.”
“I guess he’s mad at me,” said Danny.
“Why?” she asked.
“Just ’cause I put him out of the room,” said Danny. “I was cleaning Beau’s things, and telling him about Beau, and he started barking at the Rocket Base. He was bugging me, Mom.”
“The Rocket Base?” she said. “Danny, why were you showing a dog things like that?”
“I was…” He couldn’t explain, so he only shrugged.
“I think it’s time we got rid of some of those things,” she said. “It’s not fair to you to have them around.”
“No, Mom,” he said. “I don’t want anything changed. I want it all to stay the same.”
“But it’s not the same,” said Mrs. River. “It’s never going to be like it was. I want you to see what’s wrong with Rocket. I’ll talk to your father about this.”
She went down to the basement and packed away her novel. She hadn’t opened her notebook since the day of Beau’s accident, and knew she never would again. The novel seemed stupid to her now, her dreams of money as ridiculous as the Old Man’s fallout shelter.
As Mrs. River put away her notebooks and her pencils, Danny went out to help Rocket. He found it was just as she had told him: when he got close to the dog, the dog moved away. Rocket watched him come closer, then twirled around and ran a little farther down the street. In darts and dashes, the dog led the boy toward the head of the Hollow.
Gemini Summer Page 10
