Me & Jack

by Danette Haworth

  I’d already told Dad I didn’t want to go. “Who’s all going?” I asked.

  “Everyone! Come on, you can’t stay home.”

  Yeah, I could. Everyone included those kids who’d looked at Jack as if he were a monster. Everyone included the ice cream ladies. Everyone included Prater.

  “My dad’s kind of busy.”

  “We can pick you up.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I—I … I think Jack’s a little sick from all that barbecue sauce. I’m just going to stay home.” Maybe sit on the porch and listen for that coyote.

  Then I said, “Hey … um … have you heard anything weird at night, like up in the woods or anything?” I tried to make it sound like it wasn’t any big deal. I wasn’t even sure if the sound could carry to the houses off the mountain. Ours was pretty high up.

  “What do you mean? Like … ghosts?” He laughed.

  “No, not like that.” I gazed out my window. “The other night I heard—Jack and I both heard—oh, you won’t believe me, never mind.”

  “Tell me,” Ray insisted. “I will believe you.”

  I bunched up the cord in my hand and let it spring out. “We heard a coyote.”

  “No way!” Ray said. “A coyote?”

  I knew it. I shouldn’t have said anything.

  “Yeah.” My voice trailed down. I heard how stupid it sounded. I cringed as I imagined Ray’s face filled with disbelief. He’d hang up and call Prater and they’d both laugh at me.

  “What does your dad say?” Ray asked.

  “He doesn’t believe me.”

  Silence. Then Ray said, “I’ve never seen one around here.”

  “Well, I heard it. I heard it howling. It doesn’t matter anyway; no one believes me,” I said. “Everyone wants to blame Jack.”

  “You really heard a coyote?”

  “Yes,” I said firmly.

  There was a moment of silence. I knew Ray was trying to decide if he believed me or not. It didn’t matter; I was prepared to face the rest of summer alone with Jack.

  “Do you think that’s what attacked Schwartz’s chickens?”

  He believed me. Before I could answer, he went on. “Oh, man, you should’ve heard what Jimmy said after you left—that coyote really tore into those chickens. I sure wouldn’t want to run into one.”

  Hearing him talk about it made it even more real. Relief and determination rushed through me. I told him everything about the night Jack and I heard the coyote, how it made my hair stand on end. “No one else believes me, but I’m going to prove it.”

  “How?”

  I glanced at the tape recorder sitting on my nightstand.

  chapter 23

  An unfamiliar car sat in our driveway one night when Jack and I came back from our run.

  It was Mark Zimmerman’s. He and Dad sat at the kitchen table, their heads bent in deep conversation.

  “Hey,” I said, hanging up Jack’s leash.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Dad said. “You remember Mark?”

  “Yep.” Jack zipped by me to the living room. I wanted to follow him, but I didn’t want to be rude again. I leaned against a chair. “How’s it going?”

  “Pretty good.”

  They both stared at me like they were waiting.

  Oh. “Well, nice seeing you.”

  In the living room, I checked out the newspaper comics, but bits and pieces from the other room kept my ears pricking.

  “… and my dad thinks I should be pounding the pavement … don’t want a job in a factory … people giving me dirty looks …”

  I knew how that felt. People crossed the street when they saw me and Jack coming.

  Mark described his dreams, horrible nightmares that woke him up in cold sweats. “Can’t talk to my old man about it—he delivers bread, for crying out loud.”

  “What about your friends?”

  I couldn’t hear his response.

  If you didn’t have friends, you sank. That was the biggest pitfall to always moving. You were constantly starting over, making the same moves again and again … watching … waiting.

  I leaned over and gave Jack such a good roughing up that he bounced off the couch and sprang to the floor, head lowered, front legs splayed.

  “You want to play?”

  He huffed.

  I whipped his rope toy across the room and watched him bound after it. Dropping it at my feet, he settled back and waited for me to throw it again. One thing about Jack, you always knew what he wanted. I tossed it a couple more times, but he got wise fast and was already running before I threw it, so I faked him out and threw it into the kitchen and heard a crash.

  “Joshua!”

  Jack ran out of there with his tail between his legs. I felt the same way as I slunk into the kitchen, where I spotted Millie’s cookbooks all over the floor.

  Dad tipped his head at me. “Could you be more careful?”

  Heat flashed through my face. Getting yelled at in front of Mark made me feel like a little kid. I bent down to pick up the books.

  “What kind of dog is he?” Mark asked.

  I shuffled Millie’s books back onto the counter. “He’s a Pharaoh hound.”

  Mark pursed his lips in thought. “I’ve never heard of that.”

  “It’s a rare breed,” Dad said. I caught a note of pride in his voice. He looked at me hesitantly. “Joshua, maybe you should—”

  “No, no.” Mark pushed his chair back. “I’ve taken up enough of your time.” He stood, nodded, and shook Dad’s hand. “Thanks for talking to me, man. It’s been hard getting my head together.”

  “Anytime.” Dad clapped Mark’s shoulder and opened the door for him. “You come by anytime, okay?”

  After he left, I asked, “Is everything all right?”

  Dad rested heavily against the cupboard. “Yeah.”

  Whatever it was, it was between them. Dad wasn’t about to spill.

  chapter 24

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Ray said.

  We sat in my room listening to the recording from the previous night. Jack lay dozing in a warm spot by the window. The sunlight bounced off him, creating a golden halo around his body.

  “Me either.” It was the third night in a row that I’d left the cassette player recording on the porch before I’d gone to bed. Howling was what I hoped to hear, but static was the only thing that played from the cassette.

  The tape ended and we sat back.

  “Maybe we need longer tapes. Like a couple of hours’ long,” Ray said.

  I nodded. A couple of hours into the night would definitely be better than the half-hour tapes I had now.

  “Tysko’s has them,” Ray said. “We could get some today.”

  I rewound the tape. “I don’t have enough money, and I can’t ask my dad.” If he didn’t believe there was a coyote, he definitely wouldn’t give me money to try to record it.

  “I’ve got some,” Ray said. “We could pool our cash together.”

  “I thought you were saving up for that new yo-yo.”

  “Yeah,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “but I don’t want Jack to be blamed either.”

  I knew then that Ray was a solid friend.

  I opened the drawer where I kept my money and jammed the bills and coins into my pocket. “Let’s go,” I said. At that, Jack rose. Anywhere I went, he went, too.

  “Millie, we’re going to Tysko’s,” I shouted through the open basement doorway as we passed to the back door. I could hear the washer and dryer humming.

  “Okay,” she called up.

  After Ray grabbed his money, we left our bikes at his house and walked with Jack across the street to Tysko’s. The doors stood open, and a dust devil blew across the wide plank floors. We walked past the breads to get to the shelf of batteries and cassettes, but old Mrs. Tysko came around the corner and blocked the aisle.

  She put her hands on her hips. “What do you boys need?” she asked. She looked mad.

  “Cassettes,” Ray sa
id.

  She looked at Jack and me and then pointed to Ray. “You may shop.” Then she looked at me and arched an eyebrow. “That dog is not welcome here.”

  “Jack’s okay,” Ray said and touched Jack’s head.

  She kept her eyes on me. I felt like a criminal. “I know all about that dog.” She pointed to the doorway. “You can come here alone, but that dog is not welcome in the store or in the ice cream area outside.”

  Ray began to protest, but I said, “It’s okay. We’ll wait outside.” I didn’t want to stay in there with her anyway.

  “This time you can wait outside,” Mrs. Tysko said. “But don’t ever bring that dog to my property again.”

  “C’mon, Jack,” I said. We walked out, sat on the wooden steps, and I rested my chin in my hands. It was so unfair. After a few minutes, Ray came outside with the cassettes. He looked apologetic. “Wasn’t your fault,” I said, getting up.

  He sighed. “Yeah, I know, but still …”

  Jack hunted that rabbit and now people wanted to charge him with everything. I stood and stretched. Then I remembered what my dad said about the war and people being unhappy about things. I said, “They just need someone to blame. That’s why we need to get that coyote on tape.”

  We rode home slowly and zigzagged up the hill. As we got closer to the house, Jack started barking, but even Ray and I could hear the thrashing in the woods. I threw my bike down without letting go of Jack’s leash and tore into the woods. Ray ran behind us.

  “Hey!” I yelled through the trees.

  Branches snapped close by but the sound grew farther and I slowed down by the blueberry bushes.

  Then I saw it.

  chapter 25

  The fort was wrecked. Someone or something had bashed in the walls and knocked down the posts. The branches lay broken, sticking in the hole like kindling. The trapdoor was cracked in half.

  Ray’s shoulders slumped. “Geez,” he murmured.

  I felt sick as I looked at the destruction. “It was such a good fort,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Ray said. He began to pull branches from the heap. Then he stopped. “I don’t think we can fix it.” He was right; it was obliterated. I tied up Jack and dragged myself to the ruins.

  “Maybe we could just use the hole,” I said, “like, for campfires and stuff.”

  Ray considered the idea. “Yeah, that would be good.”

  But not nearly as good as having a fort. Ray and I had worked hard on this one. We’d nailed a plank up high for squirrels to run across, and even that had been destroyed.

  Anger burned in my heart. “I don’t think an animal did this.”

  Ray examined the debris and tapped a branch against his leg. “I don’t think so either.”

  Neither of us said anything after that. It was hard work, stooping over the hole and heaving the logs out. Prickers were in the brambles we’d scattered over the roof; I grabbed a pile of branches and got stuck by one.

  “Ow!” I said and dropped the pile. Blood trickled from little pinpoints on my hands.

  “You okay?” Ray asked.

  “Just some prickers,” I said and wiped my hands on my shorts. As I bent down to pick up the pile again, I saw a flat, odd-looking piece in the brambles. I shook it loose from the other twigs and branches and held it in my hands—a leather strap etched with the figure of a horse. Drops of my own blood stained it.

  “Prater!” I snarled. My lips tightened and I squeezed my hands into fists.

  Ray stopped. “What?”

  I slapped the wristband into his hand.

  He straightened up, giving a curt laugh. “Alan,” he said. “I can’t believe he wrecked our fort.”

  “I can! He’s a mean, stupid idiot!” I picked up a stick and hurled it through the woods. “I know he’s your cousin, but—”

  “He shouldn’t get away with this.” Ray looked mad.

  Something unleashed inside of me. I stomped over to Ray and snatched the wristband from him. “He’s not going to.” I went over and untied Jack.

  Ray followed me. “What are you going to do?”

  Energy pumped through me. My heart was hard as a rock. “He wrecked our fort—I’m going to wreck his.”

  “No,” Ray said. “That won’t solve anything.”

  “Yes, it will. We’ll be even.” Prater would know what it felt like. Stupid wristband. But when I looked at it, really looked at it, I thought it was cool. If I had one of Jack, I’d wear it, too. The wristband wasn’t stupid—Prater was. I wanted to go over there with a shovel and fling horse manure all over his stupid dressed-up little tree house.

  “Let’s go talk to him.” Ray crossed his arms. “See what he has to say.”

  Talk? That’s not what I had in mind. But I could sure think of a few choice things to say.

  chapter 26

  As Ray, Jack, and I made our way up Prater’s driveway, I heard the muffled report of a rifle—target shooting. We leaned our bikes against a corral post, and I held Jack’s leash tightly as we climbed the hill to Prater’s tree house.

  Just as he’d described before, the tree house sat on a platform in the split of the tree trunks. A log staircase led up to a small cabin with a shingled roof and a wide-planked door, which stood open.

  Jack and I jogged up the steps behind Ray to the doorway. I’d seen forts and tree houses before but never anything like this. A braided rug covered most of the floor. Two rocking chairs sat together in the far corner, like they were just waiting for people to sit down and talk. Pictures of Prater and Shadow filled the walls. There was even a little table. It looked more like a place for CeeCee to have tea with her dolls than a place for boys to hang out.

  Prater sat on a bench holding a rifle, the barrel resting through the window, another gun on the floor. His face was pink and sweaty—no doubt from running all the way home after trashing our fort. He’d obviously heard us tromping up the stairs because he didn’t act surprised to see us, and he didn’t say hello, not even to Ray. Then he saw Jack. His knuckles whitened as he clutched the gun, then he turned so red I thought his head would explode. “What do you want?” he snarled.

  “Alan—,” Ray started.

  “You wrecked our fort!” I blurted.

  “Your fort?” he sneered. “Your dog probably got loose and smashed it. Or maybe the wind knocked it down.”

  My voice dripped with contempt. “The wind?”

  Prater shrugged. He laid down the gun, stood, and his mouth twisted into an ugly smirk. “Could’ve been a bear.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said, thrusting myself forward. I shook the wristband in his face. “Do bears wear these?” He tried to grab it, but I whipped it behind my back. “You liar! You wrecked our fort.”

  “Give me that wristband,” he growled.

  “Not till you admit you wrecked our fort.”

  “You better give that back to me.”

  “Or what?” I was suddenly reminded of when he snatched my letter from the dog club.

  He shoved me hard on the shoulder. I stumbled backward, almost falling over the bench. Jack rushed at Prater, snapping, snarling, and gnashing his teeth. Prater tried to step away, but Jack checked his every movement. Fear flashed in Prater’s eyes. A thrill swept through my body; I’d never seen Jack like this before. My heart swelled with pride that he was protecting me, even though it was scary at the same time.

  “Jack,” I murmured. “It’s all right.” But Jack did not give up his position. Prater was pressed against the wall of the tree house. I crouched beside Jack and smoothed his fur. “C’mon, boy, it’s okay.” I drew him closer to me.

  Prater peeled himself off the wall. “That dog almost bit me! I should call the police on him.”

  “Come on, Alan,” Ray said. “You started it.”

  “So what?” Prater said indignantly. “He could’ve attacked me and you don’t even care!”

  “Oh, my God.” Ray stared at him.

  For a second, Prater looked hurt. Then he remember
ed himself and glared at me. “Get out of my tree house.”

  “What about our fort?” I said. “We all know you did it.”

  “I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR STUPID FORT. Give me my wristband!” He lunged at me, windmilling his arms.

  Jack leaped and barked. His lips pulled back to reveal sharp, white teeth. A scissor bite. “You better watch it,” I said, reining Jack in and moving toward the doorway. I turned and whipped the wristband across the room.

  “No,” Prater yelled, “you better watch it—you and your stupid dog.” He bent down, but instead of grabbing the wristband, he grabbed a gun, raised it to his shoulder, and aimed it at Jack.

  The hairs on my arm stood up and I froze. I felt blood whoosh through me. Prater held the gun steady, head tilted, one eye shut, the other eye focused with hate. I couldn’t breathe. I did not blink.

  “Put that down!” Ray yelled. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Prater shifted his fingers and gripped the gun firmly. “I want them out of here.” He cocked the hammer.

  My heart dropped. Blood drained from my face. I sensed Ray at my side and Jack by my legs, but all I could see was the end of that barrel. I stepped in front of Jack.

  “I’m getting your dad!” Ray took one step toward the door and stopped.

  Prater held the gun steady. I swallowed.

  Jack growled a low warning. Outside, two birds called back and forth to each other, and a breeze rustled through the leaves. Prater opened both eyes and lifted his head. He lowered the gun to his side. “It’s just a BB gun,” he sneered, “and it’s not even loaded.”

  My heart beat light and fast, and my lungs pumped quickly as though I’d been running. Heat crept into my face. “You’re an idiot,” I said to Prater in a low voice.

  “You’re a wuss.”

  I wanted to hit him.

  “Come on, Jack.” My legs felt shaky as I climbed down the stairs. Jack sensed my lack of balance and slowed down. My eyes stung, but I wasn’t going to let Prater think I was crying.