Saving Marty

by Paul Griffin

  Taylor’s dog howled from far away.

  I followed the baying into the wildwood, until the vines were too thick for my bike. I pushed through on foot into a clearing. There was a moldy trailer and junk piled against it—car parts, tires, old office furniture, things you can sell for ten dollars here and there.

  Now I understood Mr. Taylor’s anger. The Taylor family needed that four-hundred-dollar TV even more than we did.

  The hound’s baying was louder.

  Behind the trailer two men sat in broken chairs and sipped beers. “Howdy, Pig Boy,” the jerk with no sleeves said. “I bet right about now you’re realizing you shouldn’t have come up here.”

  “Tommy, quit it,” the other said. “You want to go to jail? Kid, I’m serious, run.”

  I ran all right, toward Marty’s squealing. They’d tied him to a dead oak next to an antler bone tree. The dirt was greasy with blood tar.

  Mr. Taylor had his butcher’s knife out. Marty gnashed like a trapped dog. The longhaired son tried to snare Marty’s leg with clothesline.

  “Hold him still already,” Mr. Taylor said. “Poor animal is out of his mind. You want the meat to taste like fear?”

  I ran head down and hit Mr. Taylor hard enough to take him off his feet. We were rolling in bramble. His sons got into the mix, and then muscle head Tommy. Mr. Taylor yelled, “Quit smacking him. Get him to your truck. Take him home.”

  I grabbed into the weeds so they couldn’t drag me away. “I’m not leaving without my pig,” I said.

  “He was roadside, no tag,” Mr. Taylor said. “Finders keepers. I’ll send you some steaks.”

  I rolled onto my side and shin-kicked him.

  “Ah!” The old man hopped and glared at the bald son. “Jason, get my rifle.”

  The Taylors’ sweet old hound bounded in and licked my face. Mr. Taylor grabbed the dog by the collar. He stroked him gently and said, “Easy, boy. Go on inside now.”

  The dog scurried into the trailer as baldy Jason came out with a shotgun.

  “Idiot,” the old man said. “I said my rifle. We’ll be chewing shot into next winter. You know what, never mind.” He drew a pistol and checked the chamber. “The four of you, get that boy out of here. Go on, pick him up, an arm or leg for each. There you go. No need to rub salt in the wound by making him watch. You bring him home in one piece, Tommy, hear me?”

  Tommy didn’t hear too well, because he kicked me hard enough to rattle my teeth.

  Mr. Taylor aimed his pistol at Marty’s head. Marty squealed as they dragged me off. His squealing turned into wailing, like a siren.

  It was a siren.

  Mr. Taylor cursed a string as the police cruiser zoomed in. I swear Mr. Lee was out of that car before it stopped.

  “Afternoon, gentlemen. Kindly stop roughing up Lorenzo. Step over to the car and put your hands on the roof, palms up. I’ll need you to do the same, Mr. Taylor sir.”

  “And I’ll need you to get off my property, Deputy Droopalong.”

  “Holster your sidearm, sir. I won’t ask you twice.”

  “Or what, sir?”

  Mr. Lee drew his gun. “Or I will have to shoot for center of mass.”

  “Center of what?” Taylor said.

  “Your heart, sir, if you have one.”

  “Mr. Lee,” I said.

  “Hush now, Lorenzo. Mr. Taylor, you and your boys will put your hands on top of the cruiser there, or I will compel you to do so.”

  “You and what army?” Mr. Taylor said.

  “Oh, they’ll be along shortly,” Mr. Lee said. “In fact, that’s them now.” The sirens whooped and squealed.

  Marty and I rode home in the back of Mr. Lee’s cruiser. I was shaking. Marty licked my face like I’d been pied.

  “All things considered, I think we came out of that one pretty good,” Mr. Lee said.

  “Mr. Lee, thank you.”

  “Breathe, Renzo. Everything’s gonna be all right. I do have to tell you though, son, back at the police academy we had a saying: Don’t be a hero. You heard that one before, huh?”

  “Yessir. Heroes go to heaven.”

  “Let’s keep you here with us a long meanwhile, all right?”

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Mr. Taylor. That nasty man was so sweet to his dog. And land grabber Mason too—he was nice to me. It didn’t make sense.

  Marty nudged my hand for petting. His eyes reflected the trees and sunbreaks zipping by the window.

  Mom was waiting out front when we pulled up. Mr. Lee and Pal walked away to let her give me an earful. She sort of pulled my hair too, which was her way of hugging me, I guess. And then something amazing happened.

  Marty leaned into Mom’s leg, and she let him. She even gave him a little scratch behind his ear.

  25. CALIFORNIA (BY WAY OF PITTSBURGH), HERE WE COME

  We landed on a song the midnight before the Pittsburgh Jamboree. “This is the one,” Pal said.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m so sure.”

  “Good,” I said. “It’s the just plain truest you ever wrote.”

  “Renz? Thanks.”

  Marty nipped the cuff of Pal’s jeans and stomped his hoof, which meant bedtime.

  “Can Marty and Bella sleep with me tonight?” Pal said.

  “Yup, and for once I’ll wake up in a fart-free room.”

  “Not if you slept in it you won’t.”

  I got my guitar ready for the next day. I changed a string that didn’t feel right, then I wiped down the body with a chamois cloth to bring out the shine.

  I didn’t read where Dad wrote his heart was a drum. I didn’t wonder about it.

  I didn’t let my eyes drift to my closet, didn’t open the door of the shrine.

  I didn’t take out that old paint-speckled CD player, didn’t play any Bruce Springsteen, not even my favorite, “Born to Run.”

  And I didn’t sleep at all.

  I was showered and ready to go an hour before dawn. Double was driving us up early to do a sound check. Mr. Lee was working through to noon, but he’d be there in time for the show. Mom said she tried to get out of calling the bingo, but then Mrs. McGrath got the shingles, and there simply wasn’t anyone else who knew how to run it properly.

  Pal and I took Marty and Bell for a walk along the orchard fence while we waited for Double. The sun was coming up through the valley.

  “There it is, the glory,” Pal said. She pointed to her shadow on the sparkly wet lawn. Gold light circled her shadow’s head, like a halo.

  “It’s one of the last things I remember my mom telling me about, except she called it la gloria like they did in Colombia when she was a kid, she said. It happens at sunrise, sunset, when your shadow goes long and your soul is stretching out. I read about it on one of the science sites. You have to be around water, like the dew in the grass.”

  “Or the Pacific,” I said.

  Bell and Marty had glories too. I was in the shadow of a peach tree, so I had no shadow of my own. I stepped out from the shade to look for my glory when Double tooted the horn, and we had to go.

  There wasn’t any traffic, and we hit downtown Pittsburgh two hours early. Double took us to a diner. I wasn’t hungry, but Pal put down a stack of flaps. “Renz?” she said.

  “What?”

  She opened her mouth wide to show me every mashed-up thing in there.

  “Gross.”

  Double went to pay the bill and Pal went to the bathroom. She had been doodling on a notebook scrap, and I took a look.

  I guess she was scared too, just a lot better at hiding her nerves. And then she came back and turned the doodle like this:

  “It’s on its way to being a puppy,” she said. She pointed out the window. “See the cute little booger on the bench with the old man? Lorenzo Ventura?”


  “Uh-huh?”

  “We’re gonna be awesome up there.”

  We said hi to the puppy, and then we took the Duquesne Incline up to Grandview Avenue. The sky was clear end to end, and the city shimmered.

  I had the feeling something big was coming, like when you’re in the car and your scalp tingles and a second later your favorite song comes on the radio.

  The Jamboree people scheduled us last. All the acts before us sang fun, stomp-your-feet-type songs. Our song was quiet. I was shivering by the time the stage manager told us we were up next and brought us to the greenroom.

  It was fancy, soft yellow lamps around the mirrors, velvet wallpaper, a vase full of wildflowers. Pal took a selfie and I took a minute to calm down. I’d brought one of my dad’s letters and looked over the lines one last time.

  Son, when you’re strumming that guitar and humming along, you’re someplace else for a while. You’re in the ocean, out deep. At first you’re scared, so far from land, but then you let the water pull on you. The sky’s blue like God tiled it with sapphires. The sea, Lorenzo, it’s greener than a green M&M. And then that wave comes, the one that catches you up, and you’re on your cherry-red surfboard, belly-riding. You feel the water—the music—pounding back against your broken heart, like when you hold your guitar high during a flourish, and the bell of it fits just right into the hollow of your chest.

  One of the girls from an earlier act came back in to get her guitar. “Saw you two in rehearsal,” she said. “I guess you’re all right.”

  “I saw you up there, and I thought you were amazing,” Pal said.

  “Yeah, I’m special that way,” the girl said.

  “We’re all special in our own way then, right?” Pal said.

  “Nope. If we’re all special, then nobody’s special.” She left, but not before she said, “Have fun up there, fat boy.”

  Pal went after her but I held her back.

  “Renz, don’t even think about her for a second.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You look amazing. You sounded amazing in rehearsal.” She went on her tiptoes and rested her forehead on mine, and we went to the safe place.

  “You told that girl she was amazing too,” I said, “even after she told us we were just all right.”

  “That was before I was ready to tear her hair out. Nobody messes with my Renzo.”

  I wondered if it really would come true, our dream. That we’d get to stay friends to the ends. We were an odd pair, if I thought about it. I spent half my life wondering about things, but Pal always knew the exact right thing to say, do, be. She was always completely herself. Pal was special.

  Our names came over the dressing room speaker.

  Pal leaned back and roared, “Woo-hooooo!”

  26. STAY WITH ME

  The stage manager rushed us down the hallway into the stage wings. There was a mess of applause and lights and the announcer saying our names and, “I’m sorry, that’s Miss Paloma Lee,” and then it was just the two of us onstage.

  Pal said, “We dedicate this song to Marty Ventura,” and my strumming hand started moving. My dad’s guitar sounded beautiful up there, warm and strong. Pal sang:

  Tripped into lightness

  So true like I’m comin’ home

  Love is a dancer

  Love like I’ve never known

  Stay

  Stay with me

  Just when I found you

  It’s time that I’m gettin’ on

  Wish I could linger

  Movin’ on feels so wrong

  Stay

  Stay with me

  I want you to know

  You’ll stay with me

  I played the instrumental bridge, and Miss Paloma Lee started riffing, humming along, just letting the song pull on her. Watching her, I was flying off the top of a wave, riding the light. Pal cut back in with the final verse:

  Walk on without me

  Walk strong out from the shade

  Know deep in my heart

  My love will never fade

  You’ll stay

  Stay with me

  Nobody clapped. A few people coughed. Pal shrugged and smiled. She was in the middle of saying to me, “Sorry, Renz, I guess I messed up,” when the air shook.

  It stung like rain hitting you in the eyes when the wind changes too fast for you to duck behind your turned-out hand. The clapping, cheering, whistling, screaming was like the crowd was determined to knock down the building, and everybody was calling out “Paloma Lee! Paloma Leeeee!”

  There was a minute before the people crushed in on us when Pal and I were alone behind the curtain, trying to figure out what the heck just happened. We could barely hear each other, the way the audience was going on and on.

  “How do you write songs like that?” I said.

  “Like what?” she said.

  “You sang it like you lived it. You were telling a story about my dad, but it’s like he was yours, and you knew him better than I’ll ever be able to. You knew how he felt, having to leave us for the war, and then at that moment when he was dying, knowing he’d never see us again, hoping we’d be able to move on, to keep on living without him.”

  “Renz, it was both of us up there—”

  “No, Pal, it was you. How do you feel like that?”

  She shrugged. “It’s like I know it’s me out there, but I get to be somebody new for a while too. I get to surrender, to be free.”

  A man in a suit rushed Pal and turned her away from me so he could talk to her alone. More came with him. They swarmed her.

  I headed off into the long green hallway to catch my breath.

  I wasn’t jealous. How could I be anything but grateful to her for letting me be with her when it happened? I’d never felt like that, a small part of something so totally dreamlike. She made the two thousand people in that theater forget their troubles for a minute. The tens of thousands listening on the radio were taken away too, I’d bet my life.

  I’d had this movie in my mind of what it would be like, the first time I took off my sneakers and waded into the Pacific, the water so sparkly, greener than a green M&M. I’d be with my dad. Okay, his ashes weren’t there anymore, but he was there.

  I needed a new dream now, except I had no idea what that might be. Army medic was out of the picture too. I wasn’t brave enough, at least not brave like my dad. Going up to the Taylors’ to get Marty was one thing, but crawling through crossfire to save your wounded buddy? That was a very particular kind of courage. The girl in the greenroom was right: Not everybody got to be special. Heroes were very, very rare.

  My face was hot. My lungs ached. I’d forgotten to breathe for how long? It was really happening: Pal was California-bound, and I wasn’t going with her.

  I found a bench at the end of the hall and lay back and stretched out on it. A minute later I felt her cool palm on my forehead. I opened my eyes, and there was Mom.

  “Who’s running the bingo?” I said.

  “Who cares?” she said. “Renz? It’s okay to cry.”

  “I’m not crying. They’re happy tears anyway. Ma, I’m so excited for her.”

  “I know you are,” she said.

  “I mean it.”

  “I know you do. Hey? You were beautiful. You are.”

  PART 3

  Summer

  27. THE SCORCHER

  The morning after school ended was the hottest yet, and it was time for Pal to leave.

  The Pittsburgh Professional Children’s School offered her a full scholarship, beginning the next September. Meanwhile, they invited her to their summer camp in the mountains. After camp, she was going to live in the city with her aunt, until Mr. Lee could find a job up there.

  We strapped ourselves into the truck bed seats of Mr. Lee’s pickup and hea
ded for the train station. Bella had slept in, but Marty wasn’t missing out on a truck ride. His ears and jowls flapped in the highway gusts, and that got Pal laughing, which got her crying. She yelled into the back window, “Daddy, turn around. I’m not going unless they take Renzo too.”

  “Oh, the drama,” I said. “You think I want to go to that musty old camp anyway, singing for your supper, your lunch too, your crummy instant oatmeal breakfast?”

  “You’re probably right,” she said. “They warned me it’s rustic.”

  “That just means there’s no free Wi-Fi.”

  “Promise me we’ll talk every night? Serious, Renz, when I call, you better pick up.”

  “I always do,” I said.

  “If you’re home. When are you ever going to get your own phone?”

  “Never.”

  “You’re so annoying. People want to be able to get in touch with you when they want.”

  “And that’s why I don’t have my own phone,” I said.

  Pal smoothed down Marty’s floppy ears. “Marty-moo,” she said.

  He cocked his head and grunted.

  The truck pulled into the train station. Mr. Lee made sure Pal had her Hug-Me-Bear. He hugged her fast and got back into the truck. Marty and I walked her to the platform where the train was waiting.

  Now she hugged Marty. “I’ll be back, boy. I’ll see you soon.”

  He latched on to her jean cuff with his teeth.

  I gave her the peach jar filled with my dad’s guitar picks. “I went through them last night,” I said. “Check out this one.” It was close enough to gold colored, and Dad had written the name of the bar he’d used it in, Gloria’s.

  We touched foreheads.

  The boarding bell rang.

  “You’re my hero,” she said.