by Paul Griffin
Marty liked that. He wagged his tail. He was squealing softly. The blood trickled over the light brown coat of his underbelly.
Pal and I tore a plastic tarp from where it was tied over a stack of concrete blocks. We rolled Marty onto the plastic and dragged him toward the fence. Keeth kept licking at him until I said, “Keeth, no. Sit, boy.”
He sat right down and stayed, and he shivered and whimpered as we dragged Marty away.
44. HEAVENLY HILLS
He would have been better off if I let him go to the petting zoo,” I said.
“Renz, shut up about that now,” Pal said. “Just let’s get him to the fence.”
We dragged Marty to the chain-link. It was a lot higher than it looked when we were fifty yards away. Pal climbed over it to get help while I stayed back with Marty.
“Marty?”
He wagged his tail.
“You’re gonna make it, boy. I’m not going anywhere, okay? You and me, Marty. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
He licked my face. He tried to get up but couldn’t. I hushed and soothed him, and after a while he quieted down, and his breathing slowed. His tail never stopped flicking.
The longest twenty minutes later Pal was back with a woman and a man riding a shiny new tractor mower. They came through the fence at a gate break a couple hundred yards down from where Marty and I waited. By the looks on their faces, Pal had definitely told them it was bad, but not this bad. The closer they came to us, their expressions went from worry to He’s a goner.
We dragged him up the tractor bed ramp. Pal and I whispered to him on the ride to the sanctuary’s veterinary clinic.
The doctor was waiting for us outside. She looked like she’d been woken up. It wasn’t even seven in the morning. She checked Marty’s belly and frowned.
They asked Pal and me to sit in the waiting room while they got Marty set up for surgery. Pal held my hand and kept squeezing it. “He’ll be okay,” she said.
“Yeah. Looked pretty bad, though, huh?” I said.
She didn’t say anything.
“That was crazy about Keeth,” I said.
“Sheesh, tell me about it,” she said.
“It just doesn’t match up,” I said. “He was gentler than a puppy. How’d he get such a bad rep?”
“Right?” Pal said. “The world’s upside down today.”
“Why do people do that anyway?” I said. “Make up stories about how mean he is? It ruins everything.”
“Everything,” Pal said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he probably has no friends because of it, all the lying about him. No human friends anyway.”
“I know,” Pal said.
“He’ll be okay,” I said. “Marty, I mean.”
“He’ll be fine,” Pal said, “just you wait and see.”
“Yeah.”
I reached into my backpack for my water bottle, and I found Marty’s old tennis ball, the one he used to bounce and catch, bounce and catch, bounce and catch. I’d planned on leaving it here with him.
I squeezed it tight.
The veterinarian came out into the waiting room. “Lorenzo, come on in here for a minute,” she said.
Pal and I went in. Marty was on the exam table on his side, and he was blinking kind of vacantly. He was semi-sedated, but when he saw me his tail spun a little.
The veterinarian, Doctor Esposito, put the stethoscope into my ears and put the bell end to Marty’s chest.
“What is that?” I said. It was a high-pitched gurgling noise.
“He broke a rib and it nicked his lung,” she said. “There’s blood in it. Lorenzo, it’s not likely he’ll make it. Not likely at all.”
Pal and I petted him while the doctor showed us how deep Marty’s wounds went, and how there were too many of them.
“You went far out of your way to get him here, didn’t you?” Doctor E said.
He was my teacher, I wanted to tell her. He taught me that the chance to look after somebody is a gift. Maybe Marty did imprint on me. Maybe I imprinted on him. I don’t know if that’s even the right thing to call it. It was a promise, just plain true, the kind where you’d risk your lives to take care of each other.
But I didn’t say any of that.
“He was my friend,” was all I said.
“I’m going to anesthetize him for surgery now,” Doctor E said. “I wanted you to have a chance to say anything you needed to say to him.” She stepped back to help her assistant get the anesthesia machine ready.
I whispered into his ear, “You’re my hero, Marty. Thank you for saving me.”
They shaved a patch of his leg and slipped the needle in. Not long after, his breathing slowed. He stopped blinking, and his eyes looked dull.
I read that Army medics trained themselves to be calm when death came knocking. I forced myself not to lose it. I kept my shaking inside, except there was never any hiding how I felt from Marty. He always could read me better than I could read myself. I stroked his muzzle and said, “It’s okay, Marty. It’s all right.” Then I said to the veterinarian, “He can’t hear me anymore, can he?”
“You just keep whispering to him for a little while,” she said. So that’s what Pal and I did.
I pushed through the clinic door into the parking lot and the dusty morning light, and there were Mom and Mr. Lee. They were leaning back against Mr. Lee’s cruiser, arms folded and frowning. But when Mr. Lee saw Pal, he spread his arms, and she ran to him.
Mom walked across the lot toward me. She walked fast, hard, almost a charge really, and she was glaring at me. She reared back with her right arm and then swung it around me and pulled me in close and told me she loved me. She was strong from working the orchard all her life, and she hugged me so tight, I ached a little. So, I guess that much was good.
PART 4
The Glory
Dear Dad,
I told my counselor about that first letter I wrote you, the one where I said you were my hero, the one I ripped up. Mrs. Perez said I should write you again, that maybe it would feel different this time. It does, even if it doesn’t seem any less crazy, writing a letter I can’t send anywhere, writing to you like you’re still overseas.
That first letter, I was writing somebody I didn’t really know. But now I know you better, a little anyway, and I have something I need to tell you.
When you wrote that playing music felt like surfing? I guess that’s how writing feels for me. Writing things down helps me slow everything down. I’m still trying to figure it all out, the last nine months since that day I read your suicide note.
Dad, I know you fought the hardest you could. You may have had the rain in your eyes, but you were sunshine too. I’m not saying the anger isn’t still there in me, here in me. Maybe it always will be, except mostly I feel it melting away to sadness. You missed out, Dad. And I did too. You could have been my world. Now you’re with the stars. I look up and wonder about you.
I think back to what Pal said, that no two people have the same fingerprints. I guess that means everybody’s special after all. But Dad? You were really special. Thank you for writing those letters to me. Thank you for leaving me with bits of you, your guitar, your music. I wear your Bronze Star around my neck, hidden under my shirt, so it rests over my heart.
Now that I think about it, writing you feels a little less crazy. Somehow, someway, you are still around. You’re here. You’re in my heart. You can believe in angels now, Dad. They’re real. I’m sure of it.
Love,
Renzo
Today was the first day of June, and we might as well have hopped into the broiler. Loretta, Bella and I rode in the bed of Mom’s truck for the highway breeze. Loretta made the volleyball team at long last, as the assistant manager, and she had a habit of roping me in to help keep score.
We dropped her off
at her house, and she gave me a sweaty knuckle bump. “Text me when you get home,” she said. Yup, I finally caved and got a stupid smartphone. I checked my text stream as Mom pulled back onto the highway. It’s a pit bull, I texted Pal. She wanted to know about Richie Calvo’s new rescue, Crusher, basically a jaw with legs, but he gave Bella a run for the sweetest dog alive.
Miss Paloma Lee was kicking some serious butt up at the Pittsburgh Professional Children’s School. She’d landed a part in the Christmas musical at the Civic Light Opera. I went up there to see her. Pal was the same awesome Pal, letting herself get lost in the music. Mr. Lee took us out to a fancy dinner after. He’d found a job managing security at a hospital near Pal’s school, and now, instead of a gun, he wore a tie.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make myself stop missing my good old Pal. Still, seventh grade ended up stinking a lot less than I thought it would without her. I joined this huge band called Vitamin B Cool. I know, most uncool name ever, and when I say huge, I mean we had sixteen people in the band. That’s almost as many Facebook likes as we had. We ended up doing the open mike at the cinco de mayo. I wasn’t as nervous this time. I wasn’t as excited either, without Pal up there.
I still dream about Maple Clutch, coasting through the orchard on Buck with Marty and Bell in the trailer, or walking the pasture with them in the morning, watching the mist rise from the grass. Mason honored his word, though. He gave us a good price and a discount on one of the apartments he made out of the old motel over by the train tracks there, right in the middle of town. It was nothing fancy, but very clean. The pool was nice too. Double called it progress. I didn’t know what to call it. I missed the quiet and wide openness.
Double got a part-time job working the candy counter at the train station. He loved gabbing with the travelers and telling them the five ways they could get to the riverbank café. You’d find Mrs. B visiting the candy counter from time to time too.
When Mrs. McGrath retired from being church secretary, Mom took over. The church finances were well in order, and there was definitely no robbing Peter to pay Paul. She took her lunch break in the chapel, and sometimes I’d meet her there. She’d tell me stories about my dad. There was no hiding anything now. She still loves him, she told me. She always will, she says.
The truck turned off the highway toward Heavenly Hills.
I volunteer there now. I heard about this Army veterinarian program where, if I get in, they’ll pay for me to go to college. I’d get to take care of military families’ pets and go on humanitarian missions to places like Ecuador and Mongolia, to fight animal-borne diseases with new vaccines. Maybe I’d even wind up taking care of the Army’s working dogs, the ones that go into battle with the platoons.
Mom dropped Bell and me off at the sanctuary just in time for the dinner feeding. We got a lot of dogs, most of them abused, and I helped them remember we’re not all messed up, we humans, not all the time anyway. I loved the horses too. Their eyes were so big, you could see yourself reflected in them very clearly, and you couldn’t help but notice you were always smiling, crooked teeth and all.
I gave Mr. Pun’kins a scratch and went out back to romp with the pups, and there he was, smack in the middle of the roughhousing, of course:
The four-hundred-pound pig who thought he was a dog.
Turned out Mr. Pun’kins took a shine to Marty after all, and now, in addition to having a housecat, Heavenly Hills had a housepig.
I saw him twice a week, more than that if I could get a ride to the sanctuary. Each time I went out back to the corral my stomach burned a little. I worried he’d be mad at me from the last time I visited, the last time I said good-bye and hugged him and then headed fast for the door. He’d try to block me. He’d hold the cuff of my jeans in his teeth to stop me, and he’d lean into my leg and wag his tail and look up at me with those gold-brown eyes. I imagined he was thinking the same thing I was: Why? Why can’t you stay with me?
Doctor Esposito said Marty would go to the window and watch me until I was gone, and then he’d mope to the corner and sink to the floor and sigh and squeal quietly. Only when Mr. Pun’kins would cuddle into him would his tail start wagging again.
I called out to him, “Marty-moo!”
He was playing tug-of-war with three pit bulls over a length of rope as thick as my arm. At the sound of my voice he dropped the rope, and those three pitties went flying backward. Marty turned to me and cocked his head. His tail whirled, and he came running. He was scarred up from all the surgery they did to save him, and he limped a little, but that didn’t slow him down much.
He buried his head into my armpit and oinked and trembled and licked me like he hadn’t seen me in years.
The heat was still high. Bella hung back in the tree shade with the other dogs, but Marty was game for a little trip through the woods.
I led him through the meadowland to our favorite spot, the top of a great rolling hill. The sun was behind me and the grass was a little wet from an early afternoon rain, and that’s when I saw it, a halo around my shadow’s head, my glory.
The sky was blue like God dumped a bucket of sapphires into it. The pasture was greener than a green M&M. All I was missing was that cherry-red surfboard, and anyway my sneakers were red. Those Chuck T’s might have been secondhand from the Goodwill, but they were the color of desire. I don’t mind broke-in soles at all.
I’d like to visit California someday, but I don’t need to anymore. I touch my heart where the Bronze Star protects it, and I feel my father with me. He was a hero all right, and so was Hana, and they are and always will be.
And Double’s a hero too, and Mr. Lee and Doctor Esposito.
And Pal and Loretta.
And Richie and Mason and in a way the Taylors.
And Mrs. McGrath and Mrs. Carmela.
And Mrs. B and Mr. Santorocco, and my old teacher Mr. G, who got me thinking about heroes in the first place.
And most of all, Mom.
And maybe even me.
Heroes are everywhere.
“Marty, let’s . . . go.”
We’re racing down that hill. We’re slipping in spots, and in others we’re sliding, but mostly we’re flying. Tell you what, I am hollering. I’m like, “WooHoooooo! Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom, bom-ba-bom-ba-bom, bom-ba-bom-ba-bom-bom, doot-doot-doo.”
ALSO FROM PAUL GRIFFIN
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A People Magazine Popular Pick
A Summer 2016 Kids’ Indie Next Pick
An Amazon Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best of Summer Pick
Working Mother Magazine’s #1 Best Book of the Year So Far
A 2016 Nerdy Book Club Award Winner
An SLJ Great Title for Middle Graders
“Friendship is an absolutely beautiful, heart-expanding book. I cried, but more than that I felt this giant balloon of love for everyone. This story convinced me all over again that love and imagination are life’s biggest magic. It’ll make you want grab hold of everyone important to you and lick them on the nose.”
—Rebecca Stead, author of When You Reach Me
“Full of pace and laughter, bruises and heart. Paul Griffin is the sort of writer you’re torn between telling the whole world about and keeping all to yourself.”
—Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief
“When Friendship Followed Me Home is both a beautiful book and an honest book; it is, in fact, beautiful because it is honest. We see the pain of loss, and the glory of community. We see love in its many forms, and we witness the truth that love goes on despite all barriers. Cheer for Ben and Halley: It is kids like these who are our hope.”
—Gary D. Schmidt, author of Okay for Now
“Some books change the way you see the world. Some change the way you breathe. This book will leave you breathless. This is
Paul Griffin’s best book yet—and that’s really saying something.”
—Patricia McCormick, author of Sold
“[T]his bittersweet, well-paced book . . . left me with faith that people can feel discarded, as though everything they love will be taken from them, and still end up whole, if they are touched by love of friendship.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Entrancing, magical, tragic, and uplifting.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“As in his young adult books, Griffin (Adrift) handles hard topics with penetrating insight and honesty, while balancing painful moments (and there are many) with levity.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“As funny and heartwarming as it is gut-punching . . . thoroughly engaging.”
—Shelf Awareness, starred review
“Although this middle grade book covers some tough topics . . . it never loses hope.”
—School Library Connection, starred review
“If you have middle schoolers who are too young to fully grasp John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and love dogs, give them this sweet tearjerker.”
—School Library Journal
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, Sarah and John for transcribing the songs. Bridget LeRoy, Eric, Bing and Georgia for letting me hang out with Fluffy and Pepper. Vincent Moustache, Maria, Jessica, Dani, Mary Kate for the beautiful cover.
Kath, MK, Leeni.
Sheila, Colleen, JD, Steve, Nicole, Ev and Doni. Andrea C., Mary R., Rebecca, Orli, Nicole M., Jennifer and Jodie.
Kim, Draga, Helen.
Carmela, Venessa, Lex, Rachel, Meriam, Kathryn.
Eileen, Dana, Julia and Kristin.
Penny, Michael, Elizabeth, Stefanie, Alaina and Text.
Jodi, Alec and Cecilia.
