Stay with Me

by Paul Griffin

  Some lady in a wheelchair yells at me for locking my bike to the handicap ramp.

  I pedal to the animal shelter, or halfway there, until my pedal breaks. I walk the godforsaken bike the rest of the way, uphill, wondering if I should just leave it on a corner for somebody to take, except who would take a bike that was garbage even when it had two working pedals? I open the shelter door, and it’s hotter inside than out on the street. Barking and crying. And the stink. They make me watch this ten-minute video and hand me a pooperscooper. All pit bulls here. Scraggly, as Mack would say. Eyes open too wide, ears back but not soft, pinned flat. They have seven days to be adopted. Most won’t be.

  One kind of looks like Boo, but she’s wild. I take her out for a walk, and she nearly pulls me into speeding traffic. I try to do all the things he showed me, get her to walk behind me, to heel, but I’m no Mack Morse. I just don’t have the gift. Any dog I get will have to come trained, except who can afford a dog trainer?

  I try to dream it every night, dream him, but it feels more and more like a movie I think I’ve seen before. Somebody else’s story. I still remember his eyes, though. The way he looked at me that last night, when we were together in the alley, the rain smashing us. He looked into my eyes for such a long time, not saying a word. I kept saying “What? What are you looking at?” And he just had that sad smile, and he was shaking his head, and he kept looking.

  I bring the dog into the shelter by the back alley. This dude is dragging garbage bags to the Dumpster. Ten or so. “They’re triple-bagged,” he says.

  “What?” I say.

  “You look like you’re worried they’ll spill out.”

  I press the leash into the man’s hand and I run. My brother is about to head overseas and wade through carnage, and I can’t find the courage to work at an animal shelter. I suck. On the upside, somebody stole my bike.

  I hike home. If riding from home to the VA to the shelter was uphill the whole way, how is that when I backtrack the exact route home, it’s all still uphill? And how do you ride a bike and hike for two hours, sweat the whole time, don’t eat or drink anything, and you still gain a pound? My ass is killing me.

  I head down to the highway to bring Cashew Man a PBJ sandwich and an eight-pack of Costco tuna for the cats, but he isn’t here anymore.

  (Saturday, August 15, afternoon)

  MACK:

  After twenty-some hours cooped together in the bathroom, me and Boo know each other pretty good. He sits fine now, gives double paw, goes to his belly for cookies, then for a scratch under his jaw, then just a sweet word. What I cannot get this dog to do is pee anywhere but on top of that table.

  “Boo.”

  He cocks his head, puts his nose under my elbow, and flips up my arm for me to pet him.

  “Where you from, boy? What’ve you seen?”

  He licks my Adam’s apple.

  I massage the scars around his torn-up ear. “You lived a thing or two, huh? How you stay so happy, man? How you forget the bad stuff?”

  He cocks his head the other way and puts his huge paw on my chest. He trembles from tail wagging, has to be three hundred switches a minute.

  “How you make friends so fast and deep, man? I’d tell you that you ought to be careful about that, but it would ruin you. Hurts, though. Get ready.” Then I stop talking, because talking too much to a dog only confuses him.

  Why’d I let myself fall in love with her when I knew we never should be together? Why’d I let her love me back? She never said the words, but she wore that stickpin every change of shirt. Still, would have been beautiful to hear her say it.

  Boo looks from my right eye to my left and back, and I swear he’s reading my mind. He nudges my chin with his nose.

  “What you want, boy? You want a cookie?” I dunk one in peanut butter, and he takes it nice and polite and tosses it to the side.

  “What’s up, boy? You want to go out and tag your table again, right?” I open the door to swing him out to the caged-in porch, but this time he won’t leave the bathroom. He sits on my foot and looks up at me.

  I crouch close to him to look into his eyes, but I can’t read him. “I don’t know what you want, boy.”

  He wiggles himself into me so I have to hug him, and when I do, he rests his head at my neck and sighs. I swear this dog is the easy side of God. When I stroke his shoulders, he sighs happiness, and I believe this is what he wants me to know: That this right here, this minute of him and me being lumped up on a prison bathroom floor is all we need, and more than anything we could ever want. That’s when I hear, “Mister Morse.”

  Thompkins points for me to sit. Wash sits next to me. Boo jumps up into my lap to lick my ears.

  “The animal is not supposed to be in the chair,” Thompkins says.

  “Down.”

  Boo pops down to wrestle my sneaker. I claw him till he goes over for a belly scratch, farting up a peanut butter cloud, tell you what.

  Thompkins stares at me. Frowns. Left hand hidden in his right. “What’s this spot peeing business? Hey, don’t turn away from me.”

  And here it comes, the hissing.

  “The training manuals very specifically tell you how to paper train the animal. The pictures show you how to do it. I could not have made it simpler. Did you study the manual, the part about laying out a ten by ten foot square of newspaper?”

  “Boo won’t go on paper, sir.”

  “After you feed him, he will have to eliminate. You walk him to the paper—”

  “He holds it in.”

  Thompkins squints. “The guard told me you are trying to get the animal to eliminate in the shower drain. He says you are trying to show the animal by example, acting like a dog as you do.”

  “Mister Thompkins,” Wash says. “This young man is special. He understands these dogs in ways you and I can’t. Give him another chance.”

  Thompkins eyes Boo, then me. “If the dog is not eliminating on the paper, then where is he eliminating?”

  By now Boo’s sniffing the table.

  “I’m cleaning it up real good,” I say.

  “Mister Morse, I asked you a question. You are evading it, and there you go again, pinching your wrist.”

  Boo trots around the table.

  “Boo, come,” I say.

  But he’s up on the table and letting loose, splattering me, Wash, and Thompkins. When he finishes he crawls into my lap and yawns and nuzzles his way to sleep.

  “Mister Thompkins—”

  He silences me with a wave of his hand. He grabs some paper towels and wipes his arms, careful to hide his left hand. He makes a note into his book and packs up his case. “Gentlemen, I have worked very hard to develop this program. Nowhere in the protocol books I gave Mister Morse does it say the boy and the animal should be hiding out in a bathroom for twenty-odd hours. Nor is there anything in the books about training the dog to eliminate on top of a table.”

  “Listen,” Wash says. “If you boot this kid from the program, he’s going back into the tent. This is a very sensitive young man.”

  “They’re all sensitive, Sergeant.”

  “Agreed, but this fellow has a hard time hiding his sensitivity. He has a contract out on him. Then again, I suppose you don’t know about the tent, do you, Mister Thompkins?”

  “Actually, Sergeant, I do. And I am genuinely sorry for Mister Morse’s predicament. But what you and Mister Morse need to understand is that I have to deliver these dogs to our veterans. I don’t know if you are aware of it, but there is a war on.”

  “I am aware of that fact, sir.” Wash frowns that one away. “Give the boy another couple of days.”

  “We would only be delaying the inevitable.”

  “Give him till tomorrow.”

  Thompkins heads for the cell door. “To process the termination paperwork will take that long anyway. Will you please inform the assistant warden he will be hearing from me tomorrow morning?” The guard opens the cage door and lets the man out.

&n
bsp; “Son?” Wash says. “Seems to me you have until tomorrow morning to get that dog housebroken. Can you do it?”

  The building trembles. I look out the window. An older, noisier 747 just clears the dome. Boo is playing chase with a big black fly.

  Another guard comes to the bars. “Morse. Visitor.”

  “He reminds me of you,” I say.

  “Yeah?” Vic says.

  “He’s real cool, but he’s sneaky. Wash isn’t afraid to bend the rules a little.”

  “Sounds like a great man. Potent, this Old Dogs thing. You found your calling.”

  “Had to get locked up to do it.”

  “You’ll be out sooner than you think,” Vic says.

  “So I been told.”

  “By people who aren’t locked up, right? When you get out, you come see me. I’ll help you get that dog training company started. You’ll make us millionaires.”

  I study him: pushing seventy. He isn’t in great shape at all. Twenty-five years from now? “I appreciate that, man. Thank you.” My lips are trembling.

  “Hey?” he says. “What’s up?”

  “Things aren’t looking great right now.”

  “They never do, till they’re great,” he says. “You watch: You’re gonna be okay.”

  He thinks I’m upset because I’m locked up. Better to let him think it’s that. He can’t help me with the fact Thompkins is about to fire me. “Tell me more about Tony.”

  “He says he wants you to know he’s there for you.”

  I look away. “Tell him I said thank you.”

  Vic nods for a while. “I need a favor.”

  “Anything, man.”

  “Just for a few minutes, I need you to let Céce sit with you.”

  “Anything but that.”

  “This is a matter of honor. Hers. Yours. One last visit. You need to do this.”

  “Vic, ten minutes ago, when they said I had a visitor, I was ready to cartwheel down here. But now I got my senses back. I can’t see her. She’s almost through it. The forgetting. Why stir up all the feelings again when her and me can never be together?”

  “Because you need to say good-bye,” he says. “I don’t tell somebody to do something unless I’m one hundred percent sure it’s—”

  “Look, man, I have to get back to my dog.”

  “You’re gonna see her, kid, whether you like it or not.”

  “Damn, man, my plate’s full, okay? I appreciate you coming down here, but just leave it alone, all right?” I fish my pocket for that letter I wrote, and I push it across the table to Vic. “For Tony.”

  “Kid, there’s three ways to do things: the wrong way, the right way, and my way. Wrong way: Make her hate you. Right way: Be a gentleman and sit with her for ten minutes, let her say what she needs to say.”

  “And your way?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I kick back out of my chair and slam it into the table, and I’m so gone.

  (Saturday, August 15, just before dinner shift)

  CÉCE:

  Bobby drops a tray of glasses. “Yup, yes, yet again,” he says. Five minutes later, he spills ice all over the kitchen floor. “I am so sorry about that. It’s an age-old problem.”

  If you’re a certified klutz, why would you seek employment in a restaurant, which is pretty much about carrying stuff from one place to another without spilling it? He’s an excellent cheesecake pal, though. We go into the walk-in and eat and we don’t care that we’re licking our fingers in front of each other. A minute later Ma’s in with us, because the air conditioner is broken again. She’s sipping iced coffee, hungover but sober for half a day and still promising to stay that way. A minute later Vic comes in, and he’s huffing and sweating.

  “What happened to you?” Ma says.

  “Car broke down again. Get this: The tow truck crapped out. He had to get a tow. And when he dropped the Olds at the gas station, it started.”

  “You just have to hit it really hard with a cinderblock,” Ma says. “Passenger side, front quarter panel. It restarts like maybe thirty-five percent of the time. I left the brick in the trunk.”

  “Good to know.”

  “You need help unloading the stuff?” I say.

  “What stuff?” Vic says.

  “The Costco crap.”

  “Yeah, no, it was too crowded. I’ll go tomorrow. Hand me a piece of cake there, kid.”

  Bobby reaches for the box and knocks over a bucket of mushrooms soaking in wine. “Yup, yes, yet again. I am so sorry about that.”

  The new waitress cracks the door.

  “Grab a spot of Parmesan wheel, Jeannie,” Ma says.

  “Um, Carmella, I . . .” She opens the door, and this older guy is standing there. He’s in a U.S. Army uniform. The nametag. Anthony’s recruiter. He searches our faces and decides my mother is the person he’s looking for. “Mrs. Vaccuccia?”

  “No,” Ma says. “Please, no.”

  And then I hear myself saying, “The hell are you doing here? He’s still in boot camp. It isn’t time yet.”

  My big brother, my mother’s only son, Anthony James Vaccuccia, was “seriously injured.” Part of his face was burned in the explosion, though that wound is supposedly minor. Also burned were two fingers on his right hand, the one that launched how many touchdowns I can’t remember. Those burns were so bad, the fingers had to be amputated, along with his legs, which were pulverized. Shrapnel lacerated his larynx, but doctors are hopeful that surgery will restore part of my brother’s voice box.

  No roadside bomb in some faraway land. No grenade. No sniper fire aimed at a Humvee gas tank. An insanely random accident. No one to blame, except Anthony.

  My brother and his platoon were leaving their barracks for a workout. A maintenance vehicle crashed into the barracks. The old man behind the wheel was having a heart attack. Anthony being Anthony went to help the old man. The truck was on fire, but Anthony couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—leave the man. The truck door jammed in the crash. Anthony was climbing into the truck to kick out the door when the fire lit up a propane tank.

  I did not see this coming. I can only conclude, definitively, that ESP is a crock of shit.

  Vic closes the restaurant for the night and drives us home—after Ma smashes the engine with the cinderblock. Vic takes the long way, for some reason, all the way around the reservoir. We’re riding for a while, nobody saying anything, until Ma says, “You guys mind I put on the radio?”

  “Course not, sweetheart,” Vic says.

  Ma rolls the ancient dial to the community college station for Punk Hour. DJ sounds like he’s huffing lighter fluid. Between the commercials a song occasionally comes on, this really old hard-edged music, The Clash, Iggy Pop, The Ramones. The station fades to crackles every time Vic makes a turn, and Ma constantly retunes the dial. She starts singing along with this band called Suicide. The song’s called “Dream Baby Dream,” and the singer keeps telling us that our dreams will keep us free. Sure they will.

  I reach over the seat and click off the radio. “How can you stand it, Ma?”

  “It makes me feel good,” she says. And that’s all anybody says until we pull up to the house and Vic pats our arms and nods. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

  “How you figure that?” I say.

  “I just know it.” Vic’s face is pocked and gray and fragile in the shade-side light. We go into the kitchen. Vic makes coffee.

  Anthony is unconscious in post-op recovery, but apparently he’s stable. We can’t go down and see him yet, because they might have to move him to another hospital. Do I even want to go down and see him? Will I recognize him?

  I head upstairs for a shower, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. I just sit there in my towel, on the floor of the upstairs bathroom, the same floor Grumpy died on. I flip through what I was flipping through while on the toilet this morning, when my life only sucked: a magazine, Bark, for dog lovers. It came in the mail yesterday, from Anthony. He picked it up at t
he PX for Mack. Could I leave it with him next time I visited?

  No, I can’t. Mack gets what he wants: He’s dead.

  His absence leaves me with plenty of shoulders to cry on, plenty of people to tell me everything will be okay, but no one to believe. He did exactly what he promised he’d never do: He left me stranded.

  I’m looking out the bathroom window. It’s still light out, but the streetlights are on, and the gnats are swarming.

  THE SIXTY-SIXTH DAY . . .

  (Sunday, August 16, just after midnight)

  MACK:

  The gnats are chewing at us. But if I close the window, we’ll roast.

  Thirty-odd hours in the bathroom. We’re staring at each other. Boo licks my face with his extra-long tongue. It hangs out of his mouth three inches when he sleeps.

  He pees on the side of the toilet. I’m mopping up the mess with newspaper when I suddenly understand what he needs.

  I’m an idiot. How could it take me this long to figure it out?

  I take the wet paper and lay it around the shower drain and lead Boo into the stall. He smells his mark in the paper and starts to pee on it.

  I give this blessed dog a quarter pound of boloney dunked in peanut butter. I’m howling and hugging him. We’re running around the training center.

  I get him full of water again. “Boo, pee.”

  He gives me paw.

  “Nuh-uh. Pee.” I lead him into the stall. He smells himself in the newspaper and lets loose over the drain again, and again I feed him boloney and praise. “Good pee. Good Boo.”

  I take the dirty papers and set them out on the roof, and Boo nails them there too. For a slice of boloney, this dog will climb a tree to spray a newspaper hung in its top.

  Wash is in the door frame. He was ripped from deep sleep again, but he’s grinning. Has a phone to his ear. “Yessir, I have good news. No, I said good news.”