The Pet

by Charles L. Grant

  "Okay." Subdued now. "I thought you were mad about tomorrow. Or about me calling you Vet."

  "I don't mind. Really." The cord had twisted itself around his wrist and he couldn't get it off without taking away the earpiece and losing what she might say. "Really, no kidding."

  And he didn't. She thought it was great that he was going to be so close to animals for the rest of his life. The day he had let it slip, she had immediately fantasized his working out in the country, traveling from village to village, farm to farm, making sure all his charges were in perfect health.

  She had been serious.

  Brian and Tar thought it was too perfect to be true—Duck, off to treat the ducks. For nearly a week afterward, every time they saw him they quacked and flapped their arms and told him they had hernias and had to swim standing up.

  "So," she said, "I thought you told me that bio test was a snap."

  They talked then the way they usually did, the preliminaries over and his heart slowly finding its way back into place. His mother walked by once with a sandwich and a beer, looked a question, and he smiled and pointed at her.

  A girl? she asked silently.

  He nodded.

  Chris Snowden?

  He shook his head and mumbled a reply to something Tracey said.

  His mother shrugged—it doesn't matter, dear, as long as it's female and she doesn't want to marry you before you go off to college—and moved on after checking on the status of his black eye, hip-swinging through the living room and back to the TV set. It was the long way around, and they both knew it.

  "Don, dammit, are you listening to me?"

  "It was my mother," he said in a near whisper, checking to be sure the coast was clear. "Spying on me."

  "Oh. Well, my folks don't care as long as he wears pants, combs his hair, and is rich. Dad figures I should be married a year after graduation."

  "I thought you were going to school."

  "I am. He just doesn't believe it yet. God, the man lives in the last century, I swear."

  "Boy, tell me about it."

  "Yeah, for sure." She yelled something at her older sister, and he could hear her mother fussing in the background. A deep voice chimed in—her father venturing an opinion about the family going to hell.

  "So," he said, "what were you saying?"

  "The walk. Where did you go?"

  "Out. The park."

  "Wow!" A pause, more whispering. "Wow, Don, don't you ever listen to the news?"

  He looked back toward the kitchen, at his mother's radio on the counter.

  "Nope. Don't have time."

  "Well, you better," she told him, her voice low. "Somebody was killed in there tonight. A couple of hours ago. My father just came in and—" She stopped. "Jesus, you were there then!"

  He put a hand to his cheek and scratched lightly. "I didn't see anything. I didn't hear anything." The hand pressed a bit harder. "What happened?"

  "I don't know. My father isn't talking. The radio said that this kid, from North, he was walking home from work, and he got it. They said ... they guessed it was the Howler. Gross."

  "Yeah."

  Iron striking iron.

  "Boy, you could be a witness or something."

  "But I didn't see anything, Tracey! Jesus, don't tell your father."

  "Okay, okay." Her mother interrupted, and she snapped at her, groaning about how great it must be to be an only child. "Hey, Vet? What's your favorite animal?"

  He sniffed, combed his hair with one hand while he drew on his imagination to put images in the air before him. "I never thought about it, you know that? Gee, that's funny but I never thought about it." His bedroom came to mind and he sorted through the posters and prints and figurines he had. "Horses, I guess. I don't know. Leopards and panthers."

  She laughed, and someone in the background laughingly mocked her. "I didn't know you rode."

  "Panthers? You don't ride panthers."

  "No, stupid, horses. I didn't know you rode horses."

  "I don't."

  There was a pause, and a man's voice began grumbling.

  "Then why horses?"

  "I don't know." He saw the poster, the horse, and shrugged to the empty foyer. "They look ... I don't know, they look so big and powerful, y'know? Like they could run right over you and not even notice."

  "A horse?"

  "Sure."

  "But they're stupid."

  "I guess."

  "I mean, they're—" The man's voice was louder, and she covered the mouthpiece. He tried to make out the words but all he heard sounded like an argument. "Don, I have to go."

  "Okay, sure."

  "See you tomorrow?"

  "Sure! Sure. I'll—"

  She hung up and he stood in the middle of the floor and stared at the front door until his father walked by on his way upstairs and reminded him gently that he started detention the next day.

  Don nodded.

  Norman, halfway up the stairs, looked down and frowned, started to say something, and changed his mind.

  Don didn't notice.

  He was looking at the door, at the black horse imposed on it, with Tracey Quintero riding on its back.

  Five minutes later Joyce pinched his rump as she walked by and he jumped, blushed at her laugh, and nodded when she asked him to check the lights and lock up. As he did, he thought about Tracey, and about the kid who had been killed. It could be that what he had heard was the murderer himself, thinking there had been a witness and coming to kill him. He felt cold, and he stayed to one side when he drew the draperies and double-checked to make sure the bolts on the front and back doors were turned over. Then he ran upstairs and into his room, considered telling his parents, and changed his mind. Mom would only get excited and demand they call the police; and Dad would tell them both there was nothing to worry about, the boy is all right, and since he didn't actually see anything, there was no sense their getting involved.

  And he would be right; there would be no sense at all.

  A wash, then, and a careful scrutiny to be sure his face hadn't broken out since that morning and that his eye wasn't getting any worse. Then he closed his door and sat cross-legged on the bed. He was in nothing but his underwear, and he looked around him at the panther, the bobcat, the elephants, rejecting each one silently until he came to the poster over the desk.

  There, he thought; there's what I need.

  "Hey, look," he said to the barely visible horse, "I hope you don't mind if I don't give you a name. I mean, I suppose I could, but all the good ones are already taken, and half of them sound like you're in the movies or something anyway. Besides," he added with a look to the panther lying in the jungle over his bed, "I don't want to make the other guys mad."

  He grinned, and rolled his eyes, muffling a laugh in a palm.

  "But you don't need one anyway, right? You're too tough for a stupid name. What you want to know is, how come you and not the black cat over there, right? Well, because you're big, and you're strong, and ... just because. Besides, Tracey likes horses, and you're a horse, and she'll like you, and if she likes you she'll like me and then we'll all be pals, right? Right. And boy would you scare the shit outta that kid with the dumbass hat."

  He grinned again and rocked back, struck his head against the wall and didn't feel a thing.

  He didn't think his other pals would mind, him singling out just one, just this once. They would understand. They always had, and they would this time.

  "So listen up, old fella," he said, looking to the ceiling where Tracey floated on a cloud, "you're gonna have to teach me a few things, y'know, because I figure you've been around, if you know what I mean. Give me some hints and stuff, okay? And if you take care of me, I'll take care of you. That's what pals are for, right? Right."

  And he slipped off the bed, kissed the tips of his fingers, and placed his hand on the horse's head.

  "Pals," he said. "Pals."

  "He's talking to those animals again," Norm complain
ed while Joyce was brushing her teeth. She mumbled something, and he shook his head, pointing to his ear.

  "I said," she told him after spitting out the toothpaste, "kids talk to themselves all the time. It's like thinking out loud. You should hear my classroom sometimes."

  "Yeah, but you teach flakes."

  "Budding artists are flakes?"

  "Look in the mirror."

  She threw her hairbrush at him, launched herself after it, and they wrestled on the bed until he had her pinned under him.

  "Norm?" she said, putting a hand on the hand that was covering her breast.

  "What?"

  The willow at the corner of the house scratched lightly at the window, and he could hear the cooing of the grey doves that nested in the eaves of the garage.

  "It's terrible, but did you ever wish we'd never had any kids? So when something like this comes up, I mean, we could walk away without worrying about tender psyches and trauma and warping the kid's mind? Did you ever think about that, Norm?"

  He tried to see her face in the dark. "Are we being honest?''

  "Yes."

  "Then ... yes. Yes, it has crossed my mind now and then." But he didn't tell her about the guilt he felt when it did.

  "That doesn't mean we don't love him," she said anxiously, begging for belief. "And god, I still miss my little Sam."

  "I know."

  "But it would be so much easier, you know what I mean?"

  "Yeah."

  The alarm clock buzzed softly. The wind blew over the roof. They could hear, faintly, two cars racing down the street.

  "Don was in the park tonight."

  "So?"

  "Didn't you listen to the news after the fight?"

  "Oh." He shifted but didn't release her. "Yeah. I guess I'd better have a talk with him. At least until they catch that guy."

  "Maybe he saw something."

  "No. If he did, he would have told us." He kissed her right ear and made her squirm.

  "Norm?"

  Wearily: "Yes?"

  "Don's grades are going down. Not a lot, but it worries me. You should talk to him about that too. He spends too much time fixing up those animals of his, and making new ones."

  "I will," he promised. "Maybe we should tell him to get rid of the beasts."

  "That would be cruel."

  "He wouldn't waste time on them." As she agreed, he nipped an earlobe.

  "Norm?"

  "Jesus, now what?"

  "I want to work things out, really I do."

  "Good," he said, rolling her breast beneath his palm.

  "No, I mean it, Norman. I really do want to work at it."

  "So do I," he said, almost believing. His head shifted to the hollow of her shoulder. "So do I, love."

  "Norm, it's late," she whispered, her eyes half closed, "and you know how tired you get lately after this. Besides, I have a committee meeting first thing tomorrow. We have to decide on the fireworks."

  "Good for you. Make them loud as hell."

  "Norman!"

  "Joyce," he said, "if you really want to work things out, you'd better shut up."

  Chapter Five

  On Saturday afternoon Don returned with his mother from a shopping expedition for new clothes during which she cited dubious, sometimes outlandish statistics which contrasted the annual before- and after-taxes incomes of veterinarians and surgeons, suggesting jokingly that spending the day shoving your hand up animals' rectums and down their throats was about as glamorous and status-marking as his late grandfather's working for the cloth mills here in town. Don laughed and almost told her what he was really planning.

  When they arrived home, he found his father in his room, looking at his pets.

  "Aren't you a little old for these?" Norm asked, and left without an answer.

  In the middle of the hall on Monday Don grabbed Jeff's arm and nearly spilled the books he was carrying.

  "Jeff, you got a minute?"

  "Hey, it's the Detention Kid. What's up? The bell's gonna ring. Jesus, that eye looks like hell!"

  "Thanks a lot, pal. It feels better, sort of. Look, I want to ask you about Tracey Quintero."

  "What's to ask? You know her as well as I do."

  "I want to know if she's with Brian."

  "Brian? Brian the Prick Pratt? That Brian?"

  "Stop kidding, Jeff, I gotta know."

  "Jesus, where the hell've you been? And she isn't. Hey, you know that kid that got offed in the park last week? It was the Howler, they said. Chewed the poor bastard up like he was dog meat or something. That guy's a real pervert, you know it? Killed five kids in New York. Like us, I mean, not little kids."

  "Jeff, I don't care about some freak, I am talking about Tracey."

  "And I told you she's not with Brian, okay?"

  "But the other night at the park, after the concert ..."

  "You mean all that talk about her boobs?"

  "Well ..."

  "Boyd, are you really that dense?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "Brian sees boobs on anything that even faintly looks like a female. And if you listen real close, you'd think he's laid every damn one of them."

  "Then she isn't."

  "His? Hell, no."

  "Jeez. Oh ... jeez."

  "You gonna tell me what this is all about or am I gonna have to read it in the paper?"

  "Can't, Jeff. The bell's rung. We're late."

  That afternoon Detective Sergeant Thomas Verona walked into Norm's office, Patrol Sergeant Luis Quintero at his side. After a few minutes of small talk, Quintero left to have a word with the secretaries in the outer office, and Verona asked the principal if he had heard anything, rumors or otherwise, about a stranger hanging around the school. Norm insisted he hadn't, but if the police wanted to ask either students or teachers during school time, it would have to be cleared with the board first. He himself didn't mind, though he didn't quite understand why they were interested if the man was already gone. That, he said when the policeman looked at him oddly, was the usual pattern as he understood it: the Howler would strike, then move on to another town. Verona, whose father had worked the mills and had known Norman since they were kids, told him off the record that if the guy had actually approached any of the students, or if he had gotten wind of the Ashford Day activities, there was a fair chance he'd stick around because there were going to be a lot of people on the streets starting the middle of next week, and safety in numbers was apparently something he counted on. When Norm asked why the man hadn't yet been caught, Verona, again off the record, told him there wasn't a picture, not a fingerprint, nor a scrap of cloth or drop of blood to build even the skimpiest physical profile. They couldn't begin to guess at his appearance, though they didn't have to guess at his strength. Norman didn't ask for more details, but he did promise to keep his ears open and to have a quiet word with the faculty to the effect that it would probably not be a good idea to keep kids very long after school for a while. Verona appreciated the cooperation and suggested they stop being strangers after so many years and have a beer together sometime soon. Verona's wife was on the committee with Joyce, and the detective allowed as how he was tired of being an Ashford Day widower.

  Norman laughed, but he didn't think it was very funny.

  After gym Don managed to get next to Fleet under the last nozzle, for the first time forgetting his embarrassment at seeing another guy naked.

  It took him a moment, too, to stop staring at the clouds of freckles that covered Fleet's body.

  "Hey, Fleet, is Trace ... you know, is she Brian's girl?"

  "Trace? Gimme the soap, man, I smell like horseshit. Trace Quintero, the cop's kid?"

  "Yeah."

  "Nah. Last I heard she wasn't with nobody."

  "No kidding."

  "Man, will you look at that gorgeous eye! You put a steak or something on that, or you'll go blind, sure as shit. Jesus, Brian can be ... never mind. Hey, you interested in Trace?"

  "I
don't know. Hey, Fleet, c'mon, that's my soap! Don't pass it around."

  "Y'know, you'd do better with somebody like Chrissy Snowden, man. Don't you dare tell Amanda I said this, she'll cut my ass off, but that's one hell of a woman, if you catch my drift?"

  "I guess."

  "You guess? Jesus, Don, you mean you ain't once whacked off just thinking about that fox?"

  "Donny, you are truly hopeless. You are an excellent human being, but you are truly hopeless."

  "I suppose."

  "A good thing you didn't meet up with that dude that stomped that kid.

  You probably would've asked him home for dinner. You're a good man, Don, but you need a little spunk, you know what I mean? A little of the old intestinal fortitude when it comes to dealing with the real world."

  "I do all right, and gimme back my soap, dammit."

  "What I think you'd best do is tell everyone you got that eye in a fight. You get a little respect and you get all the women you need, if you know what I mean."

  "It's a little late for that."

  "It's never too late to lie through your teeth, if you know what I mean."

  "Yeah, I know."

  "Besides, from what I hear, under all them sweaters Tracey's a carpenter's dream—flat as a board."

  Don wasn't sure if it was a nightmare or a dream. He walked through the rest of the week with a slight smile on his face, a good word for everyone including Brian Pratt, and he didn't even blush when Chris came up to him in the hall and touched a finger to his cheek, wincing at the purpled blotch around his eye and hoping in a soft and high voice that he wasn't hurting too badly; when he sputtered nonsense for an answer, she didn't laugh, she only smiled and winked as she left. On the other hand, he didn't hear a thing any of his teachers said, and twice he was reprimanded for daydreaming in class. Falcone's announcement that the test papers wouldn't be ready until the following week didn't faze him; Hedley's glare in the hall didn't register until an hour later; when his detention supervisors snapped at him for staring, he didn't know what they were talking about, and they told him he was rude and would let the front office know; and when Tar Boston jammed his locker with a pen on Thursday, he only shrugged and walked away without his books.