Jack smiled as best he could. “Yeah. Now go wash up for dinner.” Somewhat relieved, the boy retreated to the relative security of the bathroom. Even thrust down deeply in his pockets, his hands had become sweaty and cold, and he pushed them under the steady stream of warm water to rinse away that clammy dampness. He certainly hoped his father was right.
It was during dinner that Bradley Wallace first learned of the disappearing cats, and he must have gone every shade of white possible. His father and mother were using it as a small talk news item, something to bandy about over their food because they had nothing of any real substance to discuss. Bradley Wallace had often wondered of late why they got married in the first place, since they seemed to have so little in common.
But tonight, there were no such musings. The police and cat owners seemed to have no leads or suspects in the deepening mystery, but Bradley Wallace had no need of playing Sherlock Holmes as he’d done so often in his imagination.
This time he knew. He knew exactly what was happening to those cats; knew it and loathed it. A sudden bitter cold coursed through his bloodstream like a dunk in an icy river. He felt defiled, betrayed. Whilly had lied to him. Lied. His anger began frothing at the seams of his self-control like lava fighting to burst its confinement and spew forth uncontrollably. How could a friend have been so disloyal? Real friends didn’t lie to one another, did they?
He stewed and steamed silently through the remainder of the meal (fortunately, no one noticed, not even the usually astute Katie), and as soon as decorum permitted, stiffly excused himself from the table. He declined his mother’s call for dessert as he passed quickly through the family room and casually (though unobtrusively) snatched up the front section of the Independent Journal.
Once ensconced in his own room with the paper spread out on the bed before him, Bradley Wallace meticulously read the rather sizable article, emblazoned with the heading: “CAT BURGLER STEALS REAL CATS.” The story described in detail how some thirty cats had simply vanished over the past month, most disappearing from the Loch Lomond area (Bradley Wallace’s neighborhood). Mrs. Noble, as the first person to report a missing cat, was quoted as calling the perpetrator “sick and heartless.” The only good part of the article (if anything about this could be considered good) was that no one seemed to have any idea who or what had gotten his or her “kitties.” So at least Whilly hadn’t been seen. That was something, the boy supposed.
But then fury raged in once more to supplant that meager relief, and he determined to have it out with his so-called friend. Without even considering the ramifications of leaving the house now, Bradley Wallace angrily plucked his padded, zippered jacket from the back of his desk chair, stormed out of his room and directly out the back door. He doubted he would’ve stopped even had his father directly challenged him. Violent, animal rage burned in his mind and body like a blazing forest fire, his feeling of betrayal acute and immeasurable. He stalked up the silent, darkened street, impassioned and out of control and frighteningly dangerous. Almost like the dragons of legend.
He sensed Whilly slumbering peacefully as he approached the blackened spider-like water tower, and new fury rose up within him. How could that creature sleep at a time like this? The rampaging child stomped viciously and loudly up the creaky steps encircling the tank, hoping the clanging, metallic echoes would rouse the dormant beast within. He moved out onto the top, his footfalls echoing hollowly in the stillness of the cool April night, and stopped at the gaping rectangular opening which, less than a month before, the dragon had magically breached and inspired awe in Bradley Wallace.
Well those days were over now, he thought venomously as he clumped heavily down the unsteady metal ladder that descended into the pitch-black pit below.
He dropped to the rusty floor with a hollow clang, and whipped his flashlight around to impale the now-awake and upright dragon with its pale, slightly flickering beam. Whilly stretched out his tail and limbs and flapped the lethargy from his wings, kicking up a dust cloud that caused Bradley Wallace to cough, and stoked the flame of his ire even more. The dragon’s sleep filled eyes suddenly sprang to crystal clarity as he felt the boy’s vitriolic anger, and his lithe, supple body snapped rigid with tension.
What’s wrong, Bradley Wallace? he asked with true concern. It was also the first time he’d left the “Murphy” off his friend’s name, but Bradley Wallace was too enraged to notice.
“You know what’s wrong,” the boy shot back, almost in a hiss, like a cornered cat ready to spring.
The dragon sifted through the walls of anger and hurt in the child’s mind, and discovered the reasons for them. He understood, and nodded in silent acknowledgement.
Yes, I know. I didn’t think you would find out so soon. Whilly’s thoughts were so matter-of-fact, as though they were talking about filching from the cookie jar. The creature didn’t sound the least bit apologetic.
“I guess you think I’m stupid in addition to everything else,” the boy spat in reply, his entire body seething with wrath, almost vibrating with barely suppressed fury
I don’t think you’re stupid, Whilly replied carefully, sensing the child’s wildly unstable, and, he realized with concern, extreme spate of anger.
“You lied to me!” Bradley Wallace viciously accused the creature he had thought to be his truest friend. “You said you wouldn’t eat any more cats! You lied to me!”
I did not lie purposely and I’m sorry you’re angry, Whilly began, but Bradley Wallace’s abusive retort cut him short.
“Friends don’t lie to each other! I may be just a stupid little kid, but even I know that!”
I already said you’re not stupid, Bradley Wallace, Whilly continued, fighting to prevent the boy’s violent maelstrom of emotion from engulfing him as well. But you are sensitive, and you have been doing so much for me. I just couldn’t tell you it wasn’t enough. I am a dragon. I need live food.
Bradley Wallace should have felt at least somewhat mollified by his friend’s explanation, but he was completely out of control. “Then why didn’t you tell me, huh?” he demanded indignantly. “Because I’m a kid. Just a stupid kid who doesn’t matter unless you want something!”
He knew he was overreacting, knew his violent wrath was uncalled for, but could do nothing to curb it. He’d never flipped out this way before. What was happening to him?
That’s not true, Bradley Wallace, Whilly fought to breach the wall of fury and gain access to the reasoning portion of the boy’s young mind. He, too, failed to comprehend the child’s reactions, but recognized them as a serious threat to their relationship. I would not have survived in this world without you to guide me. You became my friend, and I shall always regard you as such.
“Then why didn’t you tell me you needed live food?” the boy repeated bitterly, shining the flashlight beam directly into the dragon’s scarlet eyes and causing the creature to blink furiously.
What would you have done if I had? Whilly posed candidly. Your emotional human nature would simply have worried constantly about where I was getting my food. I didn’t intend to deceive you, Bradley Wallace, only to spare you.
“It doesn’t matter!” Bradley Wallace flung back without pause. He knew he shouldn’t, but something almost bestial had taken over and controlled his mouth as well as his emotions. And then there remained that bitter, overpowering sense of premeditated betrayal. “I’ve never lied to you, Whilly, and I. . .”
He fumbled through his rage and hurt for the words to express himself clearly, but they eluded him. “Oh, never mind!” he finally shouted
in frustrated abandon. “Go ahead and kill every damn animal in the neighborhood! Get caught, and see if I care! You can just drop dead!”
The tears burst forth then in a flood, streaming down his reddened cheeks in little rivers and striking the metal floor with tiny ping, ping, ping sounds. He hated this, hated what Whilly had done to him, and mostly hated what he was doing to himself. Why couldn’t he stop?
Shaking with rage,
the distraught child turned and fled up the ladder, ignoring the dragon’s entreaties to come back.
Struggling to close his mind to Whilly’s thought projections, Bradley Wallace scrambled madly down the hill and ran blindly through the darkened streets toward home. His flashlight batteries had completely died by this time, but he didn’t care. Maybe a car’d hit him and all this insanity would be over. He’d just lost the only true friend he thought he had, and felt more alone than ever.
Bradley Wallace barely slept that night, the constant effort needed to shut out Whilly’s persistent probing taking its toll on his ability to rest. At one point during the night, when the boy began to dose slightly, Whilly took advantage of the moment to enter the child’s mind and plead for clemency. Bradley Wallace became so distracted and frustrated he whipped up in his bed and screamed aloud, “Leave me alone!” and covered his ears with his hands, as though to physically block out the dragon’s determined presence. His mother burst frantically into the room moments later and fearfully asked why he’d screamed. He told her it was nothing, just a nightmare. She pressed him for details like any concerned mother, but he was in no mood for her fawning tonight and said he couldn’t remember the dream. She asked uncertainly if he was all right, and he assured her yes, he was fine and just wanted to go back to sleep. Even in the darkened room he could see the stung look on her features. He knew she was only concerned with his welfare, and felt like a heel for snapping at her, but couldn’t really see beyond his own seemingly insurmountable hurt. She silently rose from the bed and left him, shutting the door carefully behind her.
The next morning Bradley Wallace remained sullen and irritable, prompting his worried mother (who hadn’t slept very well herself after her son’s nightmare) to thrust the eternally aggravating thermometer into his protesting mouth. He felt a burning desire to snap the stupid thing in two with his teeth, but decided the silver stuff inside probably wouldn’t taste very good. Finally satisfied that he wasn’t sick, Marge settled on the notion his ill temper was due to lack of sleep, and most likely that damn job his father had let him take. The boy tramped off to meet his bus in an even worse mood than when he awoke.
All through his morning classes, Bradley Wallace simmered and stewed, unable to concentrate, constantly at war with Whilly for control of his own mind and individuality, speaking only when spoken to, and avoiding everyone as much as possible. Why couldn’t that stupid beast stop plucking at his psyche like it was an out-of-tune-guitar? Why couldn’t he just leave him alone? Bradley Wallace had never fought so hard for his individuality as he did that day, and gradually came to realize the greatest potential danger in a symbiotic relationship - loss of self.
At one point, Wagner approached and haughtily challenged him to another arm wrestling match, “since you chickened out yesterday.” But Bradley Wallace cast him a glare so filled with malevolence and uncorked bestial rabidity that even Wagner backed off and slipped away quietly. The retreat was most unlike Wagner, but then the hate-filled glare was most unlike Bradley Wallace.
The inevitable eruption came during afternoon recess when a slimy, fat, grease ball eighth grader named Simon began taunting Bradley Wallace for “chickening out” of arm wrestling Wagner. Word had obviously gotten around fast. Simon was a porcine jerk with a high, squeaky voice, pimply complexion, and hair that looked like it could grease a month’s worth of Kentucky Fried Chicken. No one liked him. How could they when he was nothing but a whining little fink? Still fuming over his acrimonious encounter with Whilly, and distracted beyond reason by the dragon’s persistent interference, Bradley Wallace could simply not tolerate Simon’s sniveling, incessant jeers, and did something he’d never done before to anyone - he smacked that stupid wimp a hard right to the jaw.
So mad was he that Bradley Wallace didn’t even feel the pain in his hand. He just pounced on the older, but fatter and weaker, boy, knocking him to the hard concrete playground and pummeling that pudgy, pimply face repeatedly with his fists. Bradley Wallace rained the blows down without thought or reason, completely out of control, almost as though to kill the other boy. Naturally, a crowd of eager spectators instantly wreathed the brawling duo, and the yard monitor dashed over to snatch the wild-eyed, animalistic Bradley Wallace from his battered and crying victim.
Simon was ordered to the nurse’s office, and Bradley Wallace was marched directly to the Principal, Sister Dana, a big, intimidating woman with a stern countenance and an almost supernatural ability to remember the name of every single student in the school. This bizarre trait, as well as her rather sizable girth, had earned her the nickname “Sister Dumbo,” since elephants had a reputation for remembering. Needless to say, Sister Dana did not take kindly to that epithet. She reacted with uninhibited surprise when the yard monitor entered with a sullen, dirty Bradley Wallace and stated the charges against the boy. Sister Dana dismissed the yard monitor and sat the silent boy down in the big chair before her ancient wooden desk. She eyed his surly unresponsiveness with a concerned appraisal, and quietly asked for an explanation.
Some say the world will end in fire . . .
Why did he think of that?
He shrugged off Sister Dana’s query with the simple response that Simon had been bugging him and he’d just lost his temper. He refused to meet her eyes, and she perceived that he wasn’t telling her everything.
She stared at him carefully, as though hoping her penetrating gaze would pierce his churlish facade and uncover the truth behind his uncharacteristic behavior. He had always been one of the most likeable, trouble-free boys in the school. So why this?
Some say in ice . . .
She asked him then if everything was all right at home. He did look up at that, perhaps a bit too quickly, and stated flatly and peevishly that everything at home was fine. She sighed heavily and decided to give up for now. Perhaps it was just a singular incident that wouldn’t be repeated. She hoped. Sister Dana called the boy’s mother to come take him home. And she gave him after school detention for the rest of the week. He didn’t even care.
Bradley Wallace repeated his sullen posture in the family room that evening as both parents spewed meaningless platitudes about fighting in school. Both were concerned, he sensed through his anger and bitterness, because nothing like this had ever happened before. But they couldn’t understand how he felt (how could they when he didn’t really understand it), and he certainly couldn’t tell them about Whilly, so he automatically passed on the same inadequate explanation he’d given Sister Dana, and let them do all the talking. Besides, his head hurt something fierce, like a blacksmith was using it for an anvil, and he didn’t feel like talking to anyone.
Some say the world will end in fire . . .
Why did he keep thinking of that stupid poem? Those lines just kept running through his head, and yet, he couldn’t even recall the entire thing.
Some say in ice . . .
How did the rest of it go? He couldn’t remember. It wouldn’t have done any good even if he had; he’d never understood that poem anyway.
Tuning in once more on his mother’s droning voice, Bradley Wallace waited for her to pause for breath and quickly assured both parents that the incident had just “happened,” and would not be repeated. Neither Jack nor Marge could read their son’s inscrutable expression, and thus couldn’t tell for certain if their words had made any impression.
Marge suspected they hadn’t. She dismissed Bradley Wallace with a final stern warning not to let such a thing happen again, while Jack sat back and pensively watched his strapping young son slink moodily from the room.
Once entombed in his bedroom, Bradley Wallace struggled in vain to concentrate on his homework assignments. His heart ached painfully for the company and fealty of his friend, but pride reared its ugly head and stubbornly prevented him from the indignity of apologizing for something he didn’t do. After all, Whilly had lied to him, not the other way around. It was the dragon that was wrong, not him. So why should he make the first
move?
Actually, if the truth were told, Whilly had made overtures in the direction of apologizing, but Bradley Wallace had tuned them out with a vengeance. Apparently the dragon had given up his attempts to pierce the boy’s inflamed mind because Bradley Wallace was no longer mentally pummeled day and night by the insistent probing. He knew he should feel relief at this victory - after all, the unwanted beast was no longer violating his mind. And yet, dammit, he missed Whilly! He supposed the resourceful dragon would find someone else to help him, if he hadn’t done so already. Could that be why the mind link was broken? This thought depressed him even more, and Bradley Wallace went to bed very early that night. Images of he and Whilly playing and flying together flitted before his blurry eyes, and he cried himself into a restless sleep.
He woke the next morning bleary-eyed and despondent, glumly picked at his soggy Count Chocula breakfast cereal, and morosely tramped out the front door to meet his bus, all under the watchful, silently concerned gaze of his mother. Marge watched her son leave the house with a mixture of fear and uncertainty. She’d never seen him look so dispirited, so lifeless. It was almost as if part of him had died, or at least separated from the rest of him somehow, like Mr. Hyde from Dr. Jekyll. Oh stop, she chided herself, you’re becoming morbid. He’s troubled, yes, but there’s nothing abnormal about it. The big question in her mind was, how best to handle the situation. She broached the subject to Jack when he dashed out to the kitchen for a quick cup of coffee before departing for the office. He seemed ambivalent to her concern.
“Probably just growing pains,” he rationalized in that infuriatingly patronizing tone of voice he so often used toward her. “Thirteen is a tough age.” He sipped his coffee too fast and scorched the roof of his mouth, swearing loudly. Marge smiled at his discomfort.
“I’ve never seen him so moody,” she persisted. “It worries me.”
“Everything worries you,” Jack riposted, trying for a light touch, but actually sounding accusatory. “You worry if his hair gets too long, or if Katie leaves something out on her counter, or if their clothes are wrinkled. You worry about nonessentials.”
A Boy and His Dragon Page 19
