Yes, but not tonight. I’m quite satisfied and won’t eat again for several days.
“Well, when you do go, I want to come, too, just to make sure you’re not someplace that could get us both in trouble,” the boy decided, worried that hunger might have driven Whilly to carelessness.
Whilly cocked his head and eyed his friend somnolently. His full belly was making him sleepy again. Won’t you get in trouble if you’re late for your dinner? he projected, noting the darkening, red and gold streaked sky above. The boy seemed to find these sunsets, as he’d called them, fascinating and beautiful. To the dragon’s mind, it simply signaled the end of light and the beginning of darkness. Yes, indeed, humans were strange creatures.
Bradley Wallace looked quickly at his watch. Oh, no! It was after six already. He jumped up amidst a cloud of dust and dashed to the ladder, turning to remind Whilly that he’d return later for a synopsis of the day’s “Dark Shadows” episode. He opened his mouth to speak, but the even, raspy snoring in the barely illuminated darkness told him his words would be wasted. He shook his head in amazement. The stupid dragon was asleep already. How tacky! Extinguishing the lantern, he set it down on the floor and shimmied hurriedly up the ladder, making a mental note to bring more kerosene next time.
Fortunately for the boy, dinner that night was later than usual, and his mother had been so busy preparing it she didn’t even notice Bradley Wallace’s lateness (she’d had an afternoon bridge game at Trudy Osler’s house that went on longer than scheduled). But she was extraordinarily
relieved when Bradley Wallace appeared in the kitchen that evening, hungry and cheerful, without any trace of the sullenness he’d been displaying the past few days. It must’ve just been a mood thing, she thought, shooing her son away from the cabinet containing the oatmeal cookies. Thank God he’s over it!
That same night, John Wagner sat in the darkness of his bedroom, staring sightlessly at the books of witchcraft lore on his chipped and pitted desk. Maybe Murphy had put a spell on him during the arm wrestling match, and that’s why he lost. That little twerp couldn’t possibly have beaten him. No way!
Of course, he was really tired these days from lack of sleep. Those damn dreams! Even his mother’s “Sleep-Ez” and Valium didn’t help. Somehow he had to find out what Murphy was up to. Not that John was afraid, no sir. He just needed to be back in control. That’s what he needed. And beginning tomorrow, he was going to do just that, starting with a direct confrontation. He’d corner Murphy and beat the truth out of him if necessary. But suddenly, tomorrow seemed a long way away. A whole night. With an angry swipe of his hand, the witchcraft books flew off the desk and scattered with assorted clunks all over the floor. Yeah, tomorrow.
CHAPTER 7
“Food for Thought”
The next couple of days were relatively uneventful for Bradley Wallace, except for his run-in with Wagner. As he’d feared, all the guys sought him out for arm wrestling challenges, hoping to defeat him and become the new champion. But Bradley Wallace continued to prove unbeatable, which pleased him immensely and increased his level of self-confidence more than anything else he’d ever done. That first morning, the insanely jealous John Wagner told anyone who would listen that his loss to Murphy was a fluke and that he’d definitely win the next time. Of course, no one took him for anything but a blowhard and a sore loser, and this rejection stoked the rising flame of his anger. Murphy wouldn’t get away with this, no way!
That afternoon, during recess, Bradley Wallace exited a stall in the boy’s bathroom, and came face to face with a glowering Wagner, who defiantly blocked his path to the door. Bradley Wallace saw past the surface of his enemy’s arrogant glare to the desperation beneath that Wagner struggled so hard with to conceal, and frowned in confusion. Nonetheless, his ire rose at the other’s very presence, and Bradley Wallace challenged him in open rebellion.
“What do you want, Wagner?” His gaze was cold and hard, but Wagner remained set in his course.
“I want to know what the hell you’re up to,” Wagner demanded, a slight edge to his voice that disturbed Bradley Wallace. Wagner actually sounded sincere, and that bewildered Bradley Wallace.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he retorted honestly, but no less forcefully than before. His knees were beginning to shake, but Wagner would never know it.
“You know!” the raven-haired boy spat, his grey eyes glowing with virulence, his tone again tainted with that mysterious undertone of desperation Bradley Wallace noticed before. “You did something to beat me yesterday, just like you’re making me have all those dreams. I don’t know what you’re doing, man, but you’re gonna stop it, today!”
Wagner took several menacing steps toward Bradley Wallace, but the latter boy was too bewildered to even retreat, and Wagner, thinking better of his move, halted a few paces away, his features dancing with the conflicting emotions of anger, defiance, and fear.
Dreams? What dreams, Bradley Wallace wondered. What was Wagner talking about? Maybe he was stoned or something.
Realizing he had to say something, Bradley Wallace retorted with, “You’re crazy.” He wanted to say “You’re just mad because I beat you,” but decided Wagner was far too unstable for that; there’d be a fight for sure. Then another thought suddenly struck him - if Wagner (for whatever reason) thought he was being harassed, why couldn’t Bradley Wallace use that delusion to his advantage? Maybe get Wagner out of his hair at last? That possibility encouraged him, and a sly, almost sinister smile crossed his face. He folded his arms across his chest in his best impression of haughtiness.
“Look, you leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone,” he warned, delighted to finally be dishing out some of Wagner’s own sour medicine, For an instant, he thought Wagner might try to slug him. But he didn’t even flinch, determined to play out this scenario.
Wagner’s grey eyes blazed with argent malevolence, his body rigid with contained anger and fear. But he did not attack.
“Just stay away from me, faggot!” he spat viciously, turning on his heel and storming from the bathroom.
Bradley Wallace’s knees felt weak, and he leaned limply against the graffiti-splattered tile wall, suddenly realizing his body was slick with sweat. Despite his outward veneer of strength and calm, Bradley Wallace had been nervous and more than a little afraid. Wagner seemed to be getting worse every day. More and more unstable and unpredictable. What was all that nonsense about dreams? How could Bradley Wallace have anything to do with Wagner’s dreams? Like it or not, Bradley Wallace felt a fight between them was inevitable; it was only a matter of time. Maybe he should start watching boxing on television. And what was a “faggot,” anyway?
That afternoon, while making their familiar rounds, he asked this
final question of Mr. O’Conner, who looked curiously at the boy before answering.
“Well, in the old country, a fag is a cigarette and a faggot is a stick of wood,” he explained, much to the boy’s obvious amazement.
A cigarette, he thought in bewilderment. A stick of wood? Why on earth would Wagner keep calling him that? It didn’t make sense.
“Why you askin’, lad,” the old man asked, unable to contain his own curiosity. “You’re not smokin’ any of them, are you?”
For some reason, that question and Mr. O’Conner’s anxious tone struck Bradley Wallace as funny, and he laughed. “No, Mr. O’Conner, the smoke makes me gag. I’ve just heard the word a few times and wondered what it meant. That’s all.” He hoped the embarrassment he felt hadn’t crept into his voice. A cigarette? A stick of wood?
“For an Assistant Good Humor Man, you ask some mighty unusual questions, lad.” The old man shook his head in wonder, and Bradley Wallace laughed again. The subject didn’t come up again.
The next day, Wagner avoided Bradley Wallace more than ever before, and school passed without incident. True to his word, Whilly had not eaten these past two days, but when Bradley Wallace went to him that afternoon, the
dragon announced his intention to go hunting that night, and the boy could feel his friend’s hunger pangs resuming with their usual throbbing intensity.
After his own dinner and homework (both of which he struggled with because of the dragon-related nausea roiling his stomach), Bradley Wallace returned to the water tower and found, to his dismay and disgust, that Whilly had again become interested in John Wagner. Despite his hunger, which seemed to bother the boy more than the dragon, Whilly pressed Bradley Wallace for answers to his questions.
Do you hate John Wagner? he asked, seated beside the boy and looking like the epitome of some cinematic monstrosity under the flickering light of the Coleman lantern (which Bradley Wallace had remembered to refill with kerosene).
Sick though he felt, and irritated to be discussing a subject he
loathed, the boy had to pause a moment to consider Whilly’s question. Did he hate Wagner? Really hate him? He’d never really thought about it consciously before, but suddenly realized that he disliked Wagner more than any other person he knew. Did that dislike constitute hatred?
“Yeah, I guess I do,” he spoke, answering his and Whilly’s questions simultaneously.
I have felt this “hate” in you, and I don’t like it, the dragon responded, his tone etched with warning. Such a strong emotion is dangerous.
“Well how do you expect me to feel after everything he’s done to me?” the boy snapped, more viciously than he’d intended. “He makes me so mad sometimes, I could just kill him!”
Whilly’s head snapped around to lock eyes with the boy’s. Kill?
Bradley Wallace sensed the apprehension in the dragon’s mind, and sought to ease it. “That’s just an expression. I couldn’t really kill anyone.”
Are you sure? The dragon’s question was dead serious, and Bradley Wallace reared back as though slapped.
“Of course!” he retorted indignantly. “And I don’t know what your problem is anyway. You expect me to like somebody who hates my guts? That’s impossible.” He felt sick, and annoyed, and wanted desperately to drop this subject of John Wagner; in fact, he wanted to drop John Wagner - over a cliff.
Why is it impossible? Whilly queried, unwilling to let the matter die peacefully.
“Because it just is!’ Bradley Wallace snapped viciously, as much from uncertainty as anger. He simply had no answer to the dragon’s question. Was it possible to like someone who hated you, he wondered briefly, before the roiling of his stomach recouped his full attention.
“I don’t want to talk about Wagner, okay?” he went on, shifting his position carefully to avoid tossing his cookies all over the tower floor.
“Are you gonna hunt tonight, or what? I’m feeling awfully sick.” That was an understatement!
I am hungry, Whilly agreed, confirming what the boy knew only too well. Are you sure you wish to accompany me?
Bradley Wallace sat bolt upright, his head spinning momentarily from the sharp movement. “Yes,” he declared firmly. “And can we hurry, please?” Relief of his nausea would only come with the dragon satiating its appetite, but the taste of raw meat was another affront to the boy’s senses. Either way, it seemed, he lost.
Whilly rose to his feet and stretched out his leathery brown wings, which caught the lantern light in sparkling pinpoints, like a puddle of water after a sunny spring shower. Bradley Wallace carefully rose to his feet and set about mounting the dragon’s massive back.
The howling, whipping wind buffeted the boy wildly as he fought to keep his grip on Whilly’s neck, and on the churning contents of his stomach, as the dragon winged out past the city limits in, as far as the boy could tell, a generally northward direction.
They had been airborne for ten minutes, and Bradley Wallace shivered uncontrollably. The biting wind was cold, and his lightweight jacket offered scant protection from its stinging attacks. “How much farther?” he called out against the roaring gale, his words flung back behind him practically before they could be enunciated.
We’re almost there, came the dragon’s reassuring answer as he easily navigated the skies high above Highway 101 to the dark and forbidding Lucas Valley. Bradley Wallace noticed that they passed the city of Novato, Hamilton Air Force Base (it seemed strange to look down on planes), and continued on north toward the farming rusticity of Petaluma and its surrounding environs.
There, Whilly directed the boy’s attention downward, where he could make out the darkened shapes of many large animals grazing in a hilly pasture. He gasped.
‘Cows?” he exclaimed with unconcealed amazement and reproach. “You’re stealing cows? I can go to jail for that!”
There are a great many of these creatures in the hills, the circling dragon calmly replied. A few will not be missed.
Bradley Wallace’s mind was reeling with panic. “Don’t you think they count them?” he screamed, as much in fear as to be heard.
Please don’t get emotionally upset, Bradley Wallace, Whilly advised, still circling above the blissfully oblivious cows below. It was your idea to come along. Whilly was keenly eyeing the bovine beasts, his massive mouth beginning to salivate uncontrollably from anticipation. He sought a lone cow grazing apart from the others.
What Whilly said was true - he’d insisted on coming along. “But I didn’t know I’d be cattle rustling!” the boy flung back verbally, fighting to maintain some semblance of calm, but deathly afraid they might be spotted. Even in the darkness of this moonless night, a dragon (however youthful) is a large, visible object, and they’d probably be mistaken for a UFO.
I see one! Whilly suddenly exclaimed, interrupting Bradley Wallace’s frightened reverie. Hold on!
Before the boy could even think a protest, the dragon beneath him folded its wings tightly against its lithe, supple body in the manner of a dive-bombing eagle, and shot straight downward so fast Bradley Wallace very nearly lost his grip and tumbled blindly off into the enswathing blackness. Whilly’s target, a small calf that had strayed too far from its brethren, grazed alone atop a small hillock, oblivious to its death plunging madly down from above, razor sharp claws opening and closing in ravenous anticipation.
As the unsuspecting calf loomed ever closer, Bradley Wallace sucked in a sharp breath and snapped his eyes shut. He couldn’t watch. He heard the short, startled moo of surprise and felt a thud as Whilly snatched the calf off the hillside in a smooth, swooping maneuver, simultaneously slashing its soft throat, and rising swiftly into the enveloping darkness of the night sky. Bradley Wallace cracked his eyes open hesitantly and peered over Whilly’s undulating shoulder. The calf hung limp and lifeless from the dragon’s bloodied claws, its teeth exposed in a hideous parody of a human grin. The boy looked away in horror, already beginning to smell the freshly dripping blood. Disgust overwhelmed him, and he gripped Whilly’s neck more securely to keep from fainting.
Whilly glided to a remote, hilly area some distance from the pasture and descended, dropping the dead calf just prior to landing. Head and stomach reeling with nausea, Bradley Wallace slipped weakly off the dragon’s back, and landed with a sickening plop atop the bloody carcass, his arms and chest instantly drenched in the creature’s gushing, slippery blood. He stared, wide-eyed and mute, at the gaping gash that had once been the soft, furry throat of an animal perhaps equivalent in youth to himself, at the river of blood cascading onto his wet, slick jacket sleeve. His stomach heaved. He turned from the grisly sight, and retched violently. He vomited again and again, until there was nothing left but a sour tasting spit. Lights danced crazily in front of his eyes. His ears rang and his stomach muscles throbbed tiredly.
He felt a clawed forepaw settle gently on his shoulder, and Whilly entered his mind, carefully. Are you all right, Bradley Wallace?
Bradley Wallace started to turn. Then he saw the dark blood glistening on the dragon’s forepaw and turned quickly away. His stomach rebelled again, but there was nothing left to come up. His gut constricted violently and painfully as he dry-heaved several times, that sour,
sickening taste of spit returning to torture him. “Take it away, Whilly!” he begged, his voice barely a whisper, Uncertainly, the dragon removed his forepaw from the child’s shoulder.
I’m sorry, Whilly apologized. I shouldn’t have brought you.
Bradley Wallace remained hunched over, unable to face the dragon, and unable to face . . . the thing. “Why?” he croaked hoarsely, his voice filled with disgust and self-loathing, as though he had personally slaughtered this poor, defenseless baby. “Why a calf? Why not a full-grown one, at least?” His head continued to spin like the agitator in his mother’s washing machine.
I’m not big enough yet to lift anything larger, Whilly explained, but Bradley Wallace could barely comprehend those words,
He began to sink deeper and deeper within himself, as though to bury the sights and sounds and smells (oh, God, the smell was sickening!) of this heinous event somewhere in the dungeons of his subconscious.
I must survive, Bradley Wallace, Whilly continued, trying to pierce the boy’s stupor, And I must eat to do that. It’s natural.
Almost catatonic with shock, Bradley Wallace could no longer speak, and ignored the dragon’s explanation, if he heard it at all. He rose weakly, mechanically, to his feet, and gazed dully down at his blood-drenched jacket and pants, which were stuck to his skin like he’d spilled a whole bottle of Coke on them. He never knew blood was so sticky. And now he knew what a charnel house must smell like, the dry, decaying smell of fresh death. His stomach lurched briefly, but there wasn’t even enough for a dry heave. He walked stiffly away from the grisly carcass and plopped down limply against a nearly oak tree. Several fallen acorns pricked his behind, but he didn’t even feel them.
Disconnected thoughts scurried through his muted mind, and several coalesced into coherence. Was having a friend worth all this? Would he ever be the same again? Wasn’t he, himself, merely the equivalent of a human calf? He jumped slightly as the sound of tearing flesh assaulted his ears.
A Boy and His Dragon Page 21
