Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

by Adam Rapp

  “I’m sorry about Welton,” Grace said. And I think she sincerely was — I really do. And she is by far the prettiest girl in the whole extended family. She’s eighteen now and at Drake studying premed.

  “Are you gonna be okay?” she asked. She was nice — she really was.

  I nodded and just kept looking at that sunlight.

  When she was about to get up from the pew, I grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her on the lips. I tried to open my mouth, too, so she was really shocked.

  “That’s wrong, Steve,” she said. “That’s so wrong.”

  I don’t even know why I did that. I had no idea it was going to happen.

  Then she got up and left the church. I’ll probably never see her again, but I’m sure she’s doing great at Drake.

  After the funeral, I sat on the toilet for about two hours. Everyone else was at Aunt Ricky’s bowling outing. Nothing like Galaxy Lanes to keep your spirits up.

  On the toilet seat, I read an old greyhound racing program I’d kept from the spring season. I looked through it for a while, studying all the dogs, their weights and kennel positions, the different parks they’d been racing at, their most recent finishes.

  In the back of the program, there was this ad for a dog track down in Florida. It was for Greyhound Park in Daytona Beach. There were races seven days a week, matinees on Saturday and Sunday, and the park was open twelve months a year. There was a picture of eight dogs fighting for the first curve, their snouts muzzled, their eyes all desperate and hellish. In a box at the bottom of this page there was an ad for Greyhound buses:

  www.greyhound.com

  LEAVE THE DRIVING TO US

  I went back down to Welton’s room. His absence was like something hitting you in the back of the head. The door had been removed from the hinges.

  There’s this old cigar box that Welton used to keep in the back of the shelf of his closet. I knew he hid his extra money there, so I opened the door and helped myself to $327. It was mostly tens and twenties. Who knows where it came from. He’d probably made most of it selling drugs in the parking lot of Taco John’s. I knew it was theft, but I didn’t care about it at the time. Now I sort of feel bad about taking his money, even though he had no way of using it.

  After I stuffed the knot of bills in the back pocket of my brown suit slacks, I sat in front of Welton’s computer. It was a Gateway that my mom had bought him for Christmas a few years before, when he was still interested in stuff. He mostly used it to play Sims — Myst before that — and surf the Net. He and Dantly were always trying to find underground drug-dealing websites and porn pages. I wasn’t all that versed in surfing the web, but I knew how to key in an address. After the computer fired up, I double-clicked on Internet Explorer and typed in the Greyhound Bus website. After I clicked on schedules, it told me that there was a bus leaving from the Rialto Inn, 200 Main Street, downtown Foote, at 3:20 P.M. To get to Daytona Beach, it would take me one day, fifteen hours, and ten minutes. A one-way fare would cost me $138. I would arrive at 5:30 A.M., just in time to catch a fresh Florida sunrise. That gave me about two hours to get to the Rialto Inn.

  I walked upstairs and repacked my dad’s old Marine Corps bag. I kept it simple. I packed a T-shirt or two, a pair of running shoes, a week’s worth of underwear, a few pairs of socks, some medical tape, an extra optical shield, and the drops for my eye.

  I was still wearing the brown suit that I’d worn to the funeral, and I didn’t bother changing. I even kept the tie on.

  When I left the house, the sky was huge and cloudless and I didn’t look back once.

  31.

  While crossing the bridge to Foote I got honked at by several cars. They love trying to embarrass pedestrians. It’s usually pretty humiliating but I honestly didn’t care. On my way to the Rialto Inn, I stopped in a magazine shop and bought a pack of Camel Lights and a few packs of gum.

  I was hungry so I decided to stop in at Jack Palomino’s. There were still all of those stupid movie posters plastered everywhere and the place smelled like mayonnaise.

  Inside there were these three loners staring into their coffee cups. They were all sitting at separate booths and they seemed somehow similarly troubled. That same waitress with the knee braces was on duty.

  “You again?” she said.

  “I just want a hot dog,” I pleaded.

  We stared at each other for a moment, and she must have picked up on my desperate vibe because she pointed to a booth.

  “You fuck around and I’m callin’ the cops,” she said.

  I sat.

  I had a little over an hour to kill. I figured I’d eat and make my way to the Rialto Inn, buy my bus ticket, and hang out in the lobby.

  “Steve,” a voice rang out. I turned to my right. It was June. Her eyes were all warm and smiley. Her pickle shirt had been replaced by a Carolina-blue hooded sweatshirt that featured a picture of that Spice Girl who’s married to the famous soccer player. Her bangs had been cut and she looked at least two years younger.

  I said, “Hey, June.”

  She was smiling so hard it made her teeth look huge. I never realized how many teeth she had.

  She said, “Nice threads.”

  I said, “Thanks,” and undid the knot in my tie.

  “What happened to your eye?” she asked.

  “It’s a long story,” I said, touching my shield.

  “Are you blind?”

  “I was for a few days.”

  “Did you get shot?”

  “No,” I said. “I sort of fell.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Not yet. It’s pretty gross.”

  “This old man who lives on my street is blind,” June said. “He’s got this dog that can like drive a car and read the newspaper and stuff. You should get a dog.”

  “Maybe I will. How have you been?”

  “Okay,” she said. “I quit smokin’.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Yeah. I had this dream that I spit up a roach. You should quit, too, or you’ll croak, you know.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  June said, “Why you all dressed up?”

  “I was at a funeral,” I said.

  “Who died?”

  “My brother.”

  “Oh,” she said. “How old was he?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Was he sick?”

  “He hanged himself with a necktie.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”

  I nodded and sort of played with my silverware ensemble.

  To June, somebody dying was just another mild disappointment, like losing a quarter or failing to evade a spit bath. She’d already seen too much stuff.

  I said, “Who cut your hair?”

  “My mom. I wanted her to cut it all off but she wouldn’t do it.”

  “Looks good.”

  She was like, “Yeah.” Then she sniffed and said, “After you eat your hot dog, you wanna go see a movie with me? They got this one playin’ about a pig.”

  I said, “I can’t, June, but thanks.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I’m leaving.”

  “Where you goin’?”

  “Florida.”

  She went, “No, you ain’t.”

  “My bus leaves in an hour. From the Rialto Inn. As soon as I finish eating, I’m outta here.”

  June slid into my booth, opposite me.

  “Can I go with you?” she asked.

  “I don’t think your mom would be too happy about that.”

  “She won’t care,” she said. “She’s with Eljay, anyway.”

  I said, “Where are they?”

  “This place called Toronto, Canada. They said they’d be back three days ago, but they ain’t back. I got a hundred bucks.”

  I guzzled the ice water that had somehow materialized at my table.

  “You ever been to Florida before?” I asked.

  “No. But I seen it on a map. It’s yello
w, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s yellow.”

  “’Cause of all the vitamins and sunshine they got down there.”

  The waitress arrived with my hot dog and Coke. I cut the hot dog in half and gave one end to June, who took it and ate it in about two bites. I pushed my Coke across to her, and she swallowed a mouthful.

  I said, “You need to eat more.”

  She said, “I eat,” and took another gulp of my Coke.

  When we finished, I paid the check and June and I left the diner. The waitress sort of stared at me cockeyed when I walked through the front door. Maybe it’s because I tipped her way too much. I think I left her like a twenty-dollar bill or something.

  Outside, the air was crisp and metallic-tasting, and downtown Foote seemed to be somehow asleep. June and I walked up the hill toward Main Street. We didn’t talk, and during our silence she performed a series of kung-fu moves whose perfection I will never be able to re-create with words so I won’t bother trying. One of her victims was a mailbox. Another was a parking meter.

  “You warm enough?” I asked as we approached the Rialto Inn.

  “I’m like a lizard,” she said. “I don’t get cold.”

  Our bus was parked in front of the hotel, and it looked sort of indifferent but somehow promising at the same time.

  We went into the Rialto Inn and bought our tickets from a woman at the front desk. June’s ticket cost seventy dollars. She produced a crinkled hundred-dollar bill from her sock and gave me her change.

  “You can handle the money from now on,” she said. I shoved her change in my pocket. It was weird because she didn’t seem happy or sad. She just seemed sort of ready for whatever would come next.

  The woman behind the counter told us that the bus was now boarding and for some reason felt the need to wish us luck.

  “Good luck,” she said, and went back to work.

  When we boarded, this old black guy with electric hair took our tickets. He was the driver and he said it would be a few minutes before we left. His voice was all Southern-sounding and sleepy.

  There were others on the bus, too: old people, young people, mothers with their sleeping children, a lonely old man with this tweed Bing Crosby hat. There was a college couple in the back who had so many suitcases you would’ve thought they were being paid to transport someone else’s life to another city. It seemed like they’d all been on this bus for days, maybe even weeks.

  We found two empty seats near the back. You could smell the urine fumes from the bathroom pretty strong, but I didn’t care. I put my dad’s Marine Corps bag in the overhead rack and took the window seat. June sat next to me and pinched my arm.

  The bus driver closed the door and made some general announcement about all the cities that lay ahead: Davenport, Chicago, South Bend, Toledo, Columbus, Charleston, Wytheville, Winston-Salem, Augusta, Savannah, Waycross, Jacksonville, Gainesville, and Daytona Beach.

  The driver also informed us that the bathroom was at the rear of the bus and that there would be no smoking or drinking of alcohol and that he would be making announcements along the way indicating where we’d be stopping for cigarette and meal breaks.

  One day, fifteen hours, and ten minutes later, we’d arrive in Daytona Beach.

  Then the engine started and the door closed and we started moving.

  “Here we go,” June said.

  Through my window, Foote looked strange and silvery. Though I couldn’t tell you for sure, I’d like to believe that the leaves were starting to turn. It was probably too early in the fall for that, but I’d still like to believe it.

  The bus passed silently though the streets of downtown Foote, turned south on the highway, and began its journey toward Davenport. June was asleep on my shoulder. Her mouth was half-open and her chin was sort of damp and gluey-looking.

  As we moved south on the highway, the strip malls were replaced by silos and grain elevators and other solemn-looking agricultural monoliths. The endless black fields were all scarred and lifeless-looking.

  At some point it got cloudy.

  It’s weird — you look away for a few minutes and there they are: big gray clouds.

  A little while later it started to rain.

  32.

  So you’re probably wondering how I wound up in the middle of Michigan at this place Burnstone Grove if I was on a Greyhound bus heading for Daytona Beach.

  June had been sleeping most of the way, her head still on my shoulder, when we pulled into the Hinsdale Oasis rest stop. While the bus was parking, I sort of adjusted my shield a little because the medical tape was sort of losing its stickiness. When I took it off, everything on the right side was missing. I closed my left eye, keeping my right one open, and the world was suddenly black. I put the shield back on and went into the Oasis with June, hoping my sight would somehow miraculously return by the time we got inside.

  In the bathroom of the Wendy’s, I pulled my shield away again and everything was still missing on the right side so I knew something was seriously wrong. It was pretty scary and I almost fainted, but that black bus driver with the electric hair was in there with me and he helped me stand.

  “You okay, partner?” he asked.

  “It’s my eye,” I explained. “I just got out of the hospital and it’s giving me some problems.”

  “Do you need medical attention?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  “I can call an ambulance, if you want.”

  “I better wait,” I said. “I don’t want to freak my little sister out. We haven’t seen our mother in a long time and she’s waiting for us down in Daytona Beach.”

  I don’t know why I started lying like that. And it didn’t even make sense that I brought up our fake mother. I guess the blindness thing was suddenly making me really nervous.

  I put some drops in my eye, retaped my shield, and left the bathroom.

  In the Wendy’s dining area, June was sitting at a table, sort of swiveling her chair back and forth.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. She was eating a Frosty and a large order of French fries.

  “My eye’s bothering me,” I told her. “But I’ll be fine.”

  “You should eat,” she said.

  “I’m not hungry. I’ll probably eat the next time we stop.”

  “So what are we gonna do down in Florida?” she asked, eating her fries.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Stuff, I guess. It’ll be fun.”

  “Maybe we could like buy a bungalow or something.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  When we got to South Bend, Indiana, the bus pulled into the local Greyhound station to pick up passengers. My eye was really starting to freak me out. June was sound asleep again. I was going to go talk to that black guy with the electric hair about getting myself to a hospital, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. A few minutes later, a new driver took the wheel. He was this old white guy with a leathery face. He sat down for a minute, put some of his personal belongings down, adjusted his seat, and then got back off the bus.

  I looked at June for a second, and then I reached into my pocket, pulled out $135, and slid it into the front pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. Then I started to cry, but I didn’t want to make any sound and the pressure was making my eye hurt like crazy so I made myself stop. I grabbed my dad’s old Marine Corps bag and got off the bus while June was still sleeping.

  I know it was wrong of me to leave June on that bus — I really do. I have no idea if she ever made it all the way down to Florida or what might have happened to her. I’ll probably go to hell for it.

  Sometimes I wonder if she met someone who was in better shape than I was and that maybe that person took a special interest in her and helped her find a new life. Or maybe she took the bus all the way back to Foote.

  What I did after I saw the bus pull away was I walked up to this Hispanic woman who was working at t
his parking garage and asked her if she could point me to the nearest hospital. She said she didn’t know where the hospital was, but that she would call an ambulance for me. For some reason, the idea of being picked up by an ambulance really freaked me out, so what I did was I went back to the Greyhound station and bought a ticket back to Foote.

  I had to kill a few hours before the bus left, so I just sort of sat in one of those chairs with the portable black-and-white TVs, fed quarters into it, and watched sitcoms with my left eye.

  So I won’t bore you with details about the bus ride back to Foote and how I walked all the way home from the Rialto Inn and how I sat under that sycamore tree in our front yard for like four hours before my aunt Ricky came outside and how she had already gotten all this information about Burnstone Grove and how she sat there with her big flabby legs tucked under her and talked to me about the whole recovery thing for like two hours and about how it would help me and how she had had a few friends from Illinois who had sent their kids there, how one of them had been addicted to crystal meth and how she wound up finishing high school and getting more involved with her church and how it really helped her feel better about things. Aunt Ricky said some of the money from my mom’s will would pay for it and that it would probably only be for a couple of months.

  I was just sort of nodding along and staring at her wooden crucifix with my left eye and trying to pretend that I wasn’t blind.

  A week later, after a few visits to Dr. Black at Medical Associates confirmed the permanent blindness in my right eye, Aunt Ricky helped me pack up my stuff and we loaded up the Fairmont and she drove me up to the middle of Michigan.

  My dad didn’t even say goodbye. I just walked right past him when I left. He was watching TV with the sound turned down and sort of pulling at the little hairs on the backs of his hands.

  33.

  So my new roommate got here the other day. His name is Ahmed and he’s Pakistani. He grew up in Gary, Indiana, and he’s really into hip-hop and Denis Johnson novels and he’s a Gray Grouper like me. We have a good arrangement, because he pretty much just listens to his headphones and writes lyrics in this spiral notebook. He’s really respectful of my stuff, and whenever Sinead comes over, he’s cool and goes into the common area.