Boy's Life Part 31

Yes, I thought. I prayed Death away from him.

But I didn't say anything.

"Ah, well. Mysteries, mysteries," he said. "We come from darkness, and to darkness we must return." He spoke this almost to himself as he rocked back and forth in his chair with his fingers interwoven. "True of men, and animals, too."

I didn't like this line of thought and conversation. I didn't like thinking about the fact that Rebel was getting skinny and his hair was falling out and he didn't eat or drink but he lived on. I didn't like the empty sound of his heartbeat, like a clock working in a house where no one lived anymore. To get my mind off these thoughts, I said, "My dad told me you killed a n.a.z.i."

"What?" He looked at me, startled.

"You killed a n.a.z.i," I repeated. "In Holland. My dad said you were close enough to see his face."

Dr. Lezander didn't reply for a moment. I remembered Dad telling me not to ask the doctor about this subject, because most men who'd been in the war didn't like to talk about killing. I had feasted on the exploits of Sgt. Rock, Sgt. Saunders, and the Gallant Men, and in my visions of heroes war was a television show adapted from a comic book.

"Yes," he answered. "I was that close to him."

"Gosh!" I said. "You must've been scared! I mean... I would've been."

"Oh, I was scared, all right. Very scared. He broke into our house. He had a rifle. I had a pistol. He was a young man. A teenager, actually. One of those blond, blue-eyed teenaged boys who love a parade. I shot him. He fell." Dr. Lezander kept rocking in his chair. "I had never fired a gun before. But the n.a.z.is were in the streets, and they were breaking into our houses, and what could I do?"

"Were you a hero?" I asked.

He smiled thinly; there was some pain in it. "No, not a hero. Just a survivor." I watched his hands grip and relax on the armrests. His fingers were short and blunt, like powerful instruments. "We were all terrified of the n.a.z.is, you know. Blitzkrieg. Brownshirt. Waffen SS. Luftwaffe. Those words struck us with pure terror. But I met a German a few years after the war was over. He had been a n.a.z.i. He had been one of the monsters." Dr. Lezander lifted his chin and watched a flock of birds winging south across the horizon. "He was just a man, after all. With bad teeth, body odor, and dandruff. Not a superman, only one man. I told him I'd been in Holland in 1940, when the n.a.z.is had invaded us. He said he wasn't there, but he asked me... for forgiveness."

"Did you forgive him?"

"I did. Though I had many friends who were crushed under that boot, I forgave one of the men who wore it. Because he was a soldier, and he was following orders. That is the steel of the German character, Cory. They follow orders, even if it means walking into fire. Oh, I could have struck that man across the face. I could've spat on him and cursed him. I could've found a way to hound him until the day he died, but I am not the beast. The past is the past, and sleeping dogs should be left alone. Yes?"

"Yes sir."

"And speaking of sleeping dogs, we ought to go have a look at Rebel." He stood up, his knees creaking, and I followed him into the house.

The day came when Dr. Lezander said he had done all he could and there was no use to keep Rebel at his house anymore. He gave Rebel back to us, and we took him home in the pickup truck.

I loved my dog, though the gray flesh showed through his thin white hair, his skull was scarred and misshapen, and his withered gray leg was as thin as a warped stick. Mom couldn't be around him. Dad brought up the subject of putting Rebel to sleep, but I wouldn't hear it. Rebel was my dog, and he was alive.

He never ate. Never drank a drop. He stayed in his pen, because he could hardly walk on his withered leg. I could count his ribs, and through his papery skin you could see their broken edges. When I got home from school in the afternoons, he would look at me and his tail would wag a few times. I would pet him-though I have to be honest here and say that the feel of his flesh made my skin crawl-then he would stare off into s.p.a.ce and I would be as good as alone until he came back, however long that might be. My buddies said he was sick, that I ought to have him put to sleep. I asked them if they'd like to be put to sleep when they got sick, and that shut them up.

The season of ghosts came upon us.

It was not just that Halloween loomed close at hand, and that the cardboard boxes of silky costumes and plastic masks appeared on the shelves at Woolworth's along with glittery magic wands, rubber pumpkin heads, witches' hats, and spiders jiggling on black webs. It was a feeling in the crisp twilight air; it was a hush across the hills. The ghosts were gathering themselves, building up their strength to wander the fields of October and speak to those who would listen. Because of my interest in monsters, my buddies and even my parents concluded that Halloween was my favorite time of year. They were right, but for the wrong reasons. They thought I relished the skeleton in the closet, the b.u.mp in the night, the sheet-wrapped spook in the house on the haunted hill. I did not. What I felt in the hushed October air, as Halloween came nearer, was not the dime-store variety of hobgoblin, but t.i.tanic and mysterious forces at work. These forces could not be named; not headless horseman, not howling werewolf or grinning vampire. These forces were as old as the world and as pure in their good or evil as the elements themselves. Instead of seeing gremlins under my bed, I saw the armies of the night sharpening swords and axes for a clash in the swirling mist. I saw in my imagination the tumult on Bald Mountain in all its wild and frantic frenzy, and at the crowing of a rooster to announce the dawn all the thousands of capering demons turning their hideous faces toward the east in sadness and disgust and marching away to their fetid dens in step with the "Anvil Chorus." I saw, as well, the broken-hearted lover pined away to a shade, the lost and sobbing translucent child, the woman in white who wants only kindness from a stranger.

It was thus on one of these still, cool nights approaching All Hallow's Eve that I went out to see Rebel in his pen and found someone standing there with him.

Rebel was sitting on his haunches, his scarred head c.o.c.ked to one side. He was staring at a figure who stood on the opposite side of the mesh fence. The figure-a little boy, I could tell it was-seemed to be talking to Rebel. I could hear the murmur of his voice. As soon as the back door closed behind me, the little boy jumped, startled, and took off running into the woods like a scalded cat. "Hey!" I shouted. "Wait!"

He didn't stop. He ran over the fallen leaves without making any noise at all. The woods swallowed him up.

The wind blew, and the trees whispered. Rebel circled around and around in his pen, dragging his withered leg. He licked my hand with his chilly tongue, his nose as cold as a lump of ice. I sat with him for a while. He tried to lick my cheek, but I turned my face away because his breath smelled like something dead. Then Rebel went into one of his fixed stares again, his muzzle aimed at the woods. His tail wagged a few times, and he whimpered.

I left him staring at nothing and I went inside because it was getting cold.

Sometime during the night, I woke up in agony because I had refused Rebel my cheek to lick. It was one of those things that grew and grew, until you couldn't stand to live with it inside you. I had rejected my dog, pure and simple. I had prayed Death away from him, and my selfishness had caused him to exist in this state of betwixt and between. I had rejected him, when all he'd wanted to do was lick my cheek. I got up in the dark, put on a sweater, and went to the back door. I was about to turn the back porch light on when I heard Rebel give a single bark that made my hand stop short of the switch.

After years of having a dog, you know him. You know the meaning of his snuffs and grunts and barks. Every twitch of the ears is a question or statement, every wag of the tail is an exclamation. I knew this bark: it spoke of excited happiness, and I hadn't heard it since before Rebel had died and come back to life.

Slowly and carefully, I nudged the back door open. I stood in the dark and listened through the screen. I heard the wind. I heard the last of summer's crickets, a hardy tribe. I heard Rebel bark again, happily.

I heard the voice of a little boy say, "Would you like to be my dog?"

My heart squeezed. Whoever he was, he was trying to be very quiet. "I sure would like for you to be my dog," he said. "You sure are a pretty dog."

I couldn't see Rebel or the little boy from where I stood. I heard the clatter of the fence, and I knew Rebel had jumped up and planted his paws in its mesh just as he used to do when I went out to be with him.

The little boy began to whisper to Rebel. I couldn't make out what was being said.

But I knew now who he was, and why he was here.

I opened the door. I tried to be careful, but a hinge chirped. It was no louder than one of the crickets. As I walked out onto the porch, I saw the little boy running for the forest and the moonlight shone silver on his curly, sandy-colored hair.

He was eight years old. He would be eight years old forever.

"Carl!" I shouted. "Carl Bellwood!"

It was the little boy who had lived down the street, and who had come to play with Rebel because his mother would not let him have a dog of his own. It was the little boy who had burned up in his bed when a bad electrical connection had thrown a spark, and who now slept on Poulter Hill under a stone that read Our Loving Son.

"Carl, don't go!" I shouted.

He glanced back. I caught the white blur of his face, his eyes scared and glittering with trapped moonlight. I don't think he ever got to the edge of the woods. He was just not there anymore.

Rebel began to whine and circle in his pen, the withered leg dragging. He looked toward the forest, and I could not help but see his longing. I stood at the pen's gate. The latch was next to my hand.

He was my dog. My dog.

The back porch light came on. Dad, his eyes squinty from sleep, demanded, "What's all this hollerin' about, Cory?"

I had to make up a story about hearing something rummaging around the garbage cans. I couldn't use Lucifer as an excuse, as the second week of October Lucifer had been shotgunned to nasty pieces by Gabriel "Jazzman" Jackson, who'd caught the monkey ravaging his wife's pumpkin patch. I said I thought it might have been a possum.

At breakfast I didn't feel like eating. The ham sandwich in my Clutch Cargo lunchbox remained untouched. At dinner I picked at my hamburger steak. Mom put her hand against my forehead. "You don't have a fever," she said, "but you do look kind of peaked." This was p.r.o.nounced peak-ed, and was Southern for "sick." "How do you feel?"

"All right." I shrugged. "I guess."

"Everythin' okay at school?" Dad inquired.

"Yes sir."

"Those Branlins aren't botherin' you anymore, are they?"

"No sir."

"But somethin' else is?" Mom asked.

I was silent. They could read me like a fifty-foot SEE ROCK CITY sign.

"Want to talk about it, then?"

"I..." I looked up at them in the comforting kitchen light. Beyond the windows, the land was dark. A wind sniffed around the eaves, and tonight clouds covered the moon. "I did wrong," I said, and before I could stop them tears came into my eyes. I began to tell my parents how much I regretted praying Death away from Rebel. I had done wrong, because Rebel had been so badly hurt he should've been allowed to die. I wished I hadn't prayed. I wished I could remember Rebel as he had been, bright-eyed and alert, before he had become a dead body living on the sheer power of my selfishness. I wished, I wished; but I had done wrong, and I was ashamed.

Dad's fingers turned his coffee cup around and around. It helped him sort things out, when there were many things to be considered. "I understand," he said, and two words were never more welcome. "You know, no mistake in the world can't be fixed. All it takes is wantin' to fix it. Sometimes it's hard, though. Sometimes it hurts to fix a mistake, but you have to do it no matter what." His eyes rested on me. "You know what ought to be done, don't you?"

I nodded. "Take Rebel back to Dr. Lezander."

"I think so," Dad said.

We were going to do it the next day. Later that night, as my bedtime approached, I took a piece of hamburger steak out for Rebel. It was a real dog's treat. I hoped he might eat it, but he smelled it and then just stared at the woods again as if waiting for someone to come for him.

I was no longer his master.

I sat beside him as the chill wind moved around us. Rebel made little whining noises deep in his throat. He let me pat him, but he was somewhere else. I remembered him as a puppy, full of boundless energy, enthralled by a yellow ball with a little bell in it. I remembered the times we had raced each other, and like a true Southern gentleman he had always let me win. I remembered when we flew, over the hills of summer. Even if that had only been in my imagination, it was truer than true. I cried some. More than some.

I stood up, and I turned toward the woods. I said, "Are you there, Carl?"

He didn't answer, of course. He had always been a shy little boy.

"I'm givin' Rebel to you, Carl," I said. "Okay?"

No answer. But he was there. I knew he was.

"Will you come get him, Carl? I don't want him to be alone very long."

Just silence. Just the silence, listening.

"He likes to have his ears scratched," I said. "Carl?" I called. "You're not burned up anymore, are you? Will Rebel... be like he used to be?"

The wind was speaking. Only that and nothing more.

"I'm goin' inside now," I said. "I won't come back out." I looked at Rebel. His attention was fixed on the woods, and his tail wagged the slightest bit. I walked into the house, shut the door, and turned off the back porch light.

Long past midnight, I awakened to the sound of Rebel's happy bark. I knew what I would see if I went to the back door. It was best they get to know each other without me b.u.t.ting in. I turned over, and I went back to sleep.

The next afternoon, at Dr. Lezander's, Dad and the doctor left me alone while I said good-bye to Rebel. He licked me with his cold tongue. I stroked his misshapen head and patted him for a while, and then it was time. Dr. Lezander had the form ready, and Dad held the pen poised for my final word.

"Dad?" I said. "He's my dog, isn't he?"

My father understood. "Yes, he sure is," he answered, and he gave the pen to me.

We left the form that said Case #3432 with Dr. Lezander, my name signed on the dotted line. When we got home again, I walked around in Rebel's pen. It seemed so very small. I left the gate open when I went out.

XXII Dead Man Driving

TOWARD THE END OF OCTOBER, DAD BOUGHT A WIRE BASKET FOR me to put on Rocket. At first I thought it was pretty cool, until I realized that now I would be expected to run all sorts of errands for Mom. It was about this time that she put up a hand-lettered sign on the bulletin-board at church, announcing that she was selling pies and other baked goods. A similar sign went up in the barbershop. A few orders began to come in, and soon Mom was elbow-deep in floury mixing bowls, eggsh.e.l.ls, and boxes of powdered sugar.

The reason for this, I later learned, was that Dad's hours had been cut back at the dairy. We were hurting for money, though I never would've known it. There was simply less work for Dad to do at Green Meadows. Some of the dairy's oldest customers had canceled their orders. It was because of the new supermarket in Union Town, which had recently opened its doors to the fanfare of the Adams Valley High School marching band. The supermarket, called Big Paul's Pantry, could've swallowed our own little Piggly-Wiggly like a whale swallows a shrimp. It had a section, it seemed, for everything under a fat man's chin. The milk section alone was a whole aisle, and all the milk was in opaque plastic jugs that didn't have to be rinsed out and returned. And because Big Paul stocked so much milk, he could afford to sell it at prices that knocked the stuffing out of Green Meadows Dairy. So it came to pa.s.s that Dad's milk route became progressively shorter, if such a thing can be called progress. People liked the newness of going into a clean, air-conditioned supermarket and buying their milk in plastic jugs and then throwing those jugs away without a second thought. Not only that, but Big Paul's Pantry stayed open until eight o'clock at night, which was unheard of.

Putting a basket on Rocket was like saddling Seabiscuit with mailbags. But I did my duty, carrying pies and cakes around to people in the afternoons, and Rocket stiffened up from time to time in protest but never dropped one item.

To show thanks to the Lezanders for being so kind to Rebel, Mom decided to make a pumpkin pie-her best seller-for them free of charge. She put the pie in a box, tied it up with twine, and I slid the box into Rocket's basket and pedaled for Dr. Lezander's house. On the way, I pa.s.sed Gotha and Gordo Branlin on their black bikes. Gotha acknowledged me with a slight lift of his chin, but Gordo-still wearing bandages that covered oozing sores-sped away like blue blazes. I got to Dr. Lezander's house and knocked on the back door, and in a minute Mrs. Lezander answered.

"Mom baked you and the doctor a pie," I said, offering her the box. "It's pumpkin."

"Oh, how very nice." She took it and sniffed around the lid. "Oh dear," she said. "Does this have cream in it?"

"Evaporated milk, I think." I should know. The kitchen was teeming with Pet Milk cans. "My mom made it this mornin'."

"It's very thoughtful of your mother, Cory, but I'm afraid neither of us can eat cream. We're both allergic to anything from a cow." She smiled. "That's how we met, all red and blotched at a clinic in Rotterdam."

"Oh. Gosh. Well, maybe you can give it to somebody else, then. It's a real good pie."

"I'm sure it's a wonderful pie." Vunderful, she'd said. "But if I even kept it in the house, Frans would get into it like a little mouse around midnight. He has the sweet tooth, you know. Then in two days he would look like he had the measles and he would itch so much he couldn't wear clothes. So, better not to even let Frans smell it, or he'd be walking around like Vernon Thaxter, yes?"

I laughed at that image. "Yes, ma'am." I took the pie back. "Maybe Mom can make you somethin' else, then."

"It's not necessary. Just the thought is kind enough."

I paused at the door, wondering if I should mention something that had been on my mind lately.

"Yes?" Mrs. Lezander prodded.

"Can I see the doctor? I'd like to talk to him for a minute."

"He's taking a nap right now. He stayed up all night listening to his radio shows."

"His radio shows?"

"Yes, he's got one of those shortwave radios. Sometimes he stays up until dawn listening to the foreign countries. May I give him a message?"

"Uh... I'll just talk to him later." What I wanted to ask was if he needed some help in the afternoons. After watching Dr. Lezander at work, it seemed to me that being a veterinarian was a pretty important job. I could be a veterinarian and a writer at the same time. The world would always need veterinarians, just like it would always need milkmen. "I'll come back some other time," I said, and I returned the pumpkin pie to Rocket's basket and headed for home.

I pedaled leisurely. Rocket acted a little nervous, but I took that to be his dissatisfaction with the basket, like a greyhound with a leash. The sun was warm and the hills were blazing yellow. A week from now the leaves would be brown and tumbling. It was one of those beautiful afternoons when even the blue shadows are lovely, and you know instinctively to slow down and enjoy things because they cannot and will not last.

I grinned, thinking of Dr. Lezander walking around as naked as Vernon Thaxter. That would be a sight, wouldn't it? I'd heard of people being allergic to gra.s.s, dogs and cats, ragweed, tobacco and dandelions. Grand Austin was allergic to horses; they made him sneeze until he could hardly stand, which was why he'd stopped going to the Brandywine Carnival when it came through town every November. Grandmomma Sarah said the Jaybird was allergic to work. I supposed people could be allergic to everything under and including the sun. Just think! Neither of the Lezanders could eat ice cream. They couldn't eat banana pudding, or drink a gla.s.s of vanilla milk. If I couldn't have any of those things, I'd go just as crazy as- Vernon came to mind.

Vernon, standing in that room with the trains circling little Zephyr.

You know what I believe?