The Pet

ELEVEN

Beautiful, thought Tar as he watched Mr. Boyd shovel the remains of the dead bird and dump them with his face averted into a plastic garbage bag. Don was in the driveway, hands in his pockets and staring out at the street. For a moment Tar thought the Duck had seen him, but no alarm was given. He heard the rattle of a garbage can lid being slammed into place, then the principal came out of the garage and put his arm around the Duck’s shoulders. They went into the house like that, the door slammed, and the porch light went out.

“Excellent,” Tar whispered, crouched low and bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Beautiful.”

He had run behind the empty tool shed in old man Delfield’s backyard when the cops finally came around, wedging himself between a stack of empty orange crates and the rear wall. They weren’t looking very hard, missed him, and after he was sure they weren’t coming back, he snuck around the side of the house and dropped into the corner of the front yard, protected by the hedges and a twisted oak at the curb. From there he had been able to watch everything, sorry only that he couldn’t hear what the two bastards were saying.

He waited another five minutes, licking his lips and grinning, before bulling through the hedge into the adjoining driveway. He walked slowly in case someone was watching, the baseball bat held tight against his leg, his football jacket turned inside out. As soon as he reached the corner, he slipped the bat into the storm drain and reversed the coat, then broke into a high-stepping run, mouth open in a silent laugh. He couldn’t wait to get home and call Brian, couldn’t wait to let the asshole know that Tar Boston was not just a stupid jock.

School Street was empty, and the pavement sounded like thin ice beneath his sneakers. By the time he reached the next corner he could feel the cut of the night air against his cheeks and in his lungs, and he sniffed to keep his nose from running. Now he wished he had the car, the ten-year-old junkpile his old man had bought for him on his last birthday. It barely ran, when it bothered to run at all, but the heater still worked and he could use it now.

Or the relative luxury of Pratt’s automobile.

He slowed and scowled. Stupid jock — that’s what Pratt had called him at practice today — stupid jock, get the fuck outta my way before I run you down. There was a bug up his ass, that’s for sure, because he hardly said two words to him and Fleet the whole time, even when they were doing weights after the coach had left. Like he was mad or something, and Tar hadn’t been able to get him to tell him what was the matter.

Fleet was almost as bad, but different. That jerk acted like he was running from the cops or something, the way he kept looking around on the way home. Tar had gotten so damned nervous he almost sideswiped a bus.

But Fleet wouldn’t say anything either.

And it wasn’t until Tar was home and eating supper that he had the idea that would even the score between himself and the Duck for accusing him and Pratt of dumping that shit on Hedley’s porch. A truly fantastic idea. A blow at the fucking principal and at the Duck at the same time. Stunning. And it would shut Pratt up about how Tar must’ve blown it when the Duck didn’t get the blame the way it was planned. The idea for the dead bird came as he passed a butcher shop on the way home and saw a goose in the window. From there it was a simple matter of stopping at a friend’s house, a friend who had two little brothers who kept four ducks in a pen in the backyard. He didn’t even have to look at the bird; he’d clobbered it with a stick while it struggled in the burlap bag he’d dropped over its head; then he’d wrung its neck. Not a speck of blood on him. Even when he dropped it into the bushes he didn’t look. Didn’t have to. Didn’t even care if the Boyds found it that night or the next morning.

He picked up the pace, racing for the goal line with Pratt the jerk blocking in front of him.

The hard part was getting the car. He knew he would have time for only a few good blows before somebody heard him, and after he’d taken care of the bike, he took them standing on the hood. He pretended the windshield was Boyd’s face, that the hood was the Duck’s chest, and it had been beautiful! And a shame that Brian couldn’t be there. But he was acting like an asshole, like the minute after the game the pros were going to carry him away to the Super Bowl on their goddamned shoulders, for Christ’s sake.

He rounded another corner and headed for home, taking in air in deep, satisfying gulps. It was going to be like this tomorrow night. He was going to take North apart, and those fuckers wouldn’t know what hit them. It was going to be excellent, and Brian was going to have to show him respect. Absolutely.

Something moved behind him.

He turned and walked backward a few steps, seeing nothing but the empty sidewalk, the porch lights hazed in the crisp air, the cars at the curb silent and black. He turned again and groaned when he saw a battered pickup in the driveway, blocking his own car — his old man was home early from the factory tonight. That meant he was going to have to put up with the back-slapping and the jabbing and the reminders of how the old fart had been a star in his day, the best quarterback in the state and don’t you forget it, boy, when I give you the best goddamned advice you ever had in your life. The trouble was, it’s been twenty years since they played the way his old man did, and the jerk didn’t know it. He didn’t know why his mother put up with it, and him, all these years. He sure as hell wasn’t going to. As soon as he had that diploma in hand, he was gone. Out of that house and out of this town and out of this whole goddamned state if he could.

Something moved.

Shit, he thought, angry at the way his good mood could be shattered by the simple thought of his father. Shit!

He looked over his shoulder, his expression daring anyone to say something, to do something, even to breathe wrong tonight. And he walked past his house with his head down and averted, spitting at the pickup, zipping up his jacket and jamming his hands into his pockets. Fuck it, he would walk over to Brian’s instead of calling. The story would be better anyway, with him doing the telling in person.

Something …

He stopped at the boulevard, looked up and down the avenue, and then whirled around, fists at the ready.

There was nothing there.

But something was moving.

“Yo!” he said loudly.

A porch light blinked out, and he could see his breath feathering out of his mouth.

With his head tilted slightly to one side, he stepped off the curb and looked curiously down the block, under the trees that reached over the blacktop and created a tunnel almost solidly black. He tried to bring to mind a picture of Don’s stricken face when he found the dead bird, when he discovered the bike, because suddenly and inexplicably anything would be better than seeing into that dark. But all he could see was the broken and faded white line stretching into the night, and something in the middle moving toward him without a sound.

“Yo, stupid!” he called.

Only one streetlamp worked, and his gaze kept moving toward its light where it caught the front end of a car and the lip of a driveway.

“Asshole,” he muttered, and turned away, but didn’t move. He was suddenly indecisive. Beacher’s was already closed, and the idea of going to Brian’s didn’t seem as much fun as he’d thought. But he couldn’t go home. Not yet. Not until his old man had had his beers and was asleep on the couch and his mother had already finished the dishes. Then he’d be able to kiss her goodnight and go to bed, get some sleep. Tomorrow, as the coach kept reminding them, was the Big Day, as if they didn’t know it, and he supposed he might as well get all the rest he could.

Tomorrow, he was going to be a hero, and the hell with Brian Pratt.

Then he heard something move and he whirled again, and took a deep breath, holding it until John Delfield’s fat dachshund waddled into the light.

Don stood in the shower, oblivious to the hot water turning his skin pink. Slowly he pulled the plastic curtain aside and stared again at the jeans lying beside the wicker laundry basket. A bit of red leather poked out from one pocket. His hand released the curtain and it rattled closed, and the steam rose to cover his face while he tried to understand what was going on. He knew who the keys belonged to. He knew what he should have done the second he had found them. Yet he’d put them in his pocket and had said nothing, hadn’t heard a word his father had said about whoever had committed that atrocity, hadn’t felt a thing except a slow roll of nausea he only just managed to keep down.

Norman had suggested they not mention it to his mother; she was upset enough about the car, and they needn’t bother her with this. He hinted about Brian, about Tar, even about Fleet, and there was something in his voice that made Don stare at him for a second — a realization that Norman didn’t like kids.

It wasn’t just the troublemakers, the snobs, the ones with influential parents who made being a principal a vicious sort of hell — it was kids, period. And he remembered his father saying once that he wished all children could be born adults, without the parents having to do anything but show them the front door. Don had thought it a joke then; now he knew, perhaps more than Norman did, that it wasn’t a joke at all.

That, more than anything, had stopped him from fixing the blame. His father, in the mood he was in now, would have gone over to the Bostons and had Tar arrested — after he had slammed him a few times into a wall.

Because of the car; you win some, you lose some was the only epitaph for the bike.

He backed out of the spray and wiped the water from his face, sat on the cool edge of the tub with his hands dangling between his knees. Tracey was right; but it wasn’t just Brian who was jealous, it was Tar as well. He doubted that Pratt had put his friend up to it tonight, because it wasn’t Brian’s style. But he guessed that Brian had said something today to give Tar the idea that something had to be done to put Don in his place, retaliation for being called into his father’s office.

He moved the curtain again and looked at the key case, and he smiled. There was power of some kind in that bit of cheap dime store leather. He knew it, and now all he had to do was figure out how to use it.

The simplest thing would be to threaten to show it to his father. And if that didn’t work, he could bring it to the police. Tar would protest, of course, and claim that he’d lost it or something, but there’d be enough hassle, enough problems, that “He’ll beat the shit out of you.”

The words were soft in the room’s steamy fog, but harsh enough to make him sigh.

Someone rapped on the door, and he turned off the shower, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist. His mother called, and he yelled back, telling her he’d be only a few minutes more. And when he was dry, he held the jeans to his waist and slipped into the hall. A light was still on in his parents’ room. The downstairs was dark. Shivering at the shock of cool air on his skin, he hurried into his own room and closed the door behind him, dropped the jeans where he stood and dropped onto the bed.

A few minutes later he stirred, stood, and padded to the window.

The backyard was empty.

All right, he thought to his friend in the dark, now that I know you’re there, what do we do next?

“Stupid mutt,” Tar said. He approached the dog with one hand out and waving. The fat old thing had gotten out again, probably through the flap Delfield had put in the back door of his house. Sometimes the old man forgot to latch it at night, and the dog would spend hours roaming the neighborhood, getting at garbage cans, digging up flower beds, until someone spotted it and brought it back. Tar had always ignored it before. The last time, however, he’d been pissed on beer and grabbed it up and took it back himself before he knew what he was doing. Delfield had given him ten bucks for the trouble. Crazy. Just like the dog.

But hell, he thought as he bent into a crouch, ten bucks is ten bucks.

“C’mon, stupid,” he said in a pleasant voice. “C’mon to Tar or I’ll cut your head off.”

The dachshund recognized his voice and stopped in the middle of the streetlamp’s fall, its rat’s tail wagging furiously, its tongue lolling from the side of its mouth.

“C’mon, baby, come to Tar.”

The dog sat on its haunches.

“Ah, Jesus.”

He straightened and took a step forward, and stopped when he saw a shadow on the other side of the light.

The dog yipped once and jumped to its feet, its head down now, its tail snaking contritely between its legs.

Tar squinted and moved to his right toward the middle of the road, snapping his fingers in an effort to bring the dog to him while he tried to make out who was standing there in the road.

The wind rose.

A trailer truck coughed and thundered down the boulevard behind him.

Then a hand swooped into the light and snatched up the dog, and John Delfield followed, shaking the animal lightly before hugging it to his side.

“Foolish beast,” he said with a slight German accent, and smiled at Tar. “You try to catch him for me?”

Tar nodded, wondering what in hell was wrong with his heart that it wouldn’t stop pounding. Hell, it was only old man Delfield and who the hell was scared of him?

The dachshund squirmed in the man’s grasp, but Delfield managed to reach into a hip pocket and pull out his wallet, finger out a bill. “Take it,” he insisted when Tar protested with a wave. “You try. That’s good as doing.”

Tar accepted the money with a nod and a smile, and watched him waddle off around the corner. Crazy, he thought; the two of them are goddamn crazy. Then he raked a hand through his hair and decided to drive over to Pratt’s anyway. Walking now was out of the question. He reached for his keys, and couldn’t find them.

“What the …?”

He slapped at his pockets, turned them all out, then rolled his eyes skyward and slammed the heel of his hand against a temple. “Fuck. Jesus … fuck!”

They must have fallen out at Boyd’s while he was doing the station wagon. Christ, all he needed now was for someone to pick them up and his ass was grass. Damn, he had to go back and find those stupid keys. He started for the curb, and stopped again.

Down at the end of the block, barely lit by the streetlamps on School Street, something was standing. And watching.

Delfield, he thought; the stupid dog must’ve gotten away again and the old man was out prowling.

It moved, then, out of the light, into the dark, and Tar heard the distinct sound of something breathing. Something large, and breathing heavily.

He half-turned toward the boulevard, and swiveled his head back slowly.

He was mistaken; it wasn’t Delfield and it wasn’t his imagination.

It was there, and it was darker than the shadows, moving slowly toward him straight down the white line. He could hear it breathing, snorting once, and could hear the sound of something hard striking the blacktop, rhythmically, steadily, and unless he was as crazy as Delfield, it sounded just like a horse.

He blinked and took a side-step toward the avenue.

He shuddered, unable to shake the feeling that whatever it was, it was coming for him, not toward him. That was stupid. It was all stupid. There were no horses in Ashford, and it was only Delfield for god’s sake looking for his stupid fat dog.

Closer to the light, and he saw a glint of dark green hovering in the air; two of them now, and a long second passed before he realized they were eyes. Green eyes. Large, and slanted, and staring right at him.

The streetlight didn’t reach to the middle of the blacktop, but when it passed the white on the ground, Tar could see a massive black flank, and the side of a massive head. One green eye flaring. A flash of long white teeth.

And steam, maybe smoke, drifting from its nostrils.

“Shit,” he said, and started to trot away. He didn’t know what it was, but he wasn’t going to hang around long enough to find out. He’d go somewhere else. Maybe Brian would know.

The sound picked up speed, and when he reached the middle of the empty boulevard, he looked over his shoulder and saw it.

Running, forelegs high, hooves casting greenfire and greeneyes dark with hate.

The hope it might have been some sort of joke, Don getting back at him for the dead bird and the bike, faded to an ember. And something inside told him he was dying.

Running, galloping, and seemingly moving in slow motion.

He broke into a panicked sprint, slanting across the avenue toward the inlands in the center, leaping the curb and ducking around the trees, the bushes, toward the center of town. Sooner or later he’d see a car, the cops, and everything would be all right.

Don’t look; and he did.

It was pacing him ten yards behind, fully visible now and terrifyingly huge. Green eyes staring, greenfire snapping, the steam from its nostrils raising a cloud that it moved through, an ebony ghost flying through the boiling fog.

Tar whimpered and ran harder, leaping over a fallen branch, plowing through a bush he couldn’t swerve around in time. He stumbled and grabbed a tree trunk, spun around, and ran again.

Hooves on the blacktop, iron striking iron.

A U-turn break in the island surprised him, and he fell shouting to the street, the skin on his palms scraping onto the tarmac, one cheek slamming down and bringing tears to his eyes. He lay for several seconds gulping air, wondering where all the traffic was, the people, why couldn’t anyone see what was going on? He swallowed and tasted blood; he pushed himself to his knees and staggered to his feet.

A snorting; he spun around, and it was standing right behind him.

Tar screamed for his father.

And the stallion reared in a cloud of greenfire and white.

The telephone rang, and Tracey hurried into the kitchen to grab it before it woke her mother or one of her nosey sisters. She hadn’t been able to sleep, had come downstairs to do some studying, which she knew would make her tired sooner or later. A knee banged against a chair and she swore as she yanked the handset off the cradle, taking a moment before saying hello.

“Trace?”

“Don?” She fumbled for the chair and sat down in the dark.

“You awake?”

“Yeah, sure.” She tried to see the wall clock in the dark, but there was only enough light from the front room to tell her it was close to midnight; how close she couldn’t tell.

“No, you weren’t. I woke you. I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t asleep, Vet,” she said almost angrily. “I was studying.” She inhaled slowly and rubbed a knuckle across her eyes. “What’s the matter, something wrong?”

“Why should anything be wrong?”

“Well, it’s nearly twelve on a school night for one thing. And you’re whispering for another.”

“So are you.”

“I don’t want to get killed.”

“Neither do I.”

She pushed the chair closer to the doorway so she could see the front door. Her father was due back from his shift any minute now, and she didn’t want him catching her on the phone. After wriggling back on the seat, she brought up her legs to sit Indian fashion, holding on to one ankle with her free hand. “Don, what’s up? You want me to elope or something?”

He laughed, and she was glad to hear it; she hadn’t heard much of that lately and it made her feel good. “C’mon, hero, what’s the occasion?”

She listened without comment then as he told her about the car, and the dead bird mangled in his front yard. And when he told her about finding Boston’s car keys under the bike’s wheel, she groaned. “What a jerk,” she said. “What a stupid jerk.” When Don agreed, she asked what he was going to do.

“I don’t know. I thought I was going to let him know I knew and maybe he’d get off my case. But I figure he’d deny it, then rearrange my face for the parade.”

“God, what a mess.”

He said nothing, and her eyes narrowed. This wasn’t it, she thought; this isn’t why he’s calling.

“Tracey?”

“Still here, hero.”

A pause. “I like ‘Vet’ better.”

She frowned now. “Sure. Okay.”

“Trace, this may sound dumb, but have you ever made a wish?”

Have I ever, she thought, and what’s wrong with you, Don?

“Sure I have,” she said. “Every year on my birthday I blow my lungs out for a zillion bucks and a mansion in Beverly Hills. Doesn’t everybody?”

“You ever wish on a star?”

“What is this? Hey, are you trying to get me to do a term paper for you or something? Is that what this is? Are you taking a survey?”

“Tracey, please.”

She heard it then, and she didn’t believe it. Because they were both whispering, it had been difficult to tell, but the moment she recognized it, she knew it was true — Don was afraid of something, and it wasn’t Tar Boston.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Yeah, I do now and then.” She laughed. “Silly, isn’t it?”

“Do they ever come true? Your wishes, I mean.”

“Don … no. I mean, I don’t think they do. Not like they were magic, anyway. You wish for something hard enough and it comes true? No. You work at it and make the wishes come true yourself, if you know what I mean.”

“God.”

“Hey, Vet, would you please tell me what this is all about?”

“Tracey—”

A key rattled in the front door, and Tracey quickly told Don her father was home, she’d see him tomorrow in school. She hung up and had the chair back in place just as her father walked in the door. When he demanded to know why she was up so late, she pointed to her books in the living room and explained that she hadn’t been able to sleep and, she added when she saw the expression on his face, what was wrong, was he hurt?

“No,” he said wearily. “A hit-and-run just before I left.”

“Oh, god, no.” A closer look, then, and she bit down on her lower lip. “It was somebody I know, wasn’t it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Father.”

He made his way toward the kitchen, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Father?”

“Please, child, go to bed.”

“What?” she insisted.

“It was as if someone had run him down, then kept backing over him. Again and again. He’s so mangled we don’t know who he is yet.”