The Pet

FOUR

On Saturday afternoon Don returned with his mother from a shopping expedition for new clothes during which she cited dubious, sometimes outlandish statistics which contrasted the annual before- and after-taxes incomes of veterinarians and surgeons, suggesting jokingly that spending the day shoving your hand up animals’ rectums and down their throats was about as glamorous and status-marking as his late grandfather’s working for the cloth mills here in town. Don laughed and almost told her what he was really planning.

When they arrived home, he found his father in his room, looking at his pets.

“Aren’t you a little old for these?” Norm asked, and left without an answer.

In the middle of the hall on Monday Don grabbed Jeff’s arm and nearly spilled the books he was carrying.

“Jeff, you got a minute?”

“Hey, it’s the Detention Kid. What’s up? The bell’s gonna ring. Jesus, that eye looks like hell!”

“Thanks a lot, pal. It feels better, sort of. Look, I want to ask you about Tracey Quintero.”

“What’s to ask? You know her as well as I do.”

“I want to know if she’s with Brian.”

“Brian? Brian the Prick Pratt? That Brian?”

“Stop kidding, Jeff, I gotta know.”

“Jesus, where the hell’ve you been? And she isn’t. Hey, you know that kid that got offed in the park last week? It was the Howler, they said. Chewed the poor bastard up like he was dog meat or something. That guy’s a real pervert, you know it? Killed five kids in New York. Like us, I mean, not little kids.”

“Jeff, I don’t care about some freak, I am talking about Tracey.”

“And I told you she’s not with Brian, okay?”

“But the other night at the park, after the concert …”

“You mean all that talk about her boobs?”

“Well …”

“Boyd, are you really that dense?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Brian sees boobs on anything that even faintly looks like a female. And if you listen real close, you’d think he’s laid every damn one of them.”

“Then she isn’t.”

“His? Hell, no.”

“Jeez. Oh … jeez.”

“You gonna tell me what this is all about or am I gonna have to read it in the paper?”

“Can’t, Jeff. The bell’s rung. We’re late.”

That afternoon Detective Sergeant Thomas Verona walked into Norm’s office, Patrol Sergeant Luis Quintero at his side. After a few minutes of small talk, Quintero left to have a word with the secretaries in the outer office, and Verona asked the principal if he had heard anything, rumors or otherwise, about a stranger hanging around the school. Norm insisted he hadn’t, but if the police wanted to ask either students or teachers during school time, it would have to be cleared with the board first. He himself didn’t mind, though he didn’t quite understand why they were interested if the man was already gone. That, he said when the policeman looked at him oddly, was the usual pattern as he understood it: the Howler would strike, then move on to another town. Verona, whose father had worked the mills and had known Norman since they were kids, told him off the record that if the guy had actually approached any of the students, or if he had gotten wind of the Ashford Day activities, there was a fair chance he’d stick around because there were going to be a lot of people on the streets starting the middle of next week, and safety in numbers was apparently something he counted on. When Norm asked why the man hadn’t yet been caught, Verona, again off the record, told him there wasn’t a picture, not a fingerprint, nor a scrap of cloth or drop of blood to build even the skimpiest physical profile. They couldn’t begin to guess at his appearance, though they didn’t have to guess at his strength. Norman didn’t ask for more details, but he did promise to keep his ears open and to have a quiet word with the faculty to the effect that it would probably not be a good idea to keep kids very long after school for a while. Verona appreciated the cooperation and suggested they stop being strangers after so many years and have a beer together sometime soon. Verona’s wife was on the committee with Joyce, and the detective allowed as how he was tired of being an Ashford Day widower. Norman laughed, but he didn’t think it was very funny.

After gym Don managed to get next to Fleet under the last nozzle, for the first time forgetting his embarrassment at seeing another guy naked. It took him a moment, too, to stop staring at the clouds of freckles that covered Fleet’s body.

“Hey, Fleet, is Trace … you know, is she Brian’s girl?”

“Trace? Gimme the soap, man, I smell like horseshit. Trace Quintero, the cop’s kid?”

“Yeah.”

“Nah. Last I heard she wasn’t with nobody.”

“No kidding.”

“Man, will you look at that gorgeous eye! You put a steak or something on that, or you’ll go blind, sure as shit. Jesus, Brian can be … never mind. Hey, you interested in Trace?”

“I don’t know. Hey, Fleet, c’mon, that’s my soap! Don’t pass it around.”

“Y’know, you’d do better with somebody like Chrissy Snowden, man. Don’t you dare tell Amanda I said this, she’ll cut my ass off, but that’s one hell of a woman, if you catch my drift.”

“I guess.”

“You guess? Jesus, Don, you mean you ain’t once whacked off just thinking about that fox?”

“Donny, you are truly hopeless. You are an excellent human being, but you are truly hopeless.”

“I suppose.”

“A good thing you didn’t meet up with that dude that stomped that kid. You probably would’ve asked him home for dinner. You’re a good man, Don, but you need a little spunk, you know what I mean? A little of the old intestinal fortitude when it comes to dealing with the real world.”

“I do all right, and gimme back my soap, damnit.”

“What I think you’d best do is tell everyone you got that eye in a fight. You get a little respect and you get all the women you need, if you know what I mean.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

“It’s never too late to lie through your teeth, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Besides, from what I hear, under all them sweaters Tracey’s a carpenter’s dream-flat as a board.”

Don wasn’t sure if it was a nightmare or a dream. He walked through the rest of the week with a slight smile on his face, a good word for everyone including Brian Pratt, and he didn’t even blush when Chris came up to him in the hall and touched a finger to his cheek, wincing at the purpled blotch around his eye and hoping in a soft and high voice that he wasn’t hurting too badly; when he sputtered nonsense for an answer, she didn’t laugh, she only smiled and winked as she left. On the other hand, he didn’t hear a thing any of his teachers said, and twice he was reprimanded for daydreaming in class. Falcone’s announcement that the test papers wouldn’t be ready until the following week didn’t faze him; Hedley’s glare in the hall didn’t register until an hour later; when his detention supervisors snapped at him for staring, he didn’t know what they were talking about, and they told him he was rude and would let the front office know; and when Tar Boston jammed his locker with a pen on Thursday, he only shrugged and walked away without his books.

It wasn’t right. He was acting like a fool, knew it, and couldn’t do anything about it. He was beginning to regret his rash invitation; yet between classes he loitered near the doors as long as he dared, trying to get a glimpse of Tracey, just nod to her casually, give her a knowing smile, and remind her with a look of their date this week.

He didn’t see her.

By Friday noon he hadn’t seen her once close enough to give the signal and he became convinced she was avoiding him, ashamed because she couldn’t think of a decent excuse to get out of their date. He knew, beyond question, there would be a message for him when he got home — she had a headache, she had to do her hair, she had to go back to her grandmother’s on Long Island and they were leaving again right after school. By the end of his last class he was ready to believe that Brian had put her up to accepting, another classic gag on the stupid Duck, and since he was who he was, it didn’t make any difference if his feelings were hurt.

As he stowed his books in his locker, he almost cried; as he started for the side exit and a run around the track, he almost screamed Tracey’s name. But he didn’t. That was a rule too — it was all right for his mother to shout, to cry, but it wasn’t all right for him. Or his father. Hold it in and work it out, his father had told him; hold it in and work it out. That’s what a man does.

Hold it in.

Work it out.

And it wasn’t until he was halfway down the steps to the gym that he remembered today was the last day of his detention.

The hell with it; he wasn’t going to go. There was no way he was going to sit one more day in a stuffy room staring at the ceiling while his whole life was slipping away between his fingers. He gripped the railing and continued down, slower now, listening to his heels crack on the iron tips of the steps. No; he had to run. He had to think. And to think, he had to run.

“Don?”

His father was on the bottom landing with Gabby D’Amato, the head custodian. He glanced at his watch, then raised an eyebrow over a faintly amused look.

“You forget something?”

His face grew hot, and he almost told his father to shove it, to take the detention and cram it because it wasn’t deserved and he didn’t do it and who the hell was he to play God with his life?

Why the hell, he wanted to shout, didn’t the old man get the hell off his back and put the pressure on someone else for a change.

He wanted to.

He almost did.

Until he thought about what it would be like when he got home, what his mother would say, how his father would treat him.

Hold it in; work it out.

Shit, he thought; oh, shit.

So he gave his father a sheepish smile and headed back to his locker to get something to read. Below, he heard the two men talking, laughing quietly, Norman’s slap of the hunkered old man’s shoulder. If the black horse were here, he thought as he pushed into the hall, he’d smash them into the wall without a second thought.

Dinner was almost like the good old days. His father was in a great mood, his mother chatted excitedly about the committee meeting at the high school that night, and he managed not to tell them about what had happened after detention.

First it had been Tar and Brian.

They were on their way to practice and had wedged him into a corner, slapping his shoulder and punching him lightly on the arm.

“Hey, fucker,” Tar said, his mood as black as his hair, “you trying to get us in trouble?”

“What?”

Brian, who thought that his rugged playing-field-bashed face and close-cropped blond hair made him look like a marine, took hold of his belt and yanked him closer. “Your daddy had a talk with us, sonny. He said we shouldn’t do things like stink up Hedley’s room anymore.”

Oh, Christ, Don thought; oh, Christ.

“Now, he didn’t do nothing,” Tar said, grinning to show Don a mouth filled with nicotined teeth, “but he did say he’d keep an eye on us, didn’t he, Brian?”

“Damn right.”

“Now look, guys,” Don said, and gasped when a stiff finger jabbed into his stomach.

“No,” Brian said. “You look, Duck. You look good, because Tar baby and me, we don’t forget. And we sure as shit don’t forgive.”

They grinned and stepped away, and as they moved toward the door, Brian looked over his shoulder. “Watch your back, Duck. I’m gonna bust it, and I ain’t telling you when.”

After they left, Falcone came up to him, frowning. “You having trouble with the boys, Donald?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh, good.” And he handed him his test paper and said with a smile, “For you, Boyd, just for you.” A look at his grade and he groaned — passing, but just barely.

The red had come then.

The familiar red that took him when he started to lose his temper (hold it in), the red cloud that whirled around him and threatened to suck the ground from under his feet and left only when he forced himself to remember the rule (work it out). But this time it was hard. Hedley and Mrs. Klass had been lecturing him all week during detention on his responsibilities, on his daydreaming, on the slip of his grades. And now this.

It lasted only a moment, and when the red left, he was leaning against the wall, trembling, and Falcone was gone.

Now dinner was fun, and he didn’t mention that test paper for fear he’d be grounded for the rest of his life. Nor did he say anything about Brian and Tar. Norman would only tell him he’d simply handed them a friendly warning; he wouldn’t believe that one of these days Don was going to pay for his father’s big mouth.

He showered after dessert, washed his hair, and nearly cried when he couldn’t locate a clean pair of jeans right away. A quick whisper to the horse about the girl he was seeing 81

and a wish that he not make a complete fool of himself — and he touched the animal’s nose for luck. A shirt with a pullover sweater, shoes generally worn on Sundays, and he was finally in the foyer checking his wallet when his father came out of the kitchen munching on an apple.

“Out with the boys, huh?” Norman said.

“No,” his mother called gaily from the kitchen. “I think he has a date.”

“He does? No kidding.”

“No,” his mother said. “Really.”

Don felt as if he had been rendered invisible and shifted to recapture his father’s attention. “Yeah,” he said, stepping back for approval. “Going to a movie. Maybe to Beacher’s for something after. I don’t know. She has to be back by midnight.”

“Ah, Cinderella,” his mother said, laughing, and he wondered how her hearing had gotten suddenly so acute.

“Who is it?” Norman asked, his hand magically holding a ten-dollar bill when Don turned back from the coat closet with his windbreaker in hand. “An advance on your allowance,” he explained when Don hesitated. “Hell, why not. Anyone I know?”

“Probably,” he said, slipping on the coat and opening the door. “Tracey Quintero.”

“Quintero?” Norman frowned for a moment. “Oh! Oh, yes, yes. Little Italian girl. In your class. A senior.”

“Spanish, Dad. She’s Spanish. Her father’s from Madrid. He’s a cop.”

“Oh. Well.”

“Remind him about tonight, Norm,” Joyce called over the rush of water from the faucet.

Don waited, smiling, while his father rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “You remember the meeting, right?”

“Right.” He grinned. “And I know — if I’m home before you are, the key’s in the garage if I’ve lost mine, and I’d better be home before you are or I’ll be in deep … trouble.”

Norman grinned and slapped his arm. “Just watch it, okay? Don’t give your mother hysterics by being too late.”

Joyce called out something else, but it was drowned in a louder roar from the garbage disposal, and he nodded quickly to his father, was answered with a wink, and left as fast as he dared. He knew that look on the man’s face — it came when Norman thought it was time to have a man-to-man talk, usually when one or the other had only five minutes to get where they were going. And usually it was aborted before the first sentence was done.

God, that was close, he thought, shook himself dramatically and waved to his mother, who was standing in the living room window drying her hands, Norman at her side. They always did that, waiting as if he were going off to war; and if he didn’t get back first, they would be there when he returned, slightly drunk from the bourbons they’d had while watching TV.

Waiting for their baby.

But tonight, if he were lucky, they would have had a good meeting — teachers, public officials, and the Ashford Day committee — and won’t be stiff from a fight.

Can it, he ordered then. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about them when he had himself to worry about — what to say, how to say it, how to impress Tracey without tripping over his tongue. His usual dates weren’t really dates at all but a gathering of forces down at Beacher’s Diner next to the theater. It might have been a real diner once, but now it was more like a restaurant with a counter in front. Weeknights it closed at nine; weekends it catered to the movie crowd and the teens, and more often than not six or seven of them would troop into the theater together.

On the other hand, when he was alone with a girl he was lucky if he could think of a dozen coherent words to say between the time he picked her up and the time he brought her home.

He checked his watch under a streetlight and broke into a lazy trot. Tracey lived seven blocks down and two over, and he didn’t want to be late. He only hoped that her father was on night shift this time; the man scared him to death. He was short, built like a concrete barrel, and if he ever had a good word to say about anyone under forty, Don had yet to hear it.

Please, God, he pleaded as he turned into her block; please don’t let Sergeant Quintero be there.

And as he walked up to the door, he checked to be sure his fingernails were clean.

“I swear to god,” Brian said, his voice overriding the others sitting at the counter with him. “I mean, they were out to here!” He stretched out his arms, curved his hands back, and flexed his fingers. “To frigging here, for god’s sake.”

There were a few sniggers, some groans, and Joe Beacher in his stained apron and squashed chefs cap scowled until Pratt shrugged an apology for the language.

The front section of the diner was a long counter with eighteen stools and five jukebox terminals, and nine small tables arranged in front of the wall-long window; there was only one waitress and Joe Beacher himself, who knew he belonged in front, rough-dressed, and not in back wearing a suit. The decor was Formica and aluminum, with a roundfaced clock on the wall beside the door, above an array of posters announcing upcoming charitable events, rummage sales, and the Ashford Little Theater’s latest program. A wide passage straight from the entrance ran past the cash register to the larger dining room in back, where the walls were paneled in pine and had watercolor landscapes depicting each of the seasons. The tables were larger, were wood, and the menus were tucked into red leather binders; three waitresses here, and Joe’s brother-in-law in a black suit that passed for gentility and a bit of class. Just now the room was nearly filled as families and high-spending seniors hurried to finish their meals in time for the nine-fifteen show; and despite the Jekyll-and-Hyde appearance, the food was about the best in town.

Don stood just over the threshold, Tracey behind him, and he hesitated until she poked his back. A quick smile and he stepped aside, let her pass, and followed her to a small round table in the center of the diner’s front window. When he held the chair for her, there were whistles from the counter; when he sat, Pratt cupped his hands around his mouth and made a loud farting noise.

Don winced and there was laughter, and more when his cheeks flushed a faint pink.

“Damn,” he muttered under his breath, and Tracey smiled at him, telling him silently to ignore it as she handed him a plastic-coated single-page menu from behind the napkin dispenser. He inhaled slowly and nodded, and scanned the offerings though he knew them by heart.

“Hey, Don,” said Tar Boston, spinning around on his stool, “a good flick or what?”

He didn’t know, though he said it was all right, nothing great, lots of blood, shooting, stuff like that. He didn’t know because he had been too busy sneaking sideways looks at Tracey, debating whether to try to hold her hand, or put his arm around her shoulder, or even to steal a kiss. He had known her for years but had never been out with her alone; he had confided in her as a friend ever since junior high, but when she slipped off her jacket and he saw that she had, under all those clothes, an honest-to-god figure, he didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t Tracey the friend any longer; this was Tracey the woman, and suddenly he didn’t know which rules to follow.

The realization that things had changed without his knowing it made him miserable throughout the film, seeing nothing, hearing little, though he could have told anyone who asked exactly how many lines there were at the corner of her right eye, how high the white collar of her shirt reached toward her ear, how the intricate twirls and tucks of her hair related to each other as they brushed back toward her nape.

Brian hummed the school song mockingly, loudly, then leapt from his stool and stretched as he announced it was time for the real men to head next door, to see how Dirty Harry compared unfavorably with the Pratt. Groans again, and only Tar strutted with him to the door, their dates hustling out behind them. Fleet and his girl, Amanda, stopped by the table and asked again about the film.

“Boring,” Tracey said. Then she winked at Amanda, “Unless you’re into Eastwood.”

Amanda clung to Fleet’s arm and feigned a swoon, and was rewarded with a slap to her rump for her troubles.

Don laughed and relaxed a bit, and wondered aloud what the coach would think of his three top players staying out so late the night before a game.

“The man,” Fleet said, “just doesn’t realize that an athlete who is so smooth and graceful like myself needs a bit of relaxation and stimulation before the impending onslaught in the trenches.” He grinned. “How ‘bout them words, huh? Mandy makes me do crossword puzzles in bed.”

Amanda slapped his back, hard, and a brief scowl crossed his face before he laughed with the others and made his way to the door. As it hissed shut behind him, he stuck his head back in and winked broadly at Don, circling thumb and forefinger and making a fist with his free hand.

Don grinned back, and sobered as soon as Robinson was gone. This was a disaster, and for the first time in ages he wished the guys had stuck around. Even the teasing he’d get would be better than sitting here like a dummy, playing with the salt shaker, rearranging the silverware and paper place mat, finally folding his hands on the table as if doing penance in the third grade.

“Are you all right?” Tracey asked. “You’ve been awfully quiet since we left the house.”

He ducked his head and shook it. “Fine. I’m okay, no problem.”

“It was a lousy movie.”

“Yeah.”

“My father scared you, didn’t he?”

He looked up without raising his head and was pleasantly surprised to see the distress in her eyes. He couldn’t deny it, however; Luis Quintero had scared the shit out of him, standing there, in uniform, in the middle of the living room and reading him, quietly, the that’s-my-baby-and-don’t-you-forget-it riot act: do not mess with her, do not corrupt her, do not get her drunk, do not bring her back a second late, do not show yourself in this house again if you as much as breathe on a single hair of her head. Then he had shaken Don’s hand solemnly and walked out of the room, leaving him to wonder what the hell had happened to make the man so unpleasant.

Tracey told him it was the Howler. It had taken her an hour to convince him Don wasn’t the killer, that his father was the principal, for crying out loud, and that she wasn’t going to have to enter a convent just because she went out with a boy.

“Does … does he do that all the time?” he asked finally.

She sighed, and nodded. “If he’s home when I go out, yes. Mother just stands there and holds her hands like she’s going to cry any minute. If they had their way, my Aunt Theresa would be my duenna, for heaven’s sake.”

He didn’t know whether to say he was sorry or not, but she saw the sympathy and covered his hand with hers, squeezed it, and drew it back slowly.

“So,” she said explosively, “what’ll we talk about?”

He didn’t know, but they must have talked about something because the waitress and the food came and went, and the next thing he knew he was standing in front of her house, holding her hand and wishing she didn’t have to visit her grandmother again the next day. Then they could keep on walking, from one end of town to the other, laughing at the displays in the shop windows, making words from the three letters on the license plates they could catch, and trading notes on teachers they had in common. He said nothing about the biology grade. She mentioned the Howler only once, when they passed a corner bar and saw a pair of dingy men sitting with their backs against its wall, brown bags in hand. One was snoring, the other watching them intently, sneering as they walked by. They saw a third derelict at the next corner, but he ignored them, being too busy scrubbing his grizzled face dryly with his hands.

Tracey had guessed that any one of them could be the kid killer, and he thought they were too weak-looking; this guy, this nut, had to be massive to do what he did to his victims.

“My father,” she said, “is shorter than you, and he can break the handle of a shovel over his knee when he’s mad enough.”

That’s when she had taken his hand, and that’s when the fun and the conversation had stopped.

“Well,” she said, looking at the small house separated from its neighbors by paved alleyways leading to postage-stamp backyards.

“Yeah.”

She stood in front of him and looked up. Shadows drifted over her face and made it soft, smooth, and he couldn’t help but touch a finger to her cheek.

God, her skin was soft.

“Have a good time tomorrow,” was the only thing he could say.

She pouted. “Yeah, great. I’d rather go to the game.”

She leaned closer, stared at him, then raised herself up and kissed him. “See you Monday.”

She was up the stairs and through the door before he could think to kiss her in return, and he walked with his hands in his pockets and the tip of his tongue flicking out to test each part of his lips, to taste her, to remember, and finally to realize that she hadn’t promised to call him, or perhaps see him on Sunday.

See you Monday was what she had said.

In spite of the kiss the translation was easy: don’t call me, I’ll call you, and don’t hold your breath.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit, boy, you sure screwed that up.”

He scored himself all the way home, not noticing until the door had closed hard behind him that his parents were already there, sitting in the living room and watching him.

“Hi,” he said with a wave, and stopped before he ran up the stairs. There was something wrong. His mother wasn’t looking at him, and his father was drumming a tattoo on a knee. “What’s up? Good meeting?”

“A very good meeting,” Norman said. “Until it was over and I had a word with Mr. Falcone.”

His eyes closed slowly. A moment later they snapped open, and he pointed and said, “Wait a minute,” and was up the stairs and into his room before they could stop him. He snatched up his notebook and pawed through it until he found the test, ran down and stood in front of his father, pressing the page to his chest to smooth out the wrinkles.

“Don—”

“Wait,” he said, he held it out. “Just look at it, Dad. Just take a look.”

“Donald,” Joyce started, and stopped when he pleaded her patience with a glance.

Norman looked up, looked at the paper and read through it, his lips moving slightly. When he was finished, he passed it to Joyce, sighed, and sagged back in his chair.

“Well?”

“Don …” Norman closed one eye, pulled at his lower lip; he was hunting for the right word. “It does seem a bit harsh, I have to be honest.”

“Harsh?” He sputtered, trying to control his voice before it broke into falsetto. “Harsh? It’s more than harsh, it’s wrong, Dad! He took points off he never would have for somebody else. He deliberately marked it earlier than the rest of them, and he deliberately picked on me. He … he said before the test that I would need all the luck I could get. He said that, Dad, I swear to god.”

Norman dropped the paper into his lap and set a knuckle to his cheek, ran it down to his jaw, and stared at the fireplace. “I can’t believe that, Don.”

“Dad—”

“Damnit, you just listen to me, boy, and stop interrupting. For all the fighting that man and I are doing now, he is still a professional and you’d better remember it. I cannot believe he would deliberately single you out. It’s too obvious, don’t you see that? Christ, all I’d have to do is compare this with another paper from the same class and I’d see right away if he was picking on you.”

“But he is! Wait until Monday, I can get a hundred—”

“No,” Norman said forcefully, without raising his voice. “I won’t. He’s a damned fine teacher, Don, and I won’t insult him that way.”

“You’re grounded,” his mother said behind him.

He whirled, unable to take it in, unable to speak.

“Donald,” she said, near to tears, “if you’re going to college, you simply cannot afford to let your grades slip the way they have. This is the last straw. Colleges look at things like that, they check to see if you let your grades go down just because your school is almost over. You’re obviously distracted from your work by … a number of things. Donald, you’re grounded until you can prove you’re doing better.”

Tears brimmed into his eyes, and he felt as if he had stumbled into a dream, someone else’s dream, and he was lost and didn’t know how to find his way out, back to his own bed, his own family. There was a roaring in his ears, and a constriction that prevented the air from passing his throat. He swallowed, hoping to find his voice again, fighting not to break the rule in front of his father; he looked to Norman, who was still staring at the hearth.

He had a headache, and he knew his skull would split in half if he didn’t leave the room immediately.

He reached out, and Norman handed the test back.

He looked at his mother blankly, and turned.

There was a hint of red floating in the foyer.

Behind him they shifted uncomfortably; punishment meted and neither felt right though they knew it was the right thing.

He walked away. Slowly. So slowly a cramp began building in his left calf and he had to grab the banister to keep from racing upstairs.

The roaring increased, to a winter’s storm trapped in a seashell.

The red danced, and he told himself to remember the Rules.

Then he opened his door, and nearly screamed.

The shelves were empty except for his books, his desk was clean except for a pencil neatly centered, and the posters and prints were gone from the walls.

He was alone.

The door closed behind him and he walked to the bed, sat on the edge, and stared at nothing.

They were gone, his friends gone, and he was alone.

The red darkened, then faded.

“Donald,” he whispered after five minutes had passed. “My name is Donald, goddamnit. Goddamned Sam is dead!”

The defiance: it was terrifying.

And the power implicit in it even more so because he knew it was there and didn’t know exactly what it would do or how he should use it. All he knew was he couldn’t stand it any longer in the prison cell of his room, couldn’t stand the stench of decay and betrayal that had filled the empty shelves and spilled into his dreams. It had been an oasis once, a place where he could do his homework, read his books, dream his future as he wanted it to be. Now it had been devastated. Corrupted. His mother had walked in without his permission, and without his permission had taken away everything that had been able to give him some peace.

So he had waited until they’d left the house in the middle of Sunday afternoon, for still another meeting with still another committee determined to celebrate the birthday of a two-bit town that didn’t matter to anyone except the people who wanted their pictures in the paper; they had left, not saying a word to him because he was still in the ruins of his room, assuming he would be there when they returned. He heard them at the front door, his mother laughing at his father’s good-natured grumbling about not being able to attend the game because of the meeting, and how important it was that he at least show his face before the final gun sounded. There was a response, Norman laughed loudly, and the door had slammed shut.

And in the abrupt silence he hadn’t been able to stand it any longer. He grabbed his jacket and left, cursing them, fighting so hard not to cry that he gave himself the hiccoughs. A small and still reasonable part of him continued to insist that they weren’t being malicious, that they truly believed they had done the right thing because they loved him and didn’t want to see him hurt. But what the hell did they know about hurt? What the hell did they know about what it was like to have to memorize all the rules and do your damnedest to follow them, only to have someone sneak in behind your back and change a word here and there, change a rule, change the way things were supposed to be.

What the goddamned hell did they know about how he felt inside?

I was young once, though you probably don’t believe it, his father had said on more than one occasion; but if he did know, what did he think he was doing, going along with Joyce, standing aside and letting her strip him of his pets, of practically everything he owned, without even having the goddamned decency to let him know before he walked into the room and saw it — the rape. What the hell had he been thinking of, telling Brian and Tar about Don’s thinking they had been the ones who’d dumped the vial into that classroom? Jesus, didn’t he have eyes? Didn’t he see what was going on?

He may have been young once; he wasn’t young anymore. He may think he remembers what goes on in a kid’s head, but all he knows is what he’s read in those damned books, what he hears in the office, what he’s told by the Board of Education, who are only a bunch of stupid men and women who think they remember what it was like to be young and what it was like to be in school and what it was like to have your parents rape you without laying a finger on your arm.

Just like Norman and Joyce, they think they know kids, but they goddamned don’t know him.

And the worst part, the absolute worst and most horrible part of it was, because he didn’t know what to do or how to teach them a lesson or show them he wasn’t their goddamned dead son or their puppet or their pet … the worst part of it was, he was frightened to death because he wanted to kill them.

He walked aimlessly, first near the school, where he heard the crowd cheering and the blaring discord of the band, then toward the center of town, not realizing where he was heading until he passed Tracey’s house and paused at the front walk, staring at the closed curtains, the empty curb, sighing and moving on and wondering if maybe he wasn’t being too hard on himself, that she had after all given him a kiss, and her reputation was that such kisses were not granted lightly. Nevertheless, she hadn’t encouraged him, nor had she been dragged screaming into the house before she could tell him when they’d meet again.

What he needed to do was think.

This wasn’t the place to do it, and the track was out until the game was over.

So he moved on, shoulders slumped, feet barely lifting off the pavement, until he reached Parkside Boulevard and walked west toward the far end of town, watching pedestrians pass him without recognition, watching the traffic pass from one invisible place to another. There were garish signs in most of the shops, announcing sales in honor of the celebration beginning on Wednesday; there were workmen on lampposts and telephone poles, clinging to ladders or safely standing in the baskets of cherry pickers, hanging up large oval medallions that featured the town’s crest and the years of its incorporation; there were double-parked vans making deliveries, and a fair number of men putting the finishing touches on new paint jobs and storefront repairs, filling potholes on the side streets and trimming dead matter from the trees at the curbs.

In spite of his mood he was impressed by the effort, and within the hour his depression had changed from black to grey. What happened to him when he got home he would deal with later; right now he just wanted to find a place that would make him forget. Even for an hour it would be nice to forget so he could figure out what had gone so suddenly wrong.

By four-thirty he was having a hamburger at Beacher’s and not answering Joe’s questions about why he wasn’t at the game. When he heard the triumphant horns in the street, he knew the game was over and the home team had won. Within minutes, then, the place would be swarming and he would have to listen to the stories, the laughter, see the girls and the players and suffer the replays of the game. It took him only a moment to conclude this was not what he needed while he thought things out. He slid off the stool without finishing his food, dropped a bill beside the register, and walked outside, saw Brian’s car aiming for the curb and turned immediately to his left and bought a ticket to the shoppers’ special early show at the theater. It was the same film he’d seen with Tracey, and he didn’t see it again, sitting in the front row with his legs outstretched and his hands clasped across his stomach and his eyes blank on the center of the screen.

Until the first gunshot made him blink and he saw a dark-suited man fall through a window with blood on his face and fear in his eyes.

He shifted uncomfortably, thinking of that morning when he had wanted his folks dead. Thinking, too, of the power one had to have not just to kill another human being, because anyone could do that if anyone had a mind to, but to cause the terror that came just before it.

Another man was slammed against a wall from a shotgun blast, and he marveled at the effects they used to make it all seem so real and at the same time so gigglingly funny.

He closed his eyes.

He pictured Joyce sprawled on the kitchen floor, blood seeping from a wound in her back, her left hand gripping the table leg as though she were trying to pull herself up.

It frightened him even more to think: serves the bitch right.

When the film was over, he walked to the park’s boulevard entrance and leaned against the wall. Hands in his pockets. Gaze on the curb. A car passed and honked, and he smiled quickly when Tar waved from the backseat of Chris Snowden’s convertible. She was driving, and they were heading toward New York, and she gave him a big grin and a wave before a bus cut between them.

Football players, he thought, have all the luck. Then he felt his legs tighten, and he realized what he should be doing instead of feeling sorry for himself. The game was long over. The stands were empty. And the sun wasn’t quite ready yet to set behind the town.

He hurried, trotted, put on the brakes when he felt himself straining to break into a full run; and ten minutes later, windbreaker on the ground and shirt open to the waist, he was alone on the track.

There wasn’t anyone in the world who could keep up with him when his legs were moving and his arms were pumping and his lungs were taking in that fresh cold air.

No one.

His sneakers crunched on the finely ground cinder, the wind pushed back his hair, and there was a not unpleasant ache settling into his left side.

He was alone on the track, and it was his world, no one else’s.

His world, where there were no ambushes, no snipers, no battles for his soul.

For one brief moment he had wanted to kill his parents, and at that moment he had forgotten the Rule: never take your anger out on someone else, not even your enemies.

In place of striking out in anger, giving vent to his temper, there were words. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Christ, how wrong that was. How pious, and how wrong!

Words were how his folks did their fighting — hissing quietly, bitterly, venomously. Using time-honed razors instead of clubs to bleed each other to death. He hadn’t seen that until recently, and yet one couldn’t hit the other. It just wasn’t done.

Well, maybe that was one of the Rules, he thought as he began his second quarter mile, but it was a damned dumb one. Sometimes he knew, he simply knew how great it would feel to land a punch on Brian Pratt’s face.

The trouble was, you had to know what to do if you were doing to get into a fight, and he didn’t. The second Saturday he had lived in Ashford, when he was nine, Brian had come over with a bunch of his friends. Don was in the front yard playing soldier by himself, and Pratt jumped him. There was no introduction, no posturing, no threats. Pratt jumped him, forced him onto the ground, and punched his back solidly a dozen or so times. Then he got back onto his bike, and rode off. Don cried because he hurt, and because he was confused, but he hadn’t gone to his father because he knew what he’d hear: you have to stand up for yourself, son, you have to show them you’re better than they are.

Sure. But don’t act like you’re better because the new Rule was — you weren’t. You were the same as everyone else. You were the principal’s kid, but you were the same. Sure.

Goddamn rules. They’re never the same from one day to the next.

How was he supposed to act when they kept changing the Rules?

His legs were loose now, and his breathing regular. The air was no longer cool, the track no longer too hard to run on. He stretched out, picking up speed, letting his mind wander because that was the best way to keep the laps from beating you in the end. Pay no attention to them and you’ve got it all firmly in the palm of your hand.

The sky turned darker, and a pale ghost of a moon settled over the town.

He ran alone, alone in the stadium, thinking about Tracey, about Hedley and Falcone, Pratt and Tar Boston, and his parents. If life was like this forever, he decided he would stay in school until he was an old man.

Into his second mile, panting a bit, but his legs were holding up.

He liked running.

He liked the solitude, the way he was able to work out his problems just by sending his brain out ahead of him. Some days he caught up, some days he didn’t, and some days it just didn’t matter at all. But there was no one faster than he, not when he was alone and the wind was blowing in his face and the stadium was filled with cheering crowds that waved red handkerchiefs as he passed. He saw the finish line and knew that given a little luck and one extra push, he would break the world’s record. In one more turn of the track he would become the fastest man on earth.

The crowd was on its feet.

He felt himself breathing through his mouth and knew it was a bad sign, but there was a reserve somewhere down in the middle of his chest, and he called on it now. Grunting as he kicked his legs out for the bell lap. The crowd screaming, horns blaring, television cameras tight on the grimace frozen to his face like the scream of a clown.

Hedley was standing in the middle of the track, twirling his mustache and combing his red fringe, and Don ran right over him without breaking stride.

Pratt and Boston were down in a two-point, ready to block him into the next town, and he leapt, soared, came down lightly on the other side while they stood and gaped and scratched their heads like monkeys.

Tracey threw him a kiss.

Chrissy tore off her clothes and wet her lips when he passed.

Mom and Dad shook their heads and turned to help little Sam, who was having trouble tying his shoelaces.

The finish was ahead now, around that last turn.

The crowd was in a frenzy, pressing against the police line that tried to keep them back, though the cops were just as excited as the people they were holding.

He could hear his heart, and it was doing fine; he could hear his feet in perfect rhythm with the swing of his arms and the tilt of his head; he could hear his name being called over and over again, like the beating of a drum, like the slam of a fist hard against cement, like the march of an army across a treeless plain.

He ran harder, sobbing now because he knew he had to break the record so they would know who they were dealing with here. So they would know he wasn’t a goddamned kid anymore.

He ran harder and thrust out his chest, and broke through the ribbon just as pandemonium broke loose and smothered him, washed him, rose in awe of him while he staggered across the grass and dropped onto his back, arms outspread, legs wide, eyes staring straight up at the goalpost’s crossbar.

The crowd left, the cameras, the police, the sighing women.

But he wasn’t alone.

The field stretched ahead of him, longer now from down here, and at the far end, in the ten-foot tunnel in the thick brick wall whose heavy wooden gates were still open at both ends, he could see something standing there. Deep in the shadows. Watching him. Waiting. Not moving a muscle.

There was no light behind it though the streetlamps were on; it cast no shadow darker than itself.

But it was there. He could see it.

And it was watching him. Waiting.

Not making a sound.

He blinked the sweat from his eyes, wiped his face with a forearm, and looked again.

It was gone.

The stadium was empty, and he was lying on the grass.

He puffed his cheeks and blew out, blinked again rapidly, and stared at the tunnel. “Oxygen, kid,” he told himself as he stumbled to his feet. “You need a little of the old O2, if you know what I mean.”

His jacket was gone.

He looked down on the spot at the fifty-yard line where he had dropped it, stared with a perplexed frown, and finally looked up to scan the field. Then he turned and scanned the stands. It was gone. He knew he had left it right here; he could feel it leaving his hands and could hear it striking the ground. And now it was gone. He waited a moment for someone to start laughing, waited until he was sure it was not a joke. And when he was sure, when he knew he wasn’t even safe on his track anymore, he put his hands into his pockets and started for home.

This, Tracey thought, is the pits.

She sat alone on a crumbling stoop in front of a crumbling brownstone, one of a whole block that could just as easily have been in any of the city’s boroughs. The curbs were lined with cars, the pavement packed with children, and there wasn’t a single face she recognized, not a single voice she new.

The pits.

This was supposed to be Long Island — trees and beaches and elegant houses and developments, a place you visited to get away from it all. But even Ashford was better than this, for god’s sake. At least it had the football game she was supposed to be playing the flute for right now; it had her books and her stuffed animals and the seclusion of her room; Ashford had Don Boyd.

She squirmed, thinking of the way she had kissed him before she’d known what she was doing. He’d looked as if she’d punched him in the stomach; she felt as if she’d been punched herself, and had run straight to her room without giving her mother the usual minute-by-minute account of her time out of the house. She must have been blushing, though, because her sisters began a teasing that hadn’t let up, not even on the trip over, until her father had finally laid down the law — no talking, he was driving, he needed to concentrate on the idiots who were on the road with him.

She clasped her hands between her knees, watching a game of stick ball grow dangerously close to a brawl, suddenly thinking of the Howler and what he could do to these kids. A shudder. A swallow. A look over her shoulder to the windows above, to the window where she saw her father’s face looking down. She smiled at him, waved, and sighed when he gestured her off the steps and into the building.

Damn, she thought. If he’s such a macho cop, why the hell can’t he get the old lady to move? At least to a place that had trees instead of garbage cans.

Long Island was the pits.

At the doorway she stopped and turned, and a sour smile parted her lips. Good-bye, twentieth century, she said to the noisy street. I’m going in my time machine now. Fasten your chastity belts, please, it’s going to be a rough, boring ride.

The house’s original porch had been torn down long before Don and his family had moved in, the previous owner claiming the wood had been rotted, and he didn’t want anyone hurt in case a board or the steps gave way. It had been replaced by one that barely reached to either side of the door, and its roof was peaked, the railing up the steps twisted black wrought iron. It was the only house on the block with a porch like that, and Norman had once insisted he was going to restore the old one; that was before Sam had died. Now he said nothing beyond a grumbling that what was there did little to protect him from the rain or the snow.

Don sat on the top step. He had been inside only long enough to towel himself off and fetch a sweater, had intended on going back to his room, when he saw that his parents hadn’t yet returned. They would never know he was gone. They would assume they had been obeyed. He had actually sat down on the bed and stared at the blank wall where the stallion had been; then he felt the weight of the empty shelves, and the hollow sound his breathing made, and the chill that seemed to drift from the white-painted walls. He looked into his parents’ room, into Sam’s room, then opened the attic door and went up.

They were there. Piled on cartons, helter-skelter on the dusty floor, dropped on a trunk that belonged to his grandfather. He had swallowed, stood, and finally picked up the poster and brought him back down. Taped him up over the desk and stared at him, wondering.

He saw little save the withdrawing of the light.

He heard only the leaves, and the shadows, and the silence of the house rising behind him.

An automobile or two had sped past, but he paid them no heed; a flock of kids shrieked through the twilight, but he didn’t smile at their greetings; a red convertible crawled down the street, radio on full, and it wasn’t until he realized it had pulled into a driveway a few houses down that he turned his head slowly, as if it were too heavy to move.

The driver’s door slammed.

Chris. He blinked. It was Chris Snowden, and she wasn’t with Tar. She was still in her dark cheerleader’s sweater, still had on her saddle shoes, but her pleated skirt had been replaced by a pair of faded-to-white jeans.

And she wasn’t going into her house; she was walking across the intervening yards directly toward him.

He cleared his throat and wondered what she had planned for him — a bit of teasing, a little temptation, a breathless request for his zoology homework.

He could wait; and he did, until she stopped at the foot of the stairs, leaned on the railing and crossed one foot over the other, toe down.

“Hi!”

Her pale hair was parted down the center and gathered in two braids that flopped over her chest. Her face was flushed, her eyes wide and of a blue so dark they seemed nearly black.

Warily he smiled a greeting. He recalled her brief show of solicitude when she’d seen the damage done to his eye, saw it again as she examined his face closely, a half smile at her lips.

“Looks better,” she said.

“I barely feel it,” he admitted, unconsciously poking around the discoloration. She turned to look at the empty street; he couldn’t take his eyes from her profile. “I, uh, saw you and Tar before. I figured you guys were going to the city.”

A shrug, and a sideways look of disgust. “He got sick. Brian had some beer in his car, and after the game they had a he-man chugging contest. Tar lost.” She pointed down the street. “So did my car.”

“Gross.”

“The creep wouldn’t even help me clean it out. Last time I saw him he was falling into the park.” A grin — full of humor, touched with malice. “If there’s a god, he’ll end up in the pond.”

He chuckled and shook his head at the foolishness of kids, and did his best not to stare when she turned back to him and leaned forward on the railing, folding her arms on it and putting her chin on a wrist. This wasn’t happening, he knew; this was something his mind had dreamed up to punish him for thinking he could somehow rule the world and make it fair again.

“Were you at the game?”

“No. I had … other things to do.”

An eyebrow lifted. “We won.”

“We always win.”

“Really?”

“Every year,” he said, making it clear there was a book somewhere filled with things he thought more important, or less boring. “Especially since Brian and Tar got on the team.”

“Oh?” Her eyes drifted closed. “You gonna be down at Beacher’s later?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It depends on my folks.”

She pushed abruptly upright and he almost gasped, thinking he had said something to make her mad. The expression on her face was a dark one, the lines stabbing from the corners of her eyes deeper and longer, giving her age, turned her soft white-blonde hair into a hag’s wig, her softly pointed chin into a boney dagger. The transformation startled him, and he leaned away from it slightly, could not meet her gaze. Instead, he turned to the right where he saw in dismay the station wagon approaching.

Aw shit, he thought; not now!

“You’re in trouble, huh?” she said sympathetically.

He couldn’t help himself — he nodded.

“Shit. So am I.”

“Huh? You?”

“Oh sure,” she said with venomous disgust, each word the swing and crack of a bull whip. “It happens all the time, I’m getting used to it. They say get to know the kids, go to the parties, join the clubs. You’re gonna need it, Christine, on your college applications. You’re gonna need all that stuff.” She snorted and managed a patently false smile as the station wagon pulled slowly into the drive. “Y’know, Don, no offense but there’s a lot of scuz in your school.”

“No offense. There is.”

The smile, when she turned it on him, was genuine just long enough for him to notice; then it faded as Norman and Joyce opened their doors and got out, Norman pointing stiffarmed to Don, then to the grocery bags in back.

“A girl,” she said quietly, “can’t even get a decent lay around here.”

He wanted to laugh, to grab her, to find someplace dark and deep where he could hide and start this conversation over. He wanted to tell her he knew exactly how she felt. What he did was stand meekly and murmur a good-bye when his father gestured again for help with the bags. Chris touched his arm in farewell, smiled again and introduced herself to the Boyds as she headed for home. Norman watched her; Don grabbed the two heaviest bags and grunted back to the house where his mother had the door open and waiting.

In the kitchen he lowered them onto the counter and backed into a corner while he waited for the storm.

Norman dropped his load solidly on the table, Joyce did the same, and they proceeded to move awkwardly about the room, putting things in their places and not looking at him save for a flat glance or two.

“I thought you were to stay in the house,” his father said.

“Chris seems like a very nice girl,” his mother said with an anxious smile.

“She is,” Don told her. Guess what, Ma, she wants to get laid and I’m still a goddamn virgin.

“You’re grounded,” Norman reminded him.

“Well, maybe you should get to know her a little better, what do you think?”

Back and forth. Figurines on a clock.

“I guess, Mom. I don’t know.”

“Her father is a surgeon, you know. He works in New York. A fairly important man from all I hear.”

“How come he lives here then?” he said, flinching when Norman opened a cupboard next to his head and gave him a look that demanded a response.

“I don’t know,” Joyce said, frowning over a box of cake mix, weighing it in her hand before putting it aside. “From what I’m told, he isn’t lacking for the old green. And it certainly isn’t because this is the perfect suburb. There is, I gather, something about the mother that—”

Norman slammed a can of soup on the table and faced his son. “I want to know what you were doing outside, Donald, when you were specifically told not to leave the house.”

He lowered his gaze to his shoetops and swallowed the burrs that climbed into his throat. His left hand began thumping lightly against the wall. There was heat in his chest, and heat on his neck, and he could feel the seconds skip by like rocks dropped into a puddle. Without seeing her he could sense his mother shifting toward the doorway, fussing meaninglessly with something, staying because she had to, wanting to leave because she knew what was coming.

That was the Rule: the family never ran out on a discussion.

“I’m grounded,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I can’t sit on the dumb porch, does it?”

“You know damned well what it means,” Norman said.

“No,” Donald said, “I don’t know damned well what it means because you never told me before because I was never damned well grounded before.”

Joyce put a hand to her mouth; Norman took hold of the table’s edge and for a moment Don thought he was going to tip it over and come for his throat.

Don looked past him to his mother. “Mom, why are my things in the attic?”

“Things?”

“From my shelves. The animals. You took them away, remember? I’d like to know why they’re in the attic. Am I ever going to get them back?”

“Go to your room,” Norman said before she could answer. “Go to your room and don’t come down until you have a civil tongue in your head.”

“Sam,” Joyce said.

There was no time then; no sound; no air.

Don raised a fist, and Norman looked at his wife in shock and disgust.

“Oh,” she whispered, and ran out of the room.

There was red, briefly, before Don became aware of what he was thinking. He lowered the fist, forced the fingers to open, and headed for the staircase, his father behind him. At the landing he looked down.

“What if I’m not sorry?” he said flatly.

Norman swallowed and came up a step.

He knew it then — he knew as surely as he could see the red gathering in the corners that if his father lifted his foot one more time, one more step, there was going to be a fight. He was going to hit his father, or his father was going to throw the first punch. He had seen it in the movies and thought it stupid, that it never happened in real life. But he hadn’t been able to feel it until now, until he saw this stranger looking up at him, not even the courtesy of hatred in his eyes, this stranger fighting with himself because all the rules said you can’t hit your son when he’s almost eighteen.

“Do as I tell you,” Norman said tightly.

“I’ll go,” he answered, not conceding a thing.

He sat cross-legged on the bed, his back against the wall, his hands in his lap.

He deliberately avoided looking at the shelves, the neat desktop, the window, the floor.

He looked at the stallion, forever charging through the forest, and he thought.

First he thought about what it would be like to be an orphan and how he might accomplish the fact without leaving school to take a job;

He thought about Tracey and why she hadn’t said anything to him about going out again, or seeing him at school, or even seeing him around;

He thought about Brian and Tar and the not-always-rotten Fleet, and why he had to be known as Donny Duck when he wasn’t the only Don in the school, when there were others who had worse and funnier names, when there were others who were clearly meant to be the butt of stupid jokes;

He thought about Chris, thought about what she was like under that sweater, and wondered how many there were who knew exactly what was there and why did she have to talk to him and ruin everything about her;

He thought about the Rules.

He thought about how he could get all these people off his back before it broke in half and he was left lying in bed, crippled and dying.

Finally he thought about nothing.

At midnight he stirred.

There was nothing left in his mind he could cling to for more than a few seconds, but he smiled when he felt a curious settling inside. He looked down at his chest and was amazed to see how wet his clothes were; he touched his hair and it was matted to his scalp; he touched the bed and it was unpleasantly damp. But he didn’t move because he still felt himself settling. It was the only way he could describe it to himself — a mass of something light piled high on a plain that had nothing but horizon, something that shifted and settled and eventually became a small something else, a nugget, compact and incredibly hard.

He reached without moving his arms, and he touched it, and it was hot, and it was red, and it was perfectly fitted to the palm of his hand when he picked it up and stared, and knew what it was.

There was a moment as he watched it — all the rage, all the frustration — when fear hovered over him, a storm cloud rumbling before the first clap of thunder. Yet despite the heat, the red, the hardness it had, it was more than anything something comforting, something familiar.

It was his, and it was him.

A smile, just barely.

He shifted to the edge of the bed, let his feet touch the floor, let his hands grip the mattress.

He switched on the light over the headboard and turned away from the bulb until his eyes adjusted. Eagerly he leaned forward, ready to explain to his friend what he thought had just happened.

But he couldn’t.

He could only open his mouth in a scream that was never more than silent.

The poster was still there, taped over his desk.

The forest, the road, the darkening sky.

The poster was there.

But someone had tried to destroy the black horse. It was streaked, barely visible, as if a knife or a pen had attempted to scrape the picture off and leave only the background.