Say Goodbye for Now Page 5

  “Horses? You got horses here?”

  “Oh yes. Eleven, in fact.”

  “I’d like to meet the horses, ma’am. If that’s okay. So long as my wolf-dog is sleeping anyway. But I sure don’t want to meet those dogs I heard.”

  “They’re in kennel runs,” she said.

  She did not say that referring to the wolf-dog as his might have been the beginning of a tactical error. At least, not out loud.

  The sun was on a long slant as they stood outdoors, leaning on the top rail of a white board fence surrounding the horse pasture.

  “They’re eating grass,” Pete said.

  “Yes,” she said. “A pastured horse will do that.”

  “But then why do you need to feed them?”

  “They’re not easy keepers. They need a little hay and grain to keep their weight.”

  “What’s an easy keeper?”

  “A horse that can just eat grass or hay and keep its weight. One that doesn’t need grain.”

  “So I bet these guys cost more money to feed.”

  “You can say that again.”

  The boy looked into her face as they spoke, then back at the eleven Thoroughbreds—all lanky and tall, mostly bays, but with one sorrel and two grays mixed in.

  “They don’t look like any horses I’ve ever seen around here. I’ve seen some cattle horses in my life before. They’re short and stout. They don’t have such long legs as these guys.”

  “These are Thoroughbreds.”

  “Yeah, okay, but thoroughbred what?”

  “No. Not purebred. Thoroughbred. It’s a breed of its own. They’re racehorses.”

  “Oh, racehorses,” he said, as though she should have just said so in the first place. “Are they fast? Are they any good?”

  “Obviously they’re not good enough,” she said. “Or they wouldn’t be here.”

  She handed Pete a bucket of oats with a scoop. And then, because she had only one bucket and scoop, she stood in the withering late-afternoon sun and watched him move down the line of feed buckets, each tied to the fence. Watched him scoop the grain into the feeders, seeming unafraid and unaffected by the horses nipping and half-heartedly kicking at each other as they jockeyed for position.

  Each time he scooped grain into one—as a horse picked his way through the crowd and claimed the feeder—Dr. Lucy heard Pete say something to the horse. But she couldn’t hear the words from where she stood. It appeared to be the same length and number of sentences each time, but the only word she ever made out was “sorry.”

  She faintly heard Smokey, the gray gelding, nicker in his throat to the boy as he took the last feeder.

  Pete came back and joined her at the gate.

  “I like those horses,” he said. “I like them real good.”

  “You like them very well,” she said. Then she immediately wished she hadn’t corrected him.

  “Right. Real well. Sorry. My favorite is that gray guy. The bigger gray. Because I talked to all of them, but he’s the only one who answered me back.”

  “Yes, I heard that. What did you say to them?”

  “I told them I was real sorry somebody ever thought they weren’t good enough. And that I think they’re plenty good. And then I told them I bet they run really fast. Like the wind.”

  “And what did the gray say to you in return?”

  “Just ‘Thank you,’ I think.”

  “Hey,” Pete said, drawing out the word into a long and modulated sound. “You’re back.”

  He lay on his side on the linoleum floor of her examining room, his face about three inches from the wolf-dog’s cage.

  The animal’s eyes flickered, but he did not try to lift his head. His nose lay inches from the boy’s face, and Dr. Lucy saw it twitch as the animal took in the boy’s scent.

  “Sure am glad to see you back,” Pete said. “Now, I know you probably don’t feel all that good right now. But I’m telling you, you will. Now you will. Before this nice lady doctor did what she did, things weren’t looking so good for you. But now you’ll be okay. You just need some time to rest up is all. Rest up and heal.”

  A long silence.

  Dr. Lucy waited for the boy to get up. For his visit to be over. But the longer she waited, the less he seemed inclined to move.

  “The sun is nearly down,” she said quietly, flipping her head in the direction of one of the open windows.

  Pete looked up, as if he’d forgotten all about time, about days and nights, about the cycles of the sun. As if he’d never intended to move.

  “So it is, ma’am.”

  “I’ll drive you home.”

  “Can’t tell you how much I appreciate that, ma’am. It’s a long walk.” Then, to the wolf-dog, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Prince. Don’t try to move. And don’t be scared. Just get some rest. I’ll be back when you wake up again. Or not too long after that, anyway.”

  The boy lumbered to his feet, as though sleepy and sore, and she took him by the shoulders and guided him to the front door.

  “I was thinking that you were turning him over into my care,” she said as they passed the pig’s cage.

  She succeeded only partially at hiding her irritation.

  “Not sure I follow, ma’am.”

  “I thought you were going to leave him and go. And trust me to do the rest.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that, ma’am. I just promised him I’d be back in the morning.”

  Dr. Lucy sighed. She opened her mouth to say something—some exhausted complaint—but then thought better of it and closed her mouth again.

  As she was backing out of her driveway she looked over at the boy’s slack face. His head was back against the seat, his eyes closed. He might even have been asleep.

  “Prince?” she asked him.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said without ever opening his eyes. “I thought that was a good name. I think it suits him.”

  “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to name him at all, though. I always feel you name an animal only if you’re planning to keep him.”

  “I am planning to keep him.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good plan, though. That’s the point I’m hoping to make here. He’s been living in the wild. He can be aggressive. He’s not anybody’s puppy dog.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t hurt me, ma’am. Not now. Not after everything we been through.”

  “Maybe not. But even if you’re right about that, he could hurt somebody else. He could hurt a neighbor. He could kill a neighbor’s dog or cat. Or start going after somebody’s chickens. Why wouldn’t he? It’s how he’s been surviving.”

  The boy’s eyes were open now, and full of turmoil. She looked away from him briefly to pull out onto the road.

  “Couldn’t I train him?”

  “Yes and no. You can’t change an animal’s basic nature with training.”

  “But we can’t just let him go again. He’s all alone out there. He’s living this lonely life. You said so yourself. What if he doesn’t want to go back out there by his poor self again?”

  “I suppose he could stay with me, but he’d have to live in a kennel run. That might not be a very welcome option for a wolf-dog who’s lived in the wild.”

  “How do we know what he wants?”

  “I would say when the time comes that he’s healthy enough to go, we give him the option to go. If he doesn’t want to, he won’t. If he does and he wants to come back, I suppose he will.”

  Pete never answered, and she looked over at his ruined face.

  “You have to be willing to do what’s best for him,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am, I know that.” But he looked and sounded as if about to cry. “You need to make a right at that stop sign up ahead. We’re on Lacey Road about four miles up.”

  Silence.

  “Thank you again for the ride, ma’am.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  “And thank you for fixing Prince.”

  “Maybe it’s best if we go b
ack to calling him the wolf-dog.”

  “With all due respect, ma’am, you can call that dog, or wolf, or wolf-dog, or whatever he is . . . you can call him whatever you want. But to me he’ll always be Prince. Wherever he ends up, wild or tame, he’ll always be Prince.”

  Chapter Four: Pete

  Pete eased the front door open with his fingers crossed on both hands. Maybe his dad was already asleep. Since the accident he tended to go to bed early, and get up late. And snore in his chair in front of the black-and-white TV.

  He always said the painkillers and the muscle relaxants—the ones the doctor gave him for his back—made him feel “nappish.”

  Pete stepped into the living room to see his dad wide awake and staring back at him.

  He froze, his stomach icing over, waiting to see what would be said. Or done.

  His father’s face looked dark, but also calm. He didn’t speak. He only nodded in the direction of the hook behind the door.

  Pete’s heart sank. He could feel it all the way down into his belly.

  The hook was where they hung jackets, which they hadn’t needed for a month or two. And it was where the razor strop lived.

  Nursing a tight feeling in the pit of his throat, Pete took down the strop and carried it over to his dad, who sat quietly—almost impassively—in his chair, waiting. It was a ritual that had its own special flavor, literally and otherwise. Right at the moment it tasted like ashes and metal in Pete’s mouth.

  His dad took the strop with his right hand and nodded again in the direction of his lap.

  Pete squeezed his eyes closed and leaned over his father’s huge thighs, presenting his tender behind.

  Pete hated the sound as much as anything. Maybe because the sound and the pain could no longer be separated in his mind.

  Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

  Three fierce hits. Each lash sent its own shock wave through every cell of Pete’s body. It didn’t matter how much you were expecting it, or for how long. It was always an unimaginable jolt.

  Pete straightened up, feeling the stinging numbness of the welts rising. He noted a spot on one buttock that felt wet against his shorts, which probably meant the strop had drawn blood. He didn’t dare investigate.

  “Got an explanation?” his dad asked in that booming bass of a voice.

  “Yes, sir. There was a dog hit in the road and I was trying to get him some help.”

  “All day, until nearly nine o’clock at night?”

  “Yes, sir. Vet was no help at all. And I haven’t eaten all day, so if you don’t mind . . .”

  “Too bad supper’s long past.”

  “You didn’t save me anything?”

  “I threw yours out fifteen minutes past suppertime. This is a civilized household. We eat at mealtime. You want to eat, you show up at mealtime. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pete’s stomach groaned, as if in direct response. He could hear it, and he wondered if his father could hear it as well. He could feel the sickening pains of its contractions.

  The lady doctor had tolerated his presence, but she had offered him nothing. In essence, she had treated him like a stray cat, being careful not to make it any easier or more desirable for him to stay. At one point he had asked permission to use her bathroom and had drunk his fill with his mouth greedily attached to the sink faucet. But his stomach had remained empty.

  “I’ll just go on to bed, then, sir.”

  “Reach over and get me that pack of cigarettes,” his dad said. “And hand them to me.”

  Pete looked into his father’s face for the first time since arriving home.

  It was fully dark outside now, but the reading light was on over his father’s chair. His dad’s growing belly strained at the buttons on his checkered shirt, and Pete could see the comb marks in his dad’s wet-looking, slicked-back hair.

  The cigarettes were sitting just a matter of inches from his dad’s hand. So it was a strange and potentially dangerous request. Quite possibly a trick request.

  “Ain’t got all night, Petey boy.”

  Pete leaned over his father’s lap. Before he could grasp the pack, he felt his upper arm grabbed too tightly and his shoulder pulled down. Wrenched down, in fact.

  He loosed a little cry of pain. Unexpected pain. But that was nothing compared to what followed.

  Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

  The strop hit him more ferociously this time, and right on the fresh and tender welts of his last thrashing. Pete had never been strapped twice in a row before, and was stunned—literally stunned into immobility—by the pain of it. It was generally hard even to sit down on the once-smacked bleeding welts after a good strapping. It was hard to touch them gently with his palm or fingertip.

  This pain was hard even to register. It was a sensation he honestly hadn’t known existed.

  Pete pulled away, wrenching his arm free, and stood spraddle-legged and defiant in his surprise.

  “Hey! What was that for?”

  “Boomer Leggett come by today. Said he saw you walking down the road with some Negro boy.”

  “What about it?”

  “You said you was going fishing with Jack.”

  “Well, I tried to. But then I found that dog, like I said. And Jacky wouldn’t help me with him. He went on out to the lake without me.”

  “So where’s the Negro come in?”

  “He just started talking to me on the street. And we walked together a ways.”

  “Next time he wants to talk, tell him to make himself scarce.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s not your kind, that’s why. You stick with Jack. We know his parents. He’s one of us. Choose your friends wisely, boy.”

  “I don’t want to play with Jacky anymore. He’s a rat fink.”

  “Fine. Then spend the whole summer by yourself. But I best not hear about you spending any of it with that colored boy. It’s unseemly.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Pete said, still reeling from the pain. His voice sounded stressed, even to his own ears.

  “It explains itself, Petey. It’s easy. Unseemly. If it don’t seem right, it’s unseemly.”

  Pete opened his mouth, fully prepared to say it seemed right to him. But he didn’t. Because his dad still had the strop in one hand, and Pete feared it now more than ever. Now when he knew that, in his father’s grip, it unexpectedly could be applied to the painful welts of previous applications.

  A third time would be impossible to bear.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. Then he closed his mouth.

  “Tell me you understand what I just said to you.”

  “I understand.”

  And he did. He just didn’t agree. Or feel particularly inclined to obey.

  He felt inwardly relieved that his father had not extracted an express promise to obey.

  Pete lay on his belly in bed, desperate for sleep, but knowing his hunger would continue to keep him awake. His father had gone to bed about an hour before. Or, anyway, it seemed like an hour to Pete.

  He gingerly lifted up on his arms and listened. As if the utter silence of the house might hold clues for him. As if the lack of any stirrings might still provide a litmus test of potential dangers.

  He slipped soundlessly out of bed and padded barefoot into the kitchen.

  A loaf of white bread sat by itself on the counter. For some reason his father had not bothered to put it back in the breadbox. He slid two slices out of the wrapper and hid them in his pajama pockets.

  He opened the cupboard that held the cereal. The hinges squeaked. Not much. Not loudly. But still Pete froze for second upon second, bracing himself.

  Nothing happened.

  He took down a box of cornflakes.

  The top of the box opened silently, but the waxed-paper inner bag rustled lightly as he unrolled it.

  The silence was shattered by his father’s deep voice.

  “If I hear one flake hit a bowl,” he shouted from his bedroom,
“you can bring me that strap again.”

  “Yes, sir!” Pete shouted, all but flinging the box back onto the shelf. “Sorry, sir. No need for that. I’ll just be going back to bed.”

  He ran back to his room and leaped onto the bed, causing the springs to groan under his sudden weight and hurting his welts. He pulled the covers up to his chin and waited.

  No sound. Nothing moved.

  A good fifteen minutes later, when he could clearly hear his father’s snoring through the wall, Pete pulled the slices of bread out of his pockets and ate them quickly.

  A few minutes later, he slept.

  “Pete! Hey! Pete!”

  Pete stopped walking and stood on the sidewalk of his street, shielding his eyes against a strong slant of morning sun. He recognized the voice as Justin’s, and it made his stomach fall. And it was too bad, too, because if not for the three extra lashes the night before, he knew he’d be pleased to run into Justin again. It seemed a shame for anything so fine and harmless as a new friend to be spoiled like that, and for no good reason to boot. Like getting a shiny new toy for Christmas and then watching somebody break it before your eyes just to be mean. Just because they don’t want you to have nice things.

  “Where are you?” Pete called, looking around.

  He even tried looking up, but he realized as he did so that it was silly. There were no tall trees on this block of his street, and Justin couldn’t fly.

  “I’m here. In my house.”

  This time Pete was able to follow the voice.

  Pete was passing by a row of brown brick houses on his way back to the doctor’s house. Or at least he had been, before the voice brought his feet to a halt. They were tiny, those houses. More the size of shacks, though shacks aren’t often made from bricks, he figured. And old. But they were neat, and tended, with flower beds out front, and white shutters that looked as though they might have been painted within the previous week.

  Behind the screen of an open window Pete saw Justin’s beaming face.

  He walked closer. As close as he could go without stepping on the flowers, which were too pretty to trample. Pete wondered how you keep flowers going in the heat of a southern Texas summer. You must have to water them with the hose every day.