Say Goodbye for Now Page 9

  Dr. Lucy was leaning back on one of her counters smoking a cigarette.

  “I thought you were all fired up to go home and stand up for yourself,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I thought so, too. But it’s been a bad day. Upsetting, you know? And I just sort of . . . well, there’s really only one way to say it, I guess. I just up and lost my nerve.”

  “You have to go home sometime.”

  “I was thinking maybe when I don’t hurt anymore.”

  A silence fell. Pete thought Calvin Bell was listening to them. It would be hard not to. He was sitting just a handful of feet away. But if so he was quite purposely staying behind the invisible boundaries of their privacy. Staying out of the way.

  And Pete knew he could only avoid going home if the doctor said he could stay with her.

  “Course that’s up to you,” he added.

  “You’re talking days now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  More silence.

  Prince lay in his cage with his head high, his ears tuned forward, and looked from face to face. He’d been doing so as long as they’d been in the room. Almost as though he could read something helpful there. Almost as though each face held a different piece to the puzzle of the wolf-dog’s understanding, if only he could put them in perfect order.

  “You’d have to call your dad and tell him you’re okay,” she said.

  “We don’t have a phone, ma’am.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Write him a note, then. I’ll drive it over later and leave it on your door.”

  Pete was pretty sure she had just said yes to his staying, but he wasn’t positive, and he didn’t intend to ask. Just in case he was wrong.

  A comfortable silence fell. Within it, Pete noticed Mr. Bell looking at the doctor while her attention was elsewhere.

  The doctor is pretty, Pete thought. And it was a surprising thought, because he’d seen her so many times. But he’d never bothered to notice. He just hadn’t looked at her as pretty or not pretty, because why would he? He wondered if he was suddenly seeing her through Mr. Bell’s eyes. More the way a grown man would look at her.

  The only thing not pretty about her was that hardness in her face and eyes. That indefinable something that warned you to keep away. That part was a little scary, and not appealing in any way.

  “I haven’t fed the horses yet,” she said, knocking him out of his thoughts. “Will you do that for me, Pete?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You remember how much they get?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The scoop makes it easy.”

  “Will you feed the dogs for me, too?”

  “Do they bite?”

  “Not the hand that feeds them, they don’t.”

  “I don’t know how much they get.”

  “Give them as much kibble as their bowls will hold, then. Some will stop on their own when they’re full. The rest won’t get fat from overeating this one time. It’s their lucky day.”

  As Pete was scooping out grain into the last horse’s feed bucket, a movement caught his eye. He looked up to see Calvin Bell leaning on the top rail of the fence. Watching him.

  Pete didn’t know whether to feel flattered by the attention or afraid.

  He walked to where the man stood at the fence and gingerly ducked through.

  Mr. Bell said nothing. Just leaned on the fence and watched the horses eat. So Pete did the same. Nearly elbow to elbow with the man.

  “How’s Justin?” Pete asked. Because he didn’t know what else to say. “Still okay?”

  “Seems so. The doctor is taking his vital signs. So you’re Justin’s friend.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I didn’t know he’d made any friends. He didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m sure he would’ve told you by and by. I’ve only known him a couple days. Maybe he thought it was too soon to say we were friends. But I thought we were.”

  He waited a moment, in case Mr. Bell wanted to fill the silence. He didn’t.

  “Is it okay with you that Justin and I are friends?”

  “Yes, I think so. If you really like him.”

  “I do.”

  “What do you like about him?” As he spoke, Mr. Bell took a white handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully wiped the sweat off his neck and brow. “Sure gets hot around here,” he said.

  “Yes, sir, it sure does. I found this wolf-dog. Like a cross between a wolf and a dog. He’d got himself hit on the highway.”

  “The one that’s in a cage in the doctor’s examining room.”

  “Yes, sir. I had this friend. Jack is his name. So we found this dog . . . at least we thought he was a dog at the time, and anyway he halfway is . . . and Jacky just left me and went on to the lake to go fishing. Made me figure out the whole thing about how to help the dog by myself. That made me kind of mad.”

  “I assume you’re telling me this for a reason.”

  “Yes, sir. When I met Justin I asked him what he would do. If he would go on to the lake without me. He thought about it for a minute, which was good, because sometimes questions like that are harder than you think. He said no, once he’d seen the dog was in trouble he didn’t think he could just walk away and forget about it.”

  “So that’s why you like him.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s a pretty good reason to like somebody, isn’t it?”

  “Very good, I’d say.”

  They leaned a moment in silence, watching one of the horses. The sorrel. He’d finished his own grain and was trying to horn in on one of the other feeders. But he was getting nowhere. None of the other horses were afraid to bite or kick if necessary to protect what was theirs.

  “Those are fine-looking horses,” Mr. Bell said.

  “They’re racehorses. Only they didn’t race fast enough, I guess. Dr. Lucy’s going to let me ride them sometime. Just not now. I’m not feeling like I want to do it right now.”

  “What needs to stop hurting?” Mr. Bell asked. “You told the doctor you wanted to stay till you stopped hurting. Not that it’s any of my business. I just wondered if it had anything to do with what happened today.”

  “Oh. That. No. I just got a whipping from my dad last night. Well. Two, actually.”

  “So you don’t know anything about what happened to Justin?”

  “No, sir. I wasn’t there. I was walking home with my wagon and I heard him. I just found him that way. I asked him what happened but he was kind of groggy. And after that all he told me was that it wasn’t anybody he knew. Then again, who would he know around here? He only just got here. I’m sorry I can’t help more. I feel real bad about what happened.”

  “Let me ask you a question, Pete. You asked me if I was okay with you and Justin being friends. And I said I was. But now I’m going to ask you if your parents are okay with it.”

  “I just have a dad. I think that’s another reason why Justin and I get along.”

  “How would your dad feel about you and Justin being friends?”

  Pete felt the sudden presence of what felt like an anvil in his gut. His face tingled, so it might be getting red, and Mr. Bell might be noticing.

  “Do I have to say?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  “He wasn’t too happy about it.”

  So, there. He had done it. Because he’d had no choice. But he’d hated having to do it. He looked away from the horses and down at his own sunburned hands. He’d just told a perfectly nice man that someone thought his son wasn’t good enough to walk down the street with Pete.

  Who does a thing like that? he thought. Hurts somebody with their words that way? And how, of all people, could it have just been me?

  “So could that be why?” Mr. Bell said.

  “Why what, sir?”

  But then he knew. It hit him like an unexpected slap in the face.

  “Holy cow,” Pete said. “I sure wish you hadn’t gone and put that idea in my head.”

  He stood
blinking a moment, then decided to take his brain in an entirely different direction. It felt like an act of self-defense.

  “I have to feed those dogs,” he said to Mr. Bell. “But there’s just one thing. I’m afraid of those guys.”

  “Want me to work with you on that?”

  “That would be very nice, sir.”

  Pete figured he shouldn’t be too surprised. Any dad who gives talkings instead of whippings might also be the kind of dad who would offer to help when he didn’t even need to. Still, a day ago Pete hadn’t known either variety existed. So it came as a pleasant shock all the same.

  “Hey,” Pete said. “A lot of these guys are little. They sure sounded big to me when I first showed up at the door.”

  He dragged the heavy bag of dry kibble up to the nearest kennel run gate. Inside were two friendly-looking little guys, just the kind of dogs Pete would be thrilled to meet at almost any point in his life. One was a brown-and-white beagle, the other a smaller tan terrier-type dog. But what type, Pete wasn’t sure. He only knew it was some wire-haired variety.

  They barked excitedly at Pete and Mr. Bell, but their tails wagged frantically at the same time.

  “I like these guys,” Pete said. “What kind of dog do you think that little tan one is?”

  “Probably a mix, I’d guess,” Mr. Bell said.

  “Oh. Well, that’s okay. Mutts are good, too. Prince is half wolf and half dog, so even that’s sort of a mutt. Except somehow with him it comes out looking kind of important and regal. That’s why I call him Prince.”

  Pete filled a scoop with kibble and opened the kennel gate, quickly filling both food bowls before the dogs could get out. But he needn’t have bothered, because they weren’t trying. They were more interested in food than time outside the gate.

  Pete dragged the kibble sack on to the next run.

  In it sat a huge German shepherd. What his dad called a police dog. The dog simply looked at Pete. He didn’t bark or growl, but he also didn’t wag his tail. He just stared deeply into Pete’s eyes.

  It made his blood run cold.

  “Holy cow,” Pete said to Mr. Bell. “I’m not so sure about this guy.”

  “Would you like me to feed this one?”

  “I sure would, sir. Thanks.”

  Pete stepped back a good five steps to watch Mr. Bell work.

  “Sir?” he asked as Mr. Bell scooped up a helping of kibble. “I was thinking. If somebody hurt Justin because of me . . . which is hard for me to even say out loud, because that would be the worst thing in the whole world if it was true . . . If it was because they wanted to teach him not to hang around with me, wouldn’t they have to’ve told him that’s why they were doing it? Otherwise what good would it do?”

  Mr. Bell’s hands stopped moving. Stopped reaching for the big dog’s gate. But he didn’t turn back to face Pete as he spoke.

  “Anybody ask Justin if they said why?”

  “I think I did, sir. At least, I asked him something like that. But he never answered.”

  “Well, later, when he’s feeling better, we’ll see what’s what. You want me to finish up here by myself?”

  The words hit Pete in the form of a sharp lump in his throat. Because he took them to mean he was no longer welcome in Mr. Bell’s presence. That he was not wanted here.

  “Okay, sir,” he said.

  He found his way back into the house without crying. But only just barely.

  Pete lay with his front end draped over Prince’s cage, his face pressed straight down. Even though that meant the thin metal bars of the cage pushed deeply into the skin of his face. He didn’t care about that.

  Prince raised his head as high as he could and snuffled, and for a moment their noses were only a couple of inches apart.

  Pete reached a few fingers in through the bars, as deep into the cage as he could, and Prince licked them.

  It made Pete laugh, but it loosed the tears at the same time. They fell on the wolf-dog’s face, and Pete watched Prince’s eyes register concern. Prince reached up again, but couldn’t quite touch Pete’s face with his nose or tongue.

  “No one is talking to me at all,” Pete said, more or less to Prince. “I think they think it’s all my fault.”

  They had the examining room to themselves, which seemed strange. Dr. Lucy was elsewhere, and so was Justin. Mr. Bell might still have been out feeding the dogs, or he might have joined the doctor and his son, wherever they were.

  Wherever that was, Pete felt sure he would be unwelcome there.

  He nursed a terrible feeling in his gut that he recognized, but he could not remember why it felt familiar. Some great sense of dread about the near future, and how it would reveal itself when the trouble at hand crystallized into a clearer form.

  Then he remembered.

  He remembered listening to his mother and father scream at each other, and getting up and peering through the keyhole of their bedroom door to see that his mother was packing suitcases. And then going back to bed and having to wait to see what that would mean for his life going forward.

  Sometimes you don’t know exactly what it is but you know in your heart it’s not good.

  A hand on the small of his back made Pete jump the proverbial mile. Even Prince jumped in solidarity.

  Pete straightened up suddenly, which hurt. It hurt his welts, and it hurt his back because he’d been bent over the cage for so long. Hours, by the feel of it. It was dark outside the open examining room windows, and the breeze that came through felt almost vaguely cool.

  He turned to see Dr. Lucy holding a small pad of writing paper and a ballpoint pen in his direction.

  “Write a note to your dad.”

  “Okay,” he said, his voice sounding limp to his own ears.

  He took the pad and wandered slowly and stiffly to one of her counters.

  “You okay?” she asked him.

  “No, ma’am. Where’s Justin?”

  “He’s upstairs in the spare bedroom. He’s going to sleep up there tonight with his dad. That way he’ll be close by if I’m needed.”

  “Where do I sleep?” he asked, turning his eyes up to her with a gaze that felt burning. Which he hadn’t intended. He didn’t like the slight whine in his voice, either. But the truth was simply that he’d begun to believe no one wanted him around, and that there was not one corner of the earth in which he was welcome.

  “I’ll make you a bed on the couch. Is that okay?”

  “That would be fine, ma’am. Thank you.”

  He turned his attention back to the note.

  Dear Dad, he wrote in his best school-quality penmanship, I’m okay. I’m just going to be gone for a little while. But I’m okay.

  Then he paused for a long time, thinking there must be more to say. But—if indeed he was right and there was—he had no idea what it might be.

  So he went ahead and signed it: Your son, Pete Solomon.

  He folded it up and handed it to the doctor, who looked deeply into his face. It made him uncomfortable.

  “Thanks for driving this over there,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. If I slide it under the door, will he get it? Can he get up and move to the door with his back injury?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He goes from his bed to his chair and back. And to get the mail when the mailman drops it in the little box by the door. But he’s not very fast. So you should have plenty of time to drive away before he sees you.”

  She did not reply. Just continued to study his face.

  “Did Justin tell you anything more?” he asked her. “Like whether those men who hurt him said why?”

  She remained silent a moment, and Pete could hear her breathing. Which seemed odd. Maybe every one of her breaths was coming out as something like a sigh.

  “He said they told him to keep to his own kind.”

  “So it was my fault.”

  “No. It was the fault of the people who hurt him.”

  “But if I’d just stayed away from h
im . . .”

  “But you had no idea anything like this would happen.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “So you can’t blame yourself.”

  Pete looked down at his sneakers and said nothing.

  “But you will anyway,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Pete lay awake on the couch bed for a long time. Hours. The light of a strong moon bathed the room in a spooky glow, and that owl wouldn’t stop staring at him. And there was a dog downstairs with him. A big greyhound. Pete was a little bit afraid of him but he kept to himself.

  In time Pete got up and picked up the pillow and blanket the doctor had given him. He hauled it all into the examining room and made a bed on the floor, right up against Prince’s cage.

  “I was wrong,” he told the wolf-dog, who blinked steadily at him in the dim light. “Somebody still wants me around.”

  Within a few minutes he was able to sleep.

  Chapter Nine: Dr. Lucy

  She wound her way through the living room by moonlight, a bottle in one hand, a pack of cigarettes in the other, allowing her eyes to gradually adjust to the dimness.

  There was no one sleeping on her couch. No Pete. Even the bedding she’d given him was gone.

  She looked into the face of Archimedes the owl, who predictably stared back.

  “Where did he go?” she asked the bird.

  The bird, of course, offered no suggestions.

  Dr. Lucy made her way to the door of the examining room.

  A spill of moonlight poured through one of the open windows and fell across Pete, sleeping mostly on his belly on the hard linoleum, his face pressed close to the wolf-dog’s cage.

  Prince raised his head to regard her. Pete kept sleeping, snoring lightly.

  She sat outside on a rickety wooden lawn chair, watching the full moon begin to set over the backs of the sleeping Thoroughbreds.

  She put a fresh cigarette to her lips.

  A nearby sound made her jump.

  “Sorry,” the deep male voice said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Calvin Bell stood over her chair in his jeans and a sleeveless undershirt, his feet bare. The shirt was so white it glowed in the moonlight.