Buddy (7 page)

14

I mow the church lawn again the next Saturday evening. Daddy says I have to, so I do. Brother James gives me another five dollars even though it don't take even half as long. I stop by the store on my way back. When I get home, Tanya's sitting there singing to Buddy. She's promised she won't dress him up anymore and I've said she can sit and sing to him when I leave out.

“I'm back now,” I say.

“I ain't finished my song.”

I sit down to wait.

Tanya's got a pretty voice. I ain't going to say it out loud, but it's for true. Except she don't know any songs. She just makes it up as she goes along.

“You're a beautiful dog,” she's singing to Buddy.

 

“You've got great big eyes.

You've got pretty, black fur.

Your tongue hangs out between your teeth when you're hot.

You go ‘Ruff, ruff!' when Li'l T comes back.

You look at me when I sing.

You put your head down on your feet.

Your ears go—”

 

She stops.

She tilts her head to one side and looks at Buddy. Then she starts up again.

 

“I don't know any words for what your ears do.

They can stand up on their own.

They're pink inside.”

 

“That's enough,” I say. “This song ain't never going to end.”

She hunches up like she's afraid I'm going to hit her.

“Can't you sing something else? Something that's got an end?”

“‘The Eensy, Weensy Spider'?” she says.

“Okay. That's short.” I wait all the way through. I see her drawing a breath to start over. “You're finished. Now go.”

She hops up and runs inside, and Buddy turns his eyes to me.

I reach in the bag I brought from the store.

“It's a present,” I say to Buddy.

He lifts up his head and looks.

“Dog biscuits,” I say. I open the box and take one out. I hand it to him. He crunches it between his teeth. He drops it. He picks it up. He's slobbering all over that biscuit until it's completely gone.

I laugh. “Was that good?”

He looks up at me. He's staring at me and panting. I know he wants another one so I throw him another one. He loves those biscuits.

I'm thinking,
What do I want with a bicycle? I'm getting more biscuits next week.
And I throw him another one.

I start getting biscuits for Buddy every week on my way home from mowing the churchyard. I go with Mama when she's making groceries and I get him his regular food plus a rubber bone that squeaks when he bites it. First time he bites it, he jumps. Then he bites it again and shakes it. Me and Tanya are laughing at him. He thinks he's putting on a show.

One day I walk all the way to the pet store on St. Claude and Frenchmen Street. They've got birds in cages and rats and kittens and mice and everything. They've got a whole wall of fish swimming around plastic plants. They've got shelves stacked all the way to the ceiling with toys and food.

“What are you looking for, son?” the man says.

“I've got a dog,” I say.

“What's he need?”

“Almost everything.”

“He got a collar?”

I shake my head.

“He needs a collar.”

The man walks to a whole rack of collars. “Is he a big dog or a little dog?”

“Medium.”

He lifts up a red leather collar. “Is this one long enough?” He wraps it around in a circle and I think about Buddy and whether it would fit around his neck.

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“You got a tag?”

“A tag?”

“You need a tag. You need to put his name on it and your phone number so if he runs off, they can find you.”

“Buddy can't run. He's only got three legs.”

“He's named Buddy? I've got a tag with that name already on it.” He shows me a whole display of name tags. Sure enough, there's one that says Buddy. It's silver, with the letters already scratched into it.

“I'll take it,” I say, and I hand him the money.

When I put it on Buddy, he stands up straight like he thinks he's really somebody's dog now.

“You the man,” I say to Buddy.

“Rruff!” Buddy says.

And I think that means, “You, too, Li'l T.”

15

By the end of July, I'm about worn out with mowing yards. Some people don't call me anymore. Some people call me twice a week. J-Boy's mama calls me once and I mow the yard, but then she says she don't have the five dollars and she'll send J-Boy with it tomorrow. He don't never come. Daddy says I got to just write that one off and I don't have to go back if she calls again, which she don't.

Mrs. Washington wants me to come inside every time I go. She gives me a cold drink and we read a letter—might be a new one, might be an old one. She don't care. She just picks up one laying in the pile and hands it to me. She's starting to feel happy because her nephew says he's coming home soon.

I'm getting tired of pushing the lawn mower around and around the yards. I'm getting tired of watching cartoons on the TV. I'm getting tired of hearing Tanya singing.

Mama's always telling me to sit up straight at the table. Daddy's always telling me to chew with my mouth closed. Granpa T's saying how did I get such big feet. Tanya's saying why do I take up the whole sofa when we're trying to watch TV.

Buddy don't say anything. Buddy lays beside me under the tree. I scratch behind his ears. I throw him the ball a time or two. He listens to my stories. When I go inside, I smell him on my hands and I don't want to wash it off.

The days are slipping by and I feel like I'm half asleep most of the time.

Then the next time I go to mow at the church, I can't hardly believe my eyes. Brother James rolls out a brand-new lawn mower with a bag on the back. He shows me how to unhook the bag and dump the cut-off grass in these special new trash bags he bought. That mower whips around that churchyard so fast I feel like it's pulling me instead of me pushing it. I fill up those trash bags before you know it, set them behind the church for trash day, and get home with a box of Buddy treats before I feel like I'm hardly gone.

“Granpa T,” I say at dinner that night. “You got to get one of those new lawn mowers. Ask Brother James how much it costs.”

“Don't matter how much it costs,” Granpa T says. “I ain't spending money on a lawn mower when I got you to do the job.”

“Maybe I'll buy it,” I say. “Maybe I'll save up my money next summer and get a fancy lawn mower and can't nobody use it but me.”

“You have to share,” Tanya says. “Daddy said so.”

“You want to mow the lawn?” I say.

She gets all quiet.

“You can mow the lawn if you want to,” I say.

“Stop it,” Mama says. “Now you're teasing her.”

I swear the tip of Tanya's tongue is sticking out at me. “Mama,” I say, and start to point.

“Your feet are in my way again,” Granpa T says.

I put down my hand. I move my feet. We all just keep on eating.

Next Saturday I decide to try an experiment. I decide to let Buddy come with me, all the way to the church.

We go slow. He takes a long time, sniffing at the tree trunks and barking at the squirrels. Once, he starts to take off after one but I holler, “Stay!” and he stops just like that and comes limping back and plops himself right down beside me!

“Good dog,” I say, and rub up around his ears. “Who taught you that, Buddy? Where are you from?”

Buddy don't say nothing. He just sits there panting in my face and then he takes a little lick and I laugh and off we go again.

It takes us about three times as long to get to the church but I figure it's worth it. I've got somebody to talk to while I do my work. I drag open the shed door and show off that brand-new lawn mower to Buddy. He sniffs its wheels and checks out the bag on the back. While I gas it up, he's poking it with his nose and almost tripping me when I go to put the can away. Then I lay my hand on the cord and he hops to the back of the shed and sits down and waits, his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his ears stretching up to listen.

“Rruff!” he goes when the motor starts. “Rruff, rruff! Rrruff!” But he don't move. He just sits there and barks and waits.

I roll that lawn mower out and I start my circles. After a minute, Buddy peeps out of the shed to watch. When I head to the front, Buddy edges around the corner and sits himself down on the church steps just like he does when we're going house to house. Every time I come close, he lifts up his head and looks at the mower and gives a little “Rruff!” like he's saying, “Good job, Li'l T. Thank you for my food!”

When I'm all done, I go in the back to get those special bags. Brother James bought a wire rack you hook the bag on to hold it open. I'm searching all through that shed and can't find it. I'm saying, “Where did I put that rack last Saturday?” and then I see it, stuck up in the corner and almost invisible in the dark. I grab the rack and the bags, and then I hear Buddy start barking.

Buddy's barking up a storm. He's barking like that churchyard is full of squirrels. He's barking like he's going to tear out every one of their throats twice over. He ain't drawing breath. He's just barking and barking.

I throw down the stuff and I tear around the church to the front, and I see why.

Buddy's standing up on his three legs on the church porch tied to the post with an old piece of rope and two boys are pushing that lawn mower down the street.

“Hey, you!” I yell. “Hey, you!”

They turn around, and I see one of them is J-Boy.

“What're you doing with that lawn mower?” I yell.

They turn back around and keep on pushing.

I start running after them.

“J-Boy,” I'm yelling. “J-Boy, what are you doing with that lawn mower?”

Buddy's barking and barking and pulling at that rope.

I'm about to catch up to them.

“Leave that lawn mower alone,” I'm yelling. “That's the church's lawn mower!”

Buddy's voice is practically going hoarse with barking.

And then I'm there, and I shove J-Boy off to one side, and he falls down, and that other boy takes off down the street, and J-Boy is laying there on the sidewalk with his forehead bleeding. Then he looks up at me and says things I can't write down.

“Go home,” I say, and I watch him get up.

Buddy's still barking on the church porch.

“Be quiet, Buddy,” I say.

Buddy stops barking and stands there looking at us like we're just a little bit too far away to suit him.

“I should have shot that dog,” J-Boy says. He grabs hold of something under his shirt. “I've got a gun,” he says. Then he turns around and walks off down the street. He holds up his hand just before he turns the corner, and I know he ain't giving me no good-bye wave.

Daddy shakes his head when I tell him about J-Boy.

Mama says she doesn't care if he's last person on earth, I'm not going to pass the time with him anymore. I'm not sitting next to him at school. I'm not sitting next to him on the bus. I'm not nodding to him on the street. He's not welcome in our home. If she catches me looking his way, she's going to beat the living daylights out of me because he's bad people.

Granpa T says J-Boy can't help it with his mama like she is.

Mama says that's one thing but her boy being friends with him is another thing and she is not going to have it. Her boy is going to stay off the streets. He's going to graduate from school. He's going to go on to college if he can. He's not going to run with the drugs and the guns and end up—and then she starts crying and Daddy says it's all right now. Li'l T is going to be just fine.

And then I say I can't stand J-Boy anyway and why would I want to run with him and ain't it about time for Baby Terrell to go to bed. And she wipes her face and says if I'm so worried about him getting to bed on time maybe I ought to clean up the kitchen so she can put him down. And I say, “Okay. I'll do it.”

And finally everything's quiet.

I clean up, and then I go out and sit next to Buddy in the dark of the shed. He snugs up next to me. I bury my fingers in the fur behind his ears and I tickle the ends of that caterpillar eyebrow.

We sit still, listening to all the whispering nighttime sounds. A pecan dropping on the shed roof. Somebody playing a radio down the street. Some lady calling her kids. The air conditioner kicking on. Something rustling in the pile of paint cans stacked up in the corner. When a car rolls by, we can feel the bass beating in the wood walls around us.

I hear Buddy breathing. I feel his soft fur and the muscles growing stronger and stronger under his skin. I hold my hand up to my face, and I smell his smell, and I think,
It's okay, Mama. It's all going to be just fine.