Strider (7 page)

Barry and I quarreled. I feel terrible.

The quarrel was my fault. When Barry didn't say anything more about Strider, I didn't return him to the Brinkerhoffs' house yesterday on the way to school. I felt so guilty I avoided Barry. I knew it was wrong, but I love Strider so much I made up dumb excuses to myself about how Barry didn't need a dog because he had a full-time father and a bunch of little sisters to keep him company.

Then Barry and I bumped into each other in the breezeway between classes. “How come you don't come by my house on the way to school?” he asked, leaving Strider out of it.

“I guess I'm short of time” was the only excuse I could think of.

Barry scowled. “You almost make me late waiting for you.”

“So don't wait.” I knew I shouldn't talk that way, but I felt so guilty I couldn't help myself.

Today we met accidentally on the way to school. Barry didn't look exactly friendly. “How come you're keeping Strider?” he asked.

I wished I had a real excuse. “I didn't think you'd care. You didn't pay much attention to him during football season. Besides, he likes it at my house.” I hoped this was true.

“Sure,” said Barry. “You feed him, but don't forget he's half mine. We agreed.”

I said a mean thing. “Then how come you're behind in your dog support payments? We agreed on that, too.”

“Why should I pay for a dog you keep all the time?” Barry had me there.

“You pay and I'll bring him back.” I didn't know what else to say.

“You sound like you're holding him for ransom,” Barry said.

“You know I'm not.” I glared at Barry, who glared back.

Knowing I was wrong was making me act so angry. I didn't really want to behave that way, but I didn't know how to turn back. Already I could hear adults saying they knew we couldn't work out joint custody of a dog. They'd have a good laugh, and Strider hadn't done a thing except be a good dog.

Barry started to go on ahead.

“Barry, wait!” I called, feeling terrible.

“Drop dead,” he answered.

That made me feel so awful, I was even more angry. “Stinkerhoff!” I yelled and felt like a first-grader.

Yesterday Barry avoided me.

Last night I felt so heavy inside I had trouble going to sleep and kept one hand on Strider's rough hair as he lay on the floor beside my bed. Once he woke up and licked my hand. I know he likes the taste of salt on my skin, but I pretended he was letting me know he loved me. Maybe he was.

At breakfast this morning, Mom asked, “What's the matter, Leigh? You look down in the dumps.”

I told the truth. “I'm just a rotten kid with a bad attitude.”

“Oh, Leigh.” Mom laughed a sad, amused, worried laugh. “It isn't easy being fourteen.”

It sure isn't.

Barry is avoiding me. He even walked to school a different way, which made me feel so terrible, so tight inside, like the popcorn his sisters shrink back into kernels, that I couldn't concentrate in school and did everything wrong.

After school I walked slowly home, thinking. I had to do something to straighten out this mess. When I opened the door, Strider was so happy to see me he jumped up and licked me. As I hugged him, I noticed he had chewed another corner of the rug.

After I changed my clothes, we went for a run along the edge of the bay. Then we ran around to the butterfly grove, where we walked quietly so we wouldn't disturb the butterflies looking like brown twigs as they clung to the eucalyptus trees. As the sun moved in among
the branches to warm the butterflies, they began to unfold and rise in clouds the color of Geneva's hair and to flutter away through the trees.

I always go there when I am sad. Knowing that such fragile creatures can fly as far as Alaska every year somehow cheers me up. By the time we left the grove, I knew what I had to do to make myself feel better.

Back at the cottage, I picked up Strider's correct-posture food stand. “Come on, boy,” I said and plodded up the hill to Barry's house, where I set the dish under the overhang of the deck and unsnapped the leash, which I hung on its nail.

When I knelt to scratch Strider's chest, he looked puzzled, as if he knew something was different. I took his head between my hands,
looked at his mottled face, his black nose, his alert brown ears, and said, “So long, Strider. See you around.” Then I left, fastening the gate behind me. When I looked back, Strider was standing with his front paws on the fence, watching me walk away. “Don't forget me,” I called, turned away, and cried.

All this evening I waited for Barry to phone and tell me not to be stupid, to come and get Strider, that we still had joint custody. The telephone just sits there, silent, tan, and ugly. Now I know I didn't really mean it when I gave Strider to Barry. I just wanted Barry to phone and say, “Everything is okay, no sweat, we're still friends.”

Strider's ghost haunts this cottage. The windows are smeared with his nose print. His hair is everywhere. The chewed corners of the rug remind me of the times I left him shut in too long. I seem to hear the click of his toenails on the kitchen floor and the rattle of his license tag, as if he were still scratching. When I go to bed I reach down for the reassuring touch of his rough hair, but Strider is not there.

Today Mom asked, “What's happened to Strider? I miss him.”

“He's at Barry's.” I tried to act as if this were not unusual.

“Did you boys run into trouble over his custody?” she asked over the rim of her decaf cup.

“Not exactly,” I said. “Well, sort of.”

Good old Mom. She didn't ask any more questions.

Funny. Even though I no longer have to exercise Strider, I still have the urge to get up early and run. Habit, I guess. The first few minutes I have to push, but as I run, my muscles loosen up, a good feeling comes over me, and then I feel as if I am floating.

To avoid Barry, I take a different route to school. I often meet Kevin, which puts me on the alert at first, even when I am not wearing the shirt.

Today, instead of chasing me, Kevin said, “Hi, Leigh. How's it going?”

“You ask? In the middle of finals?” I laughed what I intended to be a hollow laugh. At the last minute I am trying to bring my grades up.

“Make my day. Give me an A.” Kevin leaped up to hit an overhanging branch. “Going out
for track? I've seen you and your dog running around town.”

My ex-dog, I thought, and said, “I haven't really thought about it.” All I had thought about was Strider, Barry, finals, and sometimes Geneva, the girl with hair the color of monarch butterflies.

We walked in silence until Kevin said, “You know something? Nobody at school ever noticed me until I started chasing you in that shirt. I really liked that shirt, but my mother practically went into coronary arrest when she saw it.” He swatted a bush. “I don't mind your wearing it now. At least chasing you in it brought me some attention. People know who I am.”

“It's hard being a new kid in school,” I said, remembering the sixth grade.

Today after the math final, I ran into Barry in the breezeway. It had to happen sometime, but he didn't look especially happy to see me, which I thought was unreasonable. He has full custody of Strider. “How come you didn't keep Strider at your place?” he asked.

I wanted to say I was sorry for all the mean things I had said, but harsh, angry words came out: “Because I'm a rotten kid with a bad attitude.”

Barry looked as if I had hit him. Maybe if I had done better on my math final, I wouldn't have been in such a bad mood and wouldn't have sounded so mean.

After school Kevin caught up with me. “How about coming over to my place for something to eat?” he asked.

Why not? Without Strider, I didn't have anything better to do.

Kevin lives in one of those big old Victorian houses painted in what they call “decorator colors,” which are worth about a million dollars these days. The kitchen was all pink and modern. Kevin opened a door of a huge refrigerator-freezer. “My mother had all our appliances painted this special pink at an auto body shop,” he explained, as if he was apologizing. I had never seen so much frozen food outside a supermarket. “Pizza?” he asked. “I'll save the beef stroganoff for dinner. Or maybe the chicken cordon bleu. I'm not into Weight Watchers.”

“Pizza's great.” I was puzzled. “Doesn't your mother cook?”

Kevin shoved the pizza into the microwave. “She never cooks. We just choose whatever we want and nuke it in the microwave.”

While we ate the Pizza, I learned a lot about Kevin, who seemed to need someone to talk to. His father is rich and lives in San Francisco on Nob Hill, or in his condo in Hawaii, and is mad at Kevin because he couldn't get into prep school when practically everyone in the family back to Adam and Eve has gone to prep school. Kevin was mad at his father for divorcing his mother for a younger woman in the midst of the entrance exams he had to take. Kevin ex
plained that his mother received lots of alimony, and the housekeeper who came in every morning didn't like him to mess up the kitchen. He wished he had gone out for cross-country because it would give him something to do.

I'm ashamed to say Kevin's problems made me feel a little better about mine.

When I told Mom I had a new friend who wasn't very happy, she asked, “What's his problem?”

“He's rich.”

Mom laughed and said she wished she had the same problem, but after seeing how Kevin lives, I don't think his being rich is so funny.

Mom said, “Maybe we should ask him over for dinner sometime when I have a day off.” Then she added, “Unless you are ashamed of the way we live.”

I have never been ashamed, but now I wonder if I'm going to be.

Today Kevin and I turned out for track. Mr. Kurtz, the coach, gave us a pep talk about the importance of taking part and doing the best we can. He said it's not the winning, it's the competing that's important. He stressed looking for improvement within ourselves. That means I'll have to start chipping away at my bad attitude.

Across the playing field I could see Geneva, arm and leg extended, red hair flying, still working at clearing those hurdles. She is improving, which probably means she has the right attitude.

The varsity team calls Mr. Kurtz “Coach,” but most of us younger kids don't feel we know him that well. He watched the freshmen and sophomores work out. Afterward, as we headed
for the locker room, Mr. Kurtz put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I have a feeling you're going to make a real contribution to the team. Stick with it.” This surprised me. With Barry and Strider so heavy on my mind, my feet felt heavy, too.

To Kevin he said, “With those long legs, you should do well.”

On a scale of one to ten, today was about fifteen. When I came home from school, Strider was sitting by the front door! When he saw me, he came running, jumped up, and licked my face. That long wet tongue felt good.

“Strider!” was all I could say. “Strider!” He wriggled all over, he was so glad to see me.

I looked for his leash, but it was nowhere around. Neither was his posture dish. That meant one thing. Strider had come on his own. The Brinkerhoffs' fence wasn't so high he couldn't get over it if he really wanted to.

I felt great. Strider wanted
me
. I took him inside and fed him in a plain dish. His
slurp-slobber
sounded good, just like old times.

And then the telephone rang. My heart dropped so far it practically bounced on the
floor because I had a feeling Barry was calling. He was.

“Is Strider there?” Barry sounded anxious.

“Yes,” I said. “Want to speak to him?”

“Wise guy,” said Barry. “What's he doing there? Did you come and get him?”

I pointed out to Barry that if I had taken Strider, I would have taken his leash and posture dish, too, and said, “Coming back was Strider's idea. He came on his own.” When Strider heard his name, he rested his head on my knee.

“That's what I figured,” said Barry, “but I wanted to be sure no one had stolen him.”

We were both silent. I could hear the little sisters shrieking in the background, so I knew he had not hung up on me.

Finally Barry said, “You didn't need to give up custody.”

“I guess I was upset about a lot of things,” I admitted, “so I said things I was sorry for.” Maybe it's easier to talk about some things over the telephone, rather than face to face.

“That's what Mom said.” Barry was silent a moment while I thought, Thank you, Mrs. Brinkerhoff, for understanding.

Finally Barry said, “You keep him, and I will be his friend. He has shown he likes you best, and I know you exercise him more than I do.
Anyway, I don't like to wash his dish, and he makes my sisters' cats nervous.”

“Gee, Barry…” I was so grateful I could hardly talk.

“That's okay.” Barry understood.

When I got hold of myself, I felt I had to mention one worry. “If I keep him, people will laugh and say they knew we couldn't manage joint custody. You know how they talked.”

“Yeah,” agreed Barry. “They're saying it already. There ought to be some way around all their stupid remarks they think are so funny.”

In our silence, I had an idea, a really brilliant idea. “When Mom and Dad got divorced, I heard something about if a kid is old enough and smart enough to form an intelligent preference, he can have something to say about custody. Or something like that. I know I am right about the intelligent preference bit.”

“Hey, that sounds great!” Barry was excited. “We can just say Strider is now mature enough to express an intelligent preference, and he decided to live with you.” We laughed like old times.

“After all, how many dogs are mature enough to read?” I asked, and we laughed some more. Then I had another thought. “The trouble is, I'm going out for track. I can exercise him in the morning, but if I leave him inside during the day, he eats the rug.”

“No problem,” said Barry. “Just leave him in our yard like always, and I'll exercise him during track season. I need to stay in shape for football next year.”

In a little while, Barry came down the path with Strider's leash and posture dish. We didn't have to say we were glad to be friends again. We both knew it. I also knew, but would never say, that Barry is relieved to be rid of the entire responsibility of Strider. I don't mind washing his dish.

I hugged my dog. Both halves of him are mine!