The Good Boy (30 page)

Must be that same desperation that makes him notice the cardboard box stamped
GREEN PEPPERS
on top of the Dumpster in the restaurant’s back alley. It might not be a solution, but it’s certainly a possibility.

Joel takes off his pack and leaves it with Butchie while he gets on his toes to reach the box; it’s empty, so he tosses it aside and lifts the Dumpster’s lid.

Flies are the first to welcome him, right in front of the ripe and complex odor of compost. Joel waves away the bugs and looks inside: the knot to a tied-up black garbage bag is within reach. He reaches. It’s heavy. No way it’s coming out, which means he’s got to go in.

He pulls the lid over and leans it against the fence. Then he turns the pepper box upside down on the ground and balances on its opposite corners. From there he reaches the garbage bag easily, using the Dumpster ledge as a fulcrum. He unties the bag and finds a hundred more flies and also what looks like the remainder of a Roman feast: there are mounds of juiced oranges, bread heels, and eggshells. There’s fat trimmed from raw meat, skin peeled from potatoes, and rinds cut from cheese. And there is definitely enough to fill their empty stomachs.

Joel loads up a Jewel bag with everything that looks edible. When he’s through, he tosses a piece of meat over the side; it’s gone by the time Joel dismounts.

“Don’t give me that face,” he says, because Butchie is sitting there looking pathetic, like he’s never had a meal in his life. “You’ve had lots more to eat today than—” He shuts up when a white SUV—blue stripe, red lightbar—slides past the alley. The vehicle doesn’t stop, but Joel’s heart does. They’re in plain sight; hiding will only prove it.

Joel waits for the squad to back up and he feels familiar nerves try to fire, shorting out after so many shocks.

He waits, but the squad doesn’t come. Still, he feels foolish; he didn’t think twice about Dumpster diving. He didn’t even think once. How could he be so careless? Why isn’t he being
smarter,
like his dad told him to be?

Butchie sniffs at the Jewel bag and Joel takes up the leash. “Quit thinking with your belly,” he says—to himself, really.

Back on the street, they don’t get two feet before Joel sees another white SUV, red light bar. A second cop. Or the same cop. Coming toward them. Slow.

Joel feels like they’re walking a plank, caught between the street and a block’s worth of gated walk-ups; there are very few trees, fewer parked cars, and nowhere to go but straight toward the squad. Across the way, a shielded fence protects the back side of Saints Mary and Elizabeth’s hospital building, its MRI mobile van, and medical trailers set up in the lot like a doctor’s carnival. The fence would have been good cover.
Would
have been.

The SUV continues its cautious approach and Joel slows down, eyeing walk-up gates: one has a keypad, the next a dead bolt, the next a keypad and a dead bolt. If he had a set of keys, he could fake it.
If.

At the next corner, the street runs one-way west; if they could make it, they could turn off, against traffic.

The squad is nearly there so Joel turns, faces the gate in front of him head-on; there is a doorknob. If it is unlocked …
if
 …

He turns the knob. It doesn’t budge.

The SUV stops fast, right there, behind them.

There is nowhere to go.

Joel shuts his eyes, wishes he could disappear that way.

He feels Butchie pull the leash taut, investigating the investigator.

He is sure this is it.

“I see you,” the driver says, a man.

“I’m sorry, Butch, I tried,” Joel says, and turns to face his fate.

And sees a white SUV with a red light bar and a blue stripe—and a decal on the door:
RESURRECTION HEALTH CARE SECURITY.
Stopped there because a basketball has rolled into the street.

This time, Joel’s nerves don’t even bother.

“I didn’t know if you saw the ball,” a long-legged boy says to the driver. He looks to be about Mike’s age. He is black and his Nikes are neon green. He picks up the ball and dribbles.

“Hope you shoot better than you apologize,” the driver says, and moves on.

“Whatev.” It seems like he’s got the ball on a string as he lopes back across the street and around the corner.

Neither of them noticed Joel and Butchie.

Around the corner, Joel sees that the boy has returned to play in a pickup game on a concrete-slab court in front of a playground. Both areas are set against a chain-link fence that splits off for Clemente High School’s block-wide sports field.

Finally, a place to blend in.

Joel leads Butchie past the court’s north hoop. On closer view, all the players are at least high-school age. Some look varsity-skilled, a few have game, and the boy in the green shoes is clearly the star. Joel recognizes the shoes from NBA games on TV; they’re pro-grade. Courtside, the spectators aren’t cheering so much as yelling, telling Tommy to go to work in the post, Terrell to take him to the hole. A few of the sideliners are dressed to play, but most wear street gear—still, they’re all into the game.

All except one. He’s about Joel’s age, although his clothes would better fit an adult: the oversize hoodie, the pants bunched at his ankles and belted around his thighs. He’s working on a supersize bag of Cheetos and a can of fruit punch, and he watches Joel and Butchie, black eyes wary, like he caught them prowling his territory.

Butchie probably had the kid on his radar first: he’s already panting, gait lowered, prowling like it’s
his
territory.

“Come on, Guard Dog,” Joel says, pulling him along.

The boy with the Cheetos sticks out his punch-red tongue.

Butchie fights the leash; he senses Joel’s fear, too.

They walk past the playground to a bike rack that sits perpendicular to a concrete street barrier. Joel ties the leash around a rung and says, “Sit.”

Butchie obeys, strategically positioning himself so the boy and his Cheetos are in his sight line. Joel’s certain that if the dog falls asleep, it’ll be with one eye open.

“You like Cheetos? Is that it, Butch?”

The dog sighs, in no mood for a tease.

“Sorry,” Joel says, not really in the mood, either. “Let’s rest a bit, then we’ll eat. Okay? I’ll be back.”

The playground jungle gym is painted aquamarine, a peculiar color that clashes with the drab surroundings. Joel climbs a set of rungs to the drawbridge, crosses the wobbly planks, and steps up to the slide platform. He sheds his pack along with the food and takes a seat on the curved bridge.

He sticks his legs through the bridge rails, lets them dangle. It feels good to take the weight off, and he’s got a decent view of the basketball game. Beneath him, the black rubber mat is warped and split, weeds growing through in places. Someone’s scratched graffiti along the slide bed and at the end, the paint is worn through to metal.

On the court, Joel is drawn to the boy in the green shoes: he hasn’t missed a basket. He’s got crazy bounce, too—those shoes might as well have springs, the way he gets up and over the other guys. He’s out of
this
league, that’s for sure.

Joel hooks his hands around the rails and stretches back to look up at the gray sky, his legs swinging. He imagines handling the ball, becoming good at it. Making the team.
I’ll practice,
he thinks.
Soon as I get home.

The game stops when one of the boy’s teammates goes in for a layup and an opponent undercuts him, taking out his legs. The shooter rolls when he hits the concrete, but it’s concrete, and he comes up bloody. When he cries foul, the other team calls bullshit: the offender’s shirt is ripped from the armpit down, evidence. Soon it’s a shouting match, sides drawn the same as the teams, everybody in somebody else’s face. Everybody but the boy in the green shoes; he stands back and waits, the ball his yo-yo.

Eventually the shooter and his opponent walk off the court to opposite corners, like fighters regrouping. When two other players jump in and the game resumes, a pair of spectators seems to be sorry the scuffle is over, and peel away from the pack. One of them is the boy with the Cheetos. The other is a heavyset kid who doesn’t look much friendlier.

They come straight toward Joel.

Joel’s legs swing to a stop.

“What you want?” asks the boy with the Cheetos, though he no longer has the Cheetos, just the orange fingers.

“Nothing,” Joel says. “I’m watching the game.”

The second boy starts to climb the slide. “What kind of dog is that?” he asks, the ragged soles of his shoes slipping as he scrambles up and slips down and scrambles up again, his shirt coming up, exposing rolls of flabby skin.

“He’s a Belgian Malinois–German shepherd mix.”
A police dog
is what Joel wants to say.

“How come you chained him up over there?”

“He doesn’t like basketball.” Joel looks through the jungle gym rails to see Butchie, sitting up, hair up, ears up, watching. Helpless.

“You know what I want?” the first boy asks, kicking the edge of the rubber mat.

Joel shrugs, pretty sure he’s kept all the cool he can.

The boy on the slide is within reach of the top and Joel starts to get up, but the other boy grabs his feet and pulls, holding him there and knocking him flat on his back.

“Hey—” Joel says.

“No,” the boy below says, “I don’t want
hey
. I want to know what you got in those bags.”

Joel feels weight on the bridge: the second boy has squeezed through the slide’s canopy. He takes Joel’s pack and the Jewel bag and pushes them down the slide.

“Hey—” Joel says again but then the boy sits on his chest, pinning his arms. He can’t move, he can’t breathe, he can’t—

“Shut up, bitch,” the boy on the ground says, which doesn’t make sense until—

“Murphy, come in?”
Molly!

“Murphy can’t come in,” the boy says. “He’s about to get fucked up!”

Then the boy on top of him laughs, and Joel thinks his ribs might break. His thoughts come fast and important and above all he wants to say
Whatever you do, leave the dog …
but he can’t. He can’t speak, he can’t breathe—he can’t
breathe
 …

And then he hears someone say, “What the fuck you doing? Jemaine?”

And then the weight is lifted.

Joel sits up right away, or what feels like right away, but by that time the boys are off in the distance, on the other side of the empty basketball court. The boy in the green shoes is with them, dribbling the basketball; next to him, Jemaine bounces Butchie’s tennis ball.

Joel pulls his legs out from the rails, gets on his feet and finds Butchie: he’s still leashed to the bike rack. Tail going.

“Oh my gosh—” Joel shoots down the slide to the rubber mat where the boys left his stuff and he leaves his stuff, too, and goes for the dog.

“I’m so sorry, Butch.” As Joel unties the leash, it begins to rain. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”

Butchie follows Joel back to the playground to collect his things: his jacket and sweatshirt in the grass. Books opened, pages wet. And the walkie-talkie, here, wires hanging. The antenna there. The battery nowhere to be found. The Jewel bag ripped open and turned inside out, most of the food ruined.

He shoves everything into a couple more Jewel bags and they cut back to Oakley toward a tall hospital building that stands at the next intersection. Butchie skips around Joel, his tongue hanging long to one side; he doesn’t understand what just happened and he doesn’t care about the rain, either. To him, this jaunt is some kind of game—until it thunders, and then Joel is the one trying to keep up with Butchie.

A few blocks later the rain is really something, sideways and biting, and Joel looks for shelter beneath the eave of St. Helen’s Church. He wishes he could duck inside; he sees lights through the stained-glass door and finds that the fish-shaped handles have pull, but he can’t leave Butchie alone out here, the thunder his biggest fear.

The wind changes direction, bringing rain around the curve of the building; they’re soaked, and Joel can’t see anywhere else to go, but a clap of thunder gets them going anyway.

They scramble south for another block until Joel finds a gigantic church called St. Nicholas, everything from its steps to its steeple dwarfing little old Helen.

Lots of saints around here,
Joel thinks; he wishes any one of them could be of help. But it won’t be St. Nick: at the top of the steps, his giant doors are open and a group of somber-looking men dressed in dark suits stands around looking out at the rain. The coffin waiting in the hearse parked at the bottom of the steps tells why.

Joel crosses the street to steer clear of the paused procession and that’s when he sees a big blue construction Dumpster parked in front of a tarped fence. Behind that, an orange-brick three-story has air for windows and a board for a door.

Joel checks over his shoulder to make sure nobody’s looking, but with the Dumpster right there, the only person who could see is the dead man, so he throws his pack over the fence and pulls back on the gate; it’s tight, but the rain gives enough grease for Butchie to slip through. Once Joel gets in, they climb through an open-air window and find a place on dry floor.

“Hello?” he asks. The thunder answers, and Butchie finds the corner-est corner and curls up, tail over his nose, shaking.

“It’s okay, boy,” Joel says, even though he doesn’t think so. He takes off Molly’s shirt and uses it to towel his hair. Then he takes off his tennis shoes, orange stains from Jemaine’s Cheeto-covered fingers on the canvas.

He gets undressed, ringing out his wet clothes and draping them over the unfinished stairs. And then, as he sits there in his underwear, his heart feels hard, and for the first time since he left home, he cries.

21

Pete waits to turn onto Western Avenue while a couple of teenagers cross the street from Clemente High School, the boys loopy and loud, one with the end of a long twist of licorice dangling from his mouth, the other belting out a baby-voiced version of a hip-hop song Pete recognizes and can’t stand. He guesses they either knocked over a candy machine or were just sprung from Saturday detention. He hopes they’re high on sugar.