The Good Boy (5 page)

The days are getting shorter and pretty soon these solid chunks of afternoon will give way to early evening. The time change will supply another hour, but it’ll go toward morning. Boy, he hates morning. And he hates that when the time comes, he’ll be ordered inside at sundown; he won’t have an official reason to be out past five o’clock until Halloween. He guesses he’ll dress as a SWAT guy again. Or maybe his dad will let him take Butchie trick-or-treating, a cadaver dog to Joel’s skeleton costume.

Rounding the corner of Rosehill, Joel checks for any goings-on at the Fireside Bar, the only place there’s ever anything going on. The coast is clear so he doubles back, makes for his mark just past the house with the window sign that reads
PETS WELCOME, CHILDREN MUST BE LEASHED.
Then he slips into the gangway and climbs the chain-link fence: up, over, over, up.

On the rooftop, it’s Tomorrowland. Or the way he imagines it, anyway. Up here, he can see everything at once, all the way around—even the tiptops of the Loop’s skyscrapers—and all in a moment. Up here, he is a hero. Like his dad.

And down below, things are so slow; or else people are. They hardly ever look up. They move from here to there and back, slouched under imaginary ceilings.

Up here, he can also see over the Rosehill cemetery’s stone walls, which gives him the jimjams, since the one time he went inside turned into a nightmare he still hasn’t been able to shake. They were playing Most Wanted and an informant told Molly that a robber who’d just hit the bank on Ashland was hiding out in there. Time was of the essence—there was a hostage, and also Joel had to be home for dinner—so he went in without backup.

Once through the gates he was immediately lost, and then what he found was a red-granite gravestone with the name
MURPHY.
That stopped him—not dead in his tracks, but in his tracks. He didn’t know of any of his family being buried in there, but then he started thinking about his family, and then he couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen if they
were
buried in there. Especially Butchie, who’s as much a Murphy as the rest of them, and who’s the first one sent to chase after real bad guys.

Joel still doesn’t know why but he called out, “I know you’re in here,” and his voice was swallowed up by a silence that gave him Canadian-sized goose bumps. When he got up the courage to move again he couldn’t get his bearings: all the memorials and monuments looked alike. Driveways ran in loops and figure eights and dead-ended at solid-stone walls. And every single thing that might have moved when Joel wasn’t looking was probably not a ghost, but definitely not some made-up bank robber or hostage. The game was over: Joel was too scared to pretend anymore.

The worst part was, after Joel followed the wall around three sides to find the only open gate, Molly was standing there waiting to point out the sign he’d missed that stood in front. It read:

OPEN DAILY AT 8:00 am

LOCKED @ 5 pm SHARP!

DON’T GET LOCKED IN!

Then she turned her father’s metal watch around and showed Joel its scratched face: it was two minutes past five. Joel didn’t stick around to see if the gates creaked back together real slow or snapped shut.

Now that he thinks about it, the cemetery call was another of Molly’s. Sometimes he wonders if she’s breaking his balls—that’s what Joel’s mom does to his dad—and it’s why he still smokes. Joel tried a cigarette one time, from his dad’s stash, but it didn’t make him feel any better about the way Molly acted. It made him feel, once again, like somehow she was right.

Joel is scaling the pyramid roof—two of the three sides, no problem—when he hears someone in the next yard. He stops, flush with the roof, out of sight.

“That’s a maple tree,” a woman says. “May-pull.”

Joel peeks around the corner: twelve feet down and as many away, a lady wearing a nice brown business suit sits cross-legged, her high heels kicked off in the grass. She’s twisting a burnt-orange leaf between her fingers and she’s trying to get the attention of the little kid in front of her; the boy is busy digging a hole with the dump part of his toy truck.

“Can you say
maple
?” she asks.

The boy looks around, his tiny brain wheel cranking, and comes up with the truck part of the toy. He offers it to her, both hands; his smile shows her likeness.

“Thank you,” she says, putting the toy aside. “May-pull?” she asks, about the leaf again.

“Wut’s dat,” says the kid, pointing to the house.

“That is our house.”

“Wut’s dat,” he says, finger thrust randomly to his right, leading the question.

“That’s a … that’s the … what are you…? That’s the neighbor’s fence, darling.”

“Wut’s dat?” the boy asks again, pointing at the same place.

“That is still the neighbor’s fence.”

Joel finds the exchange remarkable; he doesn’t remember ever getting a straight answer like that from his mom, no matter how many times he asked a question.

“Do you see this?” the woman asks. “This is a leaf. A maple leaf.”

“Wut’s dat?” This time, the boy’s pointer finger is still in motion when he spots Joel. Joel drops back, leans into the pitch of the roof.

“Ook!” the boy cries, delighted. “Ook!”

“What do you see, darling?” the woman asks. “The sky?”

“Ook!”

“The clouds? Those are clouds. Do you see this?”

Joel sits tight, waiting for a chance to bail, wondering why the lady is so hung up on that one word and also why the kid won’t just say
maple
already.

Seems like he waits forever which is seven times that long in dog years and he has no idea what that means in mommy years but she’s the one who finally breaks: the kid says, “Ook!” and she says, “I see! I see that that is the sky and this is a leaf and I am exhausted so how about I go get some mommy juice and you can play with Daddy.”

“Daddy!”

Joel backs out of there knowing it’s lucky he was too much for the kid’s vocabulary, because it would really be something, going the whole summer without a single adult busting him and then getting jammed up by a two-year-old. He guesses he should face the facts: he doesn’t need any more trouble. He should head for home.

Back on the street, Joel cuts south to the next alley, the neighborhood familiar enough to claim as his own by now. It isn’t bad here; at least not as bad as his sister says. Anyway, his mom says it’s only temporary. Pretty soon they’ll move somewhere with a yard big enough so Joel and Butchie can play fetch. That’s what his dad says.

On approach to the half block where four garages back up to a fence in a dead-end T, he finds Zack Fowler’s beater car idling, a low growl. Joel knows the car because everybody knows the car just as well as everybody knows not to mess with Zack Fowler.

The driver’s door is open, like the stop was sudden, or unexpected.

Joel decides to turn around, forget the shortcut, but the plan doesn’t reach his feet before John-Wayne Wexler, somebody else nobody messes with, comes around the corner from the garage and says, “I got him!”

For a second Joel thinks
he’s
“him” and so takes cover behind the driver’s door. From there, through the windshield, he watches the rest of the neighborhood bullies appear: Danny Sanchez over a fence. Aaron Northcutt out a gangway. And Zack Fowler from inside the garage. Like rats, all.

“Scratched the shit outta my arm,” says John-Wayne, his Southern accent bending the vowels all wrong. The actual
him
is Felis Catus, an orange and white neighborhood cat. John-Wayne has him by the tail.

Felis Catus was the subject of much interest back when Joel and Molly used to play explorers. Molly discovered him under a Hines Lumber truck over on Wolcott; Joel looked up his classification and named him by genus and species. They followed the cat, observed his habits, tried to feed him a can of tuna fish. They took notes and studied his behavior, but they never did trace his origin—that was Molly’s
real
interest: she wanted to know if the cat had a home, or else she wanted to take him home.

Then her grandma Sandee said No Cats Allowed, and then Molly got the walkie-talkies, and now they don’t really play explorers anymore.

“Where’s the bat?” asks John-Wayne. Felis Catus arches and bucks toward his captor, claws out.

“I’ve got it,” Zack says.

The boys form a loose circle around John-Wayne, Zack balancing the bat’s barrel end in his palm. Danny strikes a Zippo on his jeans for a cigarette, then thrusts the flame at the cat.

“Pussy wanna get licked?”

Felis Catus hisses; Danny hisses back.

Joel’s heart is a weight.
That is Felis Catus.

“Aw, shit!” Zack says when the cat bucks back, catching John-Wayne’s arm. Blood surfaces in thin parallel streaks and starts to bead.

“Mother—” says John-Wayne. And then, as though he feels the sting on his ego, he throws the cat down, takes the bat from Zack, and swings. Joel shuts his eyes but he hears the blunt contact, bat to bone.

Aaron says, “Oh, Jesus.”

Joel stands up, because now he has to see. The boys don’t notice; the cat is the center of attention for all of them except Aaron, who has turned away completely, hands on his knees.

Felis Catus is clearly wounded, back leg limp like he took a blow to the spine. When he begins to bawl, the sound is unnerving and pitiful; a man sobbing. A boy’s spirit breaking.

Joel doesn’t understand.
He’s just a cat.
Well, he’s not just a cat. He’s Felis Catus. Joel wishes he had Butchie with him; Butchie would’ve stopped this before it started, just being here.

“A-ron,” says John-Wayne, extending the bat. “Your turn.”

Still bawling, Felis Catus gets up on his front paws to drag himself away, his escape route slow and obvious. And impossible.

“Shit, J-Wayne,” Zack says, “the thing won’t die. I thought for sure it was done-for when it ran out in front of the car.”

Aaron takes the bat but he says, “Oh man,” like there’s no way he can lift and swing.

“Who’s the pussy now?” Danny smiles as he crouches at the cat’s back feet and twists the burning end of his cigarette into its hind fur. Felis Catus turns and hisses and the weight of his broken leg rolls him over on his back, defenseless.

“Aw, D-Bag,” says John-Wayne, “that’s mean.”

“I told you,” Danny says, “don’t call me that. I don’t make fun of your stupid redneck name.”

“Whatever, D-Bag. The Duke is a hero.”

Joel doesn’t know what that means, but he knows there are no heroes here.

John-Wayne picks up Felis Catus. “C’mon, A-ron.” He turns the writhing cat around in his hands. “The thing’s already on queer street. I think you should be the one to put it out of its misery.”

“Oh man.” Again from Aaron.

Zack puts his hand out for the bat. He says, “I should be the one to do it, J-Wayne. I’m the one who ran it over.”

“Let Aaron take a swing first.” It doesn’t sound like a suggestion.

Joel is fixed there, thinking over and over,
But that is Felis Catus
.

“Murphy, where are you?”
Molly. The radio. No—

All four boys turn toward Zack’s car and hell-o, there’s Joel.

“Hey,” Zack says, handing the bat off to Danny, coming around the car. “What’s going on?”

Joel wants to say so many things about what’s going on, like that he heard John-Wayne beat up a fifth-grader and Danny got suspended for smoking pot and Zack went to jail—
jail
—for stealing another car, but none of it is as awful as this and anyway, along with the fear caught up in his throat, there’s confusion.
Why are they hurting Felis Catus?

“You’re Joel Murphy,” Zack says. He remembers.

“Murphy as in Mike Murphy?” Danny asks, bat balanced between his knees, another cigarette to his lips.

“Who’s Mike Murphy?” asks John-Wayne. The cat mews, helpless.

“McKenna,” says Zack. He knows.

“She
is
looking more like a
McKenna
these days.” Danny swivels his hips and uses cupped hands to fill out his stick-thin chest. The bat totters and the barrel clinks on the pavement.

“I know that girl,” says John-Wayne. “Freshman, right? I’d like to hit that.”

“Hit that?”
Danny asks. “Nobody says
hit that
around here, you hick.”

“I ought to hit you in your fat mouth.”

“Were you spying on us, Joel?” Zack asks.

He wants to say no, he wasn’t spying—
but hey, guys, believe it or not that is Felis Catus—my cat—and please can I just take him home now? I won’t tell anybody
—but the words won’t come.

“What are you, some kinda moron?” Danny asks. The boys edge around the car door, and Joel is trapped, too.

Felis Catus, panting, tries again to escape John-Wayne’s arms. Joel wants to reach out and take the cat, get him to safety, but action won’t come, either.

“Murphy, are you there?”
From Molly.

“Better get that, kid,” Danny says. “And get out of here.”

“Now wait a second, D-Bag,” says John-Wayne. “I think Joel wants a shot.”

Aaron says, “His dad’s a cop.”

“My dad’s a fuckin’ asshole,” Danny says. “So what?”

“A cop’s
daughter,
” says John-Wayne, tongue to his lip.

“She parties,” Zack says, eyes flashing.

“Murphy,”
Molly yells—

“Joel Murphy,” says John-Wayne. “You want to take a swing?”

Yes,
Joel thinks.
At you.
But the words won’t come.

John-Wayne lifts Felis Catus by his back legs and he wails, delirious. “Batter up.”

Danny gets the bat; Joel shakes his head,
no, no.
If he were a bigger kid, or if he had a good swing, he would take the bat and use it to knock out John-Wayne’s knees. He’d raise it up over his head and smash Danny’s stupid face. He’d take it one more time to Zack’s ribs. But he isn’t bigger, so he just stands there, useless, as his belt says—

“That’s it, Murph, I’m done playing. Over and out.”