The Summer of Riley (9 page)

“And for those good reasons, we won’t be getting back together. I’ve faced that.”

“Really?” I asked, pausing in the middle of my pyramid-building to give her a quick glance.

“Really. So get rid of that anger. I’ve gotten rid of mine.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You have?”

Mom grinned. “Well, maybe not all of it. And maybe not all of the time.”

I grinned back. “Okay. I’ll try.”

“So next time you see your dad, you might tell him you’re sorry for being so hateful on the phone just now.”

I scattered the salt. “Oh, sure, next time I see him. And when will that be? He’s not exactly on our doorstep.” I heard my nasty, sarcastic tone. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“Don’t tell me sorry. Tell him,” Mom said. “And get rid of that salt.”

I scooped it into my hand and poured it into the sink.

Before I went to bed that night, I X-ed off another square. Four down, seventeen to go.

The next day I sent our petitions to Mr. Joel Bell to send to the commissioners. Grace and I both figured the commissioners would pay more attention if the signatures came from a lawyer. We had 103 names on those petitions, which seemed pretty good to us, although we wished we knew how many Ellis and Duane had on theirs.

We took the flyers we had left and taped them back on trees and lampposts and walls. But we gave up on giving out any more since person after person just shook their heads.

“I think about everyone has one of them by now,” Grace said. I hoped that was the reason and that it wasn’t because they were bored with the Riley story. At least not until those twenty-one days were up. Sixteen to go now—and no way to slow them down.

I paid ten dollars to have an ad printed in the
Monk’s Hill Gazette
that repeated the phone number to call.

“By now I know that phone number better than my own,” Grace’s mom said. “Listen to this. I called my husband’s office from downtown today and got city hall by mistake.”

“Did you speak to …” I began.

“Voicemail, of course. But I did leave a good message. Never waste an opportunity, right?”

That night the Channel Three poll votes were announced by a very serious Trixie Allen.

“It’s official,” she said. “Here’s
What’s Going On
in your world today.” We had to wait while they played a commercial of dancing cows, and then Trixie asked, “And how did you vote? Well, we had a lot of callers on this very divisive question of Riley the dog. Thirty-two of those who responded think Riley’s life should be spared. Fifty-four think the execution
should proceed as planned.”

“How can they?” I whispered. “How can fifty-four people want my dog dead? I told them. He’s not going to bother them.”

Mom pulled me close. “Shhh, honey. Those votes don’t mean a thing. It’s not official, whatever she says. The only thing that will matter in the end is what the commissioners decide. And I doubt very much if any of them watch Trixie Allen’s show. They’re there in the big city, after all.”

But I wasn’t a bit sure. It seemed to me that a lot of people watched
What’s Going On.
Grace and I had thought that would be good. But it wasn’t turning out that way. I knew politicians were influenced by polls; even the president watched them. Who was to say county commissioners were any different?

T
he days and nights were going by.

There were now more Xs on the calendar than there were spaces.

Our flyers were finished, and we debated getting more, but what was the point?

Mr. Bingham from the photo shop called to say the big photograph of Riley had come in.

We got it and taped it onto a humongous piece of cardboard. It was actually from the box that had held the wood for the deck Grandpa and I were planning to build around our pond. I debated about whether or not I should take the wood out and cut up the box, but I thought it would be all right. Grandpa would understand that this was for a good purpose.

For two hours Grace and I marched up and down Main Street, carrying it. Not too many people paid too much attention. We were about to give up and
head for home when we saw Ellis and Duane slouching toward us.

“Just walk past,” Grace muttered. “Don’t even look at them.”

Some hope.

They stopped right in front of us, blocking the sidewalk, and because of the cars and trucks parked by the curb, we had no room to step off and go around them.

“Excuse us,” I said, jamming my shoulder into Duane’s chest.

“Oh, look at the picture they’ve got now,” Ellis said. “Didn’t we see this before, Duane? They liked it so much they made it bigger…. How cute is that?” His hand shot up and grabbed the bottom of the cardboard, pulling it down, lopsided, between Grace and me.

“You’d better let go,” I said.

“Or what?” The picture jerked up and down, one corner of it thumping against the sidewalk.

I dropped my end and shoved Ellis with all my strength.

He sprawled backward and I leaped on top of him.

Cora Putnam came rushing out of the bakery,
carrying a long, skinny bakery loaf in a long, skinny bag.

“Boys! Boys!” she shouted. “What’s going on here? Stop it this minute.”

She was smacking me hard on the head and I realized she was whacking me with her long, crusty loaf. Crumbs rained down.

I had Ellis pinned underneath me, one knee on his stomach. King of the World, I thought, happier than I’d been in ages.

Above me I heard Grace say, “Get him, William. Sock him good,” and then she said, “Quit it, Duane! Let go!” and there was a ripping sound.

I began scrambling up. Cora had dropped her loaf and was pulling on the back of my shirt. A couple of other interested people stood around, gawking.

“Look what you’ve done, you cockroach!” Grace wailed, and I saw that our big picture of Riley, the one we’d taped so carefully onto the cardboard, had been torn away and was lying in two jagged pieces on the sidewalk.

I stood, looking at the pieces, my heart hammering. All the anger I’d had, all the triumph was gone, and there was nothing inside me but hopelessness. Riley’s ripped-up picture seemed like an omen. I
clenched my jaws so tightly my face hurt.

Ellis was up now. “Want to do that again?” he asked, his voice filled with fury.

But someone must have taken hold of him from behind. Someone said, “Enough now. There’s been enough,” and a different voice said, “Why don’t you two guys go over and walk on the other side of the street and leave William and Grace be.”

I picked up the two torn pieces of the photograph and fitted them together in my hands. Grace had the cardboard, which was bent but not torn.

“Come on,” she said to me. “Come on. We can go home and glue it on again. That’ll work.”

I shook my head. The picture was finished. I wished I didn’t have the scary thought that Riley was finished, too.

But I couldn’t give up, not as long as there was any chance. There were other things I could do.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the
Courier
and he printed it. I was so jazzed, I wrote two more, but I guess the editor felt there was no need to overdo it. Anyway, he didn’t print them. And somebody called Joseph Olson wrote an answer to my first letter that said, “So we just shift our problem off onto some other unsuspecting farmer? Pass Riley along. Let’s see
how many horses, sheep, and cows he can kill before we send him to the big doghouse in the sky?”

“Chump!” I muttered.

I was logging in to the chat rooms on-line less and less. For a while I’d seen opinions about Riley and sometimes offered mine. But now I never saw his name mentioned.

“The public is fickle,” Grace pronounced.

I thought fickle was only about girls and dates and stuff like that, but Grace doesn’t use the wrong word often, so I had to agree with her. The public is fickle. Now all the chat was about the plan for a new skateboard park where we have the putting green. There were a lot of different opinions on that one, too.

Now there were only eight spaces left on my calendar.

We called Joel Bell. “As I said,” he told us, “nothing left to do but wait.” He sounded sad and sympathetic, but that didn’t seem enough to me.

“Aren’t we paying you to do extra?” I asked in the tone of voice you don’t use to adults and definitely not to a lawyer. But I was pretty desperate.

Mom, who was standing by the open refrigerator,
turned and gave me a horrified look.

Mr. Bell didn’t sound horrified. “If there was more I could do, I’d do it, son. I know how you feel.”

But how could he? Riley wasn’t his dog.

Stephen started coming over for dinner more and more. “I can’t resist your mom’s home-cooked meals,” he told me. “Usually I eat only frozen dinners or canned stuff.”

I didn’t look at Mom when he said that. And she didn’t look at me. There’s no doubt, Mom is the best disguiser of frozen meals in this or any other universe. Stouffer’s should hire her. Campbell’s, too.

“I saw Riley in the exercise yard today.” Stephen helped himself to another chicken enchilada. “He gets along great with the other dogs.”

I nodded. “He likes other dogs.” I was remembering the time we met the lady with the little bitsy rat of a dog and how nice Riley had been. I was beginning to hate those kinds of memories. They made me sad.

“A couple of days back, I saw him wrestling with another dog over a chewed-up bunny toy they both wanted,” Stephen said. “Riley got it, but then he walked away and gave it up.”

“How come?” I asked.

“The other dog was a little Scottie. And a female.” Stephen grinned at me. “I figured Riley let her have it because he’s a gentleman.”

“He is,” I said. “He’s a real gentleman.”

I was always glad when Stephen came. He always had good stories about Riley to tell me. It made me feel better to know he wasn’t just lying around moping.

The next time I saw Stephen, I had a new bunny toy for him to take to Riley. “Tell him I sent it,” I said.

And then, when there were only five nights left, the most awful thing happened. I was lying in bed, listening to my Walkman, thinking about Riley, when he disappeared on me. I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled off the Walkman, concentrating. But I couldn’t get Riley’s exact face. It was just a dog blur, an anonymous everydog dog. It was like looking in a bathroom mirror that’s steaming up and seeing your face get foggier and foggier.

My heart thumped. Where was Riley?

I grabbed my pillow and pressed it to my face, but his smell was so faint I could hardly get it. I turned on my lamp and slid out of bed and stood in front of the
big picture of him that I’d taped together; in an instant he was back. How could I have forgotten? Those ears, those big, soft eyes? There was no one to see, so I kissed his face with the long torn scar all the way down it and went back to bed. But I couldn’t get what had happened out of my mind. I suppose saving him
had
become a kind of game against Ellis and Duane and others, and I’d lost Riley in the need to win it.

I thought about my grandpa and he was still there, even to the way the little sprout of white hair flicked up at the back of his head. I decided I’d concentrate on him every single night before I went to sleep and keep him safe inside of me.

I hoped losing Riley that way didn’t make me a shallow person. From now on, I’d be careful to think of him and not our war plans.

I was still freaked, so I got out of bed again and went down the stairs. There was music playing in the kitchen, and I stopped at my usual bend in the stairs. Below, there was only the music. From the bend, I can’t see or be seen, but not seeing can be frustrating, especially like now. I went silently down the two extra steps that took me around the curve.

Our kitchen is big. I guess you could maybe even
call it a family room. It’s certainly where we spend most of our time. The floor is made of big square flagstones. There’s a rug over by the table. The CD player and radio sit up on a dresser that holds Mom’s teapot collection.

Tonight she and Stephen were playing a CD, one of those oldies that Mom likes. I didn’t know the name of whatever it was, but Mom and Stephen were dancing to it. Some guy was singing, “Only you can make this world seem right.” Mom’s head was on Stephen’s shoulder, and they were moving very slowly, dreamily almost.

I went back up the two steps and sat down in my hiding place. My chest hurt.

So, I’d seen them dancing, so what? Adults like to dance. But I’d seen more, and I wasn’t sure exactly what. I’d seen one of those things you can’t put a name to. Like maybe you could say closeness, or fondness. I didn’t know. Maybe you could say love.

T
hree days left.

The next day was the annual Monk’s Hill Old-fashioned Summertime Picnic in Carlisle Park.

“What do you mean you’re not coming?” Grace jumped out of her chair.

We were on the porch, sitting in the half-light. We’d been playing checkers till it got too dark and I’d beaten Grace five times straight. I’m a very good checkers player. My dad taught me. “It’s because I think ahead,” I’ve told Grace more than once. My dad taught me that, too.

Grace stood staring as I stacked the red and black checkers in their cigar box. “What do you mean you can’t come?” she asked again.

I didn’t look up. “I can’t, that’s all. Not when all the time I’ll be thinking about what might happen on Monday.”

“But, look! There’s nothing more we can do. Honest, William. See? You’re thinking ahead again and that’s okay for checkers, but not when you can’t plan or … or have a strategy. Our strategies are all used up.”

I closed the lid of the cigar box and ran my hand over the faded picture on the lid—a girl with rosy cheeks and black curly hair with a cigar in her mouth—which I’d drawn in with Magic Marker when I was really little. The trees in our yard were filled with twittering birds. Moths circled the porch, banging themselves against the screen door in the oblong light.

Grace sat down again. “What does your mom say?”