Tumbleweeds (5 page)

Trey’s countenance brightened. He threw up his hand, and they high-fived. “Way to go, Tiger!”

Trey called him Tiger mainly when he agreed with his way of doing things. Trey had given John the nickname when they were playing pee wee football and he’d made good on Trey’s pass and carried two tacklers with him across the goal line, Trey yelling, “
Thataway to go, Tiger!
” John knew that Trey had in mind to
sell
his aunt on the idea, rather than simply run it by her. He always got his way with her, but maybe this time it was okay. Aunt Mabel had told them that Miss Emma was already insane about her granddaughter and that her heart felt “like a rusty old trunk with its lid pried open.” She might agree to just about anything to make Cathy happy.

N
o, boys! Absolutely not.” Mabel Church shook her head vigorously to add emphasis to her rare assertion of authority over her nephew. “I cannot permit you to go to Odell Wolfe for a puppy. We don’t know a thing about him, and who knows what would happen to you once you set foot in his house?”

“We won’t set foot,” Trey argued. “He wouldn’t keep his dog in his
house
, Aunt Mabel. She’s probably laid up in one of his mangy old sheds.”

“
Property.
I should have said ‘set foot on his
property
,’ ” Mabel corrected herself. “You’ll have to think of something else to give Catherine Ann.” She shuddered at the thought of two eleven-year-old boys doing business with the recluse who lived at the end of a neglected road in the least desirable section of her neighborhood. Wolf Man, everybody called him, and the moniker fit the man in the most uncharitable light of the species. Dirty and unkempt, red hair and beard a matted mess, he had come from nowhere at least ten years ago and taken up residence in a falling-down house that had lain vacant since its owners had abandoned it in the fifties. Few ever saw him. No one knew anything of his history, how old he was, or how he made his living. It was rumored he wandered about at night, carried a whip,
and raised fighting chickens in the ramshackle pens in the backyard. It was Mabel’s policy to have no truck with folks you didn’t know anything about.

“I don’t want to think of something else,” Trey wailed. “Catherine Ann
needs
a puppy, doesn’t she, John?”

“A puppy would probably be a comfort to her, Aunt Mabel,” John said. “I don’t think Miss Emma will say no to the idea. She’ll want Cathy to be happy.”

Mabel could feel her resistance soften. John’s insights always melted something inside her.
Out of the mouths of babes.
“It’s not the puppy I’m opposed to, John,” she explained. “It’s the fact that you’ll be dealing with Odell Wolfe. And what makes you think he’d give you one for free anyway?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Trey said. “He’s just going to kill them anyway. He’d probably be happy for us to take one off his hands.”

“We’ll compromise,” Mabel said. “This weekend, I’ll drive you boys to the pound in Amarillo, and you can get one there for the little girl. We could even take her with us to make the selection, if she’ll go. Meanwhile, we’ll broach the idea to Miss Emma.”

“Aw, Aunty, this weekend will be too late. She needs one tonight, and we want to
surprise
her with a puppy ourselves!”

“And by taking one of Wolf Man’s, we’d be saving at least one from the litter,” John put in.

As usual in these debates, Mabel had begun to feel helpless. She agreed that a pet might be just the right stroke to help the child work through the trauma of everything that had happened to her. When Mabel had called to find out how Catherine Ann’s first day at school had gone, Emma had said, “Not good. She’s in her bedroom now, curled up in the fetal position, and she won’t speak to me. Something must have gone terribly wrong at school today.”

Yes
, Mabel thought,
a warm puppy might be the exact thing for Catherine Ann right now, but not at the expense of the boys’ lives or limbs
. “I’m
sorry,” she told them, “but you’ll just have to wait until Saturday when you’re out of school. Now, I want you both to give me your word that you won’t approach Mr. Wolfe for one of his pups. You’re forbidden to have any contact with him, is that clear?”

Her nephew’s word was of dubious value, she’d learned by now. He got his peculiar brand of dishonesty honestly—from his mother—but if his word was coupled with John’s, he wouldn’t go back on it. John kept him ethical. Their friendship was the darndest thing. The two were like a tandem bike, always together but seats apart, one driving, one pedaling, one in front, the other behind, exchanging positions often. What bound them together was beyond her ken, but ever since she and John’s mother had introduced them at four years old they had been joined—if not by the soul (Lord knew where Trey’s would eventually end up, while John’s was sure to fly to heaven), at least by the heart, for there was no accounting for the attractions of the heart. There were wrangles from time to time, but they didn’t last long. Trey couldn’t go a day without making up. John was the only person in his life he couldn’t seem to live without, the only relationship he minded carefully.

“I give my word,” John said.

“Trey?”

“Me, too.” He looked defeated or had suddenly lost interest in the matter, not unusual for him. One minute he was all for something, and then as rapidly as a summer rain shower his enthusiasm could disappear.

Satisfied, Mabel said, “Okay then. Now what are you boys going to do before supper and you get down to your homework?”

Trey spoke up promptly. “Go to John’s. I left my baseball glove at his house.”

“Very well, then,” Mabel said, “but be back by six o’clock. “You know you’re to come, too, John. We’re having beef stew.”

“That sounds mighty good, Aunt Mabel,” John said.

They hurried out without taking time for a snack, and it wasn’t until Mabel entered her nephew’s room to place his freshly washed underwear and pajamas in his bureau that she saw his baseball glove on top.

C
ATHY LAY WITH HER KNEES
drawn up to her chin, a blanket covering her head, her face buried in the pillow. The realization had now sunk in, down to the fatty substance in the cavities of her bones, that her parents were gone from this world and she would never see them again. She would never hear their voices or her mother call her by her nickname, Honey Bun, or her father say each morning, “Rise and shine, sun of my world.” They would not be coming to take her home, back to her pretty room with its bay window lined up next to Laura’s that provided a secret channel of communication. Cathy would never again walk into a classroom at Winchester Academy and sit down with her classmates, be instructed by her wonderful teachers. Everyone and everything she loved had all disappeared the second she’d heard that awful word
orphan
and now she had to live forever with the old woman who was her grandmother in this worn-out house in a brown, cold place where the sun never shone, and her only friends were two boys she did not know who wore cowboy boots and one talked in double negatives.

There was nothing now inside her but empty space where once her parents had lived.

She heard her grandmother outside her door and knew she listened for sounds that she was awake. Cathy remained quiet as a stick until she heard the sad shuffle of her footsteps move back down the hall to the warmer part of the house, and then she pulled the covers tighter and buried her head deeper into the pillow.

O
kay, in case Aunt Mabel’s watching, let’s take off toward your place, John,” Trey said.

John glanced at him sharply. “That is where we’re going.”

“No it isn’t. We’re going to circle back to Wolf Man’s place.”

John stopped. “What? You gave your aunt your word that you wouldn’t go there.”

“Now, Tiger, listen to me,” Trey said. “Remember what she said, and what we said okay
to
. She asked us to give our word that we wouldn’t
approach
Mr. Wolfe about one of his pups. Those were her exact words, John. I was listening.”

“So?” John said.

“So we’re not going to approach him. We’re going to snatch one of them—those—pups without ever seeing him.”

John closed his mouth to avoid his teeth freezing. It was fiery cold this time of the afternoon when the sun disappeared and the wind blew out of the north. He longed to be out of it, even if it was to his house that smelled like sour beans. He walked on. “You’re crazy, TD. How are we going to get a pup without Wolf Man catching us?”

Trey hurried after him. “How’s he going to see us? We’ll use the alley and go in the back way. That poor old mama is probably
freezing her tits off under one of them—those—outbuildings. We’ll hear her pups, and we’ll just grab one and run.” He pulled at John’s arm and made him stop. “John, if we don’t do it now, tomorrow might be too late. He’ll take an ax to those pups’ heads, sure as shooting.”

“They’re not even weaned yet,” John said. “If a pup’s taken too soon from its mother it could die.”

“John, why do you have to be so stupidly practical? So what? It’s not going to live long enough to be weaned if we don’t rescue it. And we can be its mama, feed it milk from a bottle. Catherine Ann would probably love holding the little thing, feeding it like a baby. It’d give her something to put her feelings on rather than her sadness.”

“That’s so,” John said. Trey had a way of working him with words, which most of the time he didn’t listen to, but this time he made sense. He wished he’d had something to hold and love when his mother had died, but he couldn’t risk his father taking his foot to a dog or cat in the house. This time Trey was right. Seems like, when it came to Trey, he was always torn between what was right and what was almost right. He wanted Cathy to have the puppy more than anything in the world. On the other hand, they had sworn to Aunt Mabel they’d have no dealings with Odell Wolfe and, no matter how Trey worded it, they’d be going back on their promise. “You know how Gil Baker exaggerates,” he said. “How does he know Wolf Man’s collie had pups?”

“Because Gil’s always sneaking around the place trying to find out something to sic the law on him. His mama wants Wolf Man run off, but even though he’s a squatter, Sheriff Tyson won’t do anything unless there’s proof he’s done something wrong.”

“Why can’t we wait until your aunt takes us to the pound?” John asked, gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering.

“Because I want to make up for what I said to Catherine Ann
now
—tonight! I want to see her face when I hand her the pup.”

That was another Trey thing: Once he thought of a plan, he
couldn’t wait to put it into action. He had to have it—or do it—
right now
. “We’ll need something to wrap it in,” John said.

Trey slapped his shoulder. “You’re my man, John. I’ll put it under my jacket.”

They almost had to hold their noses when they approached the Cyclone fence of Odell Wolfe’s backyard. “Godamighty,” Trey said. “Have you ever smelled such stink?”

“The gate’s padlocked, TD,” John observed. There was also a huge N
O
T
RESPASSING
sign attached to the fence.

“We’ll go over it.”

“Only one of us can. The other one has to stay outside and give a leg up.”

The boys’ eyes locked. They could hear the soft, clucking sounds of chickens bedding down for the night. Dusk had fallen, gray and cold as frozen steel, and the wind had died, as if it had been chased away by night, which was fast creeping in. A single light shone in the coop, none in the ramshackle house, though smoke spiraled from the chimney.

“Then I’ll go,” Trey said. “You be ready to catch the pup when I drop it to you.”

John studied the stretch of ground between the alley and a series of lean-to shelters. It was a no-man’s-land of trash and garbage and rusting metal parts of indecipherable origin. In the semi-darkness, heading helter-skelter to the sheds, Trey would never see a broken bottle or the lid of a tinned can just inviting him to step on it. Trey would take no mind to that sort of danger, and probably make a racket to boot, and what if the mama didn’t want to give up her pup?

“I got an idea,” John said. “Let’s do rock, paper, scissors. Whoever wins goes over.” It was a game he nearly always won when he played it with Trey.

“Why not whoever wins stays behind?” Trey suggested.

“I’m going over, TD. I’m quieter than you, and dogs like me.”

“Not on your life, Tiger. I’m going after the pup so I can tell Catherine Ann I got it for her. You helped me, of course, but I got it for her.”

“You’ll just mess it up, and if Wolf Man gets after you, you’re cooked.”

“Don’t worry about me, John,” Trey said quietly. “You’re always worrying about me.”

“You need worrying about,” John said, and made a stirrup of his hands. “Watch where you step, for Pete’s sake.”

“You’re my man, John.”

Trey was over the fence in seconds and landed with a soft thud on the ground. He gave John a thumbs-up and, bending low, headed for the lean-tos. John hooked his fingers through the wire openings of the fence and hoped with held breath that Trey had chosen the right shed as he faded into the shadows. The chickens must have heard him. John listened, horrified, as they started up a disturbed squawking. In less than a second, a light went on in the house that he could see dimly through the dingy kitchen window. John’s heart lurched.
Oh, my God.