Gemini Summer

by Iain Lawrence

  “Does he remind you of Beau?” asked Danny.

  Mr. Kantor laughed. “A dog remind me of your brother? This would please you?”

  Danny took the milk from the big cooler. He was careful to crack open the door and snatch it out, but Mr. Kantor still called to him: “Are you buying milk or cooling the city, Danny? My electricity bills are not high enough already?”

  Danny slipped the plastic bag loaded with the bottle of milk over the handlebars of his bicycle. He lifted Rocket to the seat again, and set off the way he’d come. But Rocket barked and whined and put his paws on the handlebars, as though to steer the bike. “You want to go the other way? Gee, I don’t know.”

  The dog whined.

  “Well, okay,” said Danny.

  He knew why Rocket wanted this. It meant they had to pass Camp Wigwam and take the trails to the Hollow. It didn’t matter to him if Dopey might be waiting. He didn’t want to be late for the launch.

  At the top of the hill, where the trail began, Danny stopped the bike. It was the first time he’d be taking those trails since Beau’s accident, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to do it. He saw Rocket looking so happy and eager, rocked the bike and counted down. “Three, two, one, blastoff!” he shouted. He pushed forward. “Hang on!” he told Rocket.

  It was like his ride in the shopping cart, but the bike was even faster and wilder. At some of the corners it leaned far enough to touch a pedal on the ground. It clattered and bounced and flew down the hill, and the bottle of milk clanged against the front fork.

  Just before the bridge, Danny touched the brakes. The bike slid sideways, straightened, then shot up the hill and took to the air. It landed perfectly, and they coasted out toward the bottom.

  Suddenly Rocket turned his head and snarled at the bushes. And Danny saw Dopey Colvig sitting on a stone beside the creek.

  Rocket leapt from the bike. Danny shouted as he tried to grab him. The bike slewed from the path, crashing through bushes. It jarred to a stop, and Danny tumbled off. The bottle of milk—still in the bag—smashed as it hit the ground. The bag bulged, then leaked white trickles onto the ground.

  Danny could hear Rocket barking. He heard Dopey, too, hollering those wordless hoots and grunts. Then Rocket growled, and the hoots became howls. Danny struggled to his feet. He found Dopey lying in the creek, and Rocket on top of him, biting his chin and his neck.

  Dopey tried to push the dog away. Rocket’s teeth locked on his wrist instead.

  “Stop it!” cried Danny. “Holy man, let him go.”

  But Rocket snarled and bit, and Dopey thrashed his arm around, and it looked like two animals in a deathly fight. Then Dopey Colvig swung his arm, and the dog went flying.

  “Beau!” shouted Danny.

  Rocket stopped fighting. But he didn’t stop growling. He stood with his fur prickled up, his nose squashed into wrinkles, his teeth in horrible rows.

  Dopey scuttled backward, rolled himself up, and went running along the dried-up creek.

  “Oh, man! Oh, man!” said Danny River. “He’s going to bring Creepy now.”

  He hauled the bike from the bushes. The broken bottle still swung in its bag, dripping milk onto leaves and grass. “Come on,” he said.

  The front wheel had twisted. It rubbed on the fork, squeaking with each revolution. Danny dropped the bike in his driveway, took the bag of glass and milk from the handlebars, and ran with Rocket into the house.

  His mother called from the living room. “My, that was fast.” She came into the kitchen and found him standing there with the dripping bag. “What happened?” she asked.

  “It broke,” said Danny. “We were coming down the hill, and it broke.”

  “Were you hurt?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, Mom.”

  “Well, you look all shaken up,” said Mrs. River. “Danny, it’s only milk. No use crying over spilt milk.”

  Danny watched the liftoff of Gemini V. Rocket sat on the floor and watched it, too. They saw the clock count down to zero. They heard Gus Grissom say, “Ignition.” Then great blasts of smoke and fire spewed from the base of the rocket. The clamps that held it down fell away. The huge, towering thing started up into the air, so slowly and wonderfully.

  The dog sat and stared. But Danny kept looking toward the windows. He kept expecting a knock on the door.

  It didn’t come till that evening. And then it wasn’t Creepy Colvig at the door.

  forty-three

  Old Man River answered the knock. He opened the door to see two policemen standing on the porch. One was tall and one was short.

  “Charlie River?” said the tall one.

  “Yes,” said the Old Man.

  “You’ve got a dog here, Mr. River?”

  “We do,” he said.

  The tall policeman was holding a sheet of paper. “We have an order here to remove your dog, Mr. River.”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “We’re here to take your dog,” said the tall policeman. “It has to be destroyed.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “Your dog attacked a child, sir,” said the other policeman.

  The Old Man turned his head. He shouted, “Danny boy!”

  forty-four

  Danny River sat on a kitchen chair. He sat in tears on the chair as the policemen and his parents stood around him. Rocket had already been taken away and was barking faintly from the police car.

  “Danny, what’s your side of this?” said the Old Man. “Did Rocket bite the Colvig boy? I want the truth now, son.”

  Danny nodded. “But it wasn’t his fault,” he said.

  Mrs. River was standing behind him, with her hands on his shoulders. “That Colvig boy makes Danny’s life a misery,” she said. “He hit him once with a realtor’s sign. Did Mr. Colvig tell you that?”

  “What about this morning?” asked the short policeman. “Did the boy do anything to you?”

  “He scared us,” said Danny.

  “How?”

  “He was sitting by the creek, and we didn’t see him at first. Then Rocket got frightened.” Danny looked from one face to another. “It wasn’t his fault. You can’t take him away. He was just getting back.”

  “Getting back for what?” asked the tall policeman. “Has the boy hurt your dog?”

  “Well, kinda,” said Danny. He could see that he had nothing to lose. If he didn’t speak now, Rocket would be taken away forever. He blurted out, before anyone could stop him, “He’s not just a dog, he’s my brother.”

  “Danny!” cried the Old Man. His mother gasped.

  From there it only got worse. Danny tried to explain how Dopey had pushed Beau into the pit, and when he pointed to the window the policemen gaped at the flat, green lawn outside. His mother looked embarrassed, and his father looked angry, and they stopped him from talking. They sent him out of the room; they sent him right out of the house.

  “Go and keep Rocket company,” said his mother.

  So Danny went out in the August heat. The police car was parked in front of the house, and three people from the Hollow were standing beside it, staring at the lights and the decals as though the car was a UFO. Mrs. Elliot was among them. “What’s going on, Danny?” she asked.

  “They’re taking Rocket away,” he said. “’Cause Rocket bit Dopey.”

  “Poor thing,” said Mrs. Elliot. “He certainly doesn’t look like a vicious dog.”

  Rocket had found some shade on the floor of the car. But the sound of Danny’s voice brought him bounding to the seat, and he pressed his paws to the window. Danny touched the glass. Rocket cried to Danny with all his strange sounds.

  “Heavens, he’s talking to you,” said Mrs. Elliot.

  “Please go away,” said Danny. “Please leave us alone.”

  They all went away. They touched Danny’s shoulders and his blond hair, and then wandered slowly. Danny pushed his fingers through the tiny crack that had been left at the top of the window, and Rocket stood
up to lick them.

  “You gotta bust out,” said Danny. “You can’t let them take you where they’re going.”

  Rocket looked back at him through the window. Their faces were inches apart, and one was as sad as the other.

  forty-five

  It sounded to Mrs. Elliot, who had stopped down the street, as though the boy and the dog were talking. It was the most heartbreaking thing she had ever seen, poor Danny River touching one side of the glass and the dog the other, and both of them talking and crying.

  She wanted to hurry back and comfort the boy. But instead she went home and hugged her little Josephine to her breast.

  Her curtains were half closed to keep out the sun, and she stood behind them, staring out.

  She watched as the policemen came out from the Rivers’ house. She saw little Flo River drag her boy back from the car. She saw tall Charlie River stooped like an old geezer. Then the car drove off, and she saw Danny break free from his mother to go running behind it. “Stop!” he shouted. “Please stop.”

  The car went faster and drew away from him. It passed her house, and she saw the dog in the back window, standing up on the seat to look out the back window. And she saw little Danny stop running. She heard him scream, “The fort! The fort!”—which made no sense to her. Then she saw him all alone in the street, and she thought that if a boy could ever really fall to pieces, it would happen to Danny right then.

  forty-six

  At five o’clock that day, barely an hour after they’d left, the policemen returned to the old gray house in the Hollow. They walked toward it from their car, with the tall one carrying a closed-in cage.

  It was Old Man River who opened the door to them for a second time. Danny was lying on the living room sofa. Mrs. River kept dabbing the boy’s arms and forehead with a cloth she dipped in cool water.

  The tall policeman spoke up. “Is the dog here, Mr. River?” he said.

  The Old Man got angry. “You know damned well he isn’t here. For crying out loud, what have you done with him?”

  “We lost him,” said the policeman. “He got away from us.”

  On the living room sofa Danny opened his eyes. A smile came to his pale face, and he whispered, “He busted out. I knew he would.”

  “Mr. River,” said the short policeman, “this whole business upsets us as much as it upsets you.”

  “I doubt that very much,” said Old Man River.

  “But if the dog comes back, you’ll have to call us,” the policeman said with a little redness in his face. “You’ll be breaking the law if you don’t.”

  “Goddamn your laws,” said the Old Man.

  Danny came into the hall, wet from his mother’s dabbings. The policeman said, “Look, son, I’m—” but Old Man River cut him off.

  “Don’t call him ‘son,’ you hear?”

  The policeman turned even redder. “Dogs always come home,” he said. “We’ll be watching the street.”

  The policemen left with the empty cage. Old Man River closed the door.

  “Danny,” he said, “don’t get your hopes up. If Rocket comes home, we have to turn him in. We don’t have a choice.”

  “He won’t come back,” said Danny. “I told him not to.”

  “Well, if worst comes to worst, you can get another dog.” The Old Man was kneeling on the floor now. “You can have one right away.”

  “I don’t want another dog,” said Danny. “I want Rocket.”

  “I know you do,” said the Old Man. “But listen to me.”

  Danny put his hands over his ears. The Old Man pulled them down and said, “You can’t escape it, Danny. The only one who can save Rocket is Mr. Colvig, and he’s not going to do that, is he?”

  “No,” said Danny.

  “No,” repeated the Old Man. “We heard things today—your mother and me—that we didn’t know. Like a bucket of sewage in the Colvigs’ car. Like—”

  “He bit Dopey ’cause Dopey pushed him in the pit,” said Danny. “He bit Dopey ’cause he’s Beau.”

  Old Man River held Danny by the shoulders and shook him. “You get that nonsense out of your head. Do you hear me?” He kept shaking until he shook tears from Danny’s eyes. Then he stopped and stood up. “This isn’t the time to talk,” he said.

  “Why don’t you believe me, Dad?” asked Danny.

  “Because it’s just plain crazy,” said the Old Man.

  “But he promised he’d always hang around with me. No matter what,” said Danny. “Then I dreamed he was back, and you said he was with me, and Mom said the dog came to find me, and…” He was rubbing his arms. The marks of the Old Man’s fingers were on his skin. “And Mr. Kantor said people can be animals.”

  Danny saw his father swallow, the lump in his throat going up and down.

  “Oh, Danny,” said the Old Man. “Mr. Kantor spent four years living in a place like a kennel—like a zoo—but worse. He was beaten and starved and worked nearly to death. What he meant was that people can be terrible.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Danny. “And anyway, Creepy isn’t the only one who can save Rocket. So can I. ’Cause I know where to find him.”

  “Where?” asked the Old Man.

  “I can’t tell you,” said Danny. “I promised not to tell anyone. Not even under torture.”

  forty-seven

  Danny went up to the fort he’d built with Beau. He crossed Highland Creek behind the house and followed its banks downstream. At the end of the Hollow, where the woods weren’t as thick, he saw the police car driving slowly along the street.

  He crouched behind a bush and waited until the car was far up the Hollow. Then he ran along the trails and down the ravine.

  When he came to the fort, he found it in ruins. The walls were torn apart, the plywood panels broken. The things that he and Beau had stashed in there—the old bottles and moldy magazines—were scattered all around.

  There was no sign of Rocket.

  Danny sat and waited. All evening he waited as a thunder storm came rumbling toward him. The sky grew dark. The wind picked up, and the trees creaked and swayed, their leaves seeming to whisper. Then rain came down, and thunder rolled across the sky, and flashes of lightning glared through the Hollow.

  Danny made a tent from the plywood pieces and sat inside it, waiting. Leaves came swirling down. Little runs of water trickled through the tent, and he heard Highland Creek growing fast and strong. He began to think of the stories he’d heard, about kids who’d been murdered in the ravine. He could hear the traffic on the big bridge, and soon the headlights of the cars and trucks were making eerie shadows all around him.

  His little tent was very dark and lonely. He huddled in the middle of it, staring out at every sound. It seemed to him that hours passed, that the whole night slid by. It was long enough, at any rate, that he began to doubt that Rocket was coming. And if Rocket didn’t come…Well, he didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

  He sang songs to himself, about marching ants and bottles of beer. He sang until he heard something moving outside, something breathing in the bushes.

  Then out of the woods came Rocket. He came slowly, and then in a dash with his tail wagging and his tongue hanging out, chattering away like a bag of monkeys. He threw himself at Danny.

  “I knew you’d come,” said Danny.

  He held on to Rocket more tightly than he’d ever held on to anything. The thunder rumbled, and the traffic roared along the bridge, and Danny held on to the dog. “We can’t go home,” he said. “We can’t ever go home.” He could feel Rocket’s heart beating quickly.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  Danny wondered if Mr. Kantor might help him, or if the vet might help. But he could picture either of them picking up the phone and calling his mother or the Old Man. He could almost hear Mr. Kantor’s voice. You let a boy and a dog run loose? What were you thinking?

  There was no one in the Hollow, or anywhere in the city, who could help him. The
thought made Danny very lonely. In the whole world there was no one.

  “Hey!” said Danny suddenly.

  Rocket barked.

  “What about Gus Grissom?” Danny cried out the name, and Rocket cried back with a whimper. “Do you think Gus Grissom might help if we went down to the Cape? Do you? Do you think he would?”

  It seemed Rocket had gone crazy. He was jumping up and down, barking and barking.

  “Okay. Okay,” said Danny. “It’s a long way, but I think we can get there.”

  The boy and the dog sat together until the thunderstorm had passed. Then, with the lightning flashing far away, they headed down the ravine, through the golf course in the darkness.

  For half a mile, Danny walked in the creek. He made sure that Rocket did the same thing, and they splashed together through the water. “It’ll hide our tracks,” he said. He had seen cowboys do this on The Rifleman and The Big Valley.

  Danny hadn’t known there was an end to Highland Creek before he found it that night. His friendly little stream ran into a dirty river that flowed through concrete banks, carrying fleets of paper cups, and plastic bags like jelly fish, and sticks and cans and bottles. He followed it with Rocket, toward the lights of the city, great towers of light, and the roar of traffic and people.

  He didn’t know how to get to the Cape. “But one thing’s for sure,” he told Rocket. “It’s too far to walk.”

  Where the river flowed into a huge cave of a culvert, the boy and the dog came up to the city. They looked as though they’d come from the jungles, or as though Danny really was the hillbilly of Hog’s Hollow, stumbling for the first time into civilization. He was pushed and shoved along the street, and Rocket went in turns and darts with his tail between his legs.

  Danny tried to stop people and ask them for money. He was certain the Old Man would be furious if he knew, but there was no choice, he told Rocket. “We gotta get to the Cape.”