by John Donovan
"But your grandmother is dead," Father reminds me.
"Sure," I say. "I know."
`About this other thing. Your mother was pretty upset on the telephone. She said something about what had been going on between you and a friend from school. What's that all about?"
"Nothing."
"Sure?"
"I don't know why she is so upset. We fell asleep on the floor this afternoon. Is that such a big deal?"
"I think she meant something else."
"Oh," I say.
"Is he a special friend, Davy?"
"Sure. Altschuler. I told you about him."
"I'm not prying, Davy," my father says, "so don't get mad. We don't talk about personal things much, but sometimes it can't be avoided. I guess you have a crush on your friend, is that it?"
"A crush?" I ask. I get red in the face. "I don't know." I can't think of another word. "I'm not queer or anything, if that's what you think," I say.
Now my father gets red in the face. "I'm sure you're not, Davy. I don't want to make a big case out of this. Your mother does though. She's an emotional person. She gets upset easily. She thinks you will end up ... well, I don't know what lengths her imagination will carry her to." My father goes on to tell me that a lot of boys play around in a lot of ways when they are growing up, and I shouldn't get involved in some special way of life which will close off other ways of life to me.
"We only made out once," I tell my father. He laughs. So do I. He's OK sometimes, and he sure got the information out of me a lot less painfully than Mother could have.
Then Father talks a lot about how hysterical people sometimes get when they discover that other people aren't just what they are expected to be. He tells me there are Republicans who are always secretly disappointed when friends turn out to be Democrats, and Catholics who like their friends to be Catholic, and so forth. He says that such people are narrow-minded, he believes, and funny too, unless they become hysterical about getting everyone to be just alike. Then they are dangerous. They become religious bigots, super-patriots, super-antipatriotic, and do I understand? I tell him I think I do, but can't people learn to understand other people? He thinks they can, but only if they want to.
It has been a long talk, and I'm nervous about the time Mother and Fred have been gone. So I get up and go to the window looking out over the street. I peer up and down the street, but there is no sign of them until I see something dart around the corner at the dark end of the street. At first I suppose it's a cat because they run loose all the time, but I look again and see a woman, Mother, running, turning the corner too. The low dark thing is Fred. I can just make him out, working his way along the stone wall around the seminary. He passes under a street lamp, and I can see that he is dragging his metal leash with him. Mother is running after him, calling out, "Fred, Fred, here, Fred." I guess Fred thinks it is a game. He darts farther away from Mother. I throw up the window and am leaning out. I turn back to my father, who comes to the window.
"He'll be all right," Father says. "Your mother will catch him."
"What if she doesn't?"
"Sure she will."
"Fred is never off his leash on the street. He doesn't know how to act off the leash here in New York. I'm going down!" I scramble to the door and run out into the hallway. I jump down the stairs two at a time, but since I'm not used to that I go slower than I would ordinarily. It takes me half a second to get back to going down stair by stair. I get to the bottom. No more than thirty seconds all told from the window to the bottom of the stairs. And then I hear it. A big thud. A terrible, unnatural yelping. I throw open the door as a car filled with people speeds down the street. I see Mother running toward a place just opposite the house. "Fred!" she yells.
"Fred!" I yell. "Fred, Fred, Fred, Fred, Fred!" I keep repeating, "Fred, doggie, where are you?"
"Fred," Mother yells.
I run across the street. I can't see anything. My eyes are filled with tears. I bend down on the street. "Fred," I call. "Fred, doggie, where are you?" I close my eyes tight. The tears run out of them. I see Fred. He is under the very car I have thrown myself down next to. He is moving. I think he is moving. It's an unnatural, convulsive move. I've never seen him move like that before. I reach out to him. "Fred," I say. "Doggie," I say. "Are you all right?" I ask. I don't know why I ask that. I touch him. I can hear my father's voice behind me.
"Don't move him, Davy. He may have broken his leg. If you move him improperly that will make it worse."
So I don't move him. I keep my hand on him though. He stops making those convulsive motions. His eyes are wide open. I think he sees me. He sees me. I know he does. You see me, don't you, doggie? You're all right, aren't you, doggie? I can see a lot of blood coming out of his mouth. He's not making the slightest move now. "He's dead," I say. "He's not moving at all. I can feel him not moving."
My father crouches down. My mother does too. My father moves me aside gently. He reaches to touch Fred. He feels around, then draws Fred out. By this time there are about ten people standing around. One guy says he got the car's license number. Fred still has his eyes open, looking up at me. He looks all right except for that blood. Maybe he's just unconscious for a while. One man steps out from the people who are standing around. He says he can help. He touches Fred in a few places and says he is sorry.
If Fred is dead, how come he is still looking at me? Fred, you're not dead, doggie, are you? I pick up Fred and hold him close to me. I wrap my arms around him and rub him on the belly because I know how much he likes that. My mother is sitting down next to me. She is rubbing Fred too.
"He got away from me," she says. "He was doing his business, and he just pulled away from me. Poor dog. Poor dog."
The people standing around begin to move away now.
"We can take him to the doctor, can't we?" I ask my father. "Maybe he's just knocked out."
"No, Davy. He's dead."
We take Fred upstairs. I carry him. My father calls the A.S.P.C.A. to find out what we do now, and they tell him about the possibilities. My father asks me if I want to put Fred in a cemetery. I tell him that I want to keep him, that something will happen and Fred will be all right tomorrow. He says that it won't happen that way. I ask him why I have to decide now, and he says I just have to. I say that the only place I want Fred buried is with Grandmother. I know that's crazy, but Mother and Father don't laugh at me. They turn away from me and begin to cry, both of them. I look at Fred again. My dog. Then I cry too.
he only good thing about Friday is that my father spends the night at Mother's. He takes Fred to the A.S.P.C.A. to arrange his cremation, and when he comes back, he sleeps on the couch in the living room, right outside my room. I bawl a lot, so he doesn't get much sleep. He comes into my room and just sits on my bed. He tells me to cry all I want. I don't want to cry at all. But I keep waking up. As soon as I do and realize again that Fred isn't lying on top of my blanket or snuggled up around my feet, I get a sick feeling and say stuff about not believing what has happened.
"I'm sorry, Davy," Father says several times, "it did." Sure, I know it did. But I sure as hell don't want to believe it.
Finally morning comes. Mother hasn't slept much either. None of us wants to eat anything. Mother keeps telling me how sorry she is.
"I loved Fred," she says. "I didn't act like someone who loved him. God, Davy, I'm so sorry."
Her eyes are puffed up, and I know she has cried all night too. But I can't bring myself to say that it's OK and I understand. I don't. I understand that Fred is dead. I know what is happening to him this morning, and I want to be sick to my stomach. It is less than a day since we went to the seminary park and played games there. Now what is left of Fred is a lot of junk. Two of his rags. A hard blue ball he chewed on. A couple of half-eaten hide bones are on a shelf in the kitchen. I can't touch them, even to throw them away. I can't touch anything Fred touched. The whole world of Mother's house is Fred for me-what Fred could do, what he couldn't d
o, where he could go, and where not. Everything is Fred.
The next part is not clear to me. I go through several days. I do things I do every other day, but I don't remember what I do from one hour to another. Without Fred to walk, to come home to, to sleep with, to feed, to think about, to love-all that stuff-there isn't anything to do. So I just think.
Who's to blame? It's no one's fault. It just happened. Why does someone have to be blamed? I'm not trying to blame anyone. I am though. Why? Fred has died, and someone is to blame. I want Fred. I can't have Fred. Who says? The bastard who ran over him, that's who says. It's his fault? It's no one's fault. It happened. Someone did it. The man driving the car? No. Who else ran over him? No one. Then he did it? Yes ... that is, no. Did Mother do it? No. Not as though she sat down and did it, like making one of her drinks. She didn't do it as a positive act. How do I know? She didn't think how she was going to get Fred run over, if that's the dumb thought running through my head.
Since I was a little kid, I have been responsible for a lot of things, principally Fred. I couldn't have been more responsible than I was for Fred. Grandmother left me in complete charge of him. Look what happened. It isn't my fault. Whose is it? It wasn't Mother. He was doing his business. He pulled away from her. He was a speedy son-of-abitch when he wanted to be, and clever too. He thought it was a game. I could see that from the window. It was the kind of playful challenge he liked best. Was it the dog's fault? No! He was a dumb creature. It wasn't his fault! Maybe she should have watched him better. She could have held on to him better. He was only a little dog. It's her fault? No! Whose? I don't know. Not the dog's. Not hers. It just happ ... she took him out because of me. She wanted to leave me alone with my father to talk. Is that why it happened? Yes, God, yes. It's my fault. Because of everything I did. It wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for me. It is too my fault! All that messing around. Nothing would have happened to Fred if I hadn't been messing around with Altschuler. My fault. Mine!
or weeks, six weeks in all, the only thing I can think about is Fred. I do other things. I go to school. Altschuler tells me several times that he misses Fred too. I thank him. I'm polite enough, but I don't want to talk about it, so I don't ask Altschuler to walk home with me, and I don't hang around trying to bump into him accidentally all the time, which is what I was doing before Fred died. I come into classes as late as I can so Altschuler won't get a chance to talk to me about anything important, and I run out after class like the original bolt of lightning. Altschuler isn't dumb, so we don't talk much after the first week. By the fourth week after Fred died, I try to find ways to avoid seeing Altschuler at all. Every time I look at him I am angry. For the first few days when I start to feel this way, I am angry at myself for having gotten mixed up with Altschuler at all. It doesn't take long before it's Altschuler I'm mad at and not myself. It was that talk about making out with Enid Gerber and Mary Lou Gerrity that got us started. It was a bunch of lies, in other words. We would never have done anything if it hadn't been for those lies. Mine too. But mostly his, I think. They were mostly his. That's what led to all the trouble. Fred died because of some stupid lies about making out. It certainly isn't in my nature to queer around. I never did it before. If it hadn't been for Altschuler, I would never have done it at all. I can't stand the sight of Altschuler. I guess it gives me some pleasure for the next two weeks to think how much I hate Altschuler.
Six weeks pass, and we are playing baseball outdoors. I'm no athlete and certainly no baseball player, but New York kids don't have room to practice baseball anywhere, so in my school they are even lousier than I am. I get elected captain of this dopey team that goes to a lot of other private schools around New York to play. The first game is with another Episcopal school with an even worse team than ours, so we win the game by a dramatic score. Just about every kid who goes to bat for our side gets a home run. We have to stop the game in the fourth inning, because it is dark and our team has only one strikeout after each of us has been at bat twice during this inning alone. If we had gone nine innings, it would have been after midnight before the game broke up.
So the next day I am an important figure in the school. Frankie Menlo practically dusts off my seat on the bus on the way to school. It's ridiculous to shine like a star among these guys. In Massachusetts they wouldn't have been allowed to pinch-hit in a hurricane, and here they are on our first team. That I am the best player is comment enough on the rest of the team. I remember my grandmother was forever repeating that everything is relative, and now I know what she meant.
It doesn't matter though. For the first time in six weeks I begin to get used to life without Fred. I can see that life goes on without him, even for me-and this dumb baseball team I am the star of.
The next week we tie a nonsectarian school, but in a few days we slaughter some more Episcopalians. Altschuler is on the team too, but he doesn't shine as he did on the basketball floor, and he isn't nearly as good a hitter as I am. He tells me how great I am all the time, but I don't thank him when he says it. I don't know why. Except I do know why, so why do I say I don't?
The fourth game is the hardest. No score. Bottom of the ninth. Davy the Dazzler gets a home run, the only score of the game, and against a nonsec school. In the locker room afterward, everyone is yelling and screaming about what a great guy I am. They are also running around and snapping towels at each other. They have more energy here than they have on the field.
"Slugger Ross!" everyone is yelling. "Hooray for Slugger Ross!" The guys like to horse around like that. It's OK, I guess. As long as I remember I'm no great shakes.
Some guy snaps his towel on my backside when I am going into the shower. It stings so much that I turn the water on very cold to take away the burn. The water is like needles against my body. I like it a lot. I like the force pounding down on me, my eyes closed so I can get as close as I can to the nozzle.
"Great hit," I hear someone say at the shower nozzle next to me. I smile without opening my eyes. "Really great." He pats me on the shoulder. I open my eyes, and it's Altschuler taking a shower next to me.
"Get your hand off me," I say.
"What do you mean?"
"You heard me."
Altschuler takes his hand from my shoulder. He is smiling. When he sees that I am serious, he stops smiling.
"I just wanted to tell you how great you were," he says. "That's all."
"OK."
"What's eating you?"
"You didn't need to touch me."
"What the hell is the matter with you?"
"I don't like to be touched."
"Since when?" Altschuler says.
Altschuler shouldn't have said that. When he says it, it is like being clobbered in the stomach with a ramrod. "You're a bastard," I say.
"I don't know what's eating you."
"Don't you?"
No.
"You should, you bastard."
The water is still pounding away at both of us. I guess we are talking loud, but so is everyone else. They probably think we are just horsing around.
"We're going to end up a couple of queers," I say. "You know that, don't you? All that junk back there before Fred died. You know what happens, don't you?"
"You're crazy," Altschuler says. He shuts off his shower and turns to walk away. I don't know what gets into me. I grab Altschuler and pull him back to my shower.
"Like hell I'm crazy," I yell at him. Then I don't know what else to do. I have hold of Altschuler with one hand, so I raise my other hand and smack him across the face. Hard. He is wet and slippery, so it is easy for him to pull away from me.
"You sure as hell are crazy," he says.
I go after him again. "Don't you know what happened to Fred? Don't you know why?"
"It had nothing to do with us."
"It was because of what we did, you dumb bastard! That's why my mother was walking Fred that night. Because of us. Because of all that queering around."
"Shut up, Davy," Altschuler say
s. "You sound like a creep.
"I'm a creep all right," I say. "So are you!"
Altschuler hits me in the face then. Before we know it, we are slugging away at each other. Some of the guys have heard us now. They are standing outside the shower room. We are pushing each other. The floor is slippery, and I fall. He falls with me. We are banging at each other's heads and at our chests. I can see some blood running next to my head. It is a rich red trickle which gets pink as the water from my shower reaches it and dilutes it. When Altschuler sees the blood, he pulls away from me.
"That's from your head, Davy," he says. "What happened to your head?"
I sit up and feel the back of my neck. My hand rubs my ear, and I can feel a split in the skin behind the ear. It doesn't hurt, but my hand gets a lot of blood on it in no time at all. By then Mr. Miller, who coaches baseball and a few other sports, in addition to teaching geography, has told Altschuler to turn off the shower and is kneeling there looking at me.
"What happened?" he says.
"I slipped, I guess."
Some of the guys laugh. When I look at them, no one says anything, which proves that being a two-bit hero has compensations. Everyone has clothes on except Altschuler and me, and I am thinking more about us, naked, than I am about the blood. We look, well, naked. When I try to stand, Mr. Miller has to steady me. He has also put a towel over my ear to stop the blood.
The next few minutes are confusing. I put on clothes. Mr. Miller takes me across the street from the park we had the game in, and a doctor puts a few stitches behind my ear, telling me I'm lucky I didn't crack my skull open. The cut begins to hurt a little, and I'm pleased to get out of the doctor's office and to get a free taxi ride home, courtesy of Mr. Miller. He goes upstairs with me to explain to Mother what happened. Mother thanks him, and Mr. Miller goes away.