The next day was a Friday. Mom and Jasmine didn’t come home. They didn’t come home Saturday either. Dad went out Saturday evening and didn’t come home himself until Sunday afternoon. He smelled of beer and was angry. Jimmy knew that Dad was looking for an excuse for another whipping, so he said that Mom had called again. She had decided to stay with Grandma a few more days to help with some housecleaning and sewing. She and Jasmine would be home by Wednesday.
That had to be safe, Jimmy thought. Wednesday would be a whole week. Mom wouldn’t stay away longer than that.
* * *
On Monday, Dad left in the morning. Jimmy was again to tell Mom, if she returned, that Dad would be home for supper. Dad didn’t tell Jimmy to stay home, but Jimmy figured that he should anyway. Sometimes Dad meant orders given one day to be followed weeks or months later as well.
Ernie rode his bike out and brought lunch again. Jimmy was glad of that. He and Dad had eaten the last of the macaroni and cheese the night before, and there was nothing left in the house that either one of them knew how to fix. They were even out of bread for toast. Dad hadn’t said anything about buying groceries, so Jimmy doubted that he would. Ernie had brought bologna sandwiches and Cheez Curls again, but also two packages of chocolate cupcakes and two bottles of Coke. He was wheezing when Jimmy met him in the driveway.
“Maybe you should see a doctor,” Jimmy said. “You don’t sound so good.”
Ernie dropped his bike and staggered to the porch. He was wearing cutoffs, like Jimmy, and his matchstick legs were wobbly. He took off his backpack and sat down. “I just got hay fever,” he said. He pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his cutoffs and blew his nose into it. He held it up. “See?”
“Jeez, why don’t you show me your shit too?”
“Queer.”
“Let’s eat.”
Jimmy was out of BBs, so after lunch they decided to go swimming. They mixed up the last package of Kool-Aid lemonade and poured it into two Mason jars. They put the jars into Ernie’s backpack along with the leftover Cheez Curls and set off. The jars clanked and sloshed. Some of the chickens tried to follow the boys, so they yelled and threw clods until the birds took off squawking.
They climbed through the barbed-wire fence behind the windbreak of evergreens and tramped through prairie hay that came up to their waists. The ten-acre meadow belonged to Dad, but the man from whom he had borrowed a mower and baler last year had died. So this year the hay would stay tall. It tickled and scratched. The boys’ legs became criss-crossed with red lines. They went up over the hill and down to the second fence, where they crossed into the pasture. This was seventy acres and was owned by a man named Claussen, who kept thirty head of beef on it. Jimmy pointed at the cattle when they topped a rise. The black and brown steers were two hundred yards away, clustered around salt blocks that Claussen had dumped on a grassless patch of earth. The steers switched their tails at flies.
“We’ll have about two hours to swim before they come down and muck it up,” Jimmy said.
“How do you know?”
“I watched them. They go down when it gets really hot, about two-thirty or three. Then they stay there until it gets cool in the evening. Sometimes they spend the night there, I think. They graze in the early morning and hang out at the salt after that. Until it gets hot again.”
“I didn’t know cows had schedules,” Ernie said.
“Not cows. Steers. Bulls without balls.”
“No wonder you know all about them.”
Jimmy punched him in the shoulder. They went down to the pond.
The pond was surrounded by brown mud banks. The earthen dam rose at the east end. At the west end, the pond narrowed into a swampy stand of weeds.
“There’re snakes in the weeds,” Jimmy said, pointing. “We need to stay away from that end.”
They stripped off their shirts and went in. They left their shoes on. The water stayed blood-warm until it was waist-deep. Then there was a layer of coolness down low. The bottom was mud that sucked at their sneakers, but there were also sticks and things that felt like broken glass and tin cans. The water didn’t come up to their necks until they reached the center. Jimmy found one hole where the water was over his head. He dropped into it and opened his eyes, but all he could see was a brown haze. When he looked straight up, it turned reddish. The water in the hole was cold, and something slimy slithered past his legs. He surfaced and moved back to shallower water.
He and Ernie swam and splashed each other until they tired, and then they moved to where the water was shallow enough that they could sit with the waves lapping at their chins. The sun was hot on Jimmy’s head, and when his hair started drying, he dunked himself to wet it again.
“Hey, look,” Ernie said when Jimmy surfaced. He was pointing toward the dam.
Jimmy blinked the water out of his eyes. A small brown dog with a narrow head was sitting on top of the dam, watching them. It was panting.
“I think he wants a drink,” Ernie said.
“So why doesn’t he get one?”
“Maybe he’s scared of us.”
Jimmy stood. The breeze on his chest was cool for a few seconds, then turned hot. “Come on, pup,” he called, bending over and patting his thighs. “Come on down. We won’t hurt you. Come on.”
The dog cocked its head.
“You know him?” Ernie asked.
“Never saw him before.”
“How come you don’t have a dog, anyway? Out here in the country you could have three or four.”
Jimmy shrugged. “Dad doesn’t like them. He says they just cost money for feed.” Sort of like chickens, he thought. Only not as stupid. He started walking through the water toward the dam.
The dog stood, ready to run.
“It’s okay, pup,” Jimmy said. “Don’t be afraid. We’re your buddies. Don’t be a chickenshit.” He kept on walking until he was within a few feet of the base of the dam. “Come on down, pup. The water’s fine.”
The dog took a few steps toward the water, then returned to the top of the dam. It sat down again and panted.
“Here come the cows,” Ernie said.
Jimmy looked. The steers were moving down the slope toward the pond like slobber-nosed tanks. Jimmy slogged back to Ernie, and they got out of the pond. Ernie opened his backpack and brought out one of the Mason jars. They each took a long drink of Kool-Aid, and then the steers were close. A chunky black one bellowed at them. The boys moved away toward the dam, and a brown streak shot past them, heading toward the cattle.
It was the dog. It charged the black steer, and the steer turned and ran, thudding into another member of the herd. Then all thirty of the steers were running back the way they had come, their hooves rumbling. The dog stayed after them, dashing first at one and then another.
Jimmy and Ernie laughed. The steers disappeared over the rise, and the boys went back into the water. After a while the dog came back and took a drink while they were out in the middle.
“Thanks, pup!” Jimmy called. The dog looked across at him and grinned, its jaw dripping. It took several more laps from the muddy water, then trotted back to the top of the dam. It stayed there and watched Jimmy and Ernie until they got tired and left.
Jimmy’s mother didn’t come home that day. In the evening, Dad smacked Jimmy in the head for not doing the dishes. Dad hadn’t even told him that he should, but that didn’t seem to matter.
* * *
On Tuesday, Dad was gone before Jimmy woke up. There wasn’t a note. Jimmy took care of the chickens and boiled a couple of eggs. After eating, he cleaned up the kitchen and bathroom, then dragged out Mom’s canister Hoover and vacuumed the living room. It was boring as hell, but he wanted to head off Dad’s temper if he could. The only room he didn’t clean was Mom and Dad’s bedroom. The door was shut. He wouldn’t have gone in even if it had been open.
When he had finished cleaning the house, he went outside and mowed the yard until the mower ran out of gas. The fuel cans in
the garage were empty, so there was nothing more he could do. He left the mower where it had died and went into the house to splash water on his face and arms. He was dusty and covered with bits of dry grass that itched. When he felt better, he took some comic books to the porch. It was too hot in the house. He sat on the concrete step, his legs in the sun, his head in the shade.
Ernie showed up while he was reading The Flash. Ernie had brought lunch again. Jimmy was embarrassed that Ernie kept having to feed him, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He didn’t have any money to buy groceries, and Dad would kill him if he went into town anyway.
They ate lunch and then hiked back to swim in the pond again. The little brown dog appeared after they had been there about twenty minutes. It sat on top of the dam and watched them as it had the day before. Jimmy and Ernie went to the base of the dam and called it, but it still wouldn’t come down. It moved away whenever one of them took a step up the dam. They gave up and went back into the water.
“What kind of dog is that, anyway?” Jimmy asked.
“Heinz fifty-seven,” Ernie said. “He’s got some terrier in him, though.”
“What kind of terrier, you figure?”
“Rat.”
“I wonder who he belongs to.”
“If he belonged to anybody, he wouldn’t be here, stupe.”
Jimmy splashed Ernie in the face, and they got into a terrific war. They moved into deeper water and floated on their backs, kicking brown and white plumes at each other. Then something brushed against Jimmy’s shoulder, and he stood up in the chest-deep water.
The dog had swum out to them. It paddled around Jimmy in a circle, holding its triangular head up at an angle. Its mouth was closed. Jimmy heard air puffing in and out of its wet black nose. Its expression was one of serious concentration.
Ernie stopped splashing and stood. He stared at the dog. It swam around him and back to Jimmy.
Jimmy put a hand under the dog’s chest and lifted, buoying it. The dog stopped paddling. It didn’t try to get away. It remained still, letting Jimmy hold it. It kept its head pointed up and its mouth closed. Jimmy could feel its heart beating fast.
“You’re a brave one, pup,” Jimmy said, and let it go. It paddled across to the muddy bank, climbed out, and shook itself so hard that some of the spray reached the boys.
Ernie shook his head. “That’s a weird dog.”
“I like him,” Jimmy said.
“How you know it’s a him?”
“Look, moron.”
The dog still wouldn’t come to them when they left the water, but it trotted after them when they started back toward Jimmy’s house. It stayed well back.
“What’s the matter with him?” Ernie asked.
“He’s smart,” Jimmy said. “He wants to make friends, but he wants to make sure we want to make friends too.”
“So why’d he swim out to us?”
“He’s a good swimmer. He probably figured he could get away if we tried to hurt him.”
“Why would he think we wanted to hurt him?”
“How should I know? Maybe people have hurt him before.”
They continued toward the house. A cottontail rabbit spooked, and the dog took off after it. The boys ran after them, whooping, cheering the dog on. The wind burned past Jimmy’s face. It felt great.
The rabbit led them to the salt lick. The dozing steers looked up, startled, and saw the dog. They bellowed and ran into each other trying to get away. The dog didn’t even notice them. It was after the rabbit. The cattle fled, kicking up dirt.
The rabbit zigzagged and ran into a salt block. Jimmy saw it happen, and heard the thunk. The rabbit stopped cold. It might have been able to recover, but it didn’t have time. The dog caught it by the head and shook it.
The steers’ hooves rumbled. Dust boiled into the sky. The little dog stood in the center of chaos, victorious, shaking the cottontail. Jimmy stopped at the edge of the salt lick, breathing hard. He laughed and clapped. Ernie came up beside him, coughing.
The dog tore open the rabbit and lay down in the center of the bare patch of earth to eat. Jimmy and Ernie went toward it, and it growled. They stopped and watched it for a while. It was as serious about eating as it had been about swimming. Jimmy had never seen a human being with such singleness of purpose. He admired the little dog.
“Guess he doesn’t go hungry,” Ernie said.
“He’s too smart for that,” Jimmy said. They went on to the house. The dog stayed behind and ate.
* * *
Jimmy and Ernie were reading comic books on the porch when Dad came home. It was four o’clock. Jimmy hadn’t expected him home until after five.
Dad lurched out of the pickup. His foot slipped on the gravel, and he almost fell. He came up cussing. He started toward the house, saw Jimmy and Ernie, and looked disgusted. Jimmy glanced at Ernie. Ernie looked scared.
Jimmy stood up. “Hi, Dad,” he said.
Dad looked across the yard. “What the hell you mean leaving that mower out?” he yelled. He sounded as if his tongue were too thick. “Supposed to goddamn rain. Ain’t I told you to put it back when you’re finished?”
“I was going to,” Jimmy said. He was miserable.
“And you stopped with the job half done,” Dad said. “What kind of lazy shit did I raise, huh?”
Jimmy’s misery became rage. “It ran out of gas,” he said. His voice was loud. “And there wasn’t any more.”
“I better go home,” Ernie mumbled. He put down the comic book he had been reading and started toward his bike in the driveway.
“You talking back to me?” Dad bellowed.
Ernie looked back at Jimmy. His lips formed the word “Pray.” Then he hurried to his bike and pedaled away. He had forgotten his backpack. It lay on the porch beside the comic book.
“You talking back to me?” Dad bellowed again.
Jimmy’s skin was hot all over. He jumped off the porch. “I’ll talk to you any way I like,” he said, “you son of a bitch.”
Dad lunged for him. Jimmy dodged, and Dad banged his shin against the porch. He turned toward Jimmy. His face was purple.
Jimmy ran to the backyard and past the chicken coop. The chickens scattered as he passed. Feathers flew. Jimmy could hear Dad’s footsteps behind him. Dad wasn’t yelling, wasn’t saying anything. That scared Jimmy. Why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut? If he had kept his mouth shut, Dad would have smacked him once or twice. Big deal. Now Dad wanted to kill him. He really wanted to kill him. Jimmy could tell.
He crashed through the evergreens and clambered over the barbed-wire fence. His cutoffs caught and tore. A barb scratched his thigh. He didn’t stop. Dad was coming through the trees. Jimmy dropped to the hay meadow and ran hard for the second fence.
Hay whipped his legs. His heart slammed against his chest. Hot wind scraped his throat. He ran as fast as he could, up and over the hill and down. He couldn’t hear Dad behind him anymore. As he climbed over the second fence, he risked a glance back. Dad had stopped at the top of the hill and was watching him.
Jimmy dropped into the pasture and kept running north, over the rise and down toward the pond. His arms were heavy and tingling. His head hurt. But he couldn’t stop. He had called his father a son of a bitch. He passed the salt blocks. Some of them had smooth channels where they had been licked over and over again. He kept running.
The cattle were at the pond. Most of them stood in the shallow part beside the flat bank. The rest were lying on the mud. They saw Jimmy coming and tensed. He ran wide around them, up onto the dam. They didn’t spook, but they watched him. They didn’t trust him.
He stopped halfway across the dam and looked back. Dad was nowhere in sight. Jimmy stood there awhile, breathing hard and blinking away sweat. Then he sat down among the dry weeds. He hooked his elbows around his knees and grasped his right wrist with his left hand. He watched the steers watching him.
“Moo,” he said.
The steers star
ed back with dull eyes.
“Moooo,” Jimmy said.
Before long the steers were ignoring him. They drank the fouled water, lay on the mud, and switched their tails at flies. It was hot. Flies started buzzing around Jimmy, too. He pursed his lips and blew at them. Dad could go fuck himself with a crowbar.
His butt began to itch, but he didn’t want to stand up. He leaned to one side and scratched, then leaned to the other side and scratched. It didn’t help much. His underwear and cutoffs were still damp from swimming. They were sticking to his skin. He tried to pull them away, but they sucked right back. Short of stripping them off, there was nothing he could do that would help. He tried to ignore the irritation, but he couldn’t. He scratched and pulled.
Ernie had said “Pray.” Ernie believed in that stuff. Maybe there was something to it. Preachers were full of shit, but maybe God didn’t have anything to do with that. God had, after all, seemed to answer Jimmy’s prayer about the sparrow. And he hadn’t even been serious. Maybe God had been telling him that he should be. Or maybe he’d just had a lucky shot.
If Mom didn’t come home soon, he might as well run off or die. Mom coming back was the only thing that would keep Dad from killing him. Why was she staying away so long, anyway? What was she trying to prove? Did she think Dad would get all pitiful and go running after her, begging oh please come home I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry? It would be a cold summer in hell when Dad ever did anything like that. Goddamn her anyway. Goddamn both of them. Bitch and son of a bitch.
Jimmy closed his eyes. The sun was so hot on his head that it hurt. He started to pray.
“God,” he said. “Lord.” He didn’t know how to do this. The prayers he had learned when he was little had all been poems. God is great, God is good, Let us thank Him for our food, Amen. Pass the gravy, pass the meat, pass the taters, Lord, let’s eat. Amen.
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