Managing to escape the uncomfortable atmosphere surrounding the dinner table, Bradley Wallace ensconced himself in the playroom to watch some television.
The playroom, next to his bedroom, had been set aside as the children’s private domain when they were younger. Actually, it was never private, but at least was a spot they could sort of call their own. It contained an old, out-of-tune player piano (the player mechanism had been removed long before the Murphys acquired it) painted the sickest shade of red (like bloody puss) Bradley Wallace had ever seen; a Formica-topped counter similar to the one in his bedroom running from wall to wall and under which were three storage cabinets containing games, puzzles, and other assorted children’s divertissements; a cluster of rectangular-shaped bookcases stacked against one wall filled with old school texts and well thumbed paperbacks and, on the topmost shelf, Katie’s prized horse collection (plastic horses of every breed, shape, and pose Bradley Wallace thought could exist); and a large rattan table atop which was currently spread an intricate puzzle which, if ever completed, would presumably depict a serene English countryside .
Bradley Wallace sat slumped in one of the ratty rattan chairs (that matched the table) brought over from the Murphy’s first house and stuck in the playroom because they couldn’t be damaged any more then they already were, even by kids.
Those had been his mother’s words, he recalled as he stared at the flickering images on the television screen. His chair was uncomfortable, but the TV sat atop the counter and was too high off the ground to make sitting on the floor practical - it was too hard on the neck. He turned away from a constipation commercial to regard the sickly orange-yellow color of the surrounding walls, which he noted again, looked like someone had lost his lunch in the paint before using it.
He was usually interested in the Friday night lineup on channel 7, but tonight he was merely biding his time till he could once more join Whilly. He felt certain that the dragon had Josette’s music box open and was lost in its tinkling melodies, and he could almost hear it himself. Almost.
That same evening, as Bradley Wallace awaited his chance to slip away, John Wagner paced his own room restlessly. He’d been reading up on witchcraft and curses, but what he’d read had not eased his mind.
Nothing in any of the books he’d taken (not borrowed, since he didn’t have a card) from the library had to do with the kinds of dreams the boy was experiencing, nor whether an outside party could induce such nightmares.
He hadn’t understood much of what he read and that disturbed him even more because he feared he might have missed something important. And so, out of desperate necessity, he sought out his mother.
Joan Wagner was in the kitchen cleaning up the dinner dishes. She was a small woman with work-worn hands, a drawn, haggard appearance to her angular features, darting, wary brown eyes, dark hair rolled into a bun on top of her head, and a soft, gentle voice that never seemed to rise above a conversational hum. She had also been abandoned by her husband barely a year after John was born.
This was one of John’s most deep-seated problems. He never could understand why he didn’t have a dad like the other boys at school, and they made fun of him for it, saying the usual cruel “kid things” like, “when your dad saw how ugly you were, he split” and other similar taunts. John blamed her for his father’s abandonment and himself, as well; she had told him more times than she could count that he was only a baby and had obviously done nothing wrong.
However, the scar tissue of that abandonment had turned John into a sullen bully and near delinquent. His exasperated mother had neither the money nor the strength to seek therapy for her son, and so struggled fruitlessly against his truancy and bitterness. But, she had never held any real authority in his eyes and realized, too late, that it was because she had never commanded it. She was, by nature, a genteel and modest woman, and disciplining John had always been a task she’d planned on leaving to her husband. Without him around, she seldom had the heart to punish John. Naturally, John figured her out all too soon, and from an early age did whatever he wanted when he wanted regardless of her halfhearted commands to the contrary.
So her surprise was great, indeed, when her tough, independent son, fully five inches taller and physically much stronger, approached her almost uncertainly in the kitchen that Friday night and asked, out of the blue, if she knew anything about curses.
“Curses?” she repeated, taken aback. She pushed a loose strand of hair from her eyes and gazed at her son suspiciously. “If this is another one of your attempts to upset me, John Anthony, then forget it. I’m not in the mood.”
He hated being called John Anthony because it was his father’s name and he hated even the thought of that bastard. His mother knew this, and would often use the name to antagonize him. But tonight he ignored her “dig.”
“This time I’m serious, Mom,” he assured her in the most sincere voice he could imagine. He so seldom employed sincerity that he had to rely on his imagination for the correct tone.
Realizing that she was amazed at his honesty, Joan felt slightly guilty. “Why on earth would you want to know about curses?” she asked incredulously.
The boy shrugged and scratched the greasy black mop on his head. “I just wondered if you believed that somebody could put a curse on somebody else, that’s all.” His tone indicated his pique at her attitude.
Well what does he expect, Joan thought to herself. “No, I don’t,” she answered, more forcefully than the boy had ever heard from her. “It’s a lot of hogwash. Now why do you want to know?”
He stared back in thoughtful silence.
Her voice took on an uneasy edge. “You’re not in trouble at school again, are you? You’re bullying someone again, aren’t you? I swear, John Anthony, if I have to go back down to your school one more time and talk to that principal, I’ll—“
He threw his shoulders back defiantly. “You’ll what?” he interrupted derisively.
She gripped the checkered dishtowel tightly, and felt the momentary surge of confidence ebbing away. “I’ll turn you over to the juvenile authorities,” she threatened meekly, knowing it sounded weak and halfhearted. No wonder he had no respect for her.
He laughed mockingly, almost evilly. His voice was dripping with contempt. “You don’t have the guts! You’re no damn good anyway. I come to you for help and what do I get - threats. No wonder the old bastard left you!”
Joan’s anger flared up wildly, out of control, and she viciously slapped her insolent son across the face.
Rage darkened the boy’s countenance like a thundercloud and a red welt sprang to life on his cheek. Eyes blazing with fury, he raised a scabby fist to strike her. But for once, her own anger defied him, and she refused to cower. Let him hit her, she determined. She just didn’t care anymore.
Their eyes locked for a moment. John slowly lowered his arm and whirled to stalk out of the kitchen, kicking over a chair in the process. Joan let out the breath she suddenly realized she’d been holding, and dropped weakly into the nearest chair. What had she ever done to deserve all this?
CHAPTER 5
“Lessons”
Saturday morning dawned a bright orange slashed with patches of reddish yellow, the sky was practically cloud-free, and the air was invigoratingly crisp. Bradley Wallace got up and dressed early so he could go out to the back yard and watch the purple and pink morning glories burst into brilliant bloom. It still fascinated him that a flower could blossom only in the morning and be nearly dead by nightfall. It sort of made him sad that something so beautiful should have so fleeting an existence, without any real chance to experience life. As he sat on the pebble-encrusted concrete and gazed wistfully at the slowly, but gloriously opening flowers, he considered briefly what his father would say if the elder Murphy knew his son got up early on Saturday mornings to stare at a bunch of flowers. He’d probably call out the sissy squad, for sure. Grown ups just didn’t understand how to look at things, he finally decided, and that’s why
he never wanted to grow up. He didn’t want to become like that.
As he’d suspected, Bradley Wallace was again assigned the boring chore of cleaning the pool, while his father read the morning paper and watched television. The boy enjoyed swimming in the pool, but loathed cleaning it. He also knew better than to argue with his father about chores. When Jack wanted something done, he wanted it done now, not later. So, Bradley Wallace used a wide-mouthed net at the end of an eight-foot aluminum pole to scoop all the leaves off the surface and dump them into several paper bags. Then he unscrewed the net and replaced it with a stiff brush, which he used to scrub algae off the sides.
After these preliminaries came the backwashing, which consisted pouring some kind of white powder that looked like dry milk into the filter and opening a valve so the now-white water could stream out into the driveway, apparently taking the dirt with it.
The final step was to dump a gallon of chlorine (his father pronounced it “chlorin”) into the pool. His mother hated this part because he invariably poured too quickly and splashed tiny droplets onto his pants, which bleached out the color.
Sweating under the warm spring sun, Bradley Wallace returned the
empty chlorine bottle to the garage and reported to his father that all was completed.
Jack set aside the book he was reading (while watching television, too) and promptly sent the boy to fetch his new football. Bradley Wallace had secretly harbored the forlorn hope that his father would forget about that, but wasn’t surprised to find out the older man hadn’t. He always remembered the wrong things, Bradley Wallace noted to himself as he dutifully, but slowly, trudged off to his room. He was in no hurry, that’s for sure. In fact, he’d almost prefer cleaning the pool again, but could figure no way to get out of this one. He somehow didn’t think his father would buy the notion that he didn’t want to ruin the new football by playing with it.
His mind already on the afternoon’s prospective exploits with Whilly and Mr. O’Conner, Bradley Wallace silently followed his father outside to the front lawn and lightly tossed him the football. Jack Murphy went on to show his son how to catch the ball properly by hugging it to the body, how to throw the football in a nice smooth arc (though, if the truth be told, Bradley Wallace’s throws, while by no means great, were far and away better than his father’s), and how to run patterns with the ball clutched tightly under both arms. Bradley Wallace feigned interest for his father’s sake, but secretly itched for the “lesson” to end. He wasn’t at all athletically coordinated, and felt stupid and clumsy whenever he played such games. He fervently hoped none of the neighborhood kids saw him his morning. He sure didn’t need any jeers right now.
Though he mostly just nodded mutely at his father’s explanations, Bradley Wallace did pose one question, a question born of a particularly unpleasant experience awhile back.
He’d been playing football in the street one day with a group of kids led by neighborhood tomboy Terry Tittlehouse (she’d slug anyone who even raised an eyebrow at her last name) - a freckle-faced, straggly blond haired girl who could beat up any boy around. A member of the opposing team threw the ball in a high, wide arc and Bradley Wallace, for the first time, was in a position to catch it.
As he moved under the descending ball, he heard Terry shriek, “Don’t intercept!” But not knowing what that meant, or even if she was
addressing him, Bradley Wallace caught the ball. Beaming with pride, his bubble of joy was instantly burst by Terry, who stormed over and humiliated him in front of everyone, shouting at the top of her ample lungs that he was stupid, and didn’t he hear her say not to intercept, and a long string of other browbeating epithets. He had slunk home that day like a scolded dog with its tail between its legs. And he’d never played with that group again. Of course, he’d never been asked to, either.
That painful memory resurfaced at this moment and he shuddered at the resurgent feelings of humiliation that accompanied it. But his ever-present curiosity impelled him to ask his father what “intercept” meant, and Jack Murphy, thinking his son was finally becoming interested, excitedly explained that it was football jargon for catching the opposing team’s ball, going on to enumerate game situations when intercepting wasn’t a good idea. The boy nodded, still not certain why he’d been wrong to intercept the ball that day in the street, but decided the incident was best forgotten.
At long last his father tired, and suggested they “call it a day.” Bradley Wallace nearly cried aloud with relief. He asked permission to go off hiking in the hills, or maybe down to the schoolyard to play, and Jack thought it a good idea, shoving the football into his son’s arms and suggesting (translation: “telling”:) the boy get a game going with some of the other kids. Bradley Wallace cursed silently and took the stupid ball. Anything to get away from here!
The first order of business was to ride down to Rakestraw’s and buy Whilly some food. Bonnie, the checker, chidingly suggested that the boy would turn into a hamburger one of these days; he’d been buying so much of it lately. Bradley Wallace lied again, claiming his purchases to be for a sick friend’s dog, and he was doing his friend a favor in picking the stuff up. That explanation seemed to satisfy her, and he hoped to heaven she wouldn’t comment on his frequent visits to his mother. He knew it was dangerous to shop so close to home, but Rakestraw’s was, unfortunately, the only market close enough to be practical. Hamburger and football strapped carefully to the back of his three-speed, Bradley Wallace bicycled back toward the Gully, fighting down the rising tide of nausea in his stomach. Whilly was hungry. He peddled faster.
By this time it was early afternoon and Bradley Wallace found the famished dragon pacing the warehouse restlessly and quickly unwrapped his parcel of meat, which Whilly instantly pounced upon. Bradley Wallace had bought himself a poor boy at the Rakestraw’s deli and sat on the arm of the Masher to eat his own lunch in the peace and solitude the musty old warehouse provided. Without realizing it, the boy had brought into the warehouse with him the football he so loathed, and between gobble-fulls of food, Whilly eyed the object curiously and inquired after its nature.
Bradley Wallace scowled and kicked the ball away from him and told the dragon this was a football. Whilly nodded, recalling their earlier conversation in which football had been mentioned, and noted his friend’s impassioned dislike for this human game.
You do not like that game, do you? he projected while continuing to chomp on the last remnants of hamburger.
“No, I don’t!” Bradley Wallace spat, bitterness and anger suddenly erupting to the surface. He threw the rest of his sandwich viciously onto the ground. Whilly gobbled it up instantly.
“But I should. According to my parents, all boys are supposed to like stuff like that. Normal boys. But I don’t. I can’t help it. I just don’t.” The words spilled from his lips in anguish and acrimonious frustration. “He signed me up for Little League - I didn’t get a single hit in two years. Not one.” These memories were vivid and painful, but Bradley Wallace couldn’t seem to stop. “Then one day he made me the pitcher - I must’ve walked every guy on the other team at least twice, and still he didn’t take me out. Do you know how humiliating that is, to have all those kids laughing and even my own team yelling at me? I felt so stupid I just wanted to die.”
The tears he’d fought back began to flow unchecked, streaming down his smooth, unblemished cheeks and dropping carelessly at the dragon’s scaly feet. “I’ve always felt like ‘Pinocchio,’” he continued through his tears. “He was a wooden puppet who wished he could be a real boy. I want to be a real boy, too, Whilly, but I just don’t know how. Why am I so different?”
The tears continued to flow, and he made no attempt to stop them.
He’d held in these bitter feelings for so long that now everything poured out at once. His words came as rapidly as machine gun fire. “I like to read books and watch scary movies. I like to dream and imagine really far out, wonderful things. I like to watch flowers and sunsets and ot
her stuff like that. I know I shouldn’t be this way. I wish I was a great football player so my father would be proud of me. But I’m not and he isn’t. Pinocchio got his wish by proving himself brave, truthful, and unselfish, but I’m not even any good at those things. Maybe I am just a sissy.” He choked on those last words, deathly afraid they might be true.
Whilly nuzzled up to the boy’s tear-stained face and licked it with his thick, hamburger-smeared tongue, forked at the tip like a lizard’s. But Bradley Wallace was too upset to even react.
You’re not a sissy, dragon assured boy.
“Thanks,” Bradley Wallace muttered halfheartedly. He knew it didn’t change anything, but somehow spilling his guts this way to someone who wouldn’t laugh or sneer made the boy feel slightly better.
Bradley Wallace?
Oh, no, another question! Didn’t dragons ever get tired of asking questions? “Yeah?” he replied cheerlessly.
What is a “sissy?”
Bradley Wallace looked up sharply into those bewildered vermillion eyes, and laughed. Despite his gloomy mood, or perhaps because of it, the boy rollicked with glee, laughing almost till he cried. But these were tears of merriment, and he didn’t fight them off. Whilly cocked his head from side to side as he observed the mood shift with obvious confusion. Somehow, the boy realized, this dragon, like Mr. O’Conner, could make him feel good in the darkest of times, even unintentionally. He felt an upsurge of affection for the ancient beast, but something inside prevented him from articulating his emotions.
“Whilly,” he smiled, shaking his head, “you’re something else.”
Yes, I am a dragon, Whilly replied, sounding almost proud.
Bradley Wallace burst into several more gales of laughter before wiping the tears from his eyes and pulling himself together. Leaping down
off the Masher, he happily pronounced it time for their first flying lesson. Of course, Whilly would have to become invisible for their trek to the haunted water tower, the boy added. The dragon eagerly, but gently, handed over Josette’s music box and instantly “winked out.” Bradley Wallace blinked a few times in surprise - he’d have to get used to that.
A Boy and His Dragon Page 13