The Good Boy

by Schwegel, Theresa

  Joel wraps Butchie in a hug and hopes it’s not as easy for the men to see inside as it is to peek out.

  The guy in sneakers pivots, says, “I guess location is key.”

  “Oh yes,” the other man says. “Here you’re close to the brown line and the Eleven bus, the nightlife on Lincoln Avenue—”

  “I’ve got four kids under five. I don’t have a nightlife.”

  “We’re also blocks from Welles Park and just a quick drive to Montrose Beach. McPherson Elementary is—”

  “What about the necessities? Coffee? The grocery?”

  “There are three coffee shops between here and the Jewel on Lincoln Avenue, and that’s a five-minute walk.”

  Butchie tries to get up but Joel holds him there, buries his face in the nape of the dog’s neck.

  “What’s the situation with the hot tub?” Wood creaks as one of the men steps onto the deck above them.

  Joel looks up through the wood planks. There really isn’t much room under here, and as long as someone’s around, there’s no way out. This is the problem with hiding: there’s no believable excuse for getting caught in a place they aren’t supposed to be. Like that junkie who got arrested last night, they can’t pretend they’re invited when they snuck in.

  “It’s not as expensive to maintain as you might think,” the man in loafers says, stamping down a patch of grass. “It’s got a pretty efficient gas heater, so the cost to keep it going year-round would be thirty, thirty-two bucks a month on average.”

  “You’ve done the numbers,” the other man says, directly over them now, his shadow falling on Butchie. Joel closes his eyes, wishes they were invisible.

  “You bet.”

  “How much to get rid of it? Four toddlers plus a hazard like this is not a cost I want to calculate.”

  “I can certainly look into it. May I ask, are you working with another Realtor?”

  “No. My wife’s pretty set on staying where we are, so nothing’s official until I can make an offer she can’t refuse.”

  “I understand. I’m here for you.”

  “In that case, can you look into the zoning restrictions for me?”

  “I’ve got some of the paperwork inside.”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  As they return to the house, Joel realizes that families move all the time, and it’s never easy; there’s always at least one person who’d rather stay put.

  Butchie edges back and looks at Joel, one ear up.

  “I know, Butch, okay? Once we get out of here we won’t hide anymore. Wherever we go, we’ll act like we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.” He pets the dog’s ear back into place and checks his watch: it’s just past seven thirty. Pretty early for house-hunting, and still too early for the library.

  Butchie pants, dry-tongued, and stares at Joel as he wags his tail against the lattice. He’s hot, and thirsty, and probably hungry.

  “I hear you, Dog Breath.” Joel turns over on his forearms to root through his backpack: he’s got Butchie’s leash and tags, the walkie-talkie, the tennis ball, and the copy of White Fang. In his wallet are his Game Planet card, his library card, the four bucks, and Owen Balicki’s picture—Owen looking back at him, same bad haircut, his crooked smile now more like a smirk.

  “Hurm,” Butchie says, trying to drill a hole right into Joel’s heart, those puppy dog eyes.

  Joel’s stomach rumbles; he’s hungry, too. When he packed, he had no idea they wouldn’t be home in time for bed, let alone breakfast.

  “Just a little longer,” he tells Butchie; they should probably stay here until the realtor and his potential buyer move along. But there could be other showings. And what if the next house hunter flips Butchie’s switch?

  Butchie gets up, a vote for bailing now.

  “Okay, okay, hold your hind legs.” Joel repacks his bag, hooks Butchie’s leash, and surveys their escape route. Then he straps on his pack and they make a break for it.

  He doesn’t look back, not even once they hit Seeley Avenue, a block away, and that’s because the cop blood in his veins kicked in and he knows what he has to do.

  Well, he half knows. His dad’s police DNA is spliced with his mom’s, after all, so part of him wants to go straight home. Still, he feels the pull of purpose—to tell the judge what happened at Zack Fowler’s, to exonerate Butchie, and to make his family understand that they had to leave home to show them that home is being together, no matter where they are.

  Or maybe the pull is just Butchie on the other end of the leash.

  As they cut through the neighborhood, right turns every time, Joel remembers to stay on the left side of the street. He knows from dad that the right-side tendency is something regular people do—and don’t realize they do—and that can give the police an advantage, if they’re looking.

  And if they are looking, the real key to going unnoticed is to act natural, no matter what you’ve done or how unnatural it feels.

  At Lincoln Avenue—the border of the Twentieth District—Joel sees the Jewel sign, the grocery situated on the west side of the busy avenue. If an official search party’s been started in the district, Joel’s about to slip Butchie out the back door; he’d be a dummy to stay on the perimeter, get caught right outside. And if the unofficial search party is still out, walking along a main route is really asking for it.

  Still, his stomach.

  When traffic splits he jogs Butchie across the avenue and then turns on the first side street, hoping to home in on the store like a pigeon. A few blocks down, he tries an alley, and at the end of it finds the faded wood fence that surrounds the store’s parking lot. He ties Butchie’s leash around a shopping-cart return in back—out of the way of any customers cruising for a good parking spot, and conveniently out of sight of anybody that might be cruising for a missing boy and his dog.

  Inside the Jewel, the smell from the bakery makes Joel crazy. Warm lighting hangs over the snack aisle that stretches from loaves of bread to boxes of cookies. He goes to the last section, where doughnut, and cupcakes hide behind their pictures on wax-papered packaging. He can taste the cream filling.

  He’s startled when a woman interrupts the store’s piped-in music to say, “Twenty-one on two.” When the song plays again, someone sings, “You can’t always get what you want…”

  Speaking of: the price tags underneath all the treats advertise 10 FOR $10. Joel can’t buy ten; he only has four dollars and anyway, he didn’t want to spend more than two. He moves on.

  Around the corner, off-brand snacks sit on an end display. Joel selects a small package of cheese-flavored crackers offered for a single buck; he can share them with Butchie.

  In the dairy section, he waits for a woman with a baby boy wedged into a car seat wedged into a shopping cart wedged into the door of a cold case to make up her mind about yogurt. Joel really wants a box of chocolate milk, except the lady is blocking the way, and she’s too busy talking to her baby to make a decision.

  She says, “I told Ashley she’s kidding herself.” A weird thing to say to a baby, but so is, “You don’t get it from a toilet seat.”

  Joel isn’t sure what the baby is supposed to say to that, and apparently neither is the other woman pushing her cart past them. She goes real slow, looking down at Joel and then very critically up at the lady, who doesn’t notice either of them because she has a cup of yogurt in her hand now, and she’s reading its label.

  Joel realizes it must look like this lady is his mom, and since he probably shouldn’t be alone here he plays the part, waiting patiently while she tells the baby and pretty much everyone what happened to Ashley.

  “He needs to get tested,” she says, finally selecting a cup of banana-vanilla, tossing it into her cart and knocking the door shut. When she steers the cart around, her one-sided conversation makes a little more sense: she’s got one of those wireless buds in her ears that people use to talk without a phone.

  Joel follows quietly behind, and while Mom stops for mil
k, the other lady stops to give them the stinkeye, so Joel pretends he’s real interested in the cheese.

  “Yes, but let’s be honest. Ashley is a slut.”

  The baby squeals, and Mom turns away from him to hear whatever her ear has to say. She doesn’t notice when the baby gets a hold of the yogurt and sticks practically the whole container in his toothless mouth.

  At this, Joel decides the lady isn’t a very good mom, a very good shopper, or a very good friend, so he waits for the other woman to turn down the spice aisle and then abandons the ruse. And the chocolate milk.

  After a stop in the deli where he couldn’t find so much as a slice of turkey for less than four dollars, Joel follows his nose—like Butchie would—to the bakery.

  Everything fresh-baked is out of the question. Same with the french, sourdough, and artisan loaves, and nope to the twist-tied bags of muffins or bagels. The clock ticking and his stomach raw, he’s starting to look for a package that would fit in his pocket, and wonders if he’ll have to add theft to his list of crimes.

  But then, along the wall behind the soup kiosk, Joel spies a row of plastic bread bins, the yellow-splashed sales tags screaming 49 CENTS! He can’t believe it. He bags the two biggest kaiser rolls and heads for the checkout, proud that he found something for both of them and that he’s spending right around two bucks.

  At the front of the store there are only two lanes open; Joel opts to wait behind the old lady buying cottage cheese and peaches over the mom whose conveyor belt is lined up with rice cereal and no-sugar juice and fish sticks and all the boring stuff his own mom used to buy before she got on her macaroni kick. He won’t take the chance that this woman is also the kind of mom who would want to know what a kid is doing here by himself.

  While the old lady counts out nickels from her change purse, Joel peruses the gum-and-candy rack. Snickers are yellow-splash priced, too: fifty cents each.

  Oh, Snickers would really satisfy. He looks at his bread, his sad bag of cheese-flavored crackers. He could afford the Snickers if he gave up the crackers, except Butchie can’t eat chocolate. It wouldn’t be fair; he’s starving, too.

  That’s when he spots the beef jerky on the top of a rack of watch batteries, ChapStick, and breath strips. Beef jerky they could both eat. Beef jerky is eighty-nine cents. Joel gets on his tiptoes and leans over the belt, but he can’t reach.

  “I have a coupon,” the old lady says.

  The checkout girl’s name tag reads ANAMARIA and she looks real thrilled as she takes the coupon and click-clacks the register keys with her thick, squared nails. If the state of Anamaria’s manicure has anything to do with her mindset, Joel supposes she is going to have a zero-tolerance policy for him.

  “Do you have a preferred card?” she asks Joel, his stuff rolling toward her before the old lady gets her change.

  “No,” he says, getting his wallet from his backpack. His mom has a preferred card, but: “I have money.” He feels rushed.

  “That’s good,” Anamaria says. She keys in the code for kaiser rolls.

  “Wait,” Joel says. “I don’t want the crackers.” He reaches back for a Snickers and puts it on the belt. “I’d like this, please. And will you get me a stick of jerky?” He estimates the bill at $2.50, but it’ll be worth every extra penny.

  Anamaria swipes the items and drops them into a plastic bag, hits the Total key, and says, “Three fifty-six.”

  Joel opens his wallet and closes it again. “I thought some of the things were on sale.”

  Anamaria looks down at him, her bored, brown eyes. “With your preferred card.”

  “I don’t have a preferred card.”

  “Would you like to sign up for one?” She sounds like she’s reading from a script.

  The stinkeyed woman pulls in behind him and begins to unload her cart. If she suspects he’s wandered away from his “mom” and decides to intervene, she could blow his cover.

  Joel looks at the sales screen: nothing’s on sale and there’s tax on all of it. He’s got to get rid of something and get out of there and quick.

  “How much without the Snickers?”

  “You want me to void the Snickers?”

  No, he wants to rip it from the bag and tear it open with his teeth and shove the whole thing in his mouth at once. But it’s the most expensive item. “Yes, please.”

  Anamaria picks up the phone and says to the whole store, “Void on three.” She takes the Snickers out of the bag as music comes back and a woman sings about feeling like she’s walking on broken glass.

  To Joel it feels like he’s standing in a spotlight, waiting for anybody who cares to bust him.

  Eventually, a thin-haired woman in a Jewel apron and an arm cast, name tag SANDY, comes to Anamaria’s rescue. She maneuvers her arm up to swipe a keycard, punch some numbers, and rescan the candy bar. Her eyebrows are raised over her glasses the entire time.

  “I can’t spend more than three dollars,” Joel explains, and then, so the woman behind him will hear, too, “my mom is teaching me how to spend money.”

  Nobody looks impressed.

  “Some teacher,” the woman behind mutters as she puts a cantaloupe on the belt, “let you run around, pay no mind to people…”

  Joel tries to smile at the other two. Everybody waits for the register.

  Finally, a receipt kicks out. Sandy takes a look at it over her glasses, then ambles back to the customer-service desk. Anamaria tosses the receipt, tucks the Snickers under the counter, and says, “Two seventy-four.”

  Joel hands over three dollars and he’s waiting for his change to shoot out into the dish when he hears his “mom” roll up in the next aisle.

  “Did you hear about that drama?” she asks, her voice as loud as the store’s intercom.

  Joel’s change seems to come in slow motion, even as the cantaloupe rolls around in real time when the belt gets going again.

  “Wait—” Anamaria says as he swipes his change and his groceries and he pretends he doesn’t hear her, but he does: “Your receipt?”

  And then he stops. Act natural—isn’t that what he’s supposed to do, no matter what?

  He can’t fake a smile but he’s not deaf so he turns back, takes the receipt and says, “Thank you,” feeling that lady’s stinkeye all the while.

  “You could have saved eighty-two cents,” Anamaria says, like she couldn’t care less.

  “Thanks a lot,” he says and takes off, snagging a bunch of plastic Jewel bags from the last register before he escapes through the Out doors.

  When Butchie sees Joel come outside, he stays in heel, though he licks his chops like he can smell his breakfast from across the lot. Despite the new tangle of shopping carts in front of him and the dog who’s barking his head off in a car parked in a handicapped spot on the opposite aisle, Butchie is sitting exactly where Joel left him, and Joel bets he hasn’t once taken his eyes off the Jewel doors. He is such a good boy.

  Joel stuffs all the plastic bags into one and pitches his receipt into the garbage can beside some newspaper boxes.

  Two newspaper boxes. Two different newspapers. Both of them featuring the same giant photo of his dad and Butchie.

  Joel pulls the handle on one box and realizes it takes money to get it open: the quarter slot is right there next to the headline that reads MURPHY’S LAW. Under the headline, his dad and Butchie are pictured, his dad glancing at the camera from the curb and Butchie off in the grass doing his business, looking embarrassed. Next to the photo, there’s another of an Afroed man with his mouth and arms open—like he’s saying What?—the word $OLID stretched along the inside of his forearm. The same word, same dollar sign as the one stretched across that Redbone boy’s hoodie.

  It cannot be a coincidence.

  The caption between the pictures reads: “Ja’Kobe White is suing Officer Peter Murphy for harassment, excessive force and wrongful arrest. White claims Murphy’s K9, Butch, bit him in an unprovoked attack. PAGE 8.”

  Joel steps back
. This must be the story he overheard on the TV Thursday night, the news his dad didn’t want to share—Why would you ask me that?—jumping down Joel’s throat when he asked if Butchie was in trouble. Ja’Kobe White is not the boy Butchie bit at Zack’s last night, but he is from the same group. There must be a fleet of Mizz Redbone cars. An army of Elgin Pooles. And if they’re after his dad, they’re also after Joel and Butchie.

  Joel wants to know what’s on page 8 so he stuffs his only quarter inside and pulls the handle, but it doesn’t budge; that’s when he sees the sign that says it costs a whole dollar.

  No way he can spend his last dollar.

  Joel pushes the change return button as the stinkeyed lady rolls her groceries through the first set of Out doors.

  No way he’s going to get Butchie caught over a quarter, either, so he darts across the parking lot, unties the leash and hustles the dog back up the alley, then the next street, and then the next one after that. They keep running until they wind up in Welles Park, and into exactly what his dad would call a clusterfuck.

  It’s peewee-football game day, and hundreds of kids are in various stages of play, battle-geared in helmets, pads, and cleats. Their parents gather around the half-dozen minifields dressed in team colors. From the sidelines, they cheer for their sons and yell at the referees, most of them more fired up than the kids.

  Butchie is excited—to him, a park means fetch, and a newspaper headline doesn’t mean squat—he’s just a dog, after all.

  And Joel, he’s just a kid. A kid among a hundred others—more than a hundred, actually: besides the peewees, there’s a game of older kids’ rugby on the west side of the park, and a whole bunch of kids who are plain old playing in between. And because there are so many kids, there are also enough parents to keep the police from getting anxious. If they do drive by, Joel and Butchie will look like they belong.

  And if the Redbones drive by, Joel can only hope there’s at least one adult who will be smart enough to chase them away.