The Good Boy

by Schwegel, Theresa

  This time, Joel’s nerves don’t even bother.

  “I didn’t know if you saw the ball,” a long-legged boy says to the driver. He looks to be about Mike’s age. He is black and his Nikes are neon green. He picks up the ball and dribbles.

  “Hope you shoot better than you apologize,” the driver says, and moves on.

  “Whatev.” It seems like he’s got the ball on a string as he lopes back across the street and around the corner.

  Neither of them noticed Joel and Butchie.

  Around the corner, Joel sees that the boy has returned to play in a pickup game on a concrete-slab court in front of a playground. Both areas are set against a chain-link fence that splits off for Clemente High School’s block-wide sports field.

  Finally, a place to blend in.

  Joel leads Butchie past the court’s north hoop. On closer view, all the players are at least high-school age. Some look varsity-skilled, a few have game, and the boy in the green shoes is clearly the star. Joel recognizes the shoes from NBA games on TV; they’re pro-grade. Courtside, the spectators aren’t cheering so much as yelling, telling Tommy to go to work in the post, Terrell to take him to the hole. A few of the sideliners are dressed to play, but most wear street gear—still, they’re all into the game.

  All except one. He’s about Joel’s age, although his clothes would better fit an adult: the oversize hoodie, the pants bunched at his ankles and belted around his thighs. He’s working on a supersize bag of Cheetos and a can of fruit punch, and he watches Joel and Butchie, black eyes wary, like he caught them prowling his territory.

  Butchie probably had the kid on his radar first: he’s already panting, gait lowered, prowling like it’s his territory.

  “Come on, Guard Dog,” Joel says, pulling him along.

  The boy with the Cheetos sticks out his punch-red tongue.

  Butchie fights the leash; he senses Joel’s fear, too.

  They walk past the playground to a bike rack that sits perpendicular to a concrete street barrier. Joel ties the leash around a rung and says, “Sit.”

  Butchie obeys, strategically positioning himself so the boy and his Cheetos are in his sight line. Joel’s certain that if the dog falls asleep, it’ll be with one eye open.

  “You like Cheetos? Is that it, Butch?”

  The dog sighs, in no mood for a tease.

  “Sorry,” Joel says, not really in the mood, either. “Let’s rest a bit, then we’ll eat. Okay? I’ll be back.”

  The playground jungle gym is painted aquamarine, a peculiar color that clashes with the drab surroundings. Joel climbs a set of rungs to the drawbridge, crosses the wobbly planks, and steps up to the slide platform. He sheds his pack along with the food and takes a seat on the curved bridge.

  He sticks his legs through the bridge rails, lets them dangle. It feels good to take the weight off, and he’s got a decent view of the basketball game. Beneath him, the black rubber mat is warped and split, weeds growing through in places. Someone’s scratched graffiti along the slide bed and at the end, the paint is worn through to metal.

  On the court, Joel is drawn to the boy in the green shoes: he hasn’t missed a basket. He’s got crazy bounce, too—those shoes might as well have springs, the way he gets up and over the other guys. He’s out of this league, that’s for sure.

  Joel hooks his hands around the rails and stretches back to look up at the gray sky, his legs swinging. He imagines handling the ball, becoming good at it. Making the team. I’ll practice, he thinks. Soon as I get home.

  The game stops when one of the boy’s teammates goes in for a layup and an opponent undercuts him, taking out his legs. The shooter rolls when he hits the concrete, but it’s concrete, and he comes up bloody. When he cries foul, the other team calls bullshit: the offender’s shirt is ripped from the armpit down, evidence. Soon it’s a shouting match, sides drawn the same as the teams, everybody in somebody else’s face. Everybody but the boy in the green shoes; he stands back and waits, the ball his yo-yo.

  Eventually the shooter and his opponent walk off the court to opposite corners, like fighters regrouping. When two other players jump in and the game resumes, a pair of spectators seems to be sorry the scuffle is over, and peel away from the pack. One of them is the boy with the Cheetos. The other is a heavyset kid who doesn’t look much friendlier.

  They come straight toward Joel.

  Joel’s legs swing to a stop.

  “What you want?” asks the boy with the Cheetos, though he no longer has the Cheetos, just the orange fingers.

  “Nothing,” Joel says. “I’m watching the game.”

  The second boy starts to climb the slide. “What kind of dog is that?” he asks, the ragged soles of his shoes slipping as he scrambles up and slips down and scrambles up again, his shirt coming up, exposing rolls of flabby skin.

  “He’s a Belgian Malinois–German shepherd mix.” A police dog is what Joel wants to say.

  “How come you chained him up over there?”

  “He doesn’t like basketball.” Joel looks through the jungle gym rails to see Butchie, sitting up, hair up, ears up, watching. Helpless.

  “You know what I want?” the first boy asks, kicking the edge of the rubber mat.

  Joel shrugs, pretty sure he’s kept all the cool he can.

  The boy on the slide is within reach of the top and Joel starts to get up, but the other boy grabs his feet and pulls, holding him there and knocking him flat on his back.

  “Hey—” Joel says.

  “No,” the boy below says, “I don’t want hey. I want to know what you got in those bags.”

  Joel feels weight on the bridge: the second boy has squeezed through the slide’s canopy. He takes Joel’s pack and the Jewel bag and pushes them down the slide.

  “Hey—” Joel says again but then the boy sits on his chest, pinning his arms. He can’t move, he can’t breathe, he can’t—

  “Shut up, bitch,” the boy on the ground says, which doesn’t make sense until—

  “Murphy, come in?” Molly!

  “Murphy can’t come in,” the boy says. “He’s about to get fucked up!”

  Then the boy on top of him laughs, and Joel thinks his ribs might break. His thoughts come fast and important and above all he wants to say Whatever you do, leave the dog … but he can’t. He can’t speak, he can’t breathe—he can’t breathe …

  And then he hears someone say, “What the fuck you doing? Jemaine?”

  And then the weight is lifted.

  Joel sits up right away, or what feels like right away, but by that time the boys are off in the distance, on the other side of the empty basketball court. The boy in the green shoes is with them, dribbling the basketball; next to him, Jemaine bounces Butchie’s tennis ball.

  Joel pulls his legs out from the rails, gets on his feet and finds Butchie: he’s still leashed to the bike rack. Tail going.

  “Oh my gosh—” Joel shoots down the slide to the rubber mat where the boys left his stuff and he leaves his stuff, too, and goes for the dog.

  “I’m so sorry, Butch.” As Joel unties the leash, it begins to rain. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”

  Butchie follows Joel back to the playground to collect his things: his jacket and sweatshirt in the grass. Books opened, pages wet. And the walkie-talkie, here, wires hanging. The antenna there. The battery nowhere to be found. The Jewel bag ripped open and turned inside out, most of the food ruined.

  He shoves everything into a couple more Jewel bags and they cut back to Oakley toward a tall hospital building that stands at the next intersection. Butchie skips around Joel, his tongue hanging long to one side; he doesn’t understand what just happened and he doesn’t care about the rain, either. To him, this jaunt is some kind of game—until it thunders, and then Joel is the one trying to keep up with Butchie.

  A few blocks later the rain is really something, sideways and biting, and Joel looks for shelter beneath the eave of St. Helen’s Church. He wishes he could duck inside
; he sees lights through the stained-glass door and finds that the fish-shaped handles have pull, but he can’t leave Butchie alone out here, the thunder his biggest fear.

  The wind changes direction, bringing rain around the curve of the building; they’re soaked, and Joel can’t see anywhere else to go, but a clap of thunder gets them going anyway.

  They scramble south for another block until Joel finds a gigantic church called St. Nicholas, everything from its steps to its steeple dwarfing little old Helen.

  Lots of saints around here, Joel thinks; he wishes any one of them could be of help. But it won’t be St. Nick: at the top of the steps, his giant doors are open and a group of somber-looking men dressed in dark suits stands around looking out at the rain. The coffin waiting in the hearse parked at the bottom of the steps tells why.

  Joel crosses the street to steer clear of the paused procession and that’s when he sees a big blue construction Dumpster parked in front of a tarped fence. Behind that, an orange-brick three-story has air for windows and a board for a door.

  Joel checks over his shoulder to make sure nobody’s looking, but with the Dumpster right there, the only person who could see is the dead man, so he throws his pack over the fence and pulls back on the gate; it’s tight, but the rain gives enough grease for Butchie to slip through. Once Joel gets in, they climb through an open-air window and find a place on dry floor.

  “Hello?” he asks. The thunder answers, and Butchie finds the corner-est corner and curls up, tail over his nose, shaking.

  “It’s okay, boy,” Joel says, even though he doesn’t think so. He takes off Molly’s shirt and uses it to towel his hair. Then he takes off his tennis shoes, orange stains from Jemaine’s Cheeto-covered fingers on the canvas.

  He gets undressed, ringing out his wet clothes and draping them over the unfinished stairs. And then, as he sits there in his underwear, his heart feels hard, and for the first time since he left home, he cries.

  21

  Pete waits to turn onto Western Avenue while a couple of teenagers cross the street from Clemente High School, the boys loopy and loud, one with the end of a long twist of licorice dangling from his mouth, the other belting out a baby-voiced version of a hip-hop song Pete recognizes and can’t stand. He guesses they either knocked over a candy machine or were just sprung from Saturday detention. He hopes they’re high on sugar.

  Heading south, he feels like he’s riding the crest of the storm: the front is rolling in strong, Loop-bound. He steps on the gas some more. Rima doesn’t seem to mind.

  “I love that place,” she says, presumably referring to the little restaurant on the left called Bite; she’s had something to say about nearly every place that serves food since they left Austin.

  “You hungry?” Pete is, but so what.

  “We should eat.”

  “After this stop.”

  “Too much caffeine makes you shake.”

  So she noticed: his hands are shaking. He’s been propped up on coffee for a good twelve hours, and it’s starting to show. Still: “I’m fine.”

  “I’m not. I’m starving.”

  He gets the feeling she’s saying so for his benefit, because she’s worried about him, but if lunch will shut her up, at least while she’s chewing, “I know a place.” It’s a few blocks off the track, but it’s pretty fast and plenty greasy; it’ll do the job.

  He pulls around the back of Jackson Fish and Chicken, parks in the gravel lot and tells Rima to wait. Now that she knows this off-the-clock, off-the-books ride along is illegal, she’s resigned herself to the passenger seat, the vest shoved between her boots.

  “What do you want?” he asks, zipping his civ’s coat to hide his duty belt.

  “Something healthy.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Inside, there’s only one guy waiting at the bulletproof window that separates the cooks from the customers. He’s in plainclothes, too, though he hasn’t bothered to turn down his radio; after a single transmission, Pete gets that he’s a dick from right here in Thirteen. It’s no surprise: a lot of cops used to come by on the regular when it was Felony Franks, a hot dog joint where all the workers were ex-cons. Some came for a cheap grease fix, others to see how the workers’ second chances were going. Now that it’s Jackson’s, they no longer sell hot dogs or employ felons, but the cops still come by out of habit.

  Today there’s only one cook in the kitchen; he’s juggling fryer baskets to the beat of some shitty eighties’ dance song—looks like he’s havin’ big fun. He’s wearing rubber gloves but handles the uncooked chicken same as the white bread, same as the mayonnaise. The guy’s semiformal adherence to the health code doesn’t bother Pete. What germ could survive the deep fryer?

  Pete’s checking out the menu taped to the inside of the window and he’s going back and forth between the chicken sandwich and the fingers when two guys come in the door looking like they could use job applications.

  The first, in a puffy coat that doubles his size, gets in front of Pete and puts his hands against the window to peer in while he mumbles something about Jeff being at work today. The second, who’s carrying a duffel bag, gets in line real close behind Pete—neither of them concerned with personal space.

  “Oh I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the one smearing the glass says to Pete, finally noticing there are other customers. His lower lip hangs open and swollen, like his coat. “Lemme get in line.”

  “No problem,” Pete says. Different neighborhood, different normal.

  The cook shows up at the register with the other cop’s order. “Catfish sampler and onion rings,” he says through the squawk box, and rings up the total. The cop pays and takes his food from the turnstile and gives Pete an uneasy look, like he’s already got heartburn, as he pushes out the door ass-first.

  “What can I get for you?” the cook asks Pete.

  “Two crispy chicken sandwiches and a side of fries, please. And two Cokes. One Diet.”

  “Sorry, we only have cola.”

  “Cola, then. One diet.”

  “Right up.”

  Pete nods and moves away from the glass, giving the two other customers the space he’s accustomed to.

  While he waits, he thinks about Kitty; he wonders if she knows Frank’s has been shuttered. Apparently, the alderman made a stink. He said the establishment made light of incarceration. Said local youth were getting the wrong message. Kitty would argue: what was wrong about giving formerly incarcerated men the chance to work? And what kid ever committed a crime because of a Misdemeanor Weiner or a manacled cartoon hot dog?

  Of course, nobody would listen to Kitty about second chances. Not after what Juan Moreno did with his. And the truth is, a second chance is still a chance, and most people would rather find a way to get by than go through the painful metamorphosis of going straight.

  One case in that point happens to be standing next to Pete right now: the second of the two geniuses has his duffel bag unzipped to display all brands of men’s body wash, deodorant and shampoo. Dude is fencing soap, right here in the open, right in front of a cop.

  “I got one for one-fifty and two for three,” he says to his pal in the puffy coat.

  “That’s the same price! That ain’t no deal.” He’s considering a stick of Right Guard.

  “It’s a deal from what you gonna get you go to Walgreens.”

  “Two crispy chickens, side of fries ready,” says the cook, his smile part of the job.

  Pete pays for the food and leaves his change in the till for the cook, because it must be fucking hard to stay clean.

  When he gets back to the car, Pete hands Rima the cola marked DEIT and settles in to unwrap lunch.

  “What’d you get me?” she asks.

  He unties the white plastic bag and feels around the bottom, comes up with a couple of ketchup packets, and tosses them to her.

  “What’s this?”

  “The only healthy stuff you can get in that joint.”

  Rima reaches over, op
ens the first Styrofoam container, takes one of the foil-wrapped sandwiches and tries a bite. “Thisisawful,” she says before she swallows.

  Pete takes a bite of the other one; she’s right. “Fuel,” he says, the white bread sticking to the roof of his mouth.

  “For a garbage truck,” she says, taking another bite.

  Pete takes a slurp of his cola; it’s flat, corn syrup. When he opens the box with the fries the whole car immediately reeks of peanut oil, an odor that’ll probably stick around longer than Butchie’s dead rodent. “Fry?” he offers; the one he takes is as thick as a finger and wet, like the oil wasn’t up to temperature. It tastes exactly how he imagines cholesterol would. He washes it down with another sip of diabetes.

  Rain needles the windshield; Pete balances the cola between his legs and starts the car.

  “So I was thinking,” Ri says as he pulls around to exit the lot, “if this kid Carter is the one who got bit, he must know about Joel.”

  “I hope so.” He’d also hoped she was going to quit speculating, once she had food.

  “I mean, Joel could even be with him.”

  “He could.”

  “But that’s why we’re going, right? To see what Carter knows about Joel?”

  “I just want to talk to him. Same as Desmond Jenkins.”

  “But if Carter got bit, you must think he knows something.”

  “I don’t know what he knows. That’s why I want to talk to him.” Pete takes a bite of his sandwich, chews on it awhile. He turns up Western, going back over the same ground, same maddening thing Ri’s doing.

  She considers a french fry, says, “I guess I don’t see why you think Carter would know about Joel unless he was the one who took him.”

  Pete feels his phone buzz so he steers with his forearm, licks grease from his free fingers and reaches into his shirt pocket.

  “And I don’t know why Carter would take him. I mean, okay, he’s a Hustler—”

  It’s Ann Marie Byers calling. Another line of questioning.

  “… But how would he know Joel? I mean sure, they know you, but really—”