The worker takes pity on me. “Sorry, kid. That’s a tough one.”
I whip my head around, scanning for dog fur. “Have you seen a dog around here?”
“Nope.”
The unthinkable suddenly dawns on me. We had a dog chute in the mudroom. That way Chimney could come and go as she pleased. The old mudroom has been demolished, and the floor is covered with wood. My arms flail. Wood boards fly from the pile. The man churns his feet through the wreckage. “Be careful. There’s nails in there.”
“Shut up,” I cry.
“Okay, okay. Let me help you, then.”
For the next two hours, we excavate the mudroom site. I find Chimney’s dog tag before realizing it’s an old one from when she was a puppy. I put the metal tag in my pocket. I’m exhausted from moving the wood pile and wander into the backyard, leaning up against our wood fence. The six-foot solid board fence is the only thing that still exists from the Quinn era, unless you count the patio bricks and dirt. I remember Pop built that fence when I was about ten after a fight with some new neighbors that had moved in and replaced the Weber family.
It hasn’t occurred to me until I look up from the fence that the bloody, greedy bastards have already cut down most of the beautiful elm trees in our backyard to make way for the two new houses. Kate will be crushed if she ever comes back to review the remains of her childhood home. I sit down on one of the freshly cut stumps. On the bottom of the stump, I see a carving in the wood: K ♡ T.
I try to stop myself from thinking about Chimney to avoid crying, so I pinch myself hard on the fat part of my calf. I’ve spent half of my life chasing Chimney around the backyard. Now she’s gone and disappeared, along with everything and everyone good in my life. Rocket. My house. My dog. My country-club golf course. Owen. Cleo. I retrieve the dog tag from my pocket and rub the dirt off of it with my thumbnail. It reads “I’m Chimney Quinn, 678 Dorchester. If you find me, please return me to my family.”
I fight off some tears, and I’m about to leave when I hear some muttering from the driveway next door at the Clarks’. Pauley? I’m in no mood for him whatsoever. The muttering ceases. I glance over and can see him pulling back some branches, peering through the shrubs. He sees that I’ve spotted him and cuts through the hedge toward me.
Before I can move, Pauley appears in front of me but doesn’t say a thing. His head swivels back and forth from me and my destroyed house, like he’s just noticed it’s been nuked by a Soviet warhead.
“Whatta bummer,” he says.
The sun’s in my face, and I have to squint to look at him. His hair has grown past his shoulders. He wears a pair of cut-off jeans and no shirt, his hands greasy from working on one of the Clarks’ motorcycles. He wears a perplexed face, like he is trying to solve a riddle in his head. “Where do you live now?”
Should I give Pauley my new address? At least he doesn’t give two rips where I live or what kind of house I live in. “A building uptown called Paradise Garden Apartments.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Splendid.” I notice a deflated football by the fence line. Rocket and I used to play catch in the backyard for hours on end.
“Too bad they don’t allow dogs.”
The word “dog” gets my attention, but the word “they’ doesn’t register with me at first. “What do you mean they, Pauley?”
“Your dog doesn’t live with you. They must not allow pets.”
I leap off the stump and stand eye to eye with him. “What do you mean? Have you seen Chimney?” My nose practically presses up against his. Maybe Pauley killed my dog.
“Yeah, I’ve seen her.”
I put my hands on my head in despair. “Jesus, Pauley!” Maybe I’ll kill him. “Where the hell is my dog?”
“In my room, sleeping.” He scratches the back of his neck. “She looked lonely and hungry. My mom’s been out of town, and I didn’t have your new phone number to tell you. I was beginning to wonder if I should just keep her. She’s pretty nice.”
A million tons lift from my shoulders, and I give Pauley Clark a huge Bigfoot hug. After taking one long, last look at the remains of my childhood home, I hurry next door to get my dog, tears of relief washing down my face.
n Labor Day weekend I hear from Kate, who heard from Vicky Fontaine, that there’s a party going down at the park, and there might be a fight between the private and public schoolers. Gene comes by the apartment, and we head off together to watch the spectacle and attend the last summer party before high school kicks off.
Tonight it’s muggy cool. Swirls of tumbleweed gusts blow in from nowhere. Energy fills my bones as we step into the park, and it seems just about every kid knows this is the last summer gig before the adults run or ruin our lives again. A moth flaps its wings at me and flutters off.
I ponder where the rumble will start or if it’s just tough talk. Catholic High vs. Kensington High. There’s a big rivalry between the two schools. Usually fights end on the football field, or you hear about an occasional brawl somewhere. We stumble upon a keg of beer. I grab a foamy cup and roam the park with Gene.
Is that Cleo nuzzled up to Jack Lott against a Corvette convertible? She’s left a deep wound in my heart that hasn’t healed yet, and I wonder if it ever will. A boy with shaggy brown hair turns around and grins. It isn’t Jack and Cleo, just another mirage in the social desert.
Droning mosquito kamikazes blitz and feed on my sweaty neck. I bump shoulders with a guy and spill his beer. “What the hell, dickhead?”
“Sorry.”
We move on up a hill and hear yelling coming from over a distant ridge, and I wonder if the rumble has already started and what side I’ll be on if I ever muster the courage to join the fray. Maybe I should go to unschooling school with Pauley.
In this section of the park, I notice a few public schoolers I’d played baseball with a few years ago, and we exchange hellos. A girl appears from the crowd in a pink sweater; tight, flared Jordache jeans; and pearl earrings. Her face doesn’t register with me because I haven’t seen her outside the boundaries of Dot Ave. She stumbles up to me, and her beer breath almost knocks me over.
“I know you!” A wasted smile spreads across her lips, and she spills her drink on my shoes. “They knocked your entire house down and,” she slurs, “I watched the whole thing from my front yard.”
I’m trying to get away from that old life, but she keeps going. “And ya know what? I wrote a poem about it. The Fall of the House of Quinn. I write poetry, too.”
Too? It finally dawns on me that she’s Laney Carter from across the street, and I remember that according to Ralph Lord, she writes poetry. How the hell does she know about my poetry writing? The only two suspects are Pauley and Kate, unless Laney combed through the wreckage of my house and unearthed stuff from the rubble.
I recall Virginia saying during the frantic move before I left for Atlanta, “You can’t take all your books to the apartment … it’s too small. You could fill a library with all these books.” Maybe Laney bought my poetry book at Mom’s last garage sale on Dot Ave from the ten-cent bin. Then I trash that idea. Perhaps Cleo stole my notebook, and it made the rounds of the Hills girls in-crowd before winding up in the hands of Laney. Who the fook knows?
“Turn around, will ya?” She presses a piece of paper against my back and chisels numbers across my spine. She spins me around and shoves a piece of paper in my front pocket. “You hear about the showdown?” A piss-drunk kid stumbles into her backward, suffers a laughing fit, then rolls into the night. “Some bullshit dare Nick Lund made. Just like him.”
I wonder how she knows Lund, and a faint memory of Pop ranting about Mr. Carter belonging to the Hunt Club kicks in. The Lunds are members there, too. It’s just like adults to have some pretend club name from England, like they actually hunt foxes in Kensington Hills. Who do they think they are? Nobles, earls, lords, kings, a
nd queens? I think of our apartment building and the serfs we’ve become. Grandpa Quinn’s probably twisting in his grave. Not sure what Uncle Fred would think. For once, I feel bad for dear old Pop and decide maybe I should become a lawyer and fight for the little guy against the likes of Mr. Carter, Mr. Fitz, and all the other fox hunters.
Nah. I love space too much to piss away my life just to get revenge for Pop’s lot-scheme debacle. Plus, Laney Carter’s pink sweater is lingering in my mind like the funny-smelling smoke wafting through the park air.
She stumbles off into the night. Maybe some kids like her care more about what you do than where you live. Farther into the park, a circle of kids surrounds two dark figures squaring off with each other. I squeeze into the circle to get a better view and see Gorilla flexing his muscles inside the circle—the same guy who’d beaten Rocket’s face to a fine pulp.
My anger rises. I throw the cup I’ve been holding on to the ground and squeeze my way to the front of the throng. Gorilla throws a punch, and the kid he hits doubles over and twists around so I’m face-to-face with his next victim. A frightened, helpless Nick Lund stares into my eyes.
“Help me,” he says. “Fantastic—”
Gorilla turns him around and punches him in the windpipe. Lund stumbles, regains his footing, and throws a pathetic jab that the bully blocks. I don’t see any Holy Redeemer in sight, let alone a member of the Fantastic Four. The only guy I know who could take on the Gorilla is Jack Lott, and he’s probably snuggling with Cleo on the suede beanbag in his basement. I’m the only one who can help hapless Nick.
For me, this has nothing to do with private schoolers versus public schoolers. Nothing to do with Hills kids versus any other kids. This is about avenging Rocket. He’s never let me down—ever. Lund deserves to get his ass whipped for once in his privileged life. But what I’m about to do has nothing to do with Lund or his silly middle-school gang. I’ll avenge my friend.
The public schoolers egg their man on, and Gorilla throws a punch. Lund ducks, and Gorilla’s fist grazes off his temple. I have to make a move, or he’ll kill Lund. Gorilla holds up his hand and clenches his fist for all to see. Lund straightens, turns up his chin, and raises his left arm in self-defense. He takes two wobbly steps backward before the crowd pushes him forward like ropes in a boxing ring. I close my eyes and sprint toward Gorilla and tackle him in the knees like I’d done to King. But there’s no Rat to save me. I’m on top of him now. He throws me onto the ground like a rag doll.
Gorilla rises.
I know I’m burnt toast. He coils his arm and makes a fist to turn my face into a tossed salad. His gold ring glints on his right knuckle. An epic, primal scream silences the crowd. Gorilla’s eyes grow wide. He puts down his arm and rotates his head. I lift my chin off the ground and see Gene’s giant fist hurtling through the night air.
Gorilla ducks and avoids the punch. He does an Andre the Giant move on Gene, picking him up by the waist and body slamming him on the ground. Gorilla backs up against the human ropes and runs toward Gene, flying off the ground and landing on his fat stomach. Gene screams and throws him off. Gorilla aims a roundhouse to finish my buddy off.
I crawl forward on my knees and divert Gorilla’s attention toward me. “Hey, asshole!” I’m fast enough to run away if I want to, but Gene’ll never make it out of the ring alive.
Gorilla’s eyes drill on mine, and I’m dead scared he’s going to kill me. He rubs his hands together, clenches his fist in and out, and I quickly get to my feet, thinking the best shot I have to stay alive is by doing some Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope. As I back away in one frantic, spastic motion to get some distance between us, he raises his knuckly fist. Courage drains from my arteries and leaks from my shoelace holes into a muddy puddle on the ground. I close my eyes to meet certain death.
I open my eyes and wonder why I’m still breathing. Silver flashes in front of my petrified face. Owen Rooney’s wearing his knee-long army parka and is in a low fighting stance, waving his Swiss Army knife under Gorilla’s chin. He slashes at Gorilla’s knee, and blood spurts out, suspended in midair before dropping liquid on Gorilla’s shoes.
Gorilla cries in agony and swings an off-center punch at Owen, missing his head, but he clips his hand, and the knife goes flying. Owen clocks Gorilla straight in the nose. His knees buckle, and Owen lands another under his chin. Gorilla goes down as the crowd falls silent. The Red Sea of kids parts, and we scramble past the stunned crowd. Police sirens blare in the hills. We make a run for it, but I look back, and no one dares to follow.
On the narrow exit path in the park, Owen and I trek stride for stride, and Gigi comes up from behind. She nudges in between us and places an arm around each of us while Gene trails us. None of us need to say a thing. And we don’t. Sometimes kids can show what they’re feeling through telepathy or just a small gesture like the slight grin Owen gives me as we exit the park. I know he’s saying in his head, “Us mod loopers need to stick together.”
A warm electric glow spreads through my body, and a comet trails through the black sky, reminding me of Rocket. He’ll be back next year, I just know it. “Jake scored tix to The Who. You wanna go with us?” When two kids get in a fight together, it forms some kind of a blood bond I can’t explain.
“Bloody hell yes.”
Owen and Gigi raise their fists in the air and do an epic rebel yell. “Yaah.” They peel off from us, holding hands, into the blissful night air.
Under a lamppost, I feel a tap on my shoulder, followed by his voice. I turn and see Nick Lund with a small shiner under his eye. He looks different, small and weak. I wonder why I’ve been in awe of him all of these years and know now if I’d confronted him at some point in grade school, he’d have never bothered me again. On the other hand, maybe I would have been just like him or been part of his lousy gang and turned up my nose at guys like Rocket and Gene. But I doubt it.
“You guys saved my life. You want into the gang?” He grins stupidly. “We’ll call it the Justice League.”
“No thanks,” I say. “I’ll stick with Marvel comics.”
Gene and I let out hyena laughs. “Gene,” I say, “take care of good old Nick for me, will ya?”
Gene raises both of his gigantic fists high in the air in Lund’s direction. Nick backpedals and falls on his stuck-up ass. He scrambles to his feet and runs off into the distance.
A long wade through the woods leads us down a dirt trail before we empty into a paved alley uptown and head toward my new home at the Paradise Garden Apartments. Somehow I know that everything will be all right this coming school year at Kensington High with Owen, Gigi, Pimples, and eventually Rocket. I’ll follow Billy’s path to public school no matter what Mom and Pop say.
Pop may hate her dad’s guts, but all I can think about when I get home is Laney Carter, so I write a poem in my head about holding hands with her in some land far from the Hills, perhaps Iceland or Scotland. I’ll send Aunt Shirley hundreds of postcards with verses of a poem the length of Beowulf about the summer of ’80 that she can piece together and translate into her adopted Scots language and mail back to me. I’ll place the epic poem in the time capsule NASA intends to send into space for future Martians to translate and get someone at People to do another story.
An Earthling Sends a Poem to Mars.
would like to thank the following people for their generous support and invaluable assistance in writing this novel during its various stages. My lovely wife, Marcia (who was the first to see potential in this book), Sharon Umbaugh (editor extraordinaire), Fiona Tobin (and her mum who coined the term ‘Mocker’), Natalie Wright, Ranee Stemann, Dana MacLean, K.A. Tutin, Diane Yamashiro, Janie Rose, Bob Rose, and the wonderful copy editors at Pikko’s House: Crystal Watanabe and Cheryl Lowrance.
Cover design by Renée Barratt at The Cover Counts. Thank you Renee. Amazing work.
Permissions granted: David Wallechinsky for The
Book of Lists. Thank you.
ichael Conlon is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Wayne State Law School. In a former life, he caddied in the PGA Championship and U.S. Senior Open. This is his debut novel. His forthcoming novel The Monks’ Cross will be published in 2019. He resides in Traverse City, Michigan with his wife, three children, and dog, Sumo.
Mr. Conlon can be reached at michaelconlonbooks.com and Facebook.
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