Authors: Iain Lawrence
nineteen
Danny dreamed he was standing on a beach with Beau, on a sandy beach in a crimson twilight. He and Beau were standing side by side; then suddenly Beau was floating in the air, and he had turned into a little satellite, a metal ball with spikes and stalks. He hovered there, beeping shrill Morse code, flashing red lights from the stalks. In the dream, Danny tried to understand what Beau was saying, but couldn’t. Then Beau—satellite Beau—went zooming to the horizon, shrinking to a speck in a second, before he was gone altogether.
It was the most troubling dream that Danny had ever dreamt, for he saw its meaning very clearly. He was losing Beau. His brother would change, and soon leave him behind.
Because the signs had come in a dream, Danny believed this had to be true. It was hard for him, though, because he couldn’t
see
any difference. On school nights, Danny lay on his bed while Beau lay on his, doing his homework or working on his models. They watched TV from eight to nine. And every Sunday they went off to the fort they’d built in the woods, and sat in there talking about all sorts of things, but mostly of rocket ships and dogs, and sometimes of both at once.
“When you get a dog you should call it Rocket,” said Beau one day, as they sat in the dark of the fort. “That’s what I’d call a dog.”
“Rocket,” Danny echoed. Then he shouted, “Rocket!” and smiled. “Yeah, that’s not bad. But I’m thinking of Texas. Or Billy Bear; I can’t decide.”
They were leaning against the back wall, and the roof was sagging above them. Outside, the leaves were turning yellow and red; they were gathering on the ground.
“Hey, I got a great name,” said Beau.
“What?”
Beau moved his hands as he said it: “Laika.”
Danny laughed. “No way, man.”
“Come on, what’s wrong with Laika?” Beau asked. “That’s the best one yet. Laika the space dog. You know? The Russian space dog?”
“No way, man.”
“Yes, way. Come on, Danny. You know what it means in Russian?” Beau didn’t wait for an answer. “Barker, that’s what. So you could call your dog Barker.”
“Barker. Old Barker,” said Danny. “I guess that’s kinda neat.” He watched a beetle crawling across the floor. “It’s like Old Yeller, ’cept he’s barking instead of yelling.”
“You dope,” grunted Beau. “They didn’t call him Old Yeller ’cause he yelled. He was a yellow dog. He was Old
Yellow
.”
“No fooling?” asked Danny. “Man, you know everything, Beau.”
Beau shrugged modestly.
“I wish you didn’t have to be changing,” said Danny. “What’s going to happen, I wish it didn’t have to.”
“What do you mean?” asked Beau, making it sound like one long word,
whadayamean
. “What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know.” Danny saw the beetle bump up against the wall. It tried to climb it, then toppled backward and went off the way it had come. “I don’t think you’re going to hang around with me, you know, after a while.”
“Aw, Danny,” said Beau. “Sure I will.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what,” said Beau. “I’ll always hang around with you, Danny. I promise.”
twenty
On Halloween they went together trick-or-treating. It was a Saturday night. Danny was a pirate with a wooden sword, a black bandanna, a patch on his eye. Beau dipped a pair of gloves and a set of the Old Man’s coveralls into aluminum paint and turned himself into an astronaut. On his head he wore a bucket with a cutout for his face. But the bucket was far too big, and he stood in front of the mirror and said, “Oh, man. I look like Charlie Brown with a bucket on his head.” At half the houses they stopped at that night people laughed out loud to see him. Old Mrs. Elliot, who wore her spectacles on a string, held them to her eyes and asked, “Are you pretending to be a good robot or a nasty robot?”
They worked their way through the Hollow, then along the streets toward the school. Danny’s eye patch and bandanna fooled the people he knew, but not the dogs. They came bounding to meet him as they always had, and he fed them treats along the way, first the gooey marshmallow squares of Rice Krispies, then the pathetic little bags of popcorn that he wouldn’t have eaten anyway.
It was cold that night. They could see frost on the grass and their breath in the air. Danny blew puffs from his mouth, then ran forward and tried to swallow them. They walked in a loop above the Hollow, not wanting to go down through the woods in the dark. Danny had heard that kids had been murdered in the woods, and he never went there after sunset. So they kept to the roads, then crossed the big bridge and went down to the Hollow. Beau took off his bucket and carried it under his arm.
There were no streetlights in the Hollow, and the woods along the creek were black and spooky. The jack-o’-lanterns seemed brighter there than anywhere else, staring from the porches with their fiery eyes and jagged grins. The street was empty, though from the heights above came faint cries of “Trick or treat!” and “Halloween aaapples!” Josephine yapped as they hurried past Mrs. Elliot’s place.
As they reached their own house, the River boys saw the mountain of dirt from the Old Man’s pit. It was enormous now, with the digging almost finished. The Old Man had been squaring the sides and laying metal bars for his concrete.
When Danny saw the pumper truck he nearly cried out. Its whole front was splattered again with eggs. Yolks and whites, half frozen by the frost, hung in dripping icicles from the grille and the bumper. He tugged at Beau’s arm and got him to look. “I bet Creepy did that,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Beau.
The kitchen light was on, and they saw their mother at the sink, behind her row of dolls. It was strange to look in at her, knowing she couldn’t look out. Danny wondered if Creepy had stood here doing the same thing as he held his carton of eggs. Then he peered into the darkness, trying to see over the edge and into the pit. “You don’t think he’s still here, do you?” he said.
“No, he’s a bag of wind, like the Old Man says,” said Beau. “He woulda buzzed off before anyone seen him.”
“We should get him back,” said Danny. “Let’s get some soap and do his windows.”
But Beau had a better idea. He filled his bucket from the septic truck, right to the edge of his cutout hole. He and Danny held their noses as the stuff came plopping and gurgling from the dumper valve. Then they carried it together, slung between them on Danny’s pirate sword. They sloshed and staggered up the street to the Colvig house, one boy in a black bandanna and an eye patch, the other in an aluminum suit that shone with the faint fires of the jack-o’-lanterns.
The living room was brightly lit, the curtains drawn to all but a crack in the middle. They could see the flicker of the television set, and a big round shadow on the curtains, cast by what must have been either a pumpkin or Dopey’s head.
They set the bucket on the driveway and cracked open the door of Creepy Colvig’s station wagon. The light came on inside. It glared on Beau’s aluminum suit and on the whiteness of the bucket. To Danny it seemed shockingly bright, and he pulled away. “Let’s forget it, Beau,” he whispered. “Come on, he’s going to see us.”
“Watch the house,” said Beau.
Danny stood with his wooden sword, watching the window. He heard the car’s door creak. He heard the bucket bend as his brother picked it up. A great waft of the stench came over him, and he heard the slosh and splash, and the slam of the door.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Beau.
The streets were now empty except for the River boys. Even the jack-o’-lanterns had vanished—their candles burnt out—as though they’d tired of the night and fallen asleep. Beau was swinging the bucket as he ran, and both he and Danny were giggling about what they had done.
They were nearly home when Beau stopped in the middle of the street and held up the bucket. “What do I with this?” he said. “It’s the Old Man’s; I gotta clean it, Danny.”
“Use the hose,” said Danny.
But Beau said that was no good. “He’ll hear the water running, Danny.” He said they had no choice but to go down to the creek, down in the dark with no flashlight or anything, into the woods where Danny had heard that people had been murdered.
They chose the place where the bushes were thinnest, but still it was dark in there, as black as a vampire’s cape. Danny thought he would maybe stand guard at the edge of the woods, but it seemed more frightening to be alone. So he followed Beau through the bushes, keeping so close to the silvery shimmer of the overalls that he bumped into them twice. They startled a cat, which startled them worse.
Beau rinsed the bucket in the stream while Danny stared all around, twisting his head as far as it could go, then back the other way. In his aluminum suit, Beau was like a ghost—just a shape only vaguely like a person. Danny kept wishing he was home, that they had never gone to Creepy’s place.
“Aw, geez,” said Beau.
“What’s the matter?” asked Danny. He saw the silvery shadows of Beau’s hands fly off from his arms, as though they’d been suddenly chopped away. He saw them land beside the creek, and felt almost like screaming.
“I got stuff on my gloves,” said Beau. “Man, it stinks.”
He buried the gloves in the soft black bed of Highland Creek. Then the boys crawled through the bushes, made their way to the street, and back to the house. They collected their bags of candy.
The Old Man was waiting at the door. He opened it as Danny was reaching for the handle, and looked down and said, “Come in.”
Danny was sure right away that the Old Man knew what they’d done. But their mother came running to the door, saying, “Where have you been? I was worried sick about you.”
“We went round by the school,” said Danny. “We went right round the Hollow. Look what we got!” He tried to open his bag, but the Old Man plucked it from his hands.
“Why, the pair of you are soaking wet,” said Mrs. River. “It’s cold out there, and you’re wet and—Beau, where are your gloves?”
Beau looked at his hands as though he had never noticed them before. “Maybe I didn’t have any,” he said.
“And maybe you did. I’m sure that you did.” She seemed more worried than angry, but the Old Man was stern and tight-lipped, and that was what frightened Danny. It frightened him so much that he suddenly felt quite sick. He said, “Dad, someone egged the truck. It was probably Creepy Colvig and—”
“I know all about it,” said the Old Man. “I know everything that happened to that truck tonight.”
Danny turned pale. “Mom, I don’t feel too good,” he cried.
“Well, you’ve probably been stuffing yourself with candy,” she told him.
“Or mixed up in some mischief,” said the Old Man. “That’s what
I
think, and you know why?”
Danny’s voice had a tremble in it. “Because there’s no secrets from the septic man?”
It seemed that the Old Man would either laugh or explode. For a moment he stood looking down with his lips trembling. Then he started to speak, and stopped and started again. “Well, there is that. But we were worried enough that we called Mrs. Parker to ask if she’d seen you at that end of the Hollow, and she looked out and said you were passing right then. She could see those aluminum clothes of yours, Beau.”
“That was a good
twenty minutes
ago,” said Mrs. River.
“Or more,” said the Old Man. “I just don’t understand how two boys can take half an hour to go half a block. But I’ll tell you, I’m sure glad you’re home.”
So Danny learned that night that secrets
could
be kept from a septic man. On Sunday morning, as he and Beau sat in bed eating jelly beans and peanuts and tiny Hershey bars, covering their blankets with shells and wrappers, they heard a howl from up the street. It was a low-pitched, furious shout.
Danny looked at Beau, and Beau looked at him, but neither said a word.
Then Danny cracked another peanut.
twenty-one
The Old Man began pouring concrete in November. He mixed it up a batch at a time in big buckets that he’d been hoarding since September. But when the time came for his first pour, he found that he was one bucket short. It took him only a moment to realize that Beau had worn it on Halloween, and that was fine with him. But he had to find another, and the delay set him back by two days.
He poured only six inches of concrete before the coming winter caught him up. His lengths of reinforcing bar twisted in and out of the concrete like enormous worms, holding their spiky heads and tails a foot or so above the ground. Then the snow began to fall, and it capped his mountain first, then covered his metal worms. And on the last weekend of the month, the Old Man came into the house and threw down his cap. “I’m going to shut ’er down,” he announced. “I’m finished till the spring.”
It looked like a long and snowy winter, bound to be a white Christmas. This pleased the River boys, but Danny especially. There would be ice to smash on the pools of Highland Creek, and good sledding on Killer Hill, where a kid could coast from the top of the Hollow right into the tangle of trees.
In December, when Danny was on his third pair of mittens, he began to worry less about his strange vision of Beau as a satellite. His dreams were never wrong, but there had been no terrible change. With football finished, he was seeing even more of his brother than he had before. He worried instead about Christmas. It was coming quickly, but he had no feeling yet that he would be given a dog on Christmas morning.
He started scheming for that in the middle of the month. He drew outlines of dogs in the mist that formed on the kitchen window. Instead of snowmen he built snowdogs, and dragged his mother out to see them.
School finished on the seventeenth. As usual, Beau had done well, and Danny rather poorly.
Danny is a pleasure in the classroom,
his teacher had written in the report.
But I wish he would apply himself harder.
The Old Man, after reading that, said he should apply his hand to Danny’s backside, but of course he never did. He only offered to reward them both by taking them to the A&W. Danny said he would like that, but Beau said he was “kinda busy.”
The next day Danny followed his mother all over the house on his hands and knees, pretending to be a dog. He scraped at the back of her leg with his fingernails; he sat up and begged for his breakfast, then ate his cereal on the floor, lapping it from the bowl. He barked for more, until his mother finally said, “Great balls of fire, Danny. If you keep this up, they won’t know whether to put you in the nuthouse or the kennel.”
On the nineteenth, she took Danny into the city so that he could do his shopping. He sat on the knees of nine different Santas, one in each place that they went to, telling each one the same thing—in a voice loud enough for his mother to hear—that he wanted a puppy for Christmas. He plunked himself down and bellowed in their ears. He knew, of course, that they were just men in red suits, but he was still disappointed to have a Santa Claus tell him, “Pipe down, will ya!”
The tree went up on the twenty-first, and then the presents began to appear. Danny took them one by one in his hands, squeezing and shaking and sniffing, hoping to find a collar and leash, or a food bowl, or a squeaky toy. On Christmas Eve he discovered a big box that rattled when he shook it, and he was certain it was full of puppy food.
That afternoon the Old Man filled a big jug with water. He poured some into the tree stand, then left the jug nearby, and Danny’s heart took a little jump, because he knew what
that
was for. He tried to pretend that he didn’t, so as not to spoil the Old Man’s pleasure, but couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Why are you leaving the water there?” he said, so excited he could hardly talk.
“Why lug it back and forth?” said the Old Man. “There’ll be a need for it tomorrow, I’m sure.”
That was all Danny needed to know. His heart filled with joy, and he went out in the snow, to Killer Hill, to watch the dogs chasing sleds and snowballs. For a moment he wished, with sadness, that he hadn’t lost Billy Bear’s name tag. But he was too happy to stay sad for long, and all evening he wondered how the puppy would be presented to him. He hoped it would be lying on his bed in the morning, nestled in the bend of his knee, or pressed against his neck, and that it would wake him with little nips and kisses, with its tiny tail wagging furiously. Or, he wondered, would he find it tied to the tree by a red ribbon, and would it leap forward to meet him when he came into the room, tugging so hard at the ribbon that the tree would shake and the ornaments tremble? Or would it be waiting outside, out in the truck, so that he wouldn’t hear it barking? No matter how it would happen, he would take his puppy for a walk right away, and he would have to beat a trail through the snow to let it follow behind him. Just before bedtime, he placed his boots by the register in the mudroom so that they would be toasty in the morning.
Old Man River followed the boys to their room. He had to duck his head as he passed below the airplanes and the rockets that dangled from the ceiling on Beau’s side. Then he sat on Beau’s bed and opened a book, and read “The Night Before Christmas,” as he did every year. With the last sentence, “A merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night,” he closed the book softly. He tucked the boys in tightly and kissed them good night.
Danny thought he wouldn’t sleep at all. He lay awake, staring at the patterns of frost on the window, as names of dogs went racing through his mind. Every one he’d thought of, and every one he’d forgotten, came to him in a great rush, like a babble of shouting. There were others now, too, all Christmasy things like Sugarplum and Marzipan, and the swirl of names seemed to sweep him along into darkness.
But there was no puppy on his bed in the morning. There was no puppy tied to the tree, and no one told him to go out and look in the truck. He opened the box that he’d thought was dog food and found it was only a Crazy Clock game, with all its plastic pieces rattling. One after the other, he tore open his presents and put them aside. No leash. No squeaky toys. No dog food bowl. Beside him, Beau was shrieking at his finds—a bank like a Mercury space capsule, a Jupiter four-color signal gun, and a big Rocket Base USA. He fired one of its missiles and hit Danny in the back of the head.
Danny didn’t even move. He was so disappointed that he just sat and stared at the boxes and the wrapping paper. He kept hoping that somehow a puppy would appear, but it never did. He would have sat there and cried if he hadn’t known how much it would hurt his parents’ feelings to see him do that on Christmas. So he played with his Jumbo the Bubble-Blowing Elephant, and let Beau shoot missiles at the bubbles it made. And he played with his Agent M Radio Rifle, and bounced his Superball, and hoped he would get his dog in 1965.