Gemini Summer (9 page)

twenty-nine

They drove down into Hog’s Hollow and right past the house. Mrs. River said, “Where are you going?” but the Old Man didn’t answer. He steered the big car round the bends in the street, then pulled into the driveway at the Colvig house.

“Stay here,” he said, and got out.

Danny watched him climb up to the porch and knock on the door. He knocked three times, waited a moment, then knocked three times again. The curtains shivered in the narrow window beside the door, and then the door opened a bit and Creepy Colvig stood there in the darkness behind it.

The car was still running. The engine speeded up by itself, then slowed with a jingly sound like the Old Man’s keys.

Creepy was talking. He was shaking his head and talking, but Danny couldn’t hear what he was saying. The Old Man moved closer, and Creepy stuck out one of his thick, hairy arms.

“My boy had nothing to do with it!” shouted Creepy Colvig. “Can’t you get it through your head? He wasn’t there! I go to work, he looks after himself. He takes care of himself.
My
boy doesn’t run wild like a goddamn savage.”

The Old Man talked, and Creepy gestured with his hairy arm. He glared down at the car, right through the windshield and right at Danny. Then he tried to shut the door on the Old Man. “Get outta here, or I’ll call the goddamn cops!” he shouted.

There was a bit of a scuffle, and the Old Man reared back as the door closed with a bang.

He walked down the steps and toward the car, and Danny saw that he had a bruise on his cheek. His lip was torn, and he kept dabbing the blood with his knuckles. “Drive home, Flo,” he said, and walked right past the car.

He was halfway home before they overtook him, and he didn’t even look up.

thirty

Danny went right to his room when he got home. He had taken it on himself to look after Beau’s things, and he used one of his socks—from the pile on the floor—to brush away the dust that was settling on Beau’s schoolbooks on the chair, and on Beau’s Mercury bank on the bookcase, and on his model of a Titan rocket on the windowsill. He pulled the covers very tight on Beau’s bed, so that he would be sure to see a dent in them if Beau somehow came back and lay there again.

His mother came in as he was standing on Beau’s table, trying to reach up to the model T-38 that hung above it, so that he could dust the wings. He was stretching up as high as he could, and all the strings of the airplanes were tangled round his arm, when his mother suddenly shouted from the doorway, “Danny!”

She dragged him down from there and rubbed her hands all over his head and his back. “What were you doing? What were you thinking?” she said.

“I was cleaning the models,” said Danny.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Danny. I thought—” She sobbed and shook. “I thought you were trying to hang yourself.”

She took him to the kitchen and made him toast with peanut butter. She cut the toast into fingers, the way he’d liked it when he was four years old. She put them on a yellow plate, arranged like spokes on a wheel. She got him orange juice and cookies from the big cookie jar that looked like a dog.

“Danny, you’re the most precious thing in the world to me. To both of us,” she said. “We can’t go back to what we had. We can’t ever go back, and we don’t want to forget it. But maybe we can put it behind us now and just carry on somehow. Just carry on.”

Things were better after that. It seemed to Danny that all of them had fallen into the pit together, and that the yellow machine had covered them over and locked them inside it. And now, except for Beau, they were coming out again, crawling up through the mud. The Old Man wasn’t as quick to change as Danny’s mother was, but slowly he did, like a snowman melting. Then the three of them began to talk about Beau, and that pleased Danny enormously, because it had seemed that his parents were trying to forget him. Sometimes they even laughed at things that Beau had done.

They began by talking of things long ago, and then more recent, and nearly right to the day that Beau “had his accident.” But they never, ever talked about the accident itself.

The days went by. Danny kept trekking to school over the big bridge and across the heights, avoiding the trails and anywhere that Dopey might be. It seemed he was slipping into a new life without Beau. Even in his dreams he was alone, as though his brother had better things to do than hang around with him in the night. But then, as spring was turning to summer, he dreamt that Beau had come home. It was different from the dreams he’d had at first, when he’d seen Beau only for a moment. This dream went on for days, and Beau was back, and nothing had changed. No one even asked where he’d been. He was just
there,
as though he’d never gone away.

Danny couldn’t figure out what it meant. But the dream bothered him so much that he told his mother about it, and she said it meant that Beau would never disappear from his thoughts. “All you have to do is think about him, and he’s with you,” she said. “He’ll always be with you.”

But on a day in June, Danny suddenly realized that he’d gone more than a whole hour without thinking of Beau. He found that happening more and more, and remembered the satellite dream, and now saw what it had meant all along.

There was one very sad day in that month, when a letter came for Beau. Danny saw it on the kitchen table when he came home from school. He could see right away that it had come from Cape Canaveral, because it was marked “Cape Kennedy,” a name that Beau had never said aloud, a name he’d hated. He remembered Beau saying, “They never shoulda changed it.”

Two hours later, the Old Man came in and found it, and he started crying.

It sat there all through dinner; then Old Man River reached out very quickly and picked up the envelope and tore it open. Inside was a very short letter. It said:

Dear Beau River,

Thank you for your letter. If you would like more information about the Gemini space program, you might start at your public library. If you’re ever at the Cape, there is a public museum dedicated to the astronauts and their efforts in space. We would be delighted to offer you whatever assistance we can.

Sincerely,
Gus Grissom

Danny asked if he could keep the letter. He put it back in the envelope, and put the envelope on Beau’s table, just where he thought Beau would have kept it himself. Then he moved it to the shelf above Beau’s headboard, because he thought Beau would probably have moved it there so that he could read it every night before he went to sleep.

Every second day, Danny took out the letter and read it aloud.

thirty-one

On the first day of his summer vacation, Danny sat on the porch looking at the grass that had grown over the Old Man’s pit. He was thinking that someone passing for the first time would never guess there had
ever
been a hole there. He started thinking, too, about how everything had changed, but nothing looked any different. The grass and the sky, the trees and the creek, they didn’t care that Beau was gone. They didn’t even notice.

Then he happened to look up, and saw a dog on the big bridge at the end of the Hollow.

The bridge was a long way away. To anyone else, the dog would have been a speck, smaller than a mite of dust. But Danny could tell not only that the dog was black and white but that it stood looking into the Hollow. Then it began to move, and Danny watched it trudge along, as though it was very old. It flickered behind the railings of the bridge, until the houses and the lay of the land hid it from Danny’s sight.

He went back to looking at the grass, remembering how he and Beau had built snowmen right there, how they’d stretched out on their backs one summer night to watch meteors streak through the sky. He remembered how they’d made fifty cents cutting the grass before the Old Man started digging.

Again he saw the dog. It had come into the Hollow and was now plodding up the street toward the house. Its body was white, with a black patch like a saddle. Its legs were white, its head was black, and it kept its nose near the ground, sniffing along the street.

Danny watched it curiously, because he had never seen this dog before. He felt a little spark of happiness inside him and, without thinking, made a whistling sound with his lips. The dog raised its head and lifted its ears. A white tail swung up and waved at him, and the dog hurried a bit, though it seemed half lame.

There was nothing new in any of this. Every few months, perhaps four times a year, a wandering dog found its way to Hog’s Hollow. Of course they all ended up near Danny River. His mother had always said that Danny was like a magnet for dogs. Once, he remembered, Beau had laughed and said,
No, Danny’s a magnet for fleas. The dogs just come along
. The memory felt both happy and sad.

The dog reached the grass and nearly doubled its speed. At any time before “the accident,” Danny would have leapt up to meet it. He would have run over the grass, then dropped down in a crouch, and he and the dog would have greeted each other the same way, with their little bows and wriggles. Then he would have coaxed that dog into the house—not that it would have taken much coaxing. He would have fed it cheese from the fridge, and cold milk in a bowl. He would have called for his mother and told her, “Look. It must be a stray. Can I keep it?”

But now he barely moved. And that was to turn the other way. He didn’t want the dog to come right up to him; he didn’t want to have to pet it and stroke it.

He heard its claws on the concrete. He heard the swish of its tail, and the whine that it made. Then he felt its nose rubbing at his arm, and he jerked that arm away as though the nose had been fiery hot instead of cool and damp.

“Go away,” he said.

But the dog tried to jump up at him. It planted its forefeet in his lap and reached up for his shoulder. The claws scraped higher on his arm, and he felt the warm breaths puffing in his ear.

“Go
away
!” he said again, and shoved the dog with his elbow.

It fell away but was back in a moment. It clawed at him more frantically now. It muttered and mewled.

“Buzz off!” said Danny.

He was scared to touch the dog. He was scared of feeling happy when he shouldn’t, of forgetting about Beau as the grass and the sky had done. He got up and went into the house.

He sat in the empty living room, hearing the dog claw at the door.

His mother came in with a basket of laundry. He could smell sunshine and summer on the clothes, and knew she had just taken them down from the clothesline. She looked at him and asked, “What’s that noise at the door?”

“It’s a dog,” said Danny.

The curtains were drawn, but the windows were open, and the cloth sucked up against the frames. The door rattled, and the dog cried out.

“Were you playing with it out there?” asked Mrs. River.

“No,” said Danny, as though playing with a dog was a shameful idea.

“Well, I’m sorry, but you can’t keep it,” she said.

“I don’t
want
it,” said Danny. “I wish it would go away.” He raised his head and shouted at the door, “Buzz off, you stupid dog!”

Mrs. River looked at him over her basket of laundry. The clothes were puffy and white, like a ball of cotton candy. “Danny,” she said, “why are you sitting in here and the dog is out there?”

Danny shrugged. He wasn’t sure he really knew, and he was certain he couldn’t explain it.

“Maybe you should walk it up from the Hollow,” said Mrs. River. “It might go home on its own.”

“I don’t want to,” said Danny.

The door rattled more loudly. The dog’s whines became howls. Danny folded his arms and scowled at the carpet.

“Oh, Danny.” Mrs. River put down her basket. She sat beside him on the long sofa. “You can’t keep hoping that everything will go back to the way it was,” she said. “What’s done is done, and we have to go on. You wouldn’t be doing anything bad to Beau if you went and had some fun.” She touched his blond hair, smoothing it back from his forehead. “Isn’t that what he would want? Don’t you think he’d be sad to see how you are?”

He was surprised that she’d come so near to what he was thinking. He had never imagined that Beau might be sad because he was sad himself. But he wasn’t sure, and he said, “It doesn’t matter.”

“No, Danny, it
does
matter,” she said. “We’ve lost Beau. We’ve lost him forever. But I don’t want to lose you, too, and I am. I’m losing the happy little boy that I knew, and it breaks my heart.”

The dog was still clawing at the door, up and down the wood. “Great balls of fire, do something for him, Danny,” said Mrs. River. When he didn’t move, she went to the door herself. With the sound of the latch the clawing stopped, and when Mrs. River opened the door the dog was just sitting there, looking up, its head at a tilt and the tip of its tail tapping on the porch.

“My goodness,” she said. “He’s just a puppy, Danny.”

He had to lean out from the sofa to see the door. Mrs. River was down on one knee, and the dog was nuzzling against her. It was true, he saw now; the dog had walked like an old-timer, but it was really very young.

“He’s all ragged,” she said. “The fur’s all matted, and his ribs are sticking out. He’s starved half to death, Danny. Gracious, his little paws are worn away. Danny, he’s been walking for days, the poor thing.”

He watched her hands rubbing the dog’s back. They slid over the dark saddle and over the white, and the dog was gazing up at her, quiet and happy. The fingers circled under the neck.

“He’s got no collar. No tag,” she said.

“Don’t let him in,” said Danny as she stood up.

“I don’t believe my ears,” she said. “Danny, for heaven’s sake, don’t you care?”

“If you let him come in, he’ll never go home,” he said. He heard in his voice an exact echo of his mother. How many times had she said that to him?

“Danny, we have to at least take him to the pound,” she said. “We can’t let him keep wandering; he won’t last very long. You watch him for a minute until I get my purse and keys.”

“Just close the door,” said Danny.

“Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, you do what I tell you,” she said.

So Danny rolled off the sofa and slouched to the door. His mother came away and he took her place, blocking the entrance like a security guard. He tried not to look down, but couldn’t help it, and saw the dog’s huge eyes staring back.

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Danny. “Man, you’re an ugly dog.” It had huge, sticking-up ears and a short nose.

It whimpered at him. Then it held one little foot in the air, and Danny saw blood matted in the white hair around the claws.

His heart softened a bit. He felt it sag in his chest, and he blew out a long breath, the way his father would do. He crouched on the floor, in the doorway, and took the dog’s paw in his hand. Gently he turned it so that he could see the pad.

It looked tender and sore, just the way his own knees had looked after Creepy Colvig had made him pick up the broken bottle. He could feel it trembling, and the dog was looking at him with eyes so big and brown that Danny had to turn away. Then the dog put down its head and licked the back of his hand, from the knuckles to the wrist.

“Quit it!” said Danny, pulling his hand away. The warm tickle of the dog’s tongue had made him shiver.

The dog whined. It flopped onto its belly, then rolled upside down with its little white legs splayed out. Danny could see that all four of the pads were worn away, as though someone had taken a belt sander to them. He could see the dog’s ribs, and the pink skin on its stomach, as tight as a drum.

He heard his mother coming up behind him. “Now, that’s more like it,” she said.

“Maybe you should put iodine on his paws,” said Danny.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Mrs. River. “I don’t know what’s best for dogs. Pick him up and take him to the car, Danny, please.”

“If he’s walked so far, he can walk to the car,” said Danny.

“Please?”

“Oh, okay!” said Danny. He stood up, and the dog stood, too. It leapt into his arms as soon as he reached toward it, then wriggled against him, trying to lick his face.

“Quit it!” he said again. But he couldn’t stop himself from giggling.

“I don’t want him in the front,” said Mrs. River. “He might cause an accident. Maybe you should sit with him in the back.”

But Danny said the dog would be fine on its own, and he opened the door with one hand, and the dog jumped in. It found the little hollow that had been made by Beau’s weight, and it turned a quick circle and settled there, as though in a nest. It was asleep before Mrs. River got the car turned around.

Danny kept looking back at it as they drove through the Hollow, up the hill and over the big bridge. This was the first time a dog had ever ridden in the car, and he was glad that he hadn’t sat there with it. He didn’t want to start liking a dog that would be gone in ten minutes.

The dog stayed asleep until Mrs. River stopped the car at the pound. There were muffled barks coming from the building; when the engine shut off they could hear them. Then the dog stood up and looked out, and made the strangest, saddest sounds Danny had ever heard. It had a peculiar way of whining and grunting and howling all at once.

“It’s like he’s trying to talk,” said Mrs. River.

“I think he knows where we are, Mom,” said Danny.

“Well, he hears the dogs,” she said. “He probably smells them.”

“It’s a sad smell, I guess,” said Danny. There was a look of misery on the little dog’s face. It turned away from the window and stared at him, then suddenly bounded up at the back of his seat. It clawed at the upholstery, yelping and whining. It seemed to be pleading with Danny; then it turned and pleaded to Mrs. River. It jumped up and down, scrabbling frantically at the seat.

“Oh, Danny, this is horrible,” said Mrs. River. “Even I don’t want to leave him here. Your father’s going to have to deal with this.”

She started the car again and backed it up. The dog stopped whining but didn’t sit down. Its paws on the back of the seat, its eyes just peeking over the top, it looked out through the windshield.

“We’ll go to the vet,” said Mrs. River. “We’ll get the vet to look at those paws.”