Monstrous Affections (35 page)

A low growl came from the porch. Even as far as the end of the
driveway, it raised hackles on Rupert’s neck. Wallace moved his
finger behind the trigger guard — touched the curve of the trigger.
Peered through the grass and the slats, looking for the eyes.

And then, as he watched — the dog vanished. There was nothing
but the peeling green paint on the porch; the screen door, half-ajar.

Wallace didn’t see the dog leap. Rupert did. It was the first time
he saw the dog in full, in morning light. It
was
a beast.

It came up over the railing of the porch fast — touching it with
front paw, then pushing off a second time with its hindquarters.
The old wood of the railing protested at the launch, and the animal
flew, a twisting, dark missile. It came down hard amid the high
grass. Then it came up. And down again, lost in a swirl of weed. Up
once more, lunging high and throwing off barks like punches — as
Wallace raised the gun.

Rupert shut his eyes, expecting thunder from the Webley’s short
barrel, and the barking to turn into a short yelp, and a thump! Then
maybe another shot, to finish the kill. He shut his eyes and then
held his breath.

There was no shot. Rupert opened his eyes. He looked out at
the empty yard. Held in perfect silence, for a perfect instant — long
enough, just, to let him think:
Wallace is gone
.

Then the dog’s back, curved and shaking, emerged over the grass.
And the scream came. It was a bleat — a baby scream. It was, a deep
part of Rupert knew, how
he’d
sounded, pressed into the dirt, crying
out under the flurry of Wallace’s fists.

The grass rustled and the dog’s head came up, eyes turning to
show thin crescents of white. It dropped again and another cry
came, and Rupert, a shameful grin seeding his face, thought:

Wallace is gone
.

He couldn’t even pull a trigger
, thought Rupert.
He couldn’t even
manage that.

Rupert bent down, and reached into the scrub. His hand closed
around a rock. And he stood straight, and without aiming, he pitched
it. The rock went too far, clattering onto the porch and falling just
short of a window. He picked up two rocks next time, one in each
hand, and he threw them fast, one after another.

The second rock hit home and the next fell short. The dog yelped
and its muzzle flashed up as the third rock thumped into the ground.
Rupert and the dog met eyes an instant. Its eyes were not red but
black, as unreadable as a bug’s. Its teeth flashed. It growled.

Rupert reached down again. His hand closed around sand and
pebbles, and by reflex, he flung them, not even standing up to do
so. They made a rushing sound as they cascaded off the leaves of a
shrub.

The dog snapped its jaw. It barked twice. Rupert reached down
again. This time his hand found a bigger rock, rounded at the edges
but flattened, like the wing of an aeroplane. It was wedged in hard-packed dirt. Sand tore at the flesh on Rupert’s knuckles as he wedged
his fingers underneath to pry it up. The dog barked again. It started
toward him.

Rupert strained. The rock came up. It was the size of a lunch
plate, and heavy. Half of it was dark with soil. A centipede fell from
it as Rupert drew back. The dog came up again, and he could see its
tongue, lolling behind fangs that were long and yellow, sharp as a
snake’s.

Wallace appeared over the grass — rising up on one knee. His face
was filthy, and one arm was red with his blood. His eyes were wide
and wet. He didn’t have the gun. He wouldn’t look at Rupert.

Rupert threw the rock overhand. So hard his shoulder wrenched.
He would not be able to throw again with that shoulder, it hurt so
badly. The rock spun through the air. It hit the dog in the head with
a
crack!
, glanced off it and thumped to the ground. The dog yelped
and turned.

Wallace ran, parallel to the road, across the yard. He stumbled in
the grass before sobbing, and righting himself, and for a moment,
Rupert thought the dog was going to take off after Wallace. Rupert
didn’t care. He turned too, running as fast as he could, heading to
town, the school.

They met up half a mile on, out front of the Baptist church. Even
then, the two didn’t speak until they neared the school. Wallace
had rolled his shirtsleeve around so the blood didn’t show, at least
not much. Rupert jammed his scraped hand into the pocket of his
trousers. Both kept their faces still, eyes on the road ahead — and
that was all it took for two battered boys to make their way through
town unremarked.

As they sighted the school’s red brick walls at the end of Grissom
Road, peeking through the dying leaves of the oak in back, Wallace
finally spoke.

“The Webley,” he said, and Rupert said, “I know. You left it.”

They walked more slowly now. It was only half-past eight, and
they wouldn’t be missed at their desks until five minutes before
nine.

“I left your book bag too,” said Rupert, and Wallace said, “Fool.”
It was early, but the school yard was nearly full. A group of
younger boys were tossing sticks in the air, watching them whirl
and spin. Leaping out of the way as they fell.

“There was a smell there,” said Wallace. “Did you smell it?”
Rupert shrugged; he didn’t know if he had or not.

“Smelled like a slaughter,” said Wallace. “Like the trenches in France.”

“Maybe I did smell that,” said Rupert. The smell was all the
Captain would talk about, when pressed on how it was to fight the
Hun in the trenches.
It smelled of slaughter
, he’d said.
It is a stink you
never forget
.

“Did you get a look?” said Wallace.

“What do you mean?”

Wallace was quiet a moment.

“We have to go back,” said Wallace.

Had they come any nearer to the school, it would have been too late;
the teacher on yard duty would have seen them, and attendance
would have been unavoidable. As it was, Wallace and Rupert didn’t
entirely escape notice as they veered away from the schoolyard, and
without another word made for a ditch behind the White Rose filling
station, beneath a stretch of pine trees. It was a place where they had
hid before and thought to be safe now.

“Where’s Wallace Gleason going?” said Nancy Waite, as she
started the two ends of her jump-ropes twirling and she and her big
sister Joan began to skip. “I think I know,” said Joan.

The lot in back of the filling station smelled of oil and gasoline and
privy: this last, because the station’s toilet was an outdoor model,
hiding in a cloud of bushes and flies that also hid the ditch from easy
view. It was here in the ditch that Wallace and Rupert settled in, to
rest up and devise their plan.

“Dog’s hurt,” said Wallace. “From the rock. That’s going to make
him worse. Like a bear.”

“I just wanted to scare it,” said Rupert.

“We came to
kill
it,” said Wallace, glaring as he clutched his arm.
As though his injury were Rupert’s fault and not his own.

Rupert just nodded. He didn’t ask why Wallace hadn’t pulled the
trigger after he’d gone to the trouble of bringing a gun — why he
hadn’t killed the dog, which he’d planned to do. But Wallace knew
the question was in the air; something in Rupert’s nod made that
clear. Wallace tried to explain it.

The first time was just to Rupert. And he didn’t get to the nub of
the matter.

“It wasn’t just the smell,” said Wallace. “That was bad. But the
dog. It was like hypnosis. Like when an owl spots a mouse. Under its
nest. Where it’s got bones of other mice piled up.”

Rupert didn’t think that made any sense, and Wallace was
inclined to agree as soon as he said the words. He had the
gun
. All he
had to do was pull the trigger. The two sat quietly for a span.

“How’s your arm?” Rupert asked finally, and when Wallace said,
“Hurts.”

Rupert said, “We should see a doctor.”

Wallace shut his eyes, and clutched his wounded arm jealously.

“We should go back, anyway,” said Rupert. “Soon. Someone might
find it if we just leave it there. The Webley.”

Wallace’s eyes cracked open, and he looked at Rupert, and he said,
“I can’t yet.” Rupert thought Wallace might be ready to cry. But — to
his disappointment — Wallace just looked away.

“I think that dog’s a killer,” he said. “It’s a
devil.
”

The second time Wallace had cause to explain himself came
middle morning. Wallace insisted that they keep resting. He had
shut his eyes and was dozing — not dangerously, not like he might
die — when Rupert shook his friend’s shoulder, Wallace mumbled
that he just needed to rest up and ordered Rupert to keep a watch.
This Rupert did. He lay on his belly so his eyes peered over the
edge of the ditch, through the bramble — like barbed wire along a
trench in the War, except that Rupert was watching the brick wall
at the back of the White Rose station and not no-man’s land. When
the gravel bit into his knees, he shifted to his side. Twice, when he
judged things quiet enough, he got up and walked in small circles
at the bottom of the ditch to stretch the cramps out of his legs,
pinwheeling the soreness from his arm while his thoughts about
Wallace and the Webley and the dog circled each other.

Rupert was back on his belly when Nancy Waite appeared around
the side of the station. The sight of her stopped his breath.

Nancy was wearing a pale yellow dress. Her hair was combed
back from her forehead, held there close to her scalp with a white
ribbon. The rest fell golden and, today, unbraided down her back.
She clutched a brown paper bag in front of her. She moved with
great, guilty care, checking over her shoulder, peering through
bushes. Rupert willed himself still, until she finally turned around
and vanished around the corner of the garage.

Rupert let his breath out. He looked back and Wallace looked
up at him. His friend’s eyes were pasty, and dull, and it was clear:
Wallace had no idea what Rupert had seen. Rupert himself wasn’t
sure — what he’d seen, who he’d seen, if he’d seen anything at all.

“Hey! What’re you doing in there?”

“Wallace?”

“Are you in there?”

Rupert turned back. It wasn’t just Nancy; Joan Waite was beside
her, standing right behind the garage, in full view. Nancy giggled
as she and Joan peered through the brush. Wallace rolled onto his
knees and, grunting, stood up. Joan was wearing her pink sweater
and the pale blue dress. Her hair was tied back. Rupert swallowed,
his mouth dry as sand.

“Shhh!” said Wallace. He planted himself beside Rupert, and
motioned with his good hand for the two to come over.

They bent down around the shrubbery and lowered themselves
into the ditch — beside Wallace, Rupert noted.

“We saw you heading off from school,” Joan explained as she
flattened out her skirts in front of her, and added: “I remembered
this place.” Rupert looked at his hands, which had drawn closed into
fists.

Nancy looked at his sleeve, which was now brown with old
blood.

“Holy cow!” she said. “What’d you do?”

“Were you fighting again?” Joan, for the first time, looked at
Rupert — a little accusingly, he thought.

“No,” said Wallace. “We — ”

And Wallace paused, and thought about it for a few seconds, and
he explained himself to the Waite sisters.

First, he described the dog, in such a way that Nancy made fists
herself, and held them to her mouth, and even elder sister Joan
gasped and looked away. He related the encounter of the day before
so that Joan declared his survival a miracle. Then he got to the
battle.

“Me and the dog sized each other up. It wasn’t like before, where
the dog figured it could just take me. It knew I came ready. So it
kept back — in behind the railings of the porch, where I couldn’t get
a clear shot.”

“Did you shoot it?” asked Nancy, aghast. She seemed to relax
when he shook his head.

“I couldn’t get a shot. I just kept looking at it, sitting there in
front of the door. And then I saw it.”

“What’d you see?” asked Joan.

Wallace had developed dark rings around his eyes. The effect was
chilling when he opened them wide. “There was a dead man,” he
said, and added — before Rupert could say anything — “I was trying
to figure it out. That was the smell.
Death
.”

The Waite sisters sat rapt, staring at Wallace. Joan’s lips parted
and she clutched at her skirts in her lap. Nancy held her sister’s
shoulder.

“I didn’t see a dead man,” said Rupert quietly. Nancy spared him
a glance; Wallace and Joan ignored him, and Wallace continued:

“You could see his legs through the door. They were skinny. Like
a skeleton’s. He was lying on the floor of the living room, where he
died
.”

“Do you think the dog killed him?”

Joan asked it softly. Wallace shrugged, and winced.

“You should get a bandage,” said Nancy. “And go see a doctor.
Maybe you got rabies.”

“We can’t do that,” said Rupert, his voice louder than he intended.
“Wallace lost the Webley when he got scared and dropped it without
even shooting.”

“I was bit!” said Wallace, and Rupert said, “. . . after you dropped
the gun,” and Joan said, “That’s enough,” and they all sat quiet a
moment.

“We have to get the gun back,” said Rupert finally. “Wallace’ll get
a beating if we don’t. So we’re resting up.”

“When are you going to go?” asked Nancy.

Rupert started to say,
When Wallace is good and ready
, but Wallace
cut him off. “Right now,” he said. “Wanna come?”

“We’ve only got ten minutes until recess is finished,” said Joan.
But she sounded uncertain.

“Someone might pick up the gun if we wait,” said Wallace. Silently,
Rupert admitted that he was right.

Nancy opened up the bag she was clutching, reached in, and
handed Wallace a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. She gave
Rupert another one. The smell of peanut butter was thick.