One Shot Away (16 page)

The Wabanaki Confederacy: Abenaki, Micmac, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and Maliseet tribes run through his mind. His father taught him the names of the tribes. He used a stick and drew a map in the dirt. With the stick on the landmasses he chanted, “Passamaqouddy, Maliseet, and Micmac Nations.” He circled them and finished with “The Wabanaki Confederacy.” He made Trevor repeat the words with him.

“How's Diggy doing?” he asks.

“How do you think he's doing? First he gets your knee in his mouth and eighteen stitches, then you dislocate his finger and take his spot at one-fifty-two.” She glares at him. “You know what I think? I think the knee-lift to his face was on purpose.”

Trevor remembers the feel of it, the impact. Diggy asked for it, and he got it. Trevor leans back, surprised at himself, pleased that he's not apologizing and making excuses.

“You know, one-seventy is not going to be easy for Diggy,” she says.

“He'll have it easier than I would.”

The bell rings. She gets up and slams the chair in against the table.

A
T LUNCH,
J
ANE'S GETTING EXTRA HELP IN GEOMETRY, SO
D
IGGY
has no choice but to sit at the wrestling table. He can't sit alone. As he approaches, Gino's eyes flash at Diggy, then dart over to Trevor. Diggy knows Gino's a walking, talking time bomb. Diggy sits and lets out a long, slow breath.

“To what do we owe this honor?” asks Jimmy.

“Is the little lady on the rag?” asks Bones. “Or maybe she's trying to wash Africa off her face.” Everyone erupts into laughter.

Diggy grabs Bones's sandwich and squishes it until wheat bread squeezes between his fingers. “Next time, that's your face.”

“You ever touch my lunch again, I'll break your jerkass hands.” Bones isn't laughing. “You've got to learn how to take a joke.”

“You're a joke.” Diggy dumps his own lunch, turkey sandwich, an apple, a protein bar, and a slice of cake, from a brown bag onto the table.

“That's like a week's worth of food,” says Jimmy.

“If you'd move up a weight class”—Diggy bites his sandwich—“then you could eat too.”

Pancakes holds a “lost dog” flyer with Whizzer's picture on it. Bones snatches it from his hand. He cranes his neck around to Trevor. “Sorry to say this dude, but he's got to be roadkill by now. Why would anyone steal a mutt? He was a mutt, right?”

“He was half Lab,” says Trevor.

“That's a mutt, yo,” says Bones. “And a mutt is a mutt, right, Gino?”

Gino fixes his eyes on his square of cardboard pizza from the cafeteria kitchen.

“Who made you the expert?” says Gino.

“If he was going to be a big dog,” says Jimmy, “maybe somebody needed a guard dog. Trevor, you ever think of that?”

“Yeah.” Trevor nods. “The police mentioned that.”

Diggy chews his sandwich, barely tasting it. His stomach feels like it's on a seesaw. He looks at Gino, who has tears pooling in his eyes.

“Principal Anderson is going to make an announcement tomorrow during homeroom,” says Trevor.

Diggy puts his sandwich down. He's lost his appetite. “Trevor, he'll probably show up when you least expect it,” he says.

The wrestlers look at Diggy.

“He was a puppy,” says Bones. “How's a puppy just going to show up?”

“I don't know, anything's possible, right?”

“Thanks,” says Trevor. “I'm not giving up either.”

Everyone, except Gino and Diggy, leave the table to play handball. Gino's wide-eyed and worrying like a three-year-old on his first day of nursery school. “Give him back,” he says.

“Or else what?” Diggy hunches over the table.

“You've got to give him back,” says Gino. “Chain him somewhere and somebody can drive by and find him.” A tear leaves the corner of his eye.

“It's a dog,” says Diggy. “Not a person. When I'm ready, I'll give him back.”

“You better give him back now,” says Gino.

“You didn't tell anyone, did you?”

“No, but I can't think about anything else.”

“Just chill.”

“I can't. It's freakin' me out.”

“You told someone, didn't you?” Diggy's eyes narrow.

“I almost told Bones last night.”

Diggy reaches across the table, grabs his shirt, and twists it in his fist. “Stop worrying. I'm going to take care of it.”

“Only a prick could do a thing like this.”

“You took him too. We get caught, you're going down as hard as me.”

“You pulled him in the car! I didn't know what you were doing.”

Diggy releases him. Taking the dog was dumb, and he wants to give him back. But no one suspects anything. It's perfect revenge. Trevor's moping around at practice. Greco's probably already wishing Diggy was back at 152.

“What are you doing with the dog anyway?” whispers Gino. “You want a dog so bad, get your own.”

“This is a lesson. Every time I drove by that motel, the dog was chained up. It was animal abuse.”

“That's baloney and you know it. You wanted to get back at Crow for taking your spot. You need a shrink,” says Gino. “You've got issues.”

Diggy shoves Gino's shoulder. If anyone finds out, nothing will ever be the same for Diggy. He could be arrested, and no one would hear his side. His heart crashes in his chest. “You open your mouth, you're going down, same as me.”

D
IGGY CARRIES THE PUPPY FROM THE POOL HOUSE AT THE BACK
of the property. The leafless sycamore branch, about two feet around, rises from the green mesh pool cover. Twenty feet up the trunk of the tree, he spots the gash where the tree branch snapped. The water is coated with translucent new ice. He wonders if the puppy could break through and drown.

The puppy slurps his ear. “Happy to see me?” he asks.

His parents are at the county club for the night. Diggy puts Whizzer in the family room. Whizzer tears around the rug, running up and over the couch, around and around. He charges into the kitchen, stops, then charges back toward Diggy.

Whizzer wolfs down a porterhouse steak cut into tiny pieces, then laps up an entire bowl of water. After he's finished, he looks at Diggy as if to ask, Is that all? “You're a rowdy one, aren't you,” says Diggy.

He snuggles with the puppy on the leather wraparound couch and watches one episode after another of
Survivorman
. He TiVo'd an entire week. In the first episode, Survivorman roasts scorpions over a fire and pops them in his mouth like potato chips; in the next he cuts the meat off a dead elk and cooks it on a fire, then he builds shelters with pine branches.

Diggy likes the smell of the puppy's fur and the feel of the puppy's solid body. “Trevor was looking for you,” he says to the dog. “But he couldn't find you, could he?” Diggy wants to feel in control, but the truth is he never intended on taking the puppy. It was just the way it went down. Trevor needed to learn a lesson about respect and there's the dog hopping into the car. Diggy may have gone too far.

He microwaves popcorn and tries to teach the puppy to roll over. It's no use. He feeds the dog popped kernels, which are swallowed without chewing. After four episodes of the show, he leads the puppy back to the pool house. For the fifth night, Diggy locks the puppy in and examines the dark sky, knowing Trevor is lying awake in the motel, wondering if his dog is roadkill. He has to give the dog back. He rubs his tongue across the scar tissue forming on his lip. “But you didn't have to wrestle me off,” he says aloud. “So don't try to make me feel lower than whale crap.”

J
IMMY AND
P
OPS SIT ON METAL FOLDING CHAIRS FACING A BATTERED
wooden door labeled “Franklin B. Scales, Attorney at Law.” Jimmy bites and tears tiny pieces of flesh where his skin meets his fingernails. He considers going to the police and telling them the truth, but would they arrest him? He was there. He stole the lumber too.

Pops leans on his elbows, his sandy-blond hair hanging over his forehead. He's got his “good” clothes on: black jeans, scuffed dress shoes, and a worn leather jacket. He looks like a goon in a gangster movie, squeezing the filter of his stubby cigarette, sucking it like it's his job not to leave one bit left. “When this is over”—suck, puff—“I promise you”—suck—“I'll make this up to you.”

And how are you going to do that
, wonders Jimmy.
How are you going to give back the practice I'm missing today, or all my sleepless nights?

The attorney's door opens. A man in gas-station coveralls emerges. “He's all yours!” The man pushes out the door.

The attorney, white faced, with a wispy comb-over, looks like he just rose from a coffin. He's got to be in his seventies. His office is packed with boxes filled with files and papers.

“This is my boy,” says Pops.

“The wrestler, tough guy, huh?” The attorney laughs at his own joke. “Frankie Scales,” he says, “like the scales of justice.” He pushes a pile of green and yellow files, tagged with names, to the side of his desk. He rifles through the contents of a cardboard box on an overturned milk crate and pulls a file. He reads for a minute, then gazes at them with his saggy old eyes. “Okay, let's set the ground rules. Jim, you're eighteen?”

Jimmy nods.

“Don't talk to anyone but me and your dad about this. Any police show up on your doorstep, you say, ‘Talk to my lawyer.'” He leans forward. “From today on, I'm your lawyer. You got that?”

Jimmy nods again.

“I hear you got yourself a little girlfriend, is that true?” The attorney grins. “Well, you don't tell her anything either. You start talking to her, you might as well go chalk it on the blackboard in school. You got that?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember, Frankie Scales,” he says. “Like the scales of justice.”

Jimmy doesn't feel reassured. Nothing his father does ever turns out right.

“I don't want either one of you talking about your case on the phone. Not on your home phone or your cell phones.”

“They're bugging my phone?” asks Pops.

“Artie, you're a big fish in a small town. The police could indict you and your son, or they could come and pick you both up, or they could drop the whole thing.”

“What do you think they'll do?” asks Jimmy.

“All they have is circumstantial evidence,” says the attorney. “They don't have a witness; they don't have the wood; and they can't verify the sale of the wood. Now, what they do have is you and your son in a truck filled with, what'd you call it?”

“Lumber,” says Pops.

“Right, lumber.” He scratches his head. “What, like two-by-fours?”

“Like that, yes.” Pops coughs.

Jimmy shuts his eyes. Stealing wood. It sounds moronic, like stealing rocks or dirt.

“So, the police have a truck with lumber leaving the approximate area of the theft on the night of the crime.” The attorney cocks an eyebrow. “That's all they have?”

“Right, that's it.” Pops looks at Jimmy.

“I guess,” says Jimmy.

“Could they find a witness?”

His father lifts his eyes. “A witness?”

“Someone who saw you. A guard or a citizen out for a midnight stroll?”

Jimmy's heart jolts. “There was a guard.”

“He let us in.” Pops's knee is vibrating so hard, Jimmy can feel it in his chair.

“Pops, tell him the truth,” says Jimmy.

Pops clears his throat. “I paid him two hundred to turn his back.”

“Well, stay away from him,” says Frankie Scales. “The police may have already flipped him. He could be talking.”

“I don't think so,” says Pops. “That old guy …”

“You don't know and I don't know, so stay away from him.”

They sit for a moment in silence.

“How do you think it looks?” asks Pops.

“With you getting stopped, and now you tell me about a co-conspirator, who may or may not have been approached.” Frankie Scales shakes his head. “We'll see and hope for the best.”

Jimmy shuts his eyes. Hope for the best? What does that mean?

The lawyer stands. “I'll need a check for five hundred or four in cash.”

Pops yanks his wallet from his back pocket. He places a stack of bills on the desk. “It's all there,” he says.

“I'm sure it is.” They shake hands.

Jimmy follows Pops from the office. He's numb.