Marvel and a Wonder (34 page)

All of this before the appearance of the dog.

The dog was no breed the boy could recognize, just a grimy mongrel. Beyond that, it appeared to be only teeth and jaws, with a patch of ruddy brown fur along its abdomen, more hyena than dog. The animal did not bark at first, poking its nose out of the tiny shack, sniffing the dry air. It took a few paces and grew tense, lowering its head, a line of drool springing from its pink lips. Upon seeing it, the boy froze, capsized by fear, at once realizing the shack was its house and this patch of fenced-off dirt its yard. The dog was more rangy-looking than any animal the boy had seen, lean though heavy-shouldered. Glancing to his left, Quentin saw that the opposite end of the fence was too far to try to run to. He realized that he was going to die. He was going to die, he was going to die, he was certain of it. All he could do was try to hit the dog in the head with the gas can. But it was light metal and wouldn’t do much. Squinting over his glasses, seeing the dog’s broad flat skull, almost like a copperhead in its wide appearance, the boy did not think any number of blows would stop the animal from ripping out his throat.

The dog began to growl, baring its fangs, squatting low to the ground, preparing to lunge. Quentin braced himself, covering his genitals with the gas can, his bowels ready to loosen themselves. He then realized he ought to try to talk to it, to explain his situation, and so he began to whisper, lowering himself as well, “I come in peace,” extending his left hand cautiously. The dog snarled, treading backward.

“I know that I am in your yard. This is your yard and I know that I am in it.”

The dog snapped its jaws, reeling to the left, circling now, its paws padding along the dirt.

“I am in your yard. It is your yard. I am just walking through. I am walking through to the other side. It is your yard. I am only walking through.”

The boy stood up slowly, his left hand still out in front of him, the gas can above his privates. He took one decisive step forward, placing his foot down slowly. The dog barked but did not move, its ears perking up.

“I am only walking through.” He took another step, the dog going quiet now, watching him. “I am walking. I am walking. I am going to walk over to the fence and climb it.”

He heaved the gas can over the top of the fence, wincing as it hit the pavement and rattled dumbly. Hearing the ruckus, the dog began to bark again. Quentin raised his hand to calm it, speaking in a low, soft voice, “I am climbing the fence now. Now I am climbing the fence and then you will have your yard to yourself.”

He hefted himself up the fence, fingers gripping the wire braids, slipping his jacket over the top once more, getting one leg over, then the other, sliding down, catching his right foot on a crooked wire, swearing a little, the dog watching him the whole time, no longer barking but with a look of interest, regarding the stranger with an affectionate concern, eyes bright, tongue loose, tail wagging.

“I’m okay,” the boy whispered to the dog, examining his ankle. His sock had been caught on the fence somewhere and had ripped a little. “Thank you for allowing me passage through your yard. You are a benevolent creature and I salute you.” The boy bowed now, grabbed the can, and hurried off down the street, the enormous electric sign in front of the gas station coming on with a dull blue light.

* * *

Rick sat in the cab of the pickup, his left eye swollen shut, his forehead and cheek dusty with flakes of dried blood, tendrils of gray fog rising above his head like various succubae, angrily exhaling cigarette smoke through his nose. Only halfway through the square, he flicked the remainder of the cigarette out the window, the sun now setting, its rays cutting across the dirty parking lot; a faded black tattoo of a spider on the back of his hand momentarily regained its former shape.

It was not the bloodied eye that caused him so much anger now. It was the girl. It was the thought of that stupid rich-bitch princess tricking someone into giving her a ride all the way back to Plano, to her father—or worse, her grandfather—and all the lies and bullshit she would spout. No, that would not do, not one bit. He shuddered a little, imagining what the crazy old coot would do, knowing how brutal, how relentless he could be—certainly the law would be involved, and if not, then so much the worse for Rick.

He circled past a fried-chicken stand, past a dilapidated hardware store, past a jewelry store that looked like it had folded decades before, riding up and down, back and forth across the twilit streets. He touched the back of his hand to the ridge above his left eye and saw it was still bleeding. It needed stitches probably, which would be more fucking time he did not have. It was going on six thirty p.m. and the fucking horse was nowhere in sight. The sun had nearly set and the arrival of night for Rick meant that he was coming to an end—not just with his search for the horse, but his job, his association with the rich old man, whatever meager sense of direction his life had previously had.

He began to daydream about running off to Cancún—or Costa Rica, where he had heard there was no law. He could get a job at a fruit plant and marry a brown-skinned girl who would want a half-dozen babies. As his mind reeled through these pleasant, far-flung thoughts, he remembered old man Bolan, the sight of him in bed—sickly though indomitable—weak hands curled around the telephone, speaking his awful half-Spanish. It made Rick seize a little, thinking of his employer. If the girl got back to Plano before him, if he did not find the horse and figure out a way to keep her quiet, there would be no end to his troubles.

So on he drove, the dusk appearing like a curtain, which the hood of the pickup slowly parted.

About a half mile or so down the road, two kids darted out in front of the truck; Rick slammed on the brakes, his head jerking forward. He was too startled to even bother swearing at them. He gripped the steering wheel, watching the two kids—brothers maybe, dark-haired, brown-skinned Mexicans—running down the street, the older boy tugging the younger by his sleeve. There was a look in the older boy’s eyes, one of fierce excitement, of some sort of unforeseeable exhilaration, the older one forcing his brother to accompany him on some adventure, the two of them fleeing down the block. Rick watched their shapes for a moment and then softly swiped at the left turn signal, creeping along the curb, trailing beside the brothers for another block or so. Glancing out the passenger-side window, he saw a group of them, maybe seven or eight kids—all Mexicans—gathered in the side yard of a grubby white house that looked like it had been built with matchsticks. It was a party of some kind, the kids standing around, clapping. They even had a pony in the backyard. A man was leading it in a short circle. There were children piled up on the animal’s back, two and three at a time, the man smiling in a straw cowboy hat, the horse bobbing its head up and down, its elegant-looking neck stretched out sinuously as it moved. The horse was a muscular-looking one, wide-shouldered, stark white.

“Fuck,” Rick said, his bruised face erupting in a wide smile. “Fuck.”

He threw the pickup in park, left the driver’s-side door open, checked to be sure his pistol was beneath the flap of his jacket, then pulled it wildly from its holster. He slipped a little as he tried to remember how to walk, head still foggy, knees weak, gravity reeling all about him like the ground had gone soft. The kids who had gathered there did not notice him at first, and then panic starting on their faces, the boys glancing at the gun, going quiet, stepping in front of their younger sisters, the girls seeing the bloody, cauliflowered eye, turning to each other and gasping, the man in the straw hat with the horse, still unaware, leading the animal into a turn, two tiny girls, no older than four or five, perched like exotic birds on the creature’s back. Rick did not need to speak, seeing the whiteness of the animal, its formidable shoulders, its haunches, the unashamed, untroubled glare in its eyes, recognizing it as the one he had been sent to retrieve only yesterday, placing the gun calmly at the back of the fellow’s head, some of the kids yelling something in Spanish, other kids running off, the two girls atop the horse still smiling, then looking as passive as saints, the horse no longer stalking, the man turning, eyes wide with hope, Rick no longer in favor of thinking, only action, only momentum, only motion now, pulling the trigger, hearing the shot, the noise rippling through the air, straw hat drifting like a slow, wide leaf, the horse rearing up a little, Rick grabbing the reins with his free hand, calming it down, whispering softly, his palm against its muzzle, the man on the ground, eyes staring up with a questioning look, as if there were answers scrawled somewhere up in the darkening clouds, the rest of the kids disappearing now, Rick slipping the gun back into its holster, turning, seeing the two girls still sitting there on the horse’s back, carefully, as if they were made of the finest porcelain, lifting them off, and placing them back on the ground.

* * *

The girl found that there were only thirteen cents in the wallet she had stolen. She knew the number was bad luck but decided to pocket the money anyway. She slipped the empty wallet inside a mailbox, hoping it would get sent back to its rightful owner, and struggled on, bare feet grayed with grit. She was still more than twenty-nine dollars short and had no idea where she was going to get the rest of it. So she wandered around for a while, wondering if she ought to try to call her geegaw directly.

A few blocks on, the girl turned down an alley, picking her way among a few garbage cans, hoping to find a place to pee. She glanced over the back fence of a small white house and saw a yard that was filled with worn-looking toys—nude dolls with faces that been rubbed off, a castaway pogo stick, a rocking horse that had faded—before spotting, there, on the back porch, a half-dozen pairs of shoes piled near the kitchen door, most of them kid-size. She ended up stealing some pink cowboy boots that must have belonged to a child but still fit her small feet, and then ran off back down the alley, smiling a little, proud of herself, all out of breath. A few blocks on, she hunched over, gasping at the air. She had never walked around this much in her life. She had never been on her own for this long before.

By and by, she was ambling along the street in the direction where she hoped the bus station lay, south by southwest, when she realized she had not eaten. She stopped walking and saw a rundown grocery store up ahead on the left and then strode listlessly inside, the electric eye reading her with condemnation. She snuck an orange and apple inside her purse and was hidden behind an ice-cold door in the frozen-food aisle—biting the orange, drinking greedily from a glass bottle of milk. A moment later, a towering, slope-shouldered security guard, face dark as night, appeared. Before she could begin to explain, he pulled open the door and placed a large hand upon her wrist.

_________________

Already the boy had filled the gas can, some of it sloshing at his feet. He hunched over, replaced the cap, and dragged the heavy can inside the fatal-looking gas station. The shelves had not been stocked in some time—there were two aisles with nothing for sale, the freezers also strangely absent of merchandise. A black girl with a blue baseball cap, her black, straightened hair pulled through the back in a ponytail, looked up from a glossy hair magazine. She frowned at the boy instead of smiling.

The girl’s face was the smoothest Quentin had ever seen. She was chewing gum and he could see two dimples appear and disappear along her cheeks. He lowered the can beside him on the fog-colored tile and reached into his pants for the roll of cash.

The girl said a number out loud with disinterest, glancing back down at her magazine.

Quentin counted out the money and handed over three bills. As she recounted them and shoved them into the open drawer of the cash register, he noticed in her face a level of boredom, yes, but something more—a kind of loneliness—this girl only seventeen or eighteen, chewing her gum, leafing through magazines. Holding the gas can at his side, he saw for the first time in his life someone who seemed as lonely as him. His eyes dropped to the plastic name tag pinned above the soft slope of her breast. It said
Shanya
, which made the boy smile, the sound of the name like some far-off African princess. He realized she was trapped; there was nowhere for her to go. He decided for once he would say something; he would do something he had never done before and try to be someone else, an older, braver version of himself; he would stare at her a moment longer and then look her right in the eyes and say something like:
I can talk to animals.

The girl glanced up from her magazine, the pink wad of gum indistinguishable from the contours of her soft tongue. “What?”

“That’s why I’m interested in herpetology.”

“What’s that?”

“Herpetology. It’s the study of reptiles. I’m planning on maybe becoming a biologist. Or a veterinarian. I like working with small vertebrates.”

The girl’s eyes were a little wide, puzzled, the gum still motionless in her mouth.

The boy continued: “I’m not gonna see you again so it doesn’t really matter. But I thought maybe you’d like to know.”

Then the boy heaved the gas can up against his hip and turned, slightly beaming, proud of himself, feeling that today was one of the better days, one of the best days, the glass door to the gas station slamming shut behind him, the familiar
Donkey Kong
theme now on his lips.
Da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-DA, da-da-da-da
.

The fence rose in front of him once again, the gargantuan dog silent beside its shack, tongue flapping, the boy eyeing the wire enclosure for a moment, for a moment panicking, having forgotten that the gas can would be full on his way back. Then, smiling once again, he tied his shirt through the handle of the metal can, climbed halfway up the fence, and, using the shirt, lowered the can gently over, then pulled himself between the rolls of wire. He whistled louder, bopping his head back and forth
, Da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-DA, da-da-da-da
, awkwardly landing on his knees on the other side of the fence, the dog still sitting there, its ears pitched, snout slightly raised, tongue no longer lapping at the air, the boy nodding to it, lowering his shoulders to the ground so as not to appear threatening, speaking to it slowly, respectfully, “I once again appreciate your generosity. I will make my way through your kingdom as fast as I can.”