The Pet

THREE

Images floating through a red-tinted haze: a bobcat lurking high in the trees, fangs gleaming, snarls like thunder, claws like steel blades hunting for someone’s throat; a leopard stalking through the high grass of the broiling summer veldt, closing in on its kill, shoulder muscles and haunches rippling with tension; a hawk snatching a rabbit from the ground; a black horse causing the ground to tremble as it charged down the road, fire from its nostrils scorching the earth black.

Images that made his fists clench, his nails create craters in his palms, his chest rise and fall in barely contained rage.

Images: the basketball in slow motion smashing into his face, his knees buckling, tears leaping from his eyes, blood spotting the gym floor; the roar of surprise, the sudden silence, the laughter. Laughter until the gym teacher saw the blood, laughter in the hall as they half-carried him to the first floor, a grin from Falcone as he stood outside his door flirting with Chris.

Only the nurse didn’t laugh.

Images: the basketball, the leopard, the gym, the hawk, the corridor, the stairs, the horse waiting in shadow.

He swallowed a moan, rolled his head to the other side, and lay on the nurse’s hard cot for fifteen minutes more before he couldn’t stand it any longer. His nostrils were plugged with cotton, and a throbbing tenderness spread across his right cheek. When he sat up at last and looked into the mirror over the basin, he saw the beginnings of a beautifully grotesque black eye.

“Hell,” he said.

Grabbing a paper towel from the wall dispenser, he cleaned the dried blood off his face and combed his hair with his fingers. The nurse was gone. He looked back, peered closer, and gingerly plucked the cotton out. A sniff, and he tasted blood; another sniff and a daubing with a wet towel, and he waited with held breath until he was positive he wouldn’t start bleeding again. Then he found a permission slip on the desk, filled it out, and signed it himself. A check on the clock told him he’d still be able to make the last class, zoology, on the third floor. The corridor was empty and he hurried without running, slipped into the stairwell and took the steps two at a time, head down, breathing heavily through his mouth.

Someone, more than one, came down from above.

He ignored them, averted his head so they wouldn’t see the ignominious damage, and only whispered a curse when they bumped hard into his arm, spinning him around and shoving something into his hand. He yelled a protest and grabbed for the iron banister, and managed to end up sitting on the top step. Dizziness made him nauseated, and he clenched his teeth until it passed. Another minute to regain his composure and he hauled himself up; as he reached for the door, Mr. Hedley bulled through.

“So!” the teacher said angrily,

He frowned. “Sir?”

Hedley held out a palm, waited, then grabbed his arm and pulled him into the hall, took something from his hand, and held it accusingly in his face.

“You’ve never seen this before, right, Boyd?”

It was an unstoppered vial, and as the heavyset man waved it in his face he realized that part of his nausea came from the stench drifting out of its mouth. He gagged and turned his head.

“Don’t like the tables turned, do you, boy?”

“I … what?” He looked over the man’s shoulder and saw a dozen students in the hall. Some were leaning against the wall and talking softly, others had handkerchiefs pressed over their noses. A few saw him and grinned; the rest saw him and glared.

“It was a stupid thing to do, Boyd.”

“Do what?” His nose hurt. He had a headache that reached to the back of his neck. He pointed at the vial. “That? I didn’t do that.”

“Then who did? The ghost of Samuel Ashford?”

His head hurt; god, his head hurt.

“Well, Boyd?”

He tried to explain about his accident, about how he’d been running up the stairs when someone — two or three of them, he didn’t know for sure, he didn’t see — when someone ran past him and put that bottle in his hand.

Hedley tilted his head back and cocked it to one side.

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“Mr. Boyd, keep your voice down.”

“But I didn’t do it!”

Hedley grabbed his arm again, and Don shook him off.

“I didn’t do it, damnit,” he said sullenly.

Hedley was about to reach again when a murmuring made him turn and see Norman Boyd striding through his class. The principal paused to speak to several students and send them on their way, presumably to the nurse, with a pat on the shoulder. When he was close enough, Hedley explained over Don’s silent protest that someone had opened the lab door in the middle of a test and dumped a bottle of hydrogen sulfide onto the floor.

“From this,” he said, displaying the vial with a dramatic flourish, “which I found in your son’s possession, over there in the stairwell.”

Boyd cleared his throat and lifted an eyebrow.

Don told him, words clipped, attitude defensive, and when he was done, he dared his father with a look not to believe him.

Boyd took the vial, sniffed, and grimaced. “My office.”

“But Dad—”

“Do as you’re told! Go down to my office.”

Don looked to the chemistry teacher, who was smiling smugly, looked to the kids still in the hall, whispering and grinning. The odor of rotten eggs was making him sick. Boyd stoppered the vial with his handkerchief and gave the order a third time.

“Yeah,” he muttered, turned, and walked away.

“Hey, Don,” someone called as he went through the door, “tell him the giant crow did it!”

Norman slouched in his chair, a hand on one cheek, one eye closed as if sighting an invisible weapon. There was a stack of reports to be filed when he found the time to read them, the in basket was crowded with letters to respond to, the out basket held more files he hadn’t bothered to look over, and in the middle of the blotter was Adam Hedley’s vial with the handkerchief still dangling from the top.

A finger reached out to touch it, poke at it, shift it around, before the hand drew back and covered his other cheek.

Norm boy, he thought, for an intelligent man, you are one very stupid sonofabitch.

A chill settled on the back of his neck and he shuddered violently to banish it, and glanced up to see that the office was dark. A look behind and out the window, and he groaned; the sun had gone down, the streetlamps were on, and the traffic on School Street was mainly people coming home from shopping and work.

He was virtually alone, then, in the building. Just him in his office, and the custodial staff sweeping the hallways and auditorium, washing the blackboards, and probably stealing him blind from the supply room in the basement.

“Stupid,” he muttered, staring at the vial. “Stupid, and dumb, and you ought to be shot.”

Jesus, how could he believe Don had really tossed that bottle into Hedley’s room? How could he believe it? Or was he trying too hard to believe the boy was really normal, doing normal things like any normal kid.

That was the problem — thinking Don was special. He wasn’t. He was perfectly, sometimes unnervingly fine, with quirks like any other kid to set him apart. And there was Norman Boyd, forgetting who they both were and playing King of the Mountain, Lord of the Hill, laying down the law as if he were Moses.

As if he were his own father.

For the first time in ages he wished Joyce were here, to remind him that he wasn’t Wallace Boyd still working the mills, that Don wasn’t Norman struggling out of the gutter. He recalled with a silent groan the day Joyce had told him she was pregnant the first time. He had sworn on everything he held dear that he would do better, that he would be there — a harbor for childhood storms, a rock to hang on to when the winds grew too strong. A father; nothing more, nothing less.

He covered his face with his hands and took a deep breath.

It was the pressure, that’s what it was. After Sam had died, the pressure had begun; he didn’t know how, and he wasn’t sure why, but it was there. Waiting for him.

Whispering to him that Donald had to be protected at all costs. And when he recognized the futility of it, and the unreason, he hadn’t realized how far in the opposite direction he had gone with the boy’s life.

It was the pressure.

What he needed was a respite. What he needed was for Falcone and his teachers to cave in and stop the strike. Then they’d be off his back, and the board would be off his back, and the press and the mayor and the whole damned world would leave him alone to reacquaint himself with his son.

Twice he had blown it — first, Don’s announcement about being a veterinarian, and now this afternoon.

Twice, and suddenly he was very afraid.

His wife was falling out of love with him.

What would happen if his son did the same?

… and so the crow saw how bad the little boy was feeling, and he flew out of the tree and into the night …

The park was deserted. A breeze crept through the branches and shook loose a few leaves, spiraling them down through the dark, through the falls of white light, to the ground, to the paths, to the pond where they spun in lazy turns, creating islands that floated just below the surface.

No one walked.

The traffic’s noise was smothered.

… and found the evil king alone in his bedroom, and he flew in through the window, and before the evil king could wake up and defend himself, the giant crow had plucked out both his eyes!

The only concentrated light was set around the oval. A dim light, and there was no warmth to it, no weight, as he sat on a bench and stared at the water, rolling his shoulders to drive off the cold.

His eyes were closed.

His lips moved so slightly they might have been trembling.

And then the giant crow flew through the castle until he found the evil king’s brother, who was just as evil and just as mean, and the giant crow tore out his throat with one swipe of his giant talons.

The houses that faced the park were hidden by the trees and the width of the land, and the boulevard that ran past it on the south was too far away to matter. He was alone; no one would bother him unless he stayed until dawn, and on a night like this not even a tramp would try to make a bed on the redwood benches. He was alone. His hands were clasped tightly between his knees, and his jacket was too light for the sudden temperature drop, turning the air brittle and the leaves to brown glass.

A noise in his throat; his shoulders slumped a little more.

He had waited nearly an hour in his father’s office before the man finally walked in. Don had jumped to his feet and was ordered down again. A fussing with papers, instructions not to interrupt him, and he was lectured forever on the image both of them had to project — to the faculty as well as to the student body. Norman brandished the vial as if he were going to throw it. Don explained for the second time how the kid — he was sure now it was Pratt — shoved the bottle into his hand on the way down the stairs. His face hurt as he talked, and he kept touching the side of his face to be sure it hadn’t bloated. His father saw the situation, sympathized for the injury, but refused the whole pardon while relenting to the degree that he supposed Brian was capable of such a trick.

“I didn’t say it was him.” Don had retreated, suddenly fearful his father would call the boy in and unknowingly start a war. “I just think it was.”

Norman seemed doubting, and Don didn’t understand. In all his life he’d never done anything like that; he had been told often enough that he was neither to take advantage of his position — whatever that was — nor pretend he was only one of the boys. He wasn’t. He was, by fate, special, with special problems to handle. And Norman expected more of him than to have it end up like this.

“End up like what?” He sprang to his feet and approached the desk. “Dad, why don’t you listen to me? I didn’t do it!”

Norman stared and said nothing.

“All right, I left the nurse’s office when I shouldn’t have, I guess, and I wrote out my own pass. All right, that’s wrong. Okay. But I did not throw that crap in Mr. Hedley’s room!”

“Donald,” his father said in perfect control, “I will not have you speak to me that way, especially not in here.”

“Oh, Jesus.” And he turned away.

“And you will not swear at me. Ever.”

Don surrendered. Suspended between belief and suspicion, bullied off the subject by time-worn and weary pronouncements, he surrendered, he didn’t care, and he didn’t argue when he was given six days detention, beginning the next day.

“You should count yourself lucky,” Norman said as he escorted him out the door just as the last bell rang. “Most other kids would have been suspended.”

“Then suspend me!” he said, surprised to hear himself on the verge of begging. “Please, suspend me.”

“Don’t be smart, son, or I will.”

Don pulled away from the hand that guided him around the counter, ignored the curious looks the five secretaries gave him. “You don’t get it,” he said as he walked out the door. “You just don’t get it.”

He fetched his books and went home. His mother wouldn’t be in for at least another hour, and his father would stay at South until just before dinner. That gave him time to unload his gear and change into his jeans, fix himself a peanut butter sandwich and go for a walk.

Shortly before dark he walked into the park.

… and then the crow …

He stopped, and cocked his head.

He could not see far beyond the lights that ringed the oval, but he was positive he had heard someone approaching out there. Listening, his hands gripping his knees, he guessed it was his mother, come to take him home and scold him and make him eat a bowl of soup or drink a cup of watery cocoa. And when the noise didn’t sound again, he convinced himself it wasn’t really a footstep he had heard.

He heard it again.

To his left, out there in the dark.

A single sound, sharp on the pavement, like iron striking iron as gently as it could.

Without looking away he zipped his jacket closed and stood, slowly, sidling toward the pond for an angle to let him see through the light.

Again. Sharp. Iron striking iron.

Not his mother at all; someone else.

“Hey, Jeff, that you?” he called, jamming his hands into his pockets.

Iron striking iron. Hollow.

“Jeff?”

The breeze husked, scattering leaves at his feet and making him duck away with his eyes tightly shut. The pond rippled, and a twig snapped, and something small and light scurried up a trunk.

Swallowing, and looking once toward the exit, he walked around the oval and a few steps up the path. With the light now behind him his shadow crept ahead, reaching for the next lamppost fifteen yards away. And between there and here he saw nothing that could have made the sound that he’d heard. A frown, more at his own nervousness than at the puzzle, and he walked on, cautiously, keeping to one side and wincing each time his elbow brushed against a shrub.

Iron striking iron, hollow, an echo.

He started to call again, changed his mind, and made a clumsy about-face. Whatever it was, it didn’t want to be seen, and that was all right with him; more than all right, it was perfect. He hurried, shoulders hunched, cheeks burning as the wind worked earnestly to push him faster, the tips of his ears beginning to sting. His own shoes were loud, slapping back from the trees, and his shadow had grown faint, even under the lamps. He looked back only once, but all he could see was the pond reflecting the globes, freezing them in ice, turning the oval into a glaring white stage.

Iron. Striking iron.

He ran the last few yards, skidded onto the sidewalk and gaped at the traffic on the boulevard. The air was warmer, and he took a deep breath as he chided himself for being so foolish.

Then he turned to check one last time.

And heard iron striking iron, muffled and slow, and not once could he see what was back there in the dark.

Tanker cowered in the bushes, covering his face with his hands and praying that the moon would keep him hidden from whatever was walking out there in the dark.

At first it had been perfect. He had been feeling the familiar pressure all day, building in his chest and making it swell, building in his head and making it ache. He had ignored it when it started, thinking it was because he was hungry for people-food; so he had scrounged through some garbage cans, panhandled four bucks in front of the movie theater on the main street and had filled himself with hamburgers and dollar wine. But the pressure wouldn’t go away, and his hands shook with anticipation when he could no longer deny it — it was going to be soon, no question about it. Maybe tonight, and that kid was going to help him.

Slowly, using every skill he had left and a few he hadn’t learned from the babyfucks in the army, he had made his way through the underbrush toward the oval once he had heard the lone voice telling itself a story. It was too good to be true, but when he peered through the bushes, he almost shouted. It was the punk from the other night, the one who had been dressed in black and talked about a giant crow. And there he was, looking like he’d just lost his best girl, and for god’s sake, would you believe it, telling himself a stupid story.

It was perfect.

Then the punk turned his head sharply, and Tanker had looked back into the park.

Iron striking iron.

There was absolutely no reason for it, but the sound terrified him, loosened his bowels, poured acid into his stomach, and he couldn’t help it — he whimpered softly and covered his face with his hands. Listening. Trying to make himself invisible. Hearing the punk walk away and swearing in a cold sweat that he couldn’t follow and get him.

The sound grew louder and Tanker dropped to the ground, shifted his hands to the back of his head and waited, holding his breath, listening as whatever it was moved in front of him, as if following the boy.

And stopped.

The breeze died; there was no traffic noise, no footsteps.

He swallowed and turned his head to expose one eye. Through the shrubs he could see pieces of the pavement, the dark on the other side, and nothing else. A puzzled frown. His hands sliding off his hair to press on the grass and lift him up. Slowly. Bloodshot yellowed eyes darting side to side, taking in as much of the path as they could before his head rose over the top, before his knees straightened, before his arms spread outward to balance for flight, to lunge for a fight.

But there was nothing there.

The path was empty, the punk gone, and when he pushed through to the oval and checked both directions, he realized he was alone.

Alone with the pressure, and nobody to kill.

Then he heard it again.

Iron striking iron, muffled, slow cadence; and when he whirled around to meet it his eyes opened, his mouth gaped, and he couldn’t stop the denying shake of his head.

He was alone.

He could hear something large moving toward him, but he was completely alone.

The booze, he thought; it’s the goddamned booze. He rushed back into the trees, zigzagging to lose whatever was out there, then made his way to the westside wall. His lungs were aching and his hands were trembling, and when he tried to swallow, his throat felt coated with sharp pebbles. He listened, hard, and sagged with relief when he heard nothing but the wind.

Then the pressure came again, in his head, in his chest. A deep solemn throbbing as he looked up at the moon.

It was time, then, no stalling, and he vaulted the wall nimbly, keeping to the shadows as he hurried to his right. The houses facing the park were large and lighted, but he couldn’t hear a television, a radio, or any voices through open windows.

All he could hear was that noise from the park, and it goaded him to the corner, where he slumped against a telephone pole and checked the street up and down, panting slightly while his fingers flexed and his forehead creased.

Five minutes later Tanker saw him.

He was walking on the same side of the street, fingers snapping, hips and feet moving. Tanker frowned, thinking the punk was drunk, until he saw the earphones, and the radio clipped to his belt.

A great way to die, he thought, grinning, and angled back around the wall’s corner. A great way to die — smiling, listening to your favorite music, a nip in the air and on your way home.

He chuckled, and it sounded like a growl.

He followed the kid’s progress carefully, poked his head out, and saw him tap the top of the wall in time to his listening, once spinning around and snapping those fingers high over his head.

When he spun around a second time, Tanker was there, smiling. Taking the kid’s throat and pitching him effortlessly into the park. Before the kid landed, Tanker was kneeling beside him.

Before the song ended, Tanker was howling.

“Don the Barbarian sees the slime-covered trolls at the end of the witch’s tunnel,” he whispered as he moved slowly out of the kitchen, half in a crouch, his left arm braced across his chest for a shield, his right extended to hold his anxious pal, Crow. “The sexy maiden is chained to a burning rock, and only Don has the strength to break the magic chains and save her from a fate worse than death.” He looked to his right. “Crow, what’s a fate worse than death?” His pal didn’t answer, and when he tripped over the fringed edge of the hall rug and slammed into the wall, the telephone rang.

“Got it!” he shouted, wincing at the pain. His parents were in the back, in what used to be his father’s study and was now the television room. There was a championship fight on some cable channel, and he could hear his father cursing while his mother told the underdog’s manager what he could do with his fighter and all his fighter’s family.

Despite the language it was a good sound, a normal sound that hadn’t been heard in the house for several weeks. They were laughing, cheering together, and it sounded so right, he wished they would make up their minds how they felt about each other.

On the other hand, maybe they already had. Maybe they had made up and it was going to be all right.

The telephone rang again on the low table by the entrance to the living room. He snatched up the handset, winked a good-bye at Crow, who was off to save the maiden from whatever her fate, and leaned against the doorframe.

It was Tracey. He had completely forgotten she had said she would call.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, her voice muffled as though she were cupping her hand around the mouthpiece.

“No problem. I was out walking anyway.”

“Oh, yeah? Anybody I know?”

“Nope. Just me.” But he was pleased she had asked.

“Oh, yourself, huh? Not much company, Boyd.”

“I wouldn’t say that. If you must know, I happen to be very sophisticated when the mood strikes me.”

She giggled, and he looked blindly toward the ceiling.

“How’s the eye?”

He tested the side of his face. “Still there, I think.”

“Bummer about the detention.”

Christ, he thought, bad news travels fast.

“I don’t care,” he said. “My grades haven’t been all that good this year. I could use the time to study.”

“Senior slump,” she said. “You get complacent, y’know?”

Depressed is what you get, he thought, but he only grunted.

“Well, listen, Vet, about tomorrow night.”

His stomach filled with insects too crawly to be butterflies; he could hear it in her tone — she was going to say she already had a date with Brian. “Yeah?”

“I can’t make it.”

He decided to slit his throat; then he decided he was glad because now he wouldn’t have to face Brian. But first he would slit his throat.

“My father’s got the weekend off and we have to go see my grandmother on Long Island. We’re gonna leave right after school, he says.”

“Oh. Well, okay.”

“But look, we can go next Friday, if that’s okay with you. Next Friday would be great. If you still want to, I mean.”

He didn’t say anything. His throat healed, the ceiling abruptly came into focus, and he could see her up there, floating, smiling, her dark hair in a wisp over her eyes.

“Vet, you still there?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, shaking himself.

“Okay.” Subdued now. “I thought you were mad about tomorrow. Or about me calling you Vet.”

“I don’t mind. Really.” The cord had twisted itself around his wrist and he couldn’t get it off without taking away the earpiece and losing what she might say. “Really, no kidding.”

And he didn’t. She thought it was great that he was going to be so close to animals for the rest of his life. The day he had let it slip, she had immediately fantasized his working out in the country, traveling from village to village, farm to farm, making sure all his charges were in perfect health.

She had been serious.

Brian and Tar thought it was too perfect to be true — Duck, off to treat the ducks. For nearly a week afterward, every time they saw him they quacked and flapped their arms and told him they had hernias and had to swim standing up.

“So,” she said, “I thought you told me that bio test was a snap.”

They talked then the way they usually did, the preliminaries over and his heart slowly finding its way back into place. His mother walked by once with a sandwich and a beer, looked a question, and he smiled and pointed at her.

A girl? she asked silently.

He nodded.

Chris Snowden?

He shook his head and mumbled a reply to something Tracey said.

His mother shrugged — it doesn’t matter, dear, as long as it’s female and she doesn’t want to marry you before you go off to college — and moved on after checking on the status of his black eye, hip-swinging through the living room and back to the TV set. It was the long way around, and they both knew it.

“Don, damnit, are you listening to me?”

“It was my mother,” he said in a near whisper, checking to be sure the coast was clear. “Spying on me.”

“Oh. Well, my folks don’t care as long as he wears pants, combs his hair, and is rich. Dad figures I should be married a year after graduation.”

“I thought you were going to school.”

“I am. He just doesn’t believe it yet. God, the man lives in the last century, I swear.”

“Boy, tell me about it.”

“Yeah, for sure.” She yelled something at her older sister, and he could hear her mother fussing in the background. A deep voice chimed in — her father venturing an opinion about the family going to hell.

“So,” he said, “what were you saying?”

“The walk. Where did you go?”

“Out. The park.”

“Wow!” A pause, more whispering. “Wow, Don, don’t you ever listen to the news?”

He looked back toward the kitchen, at his mother’s radio on the counter. “Nope. Don’t have time.”

“Well, you better,” she told him, her voice low. “Somebody was killed in there tonight. A couple of hours ago. My father just came in and—” She stopped. “Jesus, you were there then!”

He put a hand to his cheek and scratched lightly. “I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear anything.” The hand pressed a bit harder. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. My father isn’t talking. The radio said that this kid, from North, he was walking home from work, and he got it. They said … they guessed it was the Howler. Gross.”

“Yeah.”

Iron striking iron.

“Boy, you could be a witness or something.”

“But I didn’t see anything, Tracey! Jesus, don’t tell your father.”

“Okay, okay.” Her mother interrupted, and she snapped at her, groaning about how great it must be to be an only child. “Hey, Vet? What’s your favorite animal?”

He sniffed, combed his hair with one hand while he drew on his imagination to put images in the air before him. “I never thought about it, you know that? Gee, that’s funny but I never thought about it.” His bedroom came to mind and he sorted through the posters and prints and figurines he had. “Horses, I guess. I don’t know. Leopards and panthers.”

She laughed, and someone in the background laughingly mocked her. “I didn’t know you rode.”

“Panthers? You don’t ride panthers.”

“No, stupid, horses. I didn’t know you rode horses.”

“I don’t.”

There was a pause, and a man’s voice began grumbling.

“Then why horses?”

“I don’t know.” He saw the poster, the horse, and shrugged to the empty foyer. “They look … I don’t know, they look so big and powerful, y’know? Like they could run right over you and not even notice.”

“A horse?”

“Sure.”

“But they’re stupid.”

“I guess.”

“I mean, they’re—” The man’s voice was louder, and she covered the mouthpiece. He tried to make out the words but all he heard sounded like an argument. “Don, I have to go.”

“Okay, sure.”

“See you tomorrow?”

“Sure! Sure. I’ll—”

She hung up and he stood in the middle of the floor and stared at the front door until his father walked by on his way upstairs and reminded him gently that he started detention the next day.

Don nodded.

Norman, halfway up the stairs, looked down and frowned, started to say something, and changed his mind.

Don didn’t notice.

He was looking at the door, at the black horse imposed on it, with Tracey Quintero riding on its back.

Five minutes later Joyce pinched his rump as she walked by and he jumped, blushed at her laugh, and nodded when she asked him to check the lights and lock up. As he did, he thought about Tracey, and about the kid who had been killed. It could be that what he had heard was the murderer himself, thinking there had been a witness and coming to kill him. He felt cold, and he stayed to one side when he drew the draperies and double-checked to make sure the bolts on the front and back doors were turned over. Then he ran upstairs and into his room, considered telling his parents, and changed his mind. Mom would only get excited and demand they call the police; and Dad would tell them both there was nothing to worry about, the boy is all right, and since he didn’t actually see anything, there was no sense their getting involved.

And he would be right; there would be no sense at all.

A wash, then, and a careful scrutiny to be sure his face hadn’t broken out since that morning and that his eye wasn’t getting any worse. Then he closed his door and sat cross-legged on the bed. He was in nothing but his underwear, and he looked around him — at the panther, the bobcat, the elephants, rejecting each one silently until he came to the poster over the desk.

There, he thought; there’s what I need.

“Hey, look,” he said to the barely visible horse, “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t give you a name. I mean, I suppose I could, but all the good ones are already taken, and half of them sound like you’re in the movies or something anyway. Besides,” he added with a look to the panther lying in the jungle over his bed, “I don’t want to make the other guys mad.”

He grinned, and rolled his eyes, muffling a laugh in a palm.

“But you don’t need one anyway, right? You’re too tough for a stupid name. What you want to know is, how come you and not the black cat over there, right? Well, because you’re big, and you’re strong, and … just because. Besides, Tracey likes horses, and you’re a horse, and she’ll like you, and if she likes you she’ll like me and then we’ll all be pals, right? Right. And boy would you scare the shit outta that kid with the dumbass hat.”

He grinned again and rocked back, struck his head against the wall and didn’t feel a thing.

He didn’t think his other pals would mind, him singling out just one, just this once. They would understand. They always had, and they would this time.

“So listen up, old fella,” he said, looking to the ceiling where Tracey floated on a cloud, “you’re gonna have to teach me a few things, y’know, because I figure you’ve been around, if you know what I mean. Give me some hints and stuff, okay? And if you take care of me, I’ll take care of you. That’s what pals are for, right? Right.”

And he slipped off the bed, kissed the tips of his fingers, and placed his hand on the horse’s head.

“Pals,” he said. “Pals.”

“He’s talking to those animals again,” Norm complained while Joyce was brushing her teeth. She mumbled something, and he shook his head, pointing to his ear.

“I said,” she told him after spitting out the toothpaste, “kids talk to themselves all the time. It’s like thinking out loud. You should hear my classroom sometimes.”

“Yeah, but you teach flakes.”

“Budding artists are flakes?”

“Look in the mirror.”

She threw her hairbrush at him, launched herself after it, and they wrestled on the bed until he had her pinned under him.

“Norm?” she said, putting a hand on the hand that was covering her breast.

“What?”

The willow at the corner of the house scratched lightly at the window, and he could hear the cooing of the grey doves that nested in the eaves of the garage.

“It’s terrible, but did you ever wish we’d never had any kids? So when something like this comes up, I mean, we could walk away without worrying about tender psyches and trauma and warping the kid’s mind? Did you ever think about that, Norm?”

He tried to see her face in the dark. “Are we being honest?”

“Yes.”

“Then … yes. Yes, it has crossed my mind now and then.” But he didn’t tell her about the guilt he felt when it did.

“That doesn’t mean we don’t love him,” she said anxiously, begging for belief. “And god, I still miss my little Sam.”

“I know.”

“But it would be so much easier, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

The alarm clock buzzed softly. The wind blew over the roof. They could hear, faintly, two cars racing down the street.

“Don was in the park tonight.”

“So?”

“Didn’t you listen to the news after the fight?”

“Oh.” He shifted but didn’t release her. “Yeah. I guess I’d better have a talk with him. At least until they catch that guy.”

“Maybe he saw something.”

“No. If he did, he would have told us.” He kissed her right ear and made her squirm.

“Norm?”

Wearily: “Yes?”

“Don’s grades are going down. Not a lot, but it worries me. You should talk to him about that too. He spends too much time fixing up those animals of his, and making new ones.”

“I will,” he promised. “Maybe we should tell him to get rid of the beasts.”

“That would be cruel.”

“He wouldn’t waste time on them.” As she agreed, he nipped an earlobe.

“Norm?”

“Jesus, now what?”

“I want to work things out, really I do.”

“Good,” he said, rolling her breast beneath his palm.

“No, I mean it, Norman. I really do want to work at it.”

“So do I,” he said, almost believing. His head shifted to the hollow of her shoulder. “So do I, love.”

“Norm, it’s late,” she whispered, her eyes half closed, “and you know how tired you get lately after this. Besides, I have a committee meeting first thing tomorrow. We have to decide on the fireworks.”

“Good for you. Make them loud as hell.”

“Norman!”

“Joyce,” he said, “if you really want to work things out, you’d better shut up.”