Dogs (6 page)

Sunday afternoon, I do my weekly happy call with Grandma and Grandpa, but by Monday morning I'm feeling good for real. Jacky, or whatever that ghost thing was, hasn't shown up again, so he was probably just in my head on account of my fever. At least I hope so.

Outside, there's a light frost. I stomp my feet to keep warm while I wait for the bus and watch the farmer across the road harvesting his corn. I can't wait for Mr. Sinclair to do the same. Once the fields are cleared, I can stop imagining the cornstalks as a hiding place for night stalkers, bullies, and dogs.

The bus arrives. I take a deep breath and get on, prepared for Cody's gang to start barking. Instead they talk about me so loudly that I can hear them from the front of the bus.

“Look who's back. Dog Food,” Cody's buddy Dave says. “Looks like Dog Food didn't get eaten after all.”
Ha-ha, very funny.

“Dog Food?” Cody grins. “He's more like Chicken Feed.”
Brack-brack
chicken sounds come from his crew.

“I was sick,” I call back.

“Aww. Cammy was sick.”

I want to sit far away from them, but that'd only prove I'm a coward. Besides, the kids on the aisle saving the window seats want me away from them like I wanted away from Benjie.

The gang clucks me to my seat, where I close my eyes and wait for it to be Benjie's turn. When he slumps beside me, he asks where I was Friday. I tell him and he blinks. “Hey, don't breathe on me. I don't want to catch your germs.”

Worry
about
your
own
breath. It could kill the whole school
.

As the bus pulls into the parking lot, I get up the nerve to say, “Benjie, something's bothering me. My first day on the bus, you asked if my place was haunted. Why? Was there a murder there?”

“No.” He laughs. “I asked on account of the dogs.”

“What dogs?”

“You know—
the
dogs
. It's why Cody barks at you.”

“What are you talking about?”

Benjie blinks. “Years ago, the farmer at your place got killed by his dogs.”

“Seriously?”

Benjie grins. “Cool, huh? Ripped apart and eaten! Ask anyone. The story's famous around here.”

The door opens. Cody's gang pushes up the aisle. Benjie hunkers in till they're past us.

“They say when the wind's up, you can hear them,” he says as we grab our backpacks and follow everyone out. “Some parents tell their kids if they're bad, the dogs will get them. But everybody knows that if you hear something, it's just coyotes.”

I relax. “So you asked because of the dogs, not because of a murder.”

“Are you kidding? Nobody gets murdered around here. We're too boring.” He looks over at Cody's gang on the side of the road. “Don't say that to Cody though.”

“Don't say what? That the town is boring?”

“No, that there wasn't a murder on your farm.”

“Why not?”

“Just don't.”

Cody looks our way. Benjie takes off.

I wish Benjie hadn't added that last part. Why does Cody think there was a murder? How can I talk to him about it without him going mental on me?

I think about that all day. At dinner I hardly hear anything Mom says except, “It's time for you to head over to Mr. Sinclair's.”

I put on my lined jacket.

“Where are your gloves? And your hat?”

“Mom.”

“We're nearing the end of October. It's cold and you've been sick.”

“I'll hardly be out that late.”

“Cameron, it's already getting dark. Which reminds me—give me a call when you're done, and I'll drive over to pick you up.”

“What? I'll just be one farm over.”

“There are no streetlights. It'll be hard to see.”

“Mom, stop!”

Mom sighs. “Fine. At least take this flashlight.” She fishes it from the drawer, and I slide it into my jacket pocket. “And don't forget to walk on the left side of the road, facing traffic.”

“Yeah, like I'm too stupid to know that.” Actually I would've forgotten.

By the time I head out, Mom has me bundled up like I'm on an Arctic expedition. I take off my hat and gloves as soon as I'm down the lane, but it really
is
cold. I put them back on again and walk fast to keep from freezing. The neighbor on the other side has harvested half his field. It's like it's had a buzz cut; you can see forever. I try to forget what could be hiding in Sinclair's fields to my right and speed up even more.

Mr. Sinclair's place is nicer than ours. The potholes in his lane are filled with gravel, and the house is yellow brick instead of tar paper. There's something strange though. All the curtains are closed and I don't see any lights, except for a lamp on the porch and one out at the barn.

I head up the stone walkway to the front door. How will I get Mr. Sinclair to talk about Jacky and his family? How do I ask if Jacky got murdered?

I bang the heavy brass knocker three times. Silence.

Remember
Benjie's story about Sinclair's meat grinder and ending up in a meat pie?

Don't be stupid. Mom knows where I am. Sinclair can't do anything to me without getting caught.

Unless
he
kills
Mom
right
after.

Yeah, like that's going to happen, except in a movie. I bang the door again. Nothing.

The only light left in the sky is deep purple to the west. I take out my flashlight and go around to the back of the house, pressing my face against the windows and shooting the beam through the cracks between the curtains. Inside is a clutter of sofas and knickknacks.

So where's Mr. Sinclair? He knows I'm coming.

What
if
he
had
a
heart
attack? What if he's dead in there?

I knock hard on the back door. “Mr. Sinclair?”

Maybe
he's not dead. Maybe he's dying.

I pull out my phone to call Mom, then remember the lamp by the barn. Why do I scare myself? He's probably finishing up some chores.

I run into the barn. It's different than ours. The floor is concrete instead of dirt and there aren't any cow stalls. I see a light coming from a room at the back and hear a throbbing hum that sounds like an engine.

“Mr. Sinclair?”

No answer. Maybe he didn't hear me. I go to the room. Mr. Sinclair's not here—but oh my God. On the right are a bunch of refrigeration units. On the left, a table runs along a wall of knives, cleavers, mallets, and saws. Ahead of me, a large, cast-iron laundry tub is filling with chewed-up flesh squeezed out of a large motorized grinder.

I gotta get out of here. I whirl round. Mr. Sinclair's blocking my way.

He steps toward me. “I wondered how long it'd take you to get here.”

“Mr. Sinclair. I…I…”

“Spit it out.”

I back up into the room. “My mother knows I'm here.”

“Of course she does. She phoned me last night. Got tired of waiting for you at the house, thought I'd finish grinding some beef.” He turns abruptly and walks over to a refrigerator, takes out a square plastic pail, and brings it to the tub. Then he grabs a flat metal scoop from the table and begins to shovel the meat into the pail.

I breathe a little easier. “I didn't see you when I arrived.”

“That makes two of us. I was next door in the drying room.” I must look pretty clueless because he adds, “It's where I hang the meat.”

“Oh. Right.”

He snorts. “You one of them kids who think your burger just shows up in the grocery store? Think your eggs grow on trees?”

“No, sir.”

“Bet you never seen a grinder like this.”

“You're right.”

Mr. Sinclair wipes a slick of hair off his forehead with the back of his arm. “It's old, that's for sure. My father bought it back in the fifties. Used to grind things for the fellow who lived over at your place—McTavish. Frank McTavish.”

Jacky's father. My heart races. “What sort of things did he grind?”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

I hope he's joking.

Mr. Sinclair scoops the last of the burger meat into the pail. “When I was a boy, food was local, especially in the country. Each farm'd have a few crops, a henhouse, maybe some hogs or dairy. My father butchered the odd cow for the neighbors in exchange for meat. He used the leftovers to make sausages.”

He seals the pail and puts it in the fridge. “Mixed farming—gone the way of the dodo. But a few folks still like to know what they're eating. So what the heck? In between planting and harvesting, what else do I have to do but watch the corn grow and worry 'bout the weather?”

Mr. Sinclair glances in my direction. I shrug helpfully like I don't know what else he could be doing either. “Come up to the house,” he says. “I pulled out an old photo album with some pictures you might want to see. You were asking about the boy.”

“You remembered.”

“Why wouldn't I? You think I lost my marbles?”

“No, sir.”

“I hope you're right.” He shoots me a look. “That was a joke. You can laugh.”

“Yes, sir.” I smile like I think it was funny.

He shakes his head and we go to the house. It's full of dust, plus that smell that old people get. There's a flypaper strip over the kitchen table that looks like it's been there since last spring.

Mr. Sinclair sits beside me and opens the album. He clicks his tongue as he flips through until he finds the page he's looking for. He taps a picture. “First things first. See anything you recognize?”

“Wow. Our farmhouse in the old days.” When it wasn't so rundown. There's a trellis of morning glories on either side of the kitchen window, and the grass has been cut. Three adults sit around a picnic table staring at the camera. I spot Jacky's parents from their wedding picture; neither of them is smiling.

“That's McTavish, in the straw hat, the fellow I told you about,” Mr. Sinclair says. “And that's his wife in the polka dots.”

I point at the third person in the picture, a chubby woman holding a baby. “Who's that?”

“My mother.”

“Is that you she's holding?”

“Well, it isn't the pope.”

It's strange seeing grown-ups as babies. I like to imagine them being born with their adult heads, but with Mr. Sinclair that's just
too
weird.

“And your father?” I ask. “Is he the one taking the picture?”

“You're a regular Sherlock Holmes.”

I blush. “So your parents were friends of the McTavishes?”

“My father was best man at their wedding, if that's what you're asking. I expect it was on account of they were neighbors and McTavish didn't have anyone else to ask. He was a strange bird. My mother never liked him.”

Jacky's parents stare at me from the snapshot. What are they thinking? I flash on Mom and Dad. They had friends who went to their wedding too, friends who came for dinner and took their pictures. Did their friends know about their fights? Did they do or say anything? What about the Sinclairs? Did they know the McTavishes had the kind of problems that made Jacky draw his pictures?

I flash on something else. Cody thinks there was a murder. I thought Jacky got killed, but what if it was his mother? Jacky says she “went away,” but what mother runs off without her kid?

“You're pretty quiet all of a sudden,” Mr. Sinclair says. “What's on your mind?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering…where's Jacky?”

“Jacky?”

“Wasn't that the name of their son?”

“You do your homework.” Mr. Sinclair sits back in his chair. “What else do you know?”

My forehead tingles. What if his family's mixed up in the murder? I thought he agreed to see me to tell me stuff. What if he agreed so he could find out how much I know?

“Not much,” I say. “Just his name.”

“You sure?”

“Honest.”

Mr. Sinclair tilts his head. He doesn't believe me. “Jacky was a year younger than me. He'd have been born a year after this shot was taken.”

He flips to a page farther back. The pictures used to be in color, but now they're bleached out. I see a snapshot of two boys playing. They look like ghosts on a pale yellow background. One of them has a Davy Crockett cap. Jacky. Is that the face I saw when I closed my eyes?

I point at the kid, barely able to breathe. “That's him?”

“What makes you say that?”

“The raccoon-skin cap.”

“What makes you think Jacky had a raccoon-skin cap?”

“I don't know. Just guessing.”

“Well, guess again,” Mr. Sinclair says. “
I'm
the one with the cap. When I was really little, every boy wanted to be Crockett, but Frank McTavish didn't have time for things like that. Jacky must've been the only kid without one.”

What? If Jacky didn't have a cap, then what I'd imagined was all in my mind. There isn't a ghost after all.

“Happy ending though,” Mr. Sinclair continues. “By the time I was twelve or so, the fad was dying out, so I gave my cap to Jacky. He wore it every day. Why, you'd think he'd died and gone to heaven.”

“You played with him a lot then?”

“Some. In those days, you didn't have much choice who you played with. It was mostly kids a couple of farms up or down. There wasn't an Internet and only one phone, a landline, for special occasions.” He flips through more pages. “See this? Each winter my father made a skating rink in the yard. Jacky and me, we'd pass a puck back and forth. Jacky slid on his boots, no skates. In summer we'd toss a baseball or climb hay in his loft. He was a strange kid. I seem to recall he liked to draw.”

“What happened to him?” I ask, all innocent.

“Don't know. His mother ran off, took him with her. Hadn't thought about him much till you asked the other day. Don't have time for memories, too busy making them… That's another joke.”

“Sorry.” I'm thinking too hard to smile. “What happened to Mr. McTavish?”

“Oh, that was a terrible thing.” Mr. Sinclair shakes his head. “Without his wife and boy, McTavish went squirrelier than he already was. Bought a dozen guard dogs. Wild things. My father told me never to go near the place.”

He turns the page and taps a picture of the field between his farmhouse and ours. A pack of dogs is running on the bare ground. “Within a few months, those dogs went crazy. Tore him to shreds.”

I stare at the dogs. “When did it happen?”

Mr. Sinclair shrugs. “Who knows? Nobody saw it.”

“I mean the date.” With the date, I can go to the
Weekly
Bugle
. I can look up Mr. McTavish's obituary and see if there were suspicions about a murder in the months before he died.

“The date?” Mr. Sinclair shoots me a sly smile. “If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to figure out my age. Let's just say early nineteen sixties.” He switches the subject to barn raisings, fall fairs, and strawberry socials. He tells me about playing in the hayloft, a girl who fell down an abandoned well, and a man who went to milk his cows in a whiteout and froze to death.

I nod, but I'm hardly listening. All I can think about is Jacky. Jacky, his father, and the dogs.