Salvation City (18 page)

“I have here a newspaper article.”

Cole had known Boots was going to bring up the dog.

He never knew exactly where they’d found it. There were the runaways, many of whom you never saw again, and there were the kids who sneaked in and out whenever they felt like it and who sometimes stayed out overnight or even longer—and what were you going to do about it, kick them out for good? They came back with loot like cigarettes and vodka and weed, and bursting with stories about what they’d been up to—usually, if true, even worse than what they did at “home.”

They could have found the dog anywhere. The pandemic had orphaned pets, too, and you couldn’t go far in any direction without seeing strays. Stray dogs formed packs, some harmless but others a danger to anyone they happened to scent. Dogs didn’t get the flu, but neglect or violence had been killing them and other animals off by the score, their unburied remains yet another danger.

Kid Hammer and Dude Snake, brothers two years apart—with Dude Snake, though the younger, being the bigger and meaner—claimed to have hunted and killed the dog, but Cole didn’t believe them. Not that he didn’t think they were capable of this, but the way the muzzle was pinched said the dog had been dead a while.

The dog was dead, but they tortured it anyway.

“Then they cut off its head.”

A female. From the look of her—the thick skull and boxy jaw—Cole thought at least part pit bull. He’d been surprised there wasn’t more blood.

“They stuck the head on a broomstick.”

“Like with the pig in
Lord of the Flies
?”

“Yeah.”

He had never read
Lord of the Flies
, though his father had kept pushing it on him. When it was assigned in class, he had SparkNoted it, even though this was against the honor code (which, of course, no one took a molecule seriously), so he knew the story. His father kept saying it was the kind of book boys Cole’s age really liked, and Cole did know kids who said it was off the hook, but the notes made it sound boring. In any case, why would he want to read a whole book about bullies?

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. They kinda marched around with it. They took turns holding the broomstick and chasing other kids with it.”

After a day or so the lips had shrunk away from the teeth, giving the head a vicious mad-dog grin, like it was going to bite you and laugh about it at the same time. Another day or so and it didn’t even look like a dog anymore but more like some kind of wild beast or mutant.

“They propped it up in this closet, and they played this game where they’d catch kids and lock them up alone in the dark with it.”

Little kids. They would scream and pound on the inside of the door. Some of them pissed or shit themselves, or threw up. A boy named Arnie, who’d lost most of his hearing after having the flu, did all three before passing out.

“I understand one time it was you who got locked in with the monster?”

However fond he was of Boots, at that moment Cole wanted to punch him.
Monster!
If only he’d never told anyone that stupid story.

“Yeah, but it was nothing. It’s not like I was scared.” (Like he really thought a dead dog could hurt him.) “They were just trying to show me because of something I said. They said I dissed them.”

“Why? What did you say?”

“That I didn’t believe they killed the dog.”

It still bothered him. The only person to whom he could remember saying he didn’t believe Kid Hammer and Dude Snake had killed the dog was Mama Ho. But she wouldn’t have gone and repeated it, would she? He couldn’t believe she’d be that clueless. On the other hand, he could think of plenty of instances of an adult getting a kid in trouble just by being uncool. Like the girl in his class who wrote a poem about touching her girlfriend between the legs (well, more than just touching), and whose teacher showed it to both girls’ parents. Even Cole’s mother said that was wrong.

It was possible someone else had overheard him. He remembered a kid named Kelvin hanging around that day, weak little nerd, no shoulders, no chin, chief bully target and one of the first to be locked in with Jaw Head. Possibly really pissed at Cole for not lifting a finger to help him.

They treated Cole the same as they treated Kelvin or Arnie or any other little kid, shoving and bitch-slapping him as they pushed him inside, barking and snarling like dogs themselves as they trapped him by sitting with their backs against the door. They knew he wasn’t scared, but they weren’t trying to scare him; they were trying to do to him what they did to other kids when they stripped them and forced them to march around naked.

You would have sworn Jaw Head was singing to itself, but it was the flies. A black velvet mask of flies. Maggots frothing in the eye sockets. Every inhale torture. Cole breathed through his mouth, cupping his hand over it so he wouldn’t inhale a fly. That was the worst of it, the flies landing on him, the same flies that had touched the putrid head settling on his skin, his face, even on his lips before he covered them. He’d been in a rage then, a rage that had stayed with him for days, maybe longer, but that rage was gone now. He was less angry at what those boys had done to him than at being reminded again how far he was from being a hero.

By the time the reporter came, Jaw Head had long since been seized and tossed into the trash like a worm-eaten cabbage, but no one had forgotten it. Not the worst Here Be Hope story by far, but one a lot of kids would rather tell than any other. The reporter heard it many times, and though it wasn’t the only story she wrote about in her article, it was the one that got into the headline.

Not that Cole was going to go into all this on the radio. According to a large clock on a wall outside the booth, fifteen minutes were almost over. Which would have been a vast relief if it hadn’t meant that now Boots was going to invite people to call in. Always when Pastor Wyatt was on the show there were plenty of callers. Cole was thinking he’d never make it to the end when he saw Boots lean sharply toward him, a worried look further warping his crooked features.

Boots was dressed as usual: Western shirt, bolo tie, Wrangler jeans, rodeo belt buckle, ostrich boots. Cole had often seen him dressed like this, had seen him in this very outfit before. But at this particular moment he looked different. He looked very strange. Cole knew, of course, it was Boots, “Grandpa” Boots, sitting there. But somehow at the same time sitting there was a person Cole didn’t know at all, and suddenly he was afraid. Who was this weird old dude? What did he want? What were they doing there in that tiny room, into which some kind of gas was now being released?

Cole’s heart bulged as if he were trying to lift something too heavy for him. Then a dark, smothering cloud pressed down on him. The headphones hurt like a vise. Tiny bright lights flashed at the corners of his eyes, and a force like an undertow dragged him by the ankles off his chair.

When he opened his eyes again he was outside the booth. He was on his back on the cold floor. Someone was singing. A chorus; a hymn.
I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free
. Cole smelled vomit, but fought the idea that it could be his.

PW and Tracy were there. They knelt on either side of him. Their faces were all tender care, but they might as well have been holding daggers at his throat. For an instant Cole saw nothing except a pulsing black rectangle with a fiery border.

“Let me go, get the fuck away from me!” Swinging fists, thrashing feet. Grazing PW’s chin, accidentally kneeing Tracy’s chest. He watched her face turn white before crumpling. Then she was gone, though not far—he could hear her trying to catch her breath as Boots took her place, helping PW to restrain him.

“Where’s my mother? What did you do to my parents? I want to see them. You can’t keep me here!”

Moments later, he lay still. He lay curled on his side, his face hidden in the crook of his arm. His hair and his shirt were wet with perspiration. He felt like a rag someone had wrung out and flung down. His stomach felt wrung out, too. He had no idea what could have happened to him. He knew only that he had disgraced himself.

Tracy was there, gently massaging his back. He might as well have kicked her on purpose for all the guilt he was feeling. And he doubted anyone had ever said fuck to her face before. But when he turned he saw no trace of anger in her expression, and later, when he tried to apologize, she hugged him and said, “It’d take a lot more than that to rattle this lady’s cage.” But as PW and Beanie were helping him to the car, Cole caught the parting look she shot Boots, a look that hissed
I told you so!

 

 

 

Warm bed, warm milk, the doctor’s deep warm voice. No, Cole wasn’t losing his mind again. Overexcitement. Nerves. Stress caused by traumatic memories. All that—a lot!—but nothing a day’s rest wouldn’t cure. And, of course, prayer. “Still the best medicine.”

(Instantly Cole’s thoughts flew to pretty, cat-faced Dr. Ming, his pediatrician in Chicago, who finished every exam by tickling his ribs and reminding him that
laughter
was the best medicine.)

Left alone, Cole lay in bed feeling very tired but not at all sleepy. It was the middle of the afternoon, and though the blinds were closed, bright sunlight leaked around them. He felt stifled under his covers, but as soon as he threw them off he was freezing. He turned round and round, like a rotisserie chicken, unable to get comfortable. His mind was racing. He thought back to a day when Pastor Wyatt had come to see him at the orphanage. Not the first time—not the rainy gray Saturday on which they had first met—but a later visit. They were sitting and talking in one of the common areas when PW dropped the word
adoption
—and even though Cole was already fond of PW and felt perfectly safe with him, a rush of fear had made him jump up and run away. It was the same kind of fear he had experienced years earlier, when he was around five or six and obsessed with the idea that if his mother let go of his hand when they were out in public, someone might try to snatch him.

Afterward he had been embarrassed, and he had felt bad for PW, whose feelings Cole was sure he’d hurt and whom he guessed he’d never see again. But in fact PW came again the very next day, and the first thing he said to Cole was, “We’ve got to get one thing straight. There can’t ever be any adoption without your consent.”

“What a place,” said PW, shaking his head.

It was three weeks later, and this time PW had come to Here Be Hope to take Cole away with him.

“Looks like they can’t find your stuff.”

He was referring to Cole’s few clothes and other belongings, which had been packed into a large cardboard box by one of the staff. That morning at Here Be Hope had been particularly chaotic; several children besides Cole were leaving for new homes the same day. PW thought maybe Cole’s box had been taken by someone else by mistake.

“In which case, they should return it. Anyway, we’re not going to sit around all day while they try to find it.”

There were some papers in the box, including Cole’s birth certificate and his medical records, but Cole barely gave those a thought. He was far too upset about his drawings, and about another item, one he never mentioned to PW or to anyone else and which he tried to forget once it appeared that the box was probably missing for good. Something he’d managed to bring with him from the house in Little Leap and hold on to throughout his long illness. It had gone with him, washed and folded and tucked into a pocket, when it was time for him to leave the hospital and move to Here Be Hope. He had promised himself he would never lose it, but now it was gone: his mother’s blue bandanna.

COLE WAS EMBARRASSED by all the get-well calls and messages. He was embarrassed by all the prayers. He became flustered when Mason dropped by the house and greeted him with a high five. “You did good, bruh.”

Mason shrugged off Cole’s fear of having ruined the program. “What? We heard a little commotion, then silence for a bit, then ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow.’ No biggie! Nothing for you to feel bad about. Besides, dude, it was yesterday.”

An echo of what both Boots and PW had already assured Cole, who nevertheless remained doubtful. You make a public spectacle of yourself, life can’t just go on like before, can it? True, no one laughed openly at him. But he didn’t think he was imagining it when, the next time he was at church, a few people avoided looking him in the eye.

Fortunately, there was something new for everyone to focus on: Starlyn’s birthday party. Actually, there were going to be two parties. One was the Saturday afternoon surprise party her aunt would be throwing in Salvation City. The other would take place in Louisville the Friday evening of the week before, a much bigger and more grown-up affair in the banquet room of a hotel: a dance party. Cole wished he could be at that party, too, mostly because he wanted to see Starlyn in the fancy new dress he’d heard her tell Tracy all about—specifically, to see how any dress that was both strapless and backless could stay on. And he was curious to see her date, her boyfriend, about whom there’d been talk as well.