Tender as Hellfire (7 page)

“It can sleep out here,” I answered.

“What about shots and rabies and all that?”

“We got that taken care of,” French said.

“I dunno …”

“Thanks, Mom!” I gave her a good hug around her waist and stared down at that big white dog. It laid still, wrapped in the blue blanket, burying its face back under the sofa cushions. I glanced up at French and nodded. He was smiling nervously, running his hand along the dog’s side, patting it gently. I guess right then I started to wonder how much longer he’d stick around before he finally had enough of us all—between my mother, who was prone to fits of crying in the middle of the night, and me and my brother running wild all around the goddamn trailer park. I stared at his long white face and nodded to myself. Sure, one morning we’d wake up and French would be gone, maybe the big black Impala would still be on the blocks out front, maybe some of his clothes would still be in my mother’s closet, but like all the men in my mother’s life, he would disappear without a right word or reason. Maybe my mother would pack up all of his things in a brown cardboard box and send it off to him, maybe he’d come by the trailer to pick it up when no one was around, but eventually he’d be gone and less than a blurry photo in my own mind. I thought I could be decent to him until then, because I knew it wouldn’t be very long.

The big dog rolled on its other side, yelping a little.

“Somebody should stay out here with it tonight,” French offered, rubbing its soft fur with his fingers. I nodded, stroking its white belly.

“Well, you’ve got school tomorrow, pal,” my mother said with a frown in my direction.

“I’ll do it, I guess,” French mumbled.

“Did you guys already come up with a name for it?” my mother asked.

“Shilo,” French said with a nod.

“Shilo? What kind of name is that?” She smiled, rubbing its side. “What about Spot or Pluto or something nice like that?”

“No, Shilo’s good,” I said, nodding too.

“All right then, I better pick up some dog food on the way home from work,” my mother said. She rubbed the dog’s sore white belly. “Good grief. Looks like it’s some kind of monster.”

After that, the dumb dog became the biggest baby I’d ever seen. My mother didn’t seem to pay too much attention to it during the first few weeks; but she ended up being the one who fed it every day and gave it its medicine. After a while, it seemed like the dog had always been there, like it was just one other dirty mouth to feed. The dog would just lie around with its ugly head drooling in your lap as you watched TV, or it would beg for scraps at the table, staring at you with the poorest single black eye you’d ever seen. Once all its wounds healed, its empty eye was a hard gray-and-black cavern that had to be sealed up with stitches. Its one leg that had lost a paw became hard and black too, a thick bumpy wound that ended just below its joint. Its neck healed fine, but left three or four huge pink scars. That dog would hop around on its three legs and rub its muzzle against your thigh or leap up and lick your face or come and lay right on top of you.

French was the worst for babying it; the two of them would just sit on the couch for hours. French would let the animal take licks from his beer can and rub its ugly one-eyed face in front of the TV. Of course, if the dog knocked over one of my mother’s flowerpots or ate a whole plate of fried chicken, French would holler, “Dough, take care of your dog here.” I guess Pill and that dog never much got along. Maybe it had been like the whole world had let him down again when Shilo lost that fight. Once, I saw my brother give that dog a kick, and because of its missing paw, it rolled right onto its side, but that’s all it did, just laid there like it had wanted to rest right there in that exact spot in the first place. Me, I tried like hell to take care of that miserable animal, but it had been an old dog to begin with and wouldn’t run or fetch or roll over or do any dog trick you could think of except sic, which didn’t do much good, because that damn dog couldn’t move after
anything
fast enough to catch it. So the dog would end up clamping its teeth down on your pant leg or shirttail and would refuse to let go until it got tired of playing or tore a hole in your clothes or until you finally gave in and took off your shirt and left it your clothes to chew on. It was a good dog, but for a ten-year-old, not much fun to play with. I guess I got used to taking it out for a walk twice a day in the field behind the trailer park so it could do its business. I’d watch it hop on home and return to its couch to watch whatever was on television, sitting there beside the rest of us.

At night it would crowd me in my own bed. I would never admit it, but I was happy when it did that. Its awful breath would be warm against my face. Its white muzzle would be buried beneath the blankets beside my neck, snoring loudly. I would lie there and stare up at the strange shapes of the wood grain of the top bunk above my head, seeing in the dark rounded lines only skulls and Devil faces and knives, images from slasher movies my brother had forced me to watch, afraid to admit I was scared of the dark. I would lie there, wishing Pill had said goodnight to me or that there was a nightlight of some kind. The sounds of the trailer would echo like fangs in the darkness. I would lie there, secretly happy that Shilo was the last thing I would see before I fell asleep. The footsteps of the slashers suddenly fell away. I would stop worrying that a ghost was going to come in and cut my throat.

the devil in his place

Almost every day for a week, Lottie, that loony girl, followed me home from school. I couldn’t understand why she thought we were friends again. I would glance over my shoulder and try to ignore her, but she’d always be behind me, singing to herself, skipping along the culvert. She would try to talk to me, hurrying to catch, up, talking all kinds of nonsense, like how her old man had cut his thumb off and ran two miles to get it sewn back on. I did not like her and I tried to make that clear.

One Wednesday afternoon after school, I was watching cartoons on TV, enjoying having the sofa to myself, when I heard a knock at the screen door, and there she was, waving at me. What she asked me just then made about as much sense as anything else she ever said: “Do you wanna go see the hanging ghost?”

“What?” I muttered, not stepping too close to the door. Like always, her hair was twisted up in four or five pigtails, pulling her pale skin taut around her eyebrows. She had on a dirty gray dress and big brown boots that must have belonged to her older brother.

“Do you wanna go to the Furnhams’ farm? It’s not too far a walk from here.” She was picking something from her tiny ear and staring back at me with her small, brownish-gray eyes.

“What the hell are doing at my house?” I said quietly so my mother in the kitchen couldn’t hear.

Lottie shrugged her shoulders, still picking at her ear. “They got a dead horse out there. That’s where Mr. Furnham hung himself. Right out in the barn.”

I thought for sure this girl, Lottie, was nuts. Shilo sniffed around the door, rubbing its pink nose against the screen.
Kill
, I wanted to say.
Sic
. But I didn’t. I just stared at her round face, looking at the way her eyes never remained still in her head.

“Well, do ya?” she asked again.

I stepped back from the screen, itching my eyes like they hurt. A week before, this girl had thrown stones at me, and now she wanted me to go to some barn with her. I didn’t know what to say that would clue her in to how I did not want anything to do with her.

“There really are ghosts out there,” she whispered.

I shook my head and decided to lie.

“I gotta eat soon,” I mumbled. It was only 4:30 in the afternoon. My mother was in the kitchen defrosting a leg of lamb that wouldn’t be ready for another few hours. “Sorry.” I tried to smile but Lottie poked her head right against the screen. Her little round nose had a gray ring of sweat underneath it. She smelled like a boy. My dumb dog sniffed the girl through the door and whined for her attention.

“Is that yours?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding.

“That’s a pretty dog.” Lottie smiled, rubbing her hand against the screen so my big dumb dog would lick her palm. “Sure is friendly.”

“Sure, sure, whatever.”

“So you’re eatin’ right now?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I lied again, trying to back away from the door. “I just asked my mom. Sorry.”

“Oh.” Her eyes became small and sad. She moved away from the door as I breathed a breath of relief.

Of course, just then my mother’s voice rose like song from the other room: “You have plenty of time to go out, Dough. Just be back by 6, okay?”

“But Mom, I—”

“No, no, you need to get out of this house and get some exercise. You don’t wanna end up like Joe Landon, do you?”

Poor Joe Landon, one of our old neighbors back in Duluth, was infamous for never leaving his house. He was a couple of years older then me and my brother, a teenager, I guess. He had a huge white freckled face and a short red crew cut that showed his tiny, pointed ears. There were at least a million neighborhood kids on our block who played stickball or catch-one-catch-all, but this kid, Joe Landon, just stayed inside and ate and slept in front of the TV until he was nearly three hundred pounds and all pasty and white and his parents had to sell their house to put him in some special clinic somewhere in Minneapolis. Joe Landon was someone my mother was always warning me about.

“But Mom, I’ve got homework and—”

“You’ve got all night to do it. Stop being rude and go out and play.”

I gritted my teeth, feeling humiliated.

“There really is a ghost out there,” Lottie repeated with a smile, pressing against the screen door. I shook my head and pulled my dirty baseball hat down over my eyes. This was going to be worse than going to Sunday school. But I made a plan right there. Stay with her a little while, maybe walk down the long road toward all the farms, then ditch her and run home and make it back to the trailer to doze in front of the TV.

“You gonna come out then?” Lottie grinned.

“Yeah, yeah, hold on,” I grunted. I stole one of my brother’s shirts and checked to see if there were a couple crumpled-up cigrettes stashed inside one of the pockets. There were. Three lonely squares. Enough for sure. I unlocked the screen and stepped outside. My dumb dog lapped at the door behind me. I hopped down the gray cement steps and looked around. Most of the trailer park was empty. Most everyone was still at work. There were some little kids running around half-naked, wearing only their diapers, chasing each other in front of a trailer down by the end of the cul-de-sac. There was a skinny mother in a long blue dress sitting on her front porch, combing out her long yellow hair, watching her little naked babies playing in the dirt. The sun was out. The sky was pretty and blue and it was almost as hot as summer. I tightened my baseball cap right down around my eyes again. Lottie was just standing there, staring at me. She was leaning beside the ugliest girl’s bicycle, too small for her for sure, with pink streamers hanging from the handlebars and silver noisemakers in the spokes.

“That your bike?” I asked.

“Yeah. It used to be my sister’s. She’s too old to ride now. You can try it if you want.”

“No, that’s okay, I’ll walk.”

“You sure? It’s a good bike.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“Haw. Okay, then.” Lottie shrugged her shoulders and took a seat on her pink bike and began pedaling around me in wide circles as we started down the road toward the Furnhams’ barn.

“You like living in a trailer park?” she asked, nearly cutting me off as she finished a big figure-eight.

“No.”

“How come?”

“Because it’s stupid.”

“Why?”

“Because it is, okay?”

“Okay.”

She circled around me again on her crappy pink bike. Her awkward knees hung out from under her dress as she pedaled. The lousy noisemakers in the spokes sparkled as she rode. “Do you like your name?” she asked.

I stopped walking and watched her wheel around. “Hey, listen, I ain’t gonna walk with you if you keep asking stupid questions.” I accentuated that with a good solid spit, then started walking again. I fumbled through my brother’s shirt pocket and put a cigarette in my mouth, then took out a book of matches from my own pants and lit the square, coughing a little as I inhaled.

“How come you smoke?” Lottie asked, swerving past me.

“What?”

“How come you smoke?” she repeated.

“Because I do. Jesus,” I grunted.

“You do it ’cause you think it’s cool.” She smiled, shaking her head. “You do it ’cause you think it makes you look older.”

“Shut the hell up for a minute, will ya?” I inhaled and coughed again.

“Haw! You don’t even know how to do it right.” She giggled, shaking her pigtails behind her round head.

“Forget it!” I shouted, and stopped walking. “I’m going home.”

“No, no, don’t go home,” she pleaded. She stopped her bike right in front of me. “I won’t ask any more questions, honest. Okay? I promise.”

“How ’bout you don’t speak at all?” I said, staring at her lousy face. She smiled and began pedaling again. I started walking.

“Do you like Miss Nelson?” she asked. Miss Nelson. Oh, Miss Nelson. Of course I liked Miss Nelson. I loved Miss Nelson. But we had gotten off on the wrong foot and there was no going back now.

“No, I don’t like Miss Nelson,” I said with a frown.

“Oh, I thought you liked her. I thought you wanted to marry her.”

“You’re crazy.” I tried to smile, offering a phony chuckle. “You’re nuts, that’s what you are.”

“I thought you wanted to marry her and run away with her.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you talk a lot?”

She stopped and shrugged her shoulders. “No.”

I shook my head and kept walking, taking another drag on my cigarette.

“Do you like any girls in class?” she asked.

“What?”

“Do you like Mary Beth Clishim?” she said with a smile, winking at me a little.

“What?” I stared at her round face and gray eyes. “No, I don’t like her.”

“All the boys do.” Her lips curled into a smirk.

“Well, I don’t.”

“Do you like Laurie Avers?”

“No.” I swatted at a fly that buzzed past my head.

“What about Jill?”

“Jill who?”

“Jill Montefort. Do you like her?”

“No, already. Jesus, you don’t ever shut up, do you?”

“What about Miss Nelson? You like her, don’t you? You can tell me.”

“You’re giving me a goddamn headache.”

“Well, you have to like somebody.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Everyone likes somebody.”

“No, not me. I don’t like anybody. I don’t like anybody anywhere.” I flicked the dying cigarette to the side of the road.

“Haw. What about your brother? You like him?” This girl was trying to be real funny.

“What, are you queer? Course I don’t like my brother.”

“Haw. What about Texas? Do you like Texas?”

“God, you’re loony.”

“Sure, sure.” She smiled, pedaling beside me. Her eyes were all bright and shiny, then she said it. “Do you like … me?”

I shrugged my shoulders, staring at my feet as I walked. “I like you about as much as that rock over there.” I pointed to a round gray stone covered in green moss and grass.

“Is that a lot?” she asked with a frown.

“You figure it out.”

“Oh, you don’t have to be shy with me. My sister told me all about what boys think.”

“How’s that?”

She kept tilting her head back and forth like she was singing a song to herself as she spoke. “My sister told me that when a boy acts like he doesn’t like you, it means he really does.”

“She told you that?”

Lottie nodded proudly, giving me another gruesome wink. “Well, your sister is wrong. I don’t like you because I don’t like you.”

“Haw!” She smirked again and shook her head. “Are you a virgin?”

“Jesus!” I shouted, shaking my head. “What in the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Are you?”

“Why the hell would I tell you about any of that stuff?”

This girl was truly nuts. She was giggling like crazy now, shaking her head and smiling to herself. “Did you ever have sex?” she asked in a whisper.

“Why the hell do wanna know so bad?”

“I don’t think you did.” Her gray teeth shone under her nose as she grinned. “Do you know how to have sex?” she whispered, stopping her bike in its tracks. Her face was all shiny with sweat. One of her pigtails began to unravel on the side of her head.

“Yeah,” I kind of mumbled, looking away from her.

“Really?”

“Yeah, already, I said I do!”

She stared at me hard, edging her teeth along her bottom lip. I tried to stare back, squinting a little. Right then, she had to know it was a lie. Her eyes were all sharp and mean and she smiled a little to herself. My face felt hot. The whole back of my neck felt like it was bubbling with sweat. I looked away and began walking again.

“I think you’re lying. I don’t think you know the first thing about doing it.”

“So what? What the hell do you care?”

Lottie shrugged her shoulders and began pedaling again. She wouldn’t stop grinning. Her eyes were nearly crossed from her smiling so hard. I rubbed the back of my neck and scratched my face.

“Where the hell is this place anyway?” I shouted, digging my hands in my pockets.

“Right there.” She pointed to a huge red barn, worn and crooked, that stood a few hundred feet away, behind a low wire fence. The barn looked spooky as hell. Sunlight poured through the breaks in the roof in thick silver beams, cutting the dust in the air like the hand of God or something. There was an old red tractor parked beside it and a ways back from that was the Furnhams’ white farmhouse, graying along the porch and roof.

“That’s it, huh?” I mumbled.

“You scared?” Lottie smiled.

“No, I’m not scared.”

Lottie set down her ugly bike in the long yellow grass beside the wire fence. Then she hopped over like a pro, landing on her feet with a little grunt. I followed, catching my left foot on a loose wire, tripping to my knees as I fell on the other side.

“There’s their house,” Lottie whispered, pointing to the white building as we walked up the path toward the barn. “And that’s the barn. That’s where he did it.” She frowned. Her eyes were dark and shallow. Her whole face was gray.

“Did what?”

“Hung himself,” she whispered again, staring straight at the huge red door. “His crops all died and so he sold off all his equipment, and then one night a man called to tell him that he had lost the land too, and then he went out to the barn and did it. He hung himself right in there and his family had to move away down south, and they left everything the way it was.”

My mouth felt dry as hell. I kept staring at the big red door, waiting for it to swing open. The sun had already begun to set. I looked over my shoulder. There in the distance was the trailer park, not too far away at all. There was a whole line of silver mobile homes cluttered on the horizon, packed tightly together and looking as dull as anything I could ever imagine. I turned back and stared at the red barn. Posted in huge white letters on a black sign were some faded words. I couldn’t make them out.

“No trespassers,” Lottie whispered. I nodded and cleared my throat, squinting at the silver light that gleamed from inside. “You ready?”

I nodded slowly as Lottie dug her fingers between the two huge red doors and gave them a shove. The whole barn creaked and groaned as more dust erupted from the thin black opening. Lottie stopped pushing and turned to me and winked.