The Good Boy (22 page)

At this, Joel decides the lady isn’t a very good mom, a very good shopper, or a very good friend, so he waits for the other woman to turn down the spice aisle and then abandons the ruse. And the chocolate milk.

After a stop in the deli where he couldn’t find so much as a slice of turkey for less than four dollars, Joel follows his nose—like Butchie would—to the bakery.

Everything fresh-baked is out of the question. Same with the french, sourdough, and artisan loaves, and nope to the twist-tied bags of muffins or bagels. The clock ticking and his stomach raw, he’s starting to look for a package that would fit in his pocket, and wonders if he’ll have to add theft to his list of crimes.

But then, along the wall behind the soup kiosk, Joel spies a row of plastic bread bins, the yellow-splashed sales tags screaming 49
CENTS!
He can’t believe it. He bags the two biggest kaiser rolls and heads for the checkout, proud that he found something for both of them and that he’s spending right around two bucks.

At the front of the store there are only two lanes open; Joel opts to wait behind the old lady buying cottage cheese and peaches over the mom whose conveyor belt is lined up with rice cereal and no-sugar juice and fish sticks and all the boring stuff his own mom used to buy before she got on her macaroni kick. He won’t take the chance that this woman is also the kind of mom who would want to know what a kid is doing here by himself.

While the old lady counts out nickels from her change purse, Joel peruses the gum-and-candy rack. Snickers are yellow-splash priced, too: fifty cents each.

Oh, Snickers would really satisfy. He looks at his bread, his sad bag of cheese-flavored crackers. He could afford the Snickers if he gave up the crackers, except Butchie can’t eat chocolate. It wouldn’t be fair; he’s starving, too.

That’s when he spots the beef jerky on the top of a rack of watch batteries, ChapStick, and breath strips. Beef jerky they could both eat. Beef jerky is eighty-nine cents. Joel gets on his tiptoes and leans over the belt, but he can’t reach.

“I have a coupon,” the old lady says.

The checkout girl’s name tag reads
ANAMARIA
and she looks real thrilled as she takes the coupon and click-clacks the register keys with her thick, squared nails. If the state of Anamaria’s manicure has anything to do with her mindset, Joel supposes she is going to have a zero-tolerance policy for him.

“Do you have a preferred card?” she asks Joel, his stuff rolling toward her before the old lady gets her change.

“No,” he says, getting his wallet from his backpack. His mom has a preferred card, but: “I have money.” He feels rushed.

“That’s good,” Anamaria says. She keys in the code for kaiser rolls.

“Wait,” Joel says. “I don’t want the crackers.” He reaches back for a Snickers and puts it on the belt. “I’d like this, please. And will you get me a stick of jerky?” He estimates the bill at $2.50, but it’ll be worth every extra penny.

Anamaria swipes the items and drops them into a plastic bag, hits the Total key, and says, “Three fifty-six.”

Joel opens his wallet and closes it again. “I thought some of the things were on sale.”

Anamaria looks down at him, her bored, brown eyes. “With your preferred card.”

“I don’t have a preferred card.”

“Would you like to sign up for one?” She sounds like she’s reading from a script.

The stinkeyed woman pulls in behind him and begins to unload her cart. If she suspects he’s wandered away from his “mom” and decides to intervene, she could blow his cover.

Joel looks at the sales screen: nothing’s on sale and there’s tax on all of it. He’s got to get rid of something and get out of there and quick.

“How much without the Snickers?”

“You want me to void the Snickers?”

No, he wants to rip it from the bag and tear it open with his teeth and shove the whole thing in his mouth at once. But it’s the most expensive item. “Yes, please.”

Anamaria picks up the phone and says to the whole store, “Void on three.” She takes the Snickers out of the bag as music comes back and a woman sings about feeling like she’s walking on broken glass.

To Joel it feels like he’s standing in a spotlight, waiting for anybody who cares to bust him.

Eventually, a thin-haired woman in a Jewel apron and an arm cast, name tag
SANDY
, comes to Anamaria’s rescue. She maneuvers her arm up to swipe a keycard, punch some numbers, and rescan the candy bar. Her eyebrows are raised over her glasses the entire time.

“I can’t spend more than three dollars,” Joel explains, and then, so the woman behind him will hear, too, “my mom is teaching me how to spend money.”

Nobody looks impressed.

“Some teacher,” the woman behind mutters as she puts a cantaloupe on the belt, “let you run around, pay no mind to people…”

Joel tries to smile at the other two. Everybody waits for the register.

Finally, a receipt kicks out. Sandy takes a look at it over her glasses, then ambles back to the customer-service desk. Anamaria tosses the receipt, tucks the Snickers under the counter, and says, “Two seventy-four.”

Joel hands over three dollars and he’s waiting for his change to shoot out into the dish when he hears his “mom” roll up in the next aisle.

“Did you hear about
that
drama?” she asks, her voice as loud as the store’s intercom.

Joel’s change seems to come in slow motion, even as the cantaloupe rolls around in real time when the belt gets going again.

“Wait—” Anamaria says as he swipes his change and his groceries and he pretends he doesn’t hear her, but he does: “Your receipt?”

And then he stops.
Act natural—
isn’t that what he’s supposed to do, no matter what?

He can’t fake a smile but he’s not deaf so he turns back, takes the receipt and says, “Thank you,” feeling that lady’s stinkeye all the while.

“You could have saved eighty-two cents,” Anamaria says, like she couldn’t care less.

“Thanks a lot,” he says and takes off, snagging a bunch of plastic Jewel bags from the last register before he escapes through the Out doors.

When Butchie sees Joel come outside, he stays in heel, though he licks his chops like he can smell his breakfast from across the lot. Despite the new tangle of shopping carts in front of him and the dog who’s barking his head off in a car parked in a handicapped spot on the opposite aisle, Butchie is sitting exactly where Joel left him, and Joel bets he hasn’t once taken his eyes off the Jewel doors. He is such a good boy.

Joel stuffs all the plastic bags into one and pitches his receipt into the garbage can beside some newspaper boxes.

Two newspaper boxes. Two different newspapers. Both of them featuring the same giant photo of his dad and Butchie.

Joel pulls the handle on one box and realizes it takes money to get it open: the quarter slot is right there next to the headline that reads
MURPHY’S LAW
. Under the headline, his dad and Butchie are pictured, his dad glancing at the camera from the curb and Butchie off in the grass doing his business, looking embarrassed. Next to the photo, there’s another of an Afroed man with his mouth and arms open—like he’s saying
What?
—the word
$OLID
stretched along the inside of his forearm. The same word
,
same dollar sign as the one stretched across that Redbone boy’s hoodie.

It cannot be a coincidence.

The caption between the pictures reads: “Ja’Kobe White is suing Officer Peter Murphy for harassment, excessive force and wrongful arrest. White claims Murphy’s K9, Butch, bit him in an unprovoked attack.
PAGE 8
.”

Joel steps back. This must be the story he overheard on the TV Thursday night, the news his dad didn’t want to share—
Why would you ask me that?
—jumping down Joel’s throat when he asked if Butchie was in trouble. Ja’Kobe White is not the boy Butchie bit at Zack’s last night, but he is from the same group. There must be a fleet of Mizz Redbone cars. An army of Elgin Pooles. And if they’re after his dad, they’re also after Joel and Butchie.

Joel wants to know what’s on page 8 so he stuffs his only quarter inside and pulls the handle, but it doesn’t budge; that’s when he sees the sign that says it costs a whole dollar.

No way he can spend his last dollar.

Joel pushes the change return button as the stinkeyed lady rolls her groceries through the first set of Out doors.

No way he’s going to get Butchie caught over a quarter, either, so he darts across the parking lot, unties the leash and hustles the dog back up the alley, then the next street, and then the next one after that. They keep running until they wind up in Welles Park, and into exactly what his dad would call a clusterfuck.

It’s peewee-football game day, and hundreds of kids are in various stages of play, battle-geared in helmets, pads, and cleats. Their parents gather around the half-dozen minifields dressed in team colors. From the sidelines, they cheer for their sons and yell at the referees, most of them more fired up than the kids.

Butchie is excited—to him, a park means fetch, and a newspaper headline doesn’t mean squat—he’s just a dog, after all.

And Joel, he’s just a kid. A kid among a hundred others—more than a hundred, actually: besides the peewees, there’s a game of older kids’ rugby on the west side of the park, and a whole bunch of kids who are plain old playing in between. And because there are so many kids, there are also enough parents to keep the police from getting anxious. If they do drive by, Joel and Butchie will look like they belong.

And if the Redbones drive by, Joel can only hope there’s at least one adult who will be smart enough to chase them away.

“C’mon, boy.”

They walk along the grass toward the center of the park as a dad and two players stuffed between shoulder pads come up behind them, the Dad the only one in a rush. Of course he doesn’t notice Joel and knocks right into him—“Sorry—” and fumbles past, a hand over the top of his sunglasses to further shield his eyes while he looks out over the fields. “Better get loose, boys—you’re playing the red team.”

The three cross in front of Joel and Butchie and the taller boy mumbles through his mouth guard—something that sounds like a protest—but his dad ignores him, leading them on toward the match.

Joel thinks of his dad, just as distracted. He has never pushed Joel to play sports, though. They’ve been to some professional games together, the Cubs and Bulls and one time, the Bears, but Joel never felt like they were recruiting trips. Then again, those games were special events. Playing a sport takes a lot more time and money, and those two things are in short supply this year. Joel practically had to organize a campaign to play softball, and his dad’s only seen him play a couple of times. If he had a do-over, he’d trade the whole season for one more game at Wrigley Field—and not just because he isn’t much of an athlete.

They stop at a water fountain where Joel takes a long drink and then fills one of the Jewel bags for Butchie. He carries the bag to a grove of trees and props it in a patch of grass, a makeshift water dish. Butchie drinks half the water and lies down, rolling onto his back, head arcing from side to side, the first time he’s relaxed since they left. He doesn’t know he’s a headline.

Joel sits down at the base of one of the trees on a rise where he can see in all directions, including emergency exit routes. He gets the beef jerky from the bag and pulls the sleeve away. He says, “Best I could do, boy,” and breaks off a piece; he tosses it to Butchie and snap—midair, it’s gone—like that. Joel doesn’t even see him swallow.

“Did you bother to taste that?”

Butchie stares at the sleeve, waiting for more.

“Jeez, puppy. Hang on.” Joel unties the knot of thin plastic, one kaiser roll theirs to eat now. He bites off a hunk, his mouth feeling as dry as the bread. He chews, and chews, and chews.

He tries to feed Butchie the rest of the jerky slowly, so he’ll savor it, but that takes about a whole minute, so he tears off a rough half of the bread and gives him that, too. Butchie chews a few times and swallows, his eyes fixed on Joel as he tries to mind-trick him out of the other half. Joel takes another bite and gives Butchie the rest. He wishes he had the Snickers.

Someone on the rugby field blows a whistle and the players head for the sidelines, their gym bags. On the football fields, new waves of bigger kids arrive—Joel’s age, though he’d be on the small side if he played. The boys don’t look as silly as the peewees in their protective pads; they have longer strides and faster reflexes, and probably more mental guts.

When Joel unzips his backpack to put the other roll inside, Butchie spots the tennis ball, the one thing he loves more than beef jerky and bread and Joel all rolled together. The dog harrumphs and lies down in the grass when Joel takes
White Fang
from the pack instead of the ball.

“Sorry, Butch,” Joel says. “Leash law.” Even though part of acting natural is breaking stupid rules, they can’t chance it—especially since Butchie
is
an athlete; he’d draw too much attention.

Joel takes off his jacket, leans against the tree, and opens to his bookmark.

*   *   *

When Joel reaches the end of the chapter, he tucks his finger into the fold and decides it’s the most terrible book in the world. The gods took White Fang’s mother away and beat him when he tried to go after her. Then, stuck in the camp, he had to fight dogs and gods both, and they forced him to become mean, and a loner. The author says White Fang did not know what love was, but so far it seems like nobody ever loved the wolf-dog in the first place.

He looks over at Butchie, who has fallen asleep with his face in the sun, feet twitching, and Joel has no idea how anybody could be mean to a dog.

His heart flares: he’s got to protect Butchie.

When his watch reads two minutes to nine he gets up, gently raps on the dog’s rump and says, “Time to go.”

Butchie lifts his head and watches Joel tie his jacket around his waist and strap on his backpack.