Whippoorwill (12 page)

At Fat Bob's I ordered a child-size portion of rocky road. Danny got French vanilla with sprinkles, and Holly ordered chocolate mint with a side of maraschino cherries. It wasn't exactly ice cream weather, and the girl who served us closed the slide window as soon as she took Danny's money and made change. Clouds had moved in to cover the sun, and Mount Moosilauke, the tallest peak nearby, still had a cover of snow. Still, we sat at one of the picnic tables they had out near the parking lot and ate the ice cream and watched Wally vacuum the area around the tables. His flubbery lips rattled and his nose took in breaths deep enough to inhale the scent of every dropped ice cream from a decade gone by. Now and then he stopped what he was doing and looked at us, wondering where his ice cream was. It was funny and sad and Danny finally trotted back up to the window and ordered him a plain vanilla on a sugar cone.

“He'll like that,” Holly said, popping one of the cherries into her mouth.

“I wonder if it's good for him,” Danny said as he came back and resumed his seat. He had nearly finished his own cone. He speared it in his mouth and then he did something that kind of went right into my heart. He pretended he was going to eat the other cone, and Wally sat, squiggle-butted, and you could see all that yearning in the dog's eyes. Danny smiled and slowly, slowly moved the cone toward his own mouth. Wally watched, a sting of drool yo-yoing down and glinting in the dull sun, and then Danny began talking real low and whispery.

“If there was a good dog, I mean a really good dog, a special, ice-cream-eating dog,” he said, not letting his eyes go anywhere near Wally's, “and if that dog happened to be anywhere nearby . . . if he happened to be sitting in this ice cream place and had been really good, no-kidding good, supergood, do you two think that dog, a dog like that, well, do you think he would deserve a cone of his own?”

“Oh, you're torturing him!” Holly said, but I could see she thought it was cute too.

“And if that dog did get an ice cream cone, if he was one lucky dog, maybe the luckiest dog in the world, do you think that dog would promise to eat the ice cream like a proper gentleman? Do you think he would show good manners and not wolf it all down like a big hound dog?”

He glanced at Wally and Wally wiggled his rear end on the ground, nearly crazy with wanting that ice cream.

Then Danny looked right into Wally's eyes and he stopped fooling.

“You
are
a really good boy,” Danny said. “You're a really, really good boy.”

And I don't know why, but tears came into my eyes and I had to look away when he gave Wally the cone.

“He's better-looking than when you first see him, don't you think?” Holly asked on the phone almost as soon as Danny dropped me home. He had taken her home first. “I mean, he sort of grows on you.”

“He's okay,” I said.

“I can't figure you, Clair. Do you like him or not? I think Danny is wondering too.”

“Danny can wonder all he likes.”

“But do you?”

I lay flat on my bed, looking up at the ceiling. Dad would be home any minute, bringing subs from Poulchuck's Deli. I wasn't hungry. Dad loved subs from Poulchuck's, I knew, so I listened for his truck. He always made it into a big deal when he brought home subs, spreading out paper plates and extra mayonnaise and fussing with the condiments. He had to have Lay's Classic Potato Chips, too, and a large Dad's Root Beer. I tried to match his excitement on the days he brought home subs, because I knew he felt like he was doing something special for me. It was funny, really, and a little sad, but I wanted to meet him at the door when he came in from work.

“I don't know if I do, Holly,” I said. “I honestly don't. He's nice. He is. I don't have anything against him, but I guess he was never the kind of boy I imagined hanging out with.”

“Seriously?”

“I mean, did you hear him gunning the engine when we drove out of the parking lot? I never imagined being with a boy who did that.”

“Most boys do that kind of thing, don't they?”

“I guess. But with the sideburns . . .”

“I love the sideburns!” she said, squealing a little when she said it.

She had said that before and it annoyed me.

“You take him, then,” I said, feeling bitter and lousy as I said it. “You take him for a boyfriend.”

“Don't be crazy, Clair. We're just friends.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't want to fight with Holly. I didn't even know if I liked Danny in any special way, but I didn't appreciate her poaching, either. It tied me up to think about it all, so I was relieved when I heard Dad pull in the driveway.

“Got to hop,” I said. “Dad's home.”

“Okay, I'll talk to you later. You're really weird sometimes, Clair.”

“I don't doubt it.”

We hung up and I glanced in the mirror on my way out of my room. My hair looked like a rat's nest. I shrugged and hustled downstairs and arrived in the kitchen as Dad did. He lifted up the plastic bag from Poulchuck's and smiled a big smile.

“Best subs in the universe!” he said. “Made by Doris herself.”

Doris owned Poulchuck's, and I always wondered if Dad had a crush on her.

“Sorry, I was on the phone. I'll get the table set.”

“I'll wash up. Crack that Dad's Root Beer, would you?”

He disappeared in the hall bath and I heard him splashing around. His boots made a heavy sound on the floorboards too. By the time he finished cleaning up, I had the table set with paper plates and salt and pepper and a bowl for the potato chips. I poured his Dad's Root Beer over a glass of ice and handed it to him. He raised it to me quickly because the carbonation had turned the top into a moat of blond fizz and he knew I loved that. I had been sipping off his sodas for my entire life, and I did it now and felt the bubbles sizzle in my sinuses. He smiled and winked at me, which was something he always did too, whenever we did the soda thing.

He unwrapped his turkey-Swiss-bacon, extra mayo, half hots. I had a straight tomato-mozzarella with oil and vinegar, hold the hots. It's what we always ordered. The subs looked like swords of bread stuffed with deli food.

“How was school?” he asked around his first bite. “Did you learn anything today?”

“A million things. I'm a genius now.”

“Really? Then it was a day well spent. Name one thing you learned.”

“Mrs. Cummings got new earrings from her husband.”

“Good for old Agnes.”

“You really knew her when you were younger?”

He smiled and flicked a piece of lettuce off his beard. Then he drank some root beer and chomped a few chips.

“Of course I did,” he said when he had mouth space. “You know that. Is that so hard to believe?”

“I just can't picture it. I can't see it somehow.”

I had a bite of my sandwich, but I still wasn't hungry. I didn't particularly want to tell him about going for ice cream with Danny, but I didn't know why. I tried another bite and had trouble swallowing it.

“Everyone was young once upon a time,” he said. “That's a fact of life.”

“I know, but I can't picture it.”

“Well, I had an interesting day too,” he said, herding a few more chips onto his plate. “We did a job over by Hanover, and I can't tell you what the house was like. You would have loved it, Clair Bear. All post and beam, like the restaurant you like over in Lincoln, and it had a fireplace that covered half the southern wall. It was right out of a magazine, I swear. The thing about it was, it wasn't fussy. It was just a place these people had, but they had plenty of money, you could tell, but mostly they liked the house for the fun it promised. I don't know. It's hard to explain.”

“Did you put in a big system?”

“Oh, yeah. Top-of-the-line everything. They got the full setup, believe me. I don't know what the final bill will be, but it will be steep.”

“Do you like doing what you do, Dad? Did you like putting in that system today?”

He smiled down at the sub. He didn't say anything right away. I realized I had never asked whether he liked what he did every day. I had taken his work for granted. It didn't make me proud to see that for the first time. Somehow it felt a little like ignoring Wally all those days.

“It maybe isn't what I dreamed of doing.”

“You dreamed of being a racecar mechanic, right?”

“Or something. I used to think I could have been pretty good at designing new vehicle models. You know, like the new Chrysler or Ford for such and such a year. I liked doing that kind of thing as a kid.”

“You never told me that before.”

He kept looking down at the sub and I wondered if he felt emotional. I tried to see his face, but then he looked up and put a smile on his lips. But it wasn't a real smile, and I watched him closely, trying to fathom what he was feeling at that moment.

“Well, it wasn't anything my parents encouraged, I guess. In shop class I used to make models of clay and sometimes soap, even. The shop teacher was a guy named Mr. Gallo and he was a good sort of teacher. He took an interest and he liked cars, so we would talk about the new models. It sounds funny now, but that's what we did. He subscribed to
Popular Mechanics
and
Auto Digest
, I think, and he passed on the issues to me after he finished with them. I didn't even know there was such a job as a designer for new cars. That's how raw I was.”

“Did you ever think about moving out to Detroit or something?”

“Thought about it, but I met your mom and I didn't really know how to go at it. So I did the heating business thing and that's worked out okay. A job usually outlines your life, I guess.”

“But that's why you like monkeying with the Softail, right?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Probably so.”

“I never thought about you doing anything else.”

“Most people let go of a few dreams along the way. Jebby wanted to be an astronaut. Did you know that?”

“That's just wrong,” I said, laughing.

“He was sort of serious about it. He used to take off school to watch the space mission launches. Of course, if he had been serious about being an astronaut, he would have made it a point to stay in school when they had a mission launch, but he didn't know that at the time.”

“Jebby—”

Someone knocked on the door. Dad raised his eyebrows, wondering. I held up my finger and went to the door and opened it just a little. Danny stood on the step with Wally beside him, his desire to come inside transparent. But I didn't open the door all the way. Instead, I blocked the opening, reached a hand down to say hello to Wally, then shook my head and told him we were in the middle of dinner.

“Oh,” he said, his face folding down, “sorry. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay. We're just having a family dinner.”

I didn't even want to think about submarine sandwiches being a family dinner, but that's the way it was. He nodded as if understanding and he backed off the porch. I felt terrible, but I forced myself not to give in and I closed the door.

“You two okay?” Dad asked when I sat back down.

“Sure.”

“You didn't want to invite him inside?”

“No. Not right now.”

He nodded. Then he grabbed some more chips and took a humongous bite of the sub.

Before bed I went out to see Wally. Danny had put him on his pole. I figured his father would have some say about whether Wally came inside or not, and it wasn't a bad night to be outside, anyway. I squatted down and rubbed Wally's chest. I kept glancing behind me, half hoping Danny might appear, but I couldn't see his car in the driveway. He was probably out cruising somewhere, maybe over at Holly's for all I knew, and that line of thinking got me tangled up.

I put my forehead against Wally's forehead and neither of us moved for twenty seconds or so. The world smelled good. It smelled of rain and mud and trees taking leaf. I thought of what my dad had said at dinner, and about his idea of being a designer, and about the look on Danny's face when I didn't invite him inside, and it felt as though I had swallowed a hot coal and instead of going out it burned brighter with each breath. In Shakespeare's play
Julius Caesar,
Brutus's wife, Portia, dies from eating coals, I knew, because we had read about it in ninth grade literature. When I read it, and when Mrs. Philipone explained it, I didn't believe a word of it, but now I did. It made all the sense in the world.

Later, from my bed, I heard Danny come out and let Wally off his pole. I rolled over and ducked down by the window and I watched him. Wally tried to jump up, but Danny corrected him and lowered his own posture so Wally could give and receive affection without misbehaving. Danny rubbed him a long time. Then he leaned forward and put his head against Wally's shoulder and he was so still, so unmoving, that Wally actually sat and let him keep doing it. The sight of Danny finding some comfort in Wally made me choke up. I wanted to call to him and tell him I was sorry for not letting him inside at dinner, but once a thing was done, it was done.

Finally Danny stood and led Wally on a short loop around the yard. Danny looked over at our house a couple of times, but he didn't keep his eyes on it for long. He led Wally inside afterward and Wally trotted at his side, happy to go with him, happy to go anywhere.

O
N THE TEACHER
in-service day, Danny texted me first thing in the morning asking me to go for a ride, and I said yes, okay, because it was a pretty day and I had nothing else to do. Dad was out of the house early, still working on his job over by Hanover, and I left a note saying I was going for a ride, not sure when I would be back, but that I'd call.

I checked my phone for texts from Holly, wondering if Danny had invited her, too. We had been a little brown with each other at school, talking, but not really. She had mentioned doing something with her brother on the in-service day, but I couldn't remember what it was. We didn't talk much about Danny.