Whippoorwill (6 page)

I kept thinking,
Is this a date, is this
really
a date, and is he going to try to kiss me?
I thought yes, and I thought no, and I thought about how Danny reminded me of Wally, both of them left to their own devices, and how maybe I was like a Daily Growler that Danny had wanted but couldn't reach, not sexually, not like that, but like proof of another person in the world, proof that someone else paid attention to him.

“You want to walk Wally?” Danny asked when we pulled back in his driveway.

“I do,” I said, glad to have the distraction, glad not to have to think about kissing him one way or the other. “But I should tell my dad where I am.”

“Okay, I'll meet you out at Wally's post.”

“Thanks for the hamburger.”

“My pleasure,” he said, although he said it
plais-ir,
like French, like it should rhyme with brassiere.

I hurried through the Stewarts' yard and then hustled up the stairs to our kitchen. Dad wasn't there, but he had left a note where I had left mine.

Gone to Jebby's for a part. Back soon. Hamburger? Smitty's? Danny Stewart?

He had underlined “Danny Stewart” about five times. I couldn't blame him.

W
HAT WE FIND
in a dog is what we bring to a dog. That's what Father Jasper says.

I felt a little sick walking over to Wally, and excited, too. With my luck I knew Dad would return right when I was over with Danny, and then we would all undergo an awkward, crazy moment or two while Danny and Dad tried to figure each other out. Dad would have to see Danny
that
way, as a suitor, or at least as a boy marginally interested in his daughter, and Danny would have to see Dad as
Dad,
an old bearded Harley guy, who maybe wanted to stick up for his daughter.

All of that was possible. And it was also possible Danny simply wanted to go for a hamburger and I was around so he asked me.

I couldn't think it through too much. I saw Danny playing with Wally when I came around the stockade fence that separated our two yards. He had Wally dancing around off the post. I heard the Daily Growler squeaking, and Danny's voice was high and happy, saying things like “thataboy,” “thereyougo,” “thatsit.” He was probably doing what Father Jasper wouldn't want him to do, getting Wally crazy and associating human companionship only with play, but I didn't have the heart to tell him. Danny looked kind of good in the late-evening light, kind of young and happy, and the same way I had seen the puppy in Wally, I now saw the puppy in Danny. He looked like he did before the sideburns, before the jacked-up car and bluesmen, looked like the kid I had occasionally glimpsed in our neighborhood. Cute, sort of.

“Hey,” I said, coming around, letting him know I was there.

“Look at this good boy,” Danny said, dancing around with Wally.

“He's a nice dog.”

“He's a great dog,” Danny said, bouncing around with him.

I crossed my arms. It was cold now. All the shadows were long and tired. The sun had gone behind the mountains in Vermont, and one big shadow spread slowly across New Hampshire.

“I should do some homework,” I said.

“Wait, tell me what this priest guy says. How do you train him?”

“I'm no expert. I just read the book. It's pretty good. It gives you a lot of common-sense tips, but it also talks about what a dog's spirit needs.”

“I'd like to read that book. Could I borrow it?”

Part of me wanted to say,
You know how to read?
But I nodded.

“First of all,” I said, coming forward and petting Wally, “when a dog's on a leash, he has to mean business. You can't let him pull and jump and go nutty while he's on a leash.”

“How do you play with him then?”

“Well, you can play with him, but only after you've released him. In other words, he has to know when he's supposed to be serious and when he's supposed to play. The whole thing about dogs, Father Jasper says, is giving a dog something to do. Dogs want direction, they want a pack leader. If you leave a dog to its own devices, then it doesn't know what to do so it spazzes.”

“Okay,” Danny said, “so what do we do?”

I didn't really know. But I took the leash and put Wally in front of me. He jumped and I kneed him off. I spotted a glimmer, just a glimmer, of a small change in his eyes. He understood we wanted to help him, to be with him, and so he didn't act quite as frantic as he had the other times I'd been around him.

“Sit, Wally,” I said, and raised the leash.

He didn't sit.

“You only give a command once,” I told Danny. “Father Jasper insists on that. If you say things more than once, then the command becomes sit, sit, sit, sit, and the dog doesn't take it seriously.”

I put my hand on Wally's rear end, lifted the leash higher, and seesawed him into a sit. Wally popped right out, but I made him sit again three times. He got better each time.

“We need to give him biscuits when he does it right,” I said. “Positive reinforcement. No punishment.”

“Cool.”

“You can bake your own biscuits. They're really cheap to make. I could make some if you're serious about training him.”

“Sure, why not?”

“He could really be a good dog,” I said. “I mean, if you worked with him. He's got a good heart. He's just never been told what's expected of him.”

“You really think he could be a dog? A real, I don't know, a dog friend kind of thing? I always thought once something was set one way, it usually stayed that way. It feels like it is with most people.”

“Of course he could. He's a good boy. Father Jasper is all about changing people and dogs.”

“I'd like to borrow that book. I feel awful now knowing I didn't pay more attention to him. Seems kind of rotten.”

I ran back to get the book. My dad was just pulling in the driveway in his truck when I came downstairs.

“Hey, where you going?” he asked.

“BRB,” I said, which was a little code we used for “be right back.”

“Okay, but don't go anywhere else.”

“I'm just giving Danny this book about dogs.”

“The priest book, huh? Okay.”

Danny had Wally on the post by the time I got back. He had cleaned up a few messes and gave Wally fresh water.

“My dad's home,” I said. “I should get inside.”

“Okay.”

“The book makes a lot of sense. If you read it in small doses, I mean, it makes sense. You have to be consistent with a dog, that's all. It takes time, though.”

“Maybe you'd help me,” Danny said, thumbing through the first pages. “Wild. He's a priest and he trains dogs?”

“That's what I said. I guess he had a temporary eye problem and he got used to a Seeing Eye dog being around. When his eyes got better, he still wanted to have a dog near him. Then he started to realize dogs had something to teach him. He talks a lot about love and acceptance. Some of the book is about his childhood and the dog he had then. It was a little beagle named Porky.”

“I guess I didn't get who he was. Okay, it makes sense now. I'll read it tonight. It's like a car manual, right?”

“I guess you could say that.”

I gave Wally a hug. He sat still and let me do it, which was a small miracle. Then I almost,
almost
felt like I should give Danny a hug. Instead, I backed awkwardly away, raising my hand in a stupid little wave.

“See you, Danny. Thanks again for the hamburger.”

“You're welcome. Thanks for the book.”

“I'll see you tomorrow.”

Then I turned around and ran back to our house.

“I have no problem with Danny,” Dad said at the kitchen table. “Should I?”

“No.”

“He's never had much parenting. Elwood is some kind of stiff.”

“You mean harsh?”

“He has a temper.”

“It was just one of those things. Danny cleaned up Wally—”

“He did?” Dad interrupted. “Well, good for him.”

“So, yeah. He cleaned him up and we were trying to get Wally to behave when Danny said he was going up to Smitty's for a burger.”

“He invited you to go along?”

“Yes.”

“I guess that's okay. I wish you had cleared it with me first. You could have texted.”

“I did text. Maybe you were out of range.”

“Okay. Still, this is all new, so let's just be fair about things.”

I wore a pair of pajama bottoms and a fleece and had a cup of cocoa in front me. Dad had one too. For once he wasn't playing with a motorcycle part. Maybe he figured he needed to pay attention, because his daughter had gone out with a boy in a car. I didn't know what he was thinking. He was being so calm, though, that it made me more jittery than if he had been upset.

“We haven't had a kind of birds and bees talk,” Dad said, his face going a little bright under his beard, the cup at his lips. “You know what I mean.”

“Oh, geez, Dad.”

“I don't mean about the mechanics of men and women. I suppose you know most of that.”

“You are
not
doing this,” I said. “I'm going upstairs.”

“Hold on a second,” he said, and reached across the table and put his hand on mine. “I'm not going to lecture you. It's just that boys, at Danny's age, boys are just, well, they're more like wild ponies than like humans.”

“Wild ponies, Dad?”

“Not ponies, maybe, but something wild and just bent on . . . procreation. On moving their gene pool further into the future.”

“This is the weirdest conversation we've ever had.”

“What I mean is, girls sometimes think about love, or friendship, while guys . . .”

“I get it, Dad.”

“That doesn't mean a boy doesn't like you. You're just playing at slightly different games. Think of it as if you're playing gin, and he's playing, I don't know, spades or poker.”

“This conversation is officially closed.”

“But you're both still playing cards, is the point. I'm not just talking about Danny. I'm talking about guys in general.”

“Are we finished?”

“I guess we're finished. I'm sorry if I didn't do this well.”

He shrugged. He took a sip of his cocoa. I went around and hugged him.

“I know what you're trying to say,” I said, pulling back and heading up the stairs. “You've done your job.”

He didn't say anything. A while later I went to the top of the stairs and listened. He had the heating wand going, soldering something. I smelled it and heard it. I went back into my room and tried to read for fifth-period English class, but I felt confused and jumpy in my gut. We were reading
A Separate Peace,
all about a group of boys in a boarding school in southeastern New Hampshire. We were supposed to reach chapter seven for tomorrow, but I couldn't concentrate for thinking of Danny's sideburns, the way they framed his face when he looked at you, the way he danced with Wally, happy and sweet, both of them having a pal at last.

I couldn't fall asleep until late. I didn't even try to fall asleep, honestly, because I kept thinking of Danny, of Wally, too, and my stomach felt buttery and unsettled. I texted Holly, my one true girlfriend, about twenty times, but I didn't want to go into the whole Danny situation with her. Not in texts. Around eleven I typed I'd see her before French class, then I listened to music for a while and finished some geography homework. Usually doing homework makes me sleepy, but I sat on my bed a long time and listened to the spring peepers calling, and I thought of what I should wear the next day, what I owned to wear, and that got me up and going through my closets, and it was ridiculous to do that so late at night.

I heard Wally a couple of times too. I heard him move and heard his chain clink, and I imagined he didn't sound quite as lonely as he used to when he wasn't cleaned or fed well. Just hearing him got my stomach going more, and I finally shut off all the lights and listened to him, listened to everything, and I felt empty and quiet and filled with trembles. Later some geese went over the house, and that got me crying a little. I don't know why. They sounded so beautiful and distant, but they also sounded like they called to every human they reached, called us to something higher, something eternal, and I was almost glad when the night was quiet again.

Then, around the edges of my bed, in the small house sounds, I started thinking about Mom. She had a statue on a town square in upstate New Hampshire, up in a tiny fishing village, which was the only piece of art she ever sold. She got paid $750 and there had been pictures in the paper, and underneath her photo had been a line that read “Local Artist Places Work in Bolston.” I had never been to the village, but I knew the pictures by heart, and I wondered if the statue was still there. One of the pictures captured Mom perfectly: She looked long and lean, strong, with a thick head of hair and fairly dark brows. She appeared slightly exotic, but vulnerable, too, though you wouldn't see the vulnerability unless you knew to look for it. She had a half smile on her lips, and I always thought, when I looked at the picture, that she had a joke in her head that no one else quite understood. She looked proud, too, because she had sold an art piece, put it up in her hometown, and maybe not everyone thought she was the greatest thing around, but on this day, this moment, she had accomplished something. Beside her was the abstract sculpture, made of bicycle parts, and when you looked at it, you saw it was a man throwing a fly line. She had managed to convey the sense of water around the man's legs, and although I only saw it in pictures, it looked pretty good to me. Whimsical, the newspaper said, but representational, too. People liked it and it suited the town, a quote said.