Whippoorwill Page 5

  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 abou
t 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.

  It was my mom’s best day, I always imagined. One of her best, anyway.

  I was still thinking of Mom, dozing almost, when I heard Danny and his father fighting. It sounded crazy and loud, and I couldn’t conceive of being awake and so violent at that time of night. I had heard them plenty of times before; everyone had, but no one talked about it much. Elwood was a bitter man, a man not to be trifled with, as people said, and their voices went careening around their house and yard and then went quiet suddenly. In the absence, I almost wondered if I had heard the argument at all. It reminded me of thunder, something you hear far away but approaching, and I held on to my stuffed dog, a Dalmatian I had named Dougie years ago, and I listened to hear them again, but everything gave way to the peepers, and finally I did too.

  Eight

  I MET HOLLY before French class. She came speeding through the hallway, her books pressed against her chest, her Uggs too thick for spring. I wondered that her feet didn’t sweat off into pools of water, but I figured she liked the way they looked for some reason, so she went with them. She wore her hair differently too, pulled back and up, so that it gave her cheekbones every advantage. Although it wasn’t charitable to think it, I always thought she looked a little like a crazy squirrel, stopping and starting and sitting on its tail, her hands small and fidgety. She was under five feet tall and was finished growing, and now, as she said herself, the only thing left was to get wider.

  She didn’t really listen, was the thing about Holly. She talked without hearing herself, or reading the person trying to take it in, but that made her funny at times. She had no filter; whatever she thought flew right out of her mouth. The squirrel metaphor worked because wherever she went she dropped an acorn of conversation, hardly listened to whatever the other person said, then went on her way.

  But I loved Holly. She was my friend, my bud, and I would have done anything for her. She had a fairly solid home life. Her dad owned a Jeep dealership down in Plymouth, and they had cars the way some rich people had horses. Her mom sold plastic signs—banners and flags, anything that needed stenciling—and she always had reams rolled up in the pantry off the kitchen, waiting for delivery. They had a fully stocked refrigerator and didn’t think twice about ordering out for dinner. They were the only family I knew who went on actual get-in-a-jet-and-fly-away vacations.

  “Such a fashion faux pas,” she said as soon as she was in range, a piece of gum snapping around back in her jaws. “I mean, I thought they looked good, but now I see they look ridiculous.”

  “What does?”

  “My Uggs. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “They look warm.”

  “Do you have an extra pair of flip-flops?”

  “At home.”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I have got to go shopping soon. I need some cute sandals for summer.”

  “No one’s going to notice the boots.”

  “Yes, they will. People do. Did you hear about Julia?”

  Then she was off to the races, telling me what was supposed to be a juicy piece of gossip about Julia Fields, one of the cheerleader types rumored to be pregnant. I didn’t care one way or the other, but I listened because Holly liked telling the story, and she bent close to me and whispered when she got to the grimiest parts, and her breath smelled of cinnamon. Then the bell went off and we both plunged into French class, where Mrs. Baboo, not her real name, greeted us all with a big, phony “Bonjour.”

  After school Holly snagged me again. She had talked to her mom, and they were going to the mall, and did I want to come? It was Friday afternoon. The weekend was here.

  “I have to get home,” I said. “I’m taking care of a dog.”

  “A dog?” Holly asked. “What dog? This is the first I’m hearing about a dog.”

  “It’s our next-door neighbors’ dog.”

  “Are they away or something?”

  “Yes,” I said, agreeing because it was an easier route to follow with Holly. “They’re away.”

  On the bus ride home I wondered why I didn’t tell Holly about Danny. Didn’t mention Danny. It wasn’t as though either one of us went out with boys often, or even had a date. If it was a date, I reminded myself. Tied up in it was my own confusion about what I wanted. Then gradually the herky-jerky motion of the bus, all the stops to let kids off, started making me sick. I put my forehead against the window and closed my eyes. The coolness from the glass made me feel better, and in a little while my stomach settled.

  Wally looked beautiful in the afternoon sun. I watched him out of my bedroom window. He didn’t fuss, didn’t move around or try to be anyplace he wasn’t. He didn’t sleep, either, but simply stared ahead, just being. Dogs are a little Zen that way, and I watched him until he stood up, circled, and sniffed at the corner of his house. He peed at the edge of his chain length. Then he heard Danny come out, his door slamming, and Wally jumped up and dangled on his chain. Danny came over and thumped Wally’s ribs, but I saw he kept Wally from jumping on him. I had to
duck down and watch from the edge of the window, because Danny glanced up at our house, patted Wally some more, then glanced up again.

  Before I knew what I wanted to do, I knocked on the window with my knuckle and raised my finger to tell him I’d just be a minute. Danny smiled and nodded. He kept petting Wally.

  “I got him some stuff,” Danny said, waggling an orange plastic bag at me. “At the pet store. I got him a tag with his name on it, so if he gets lost or gets away, someone will know he belongs to me. See? It says Wally and my phone number. And a collar called a gentle leader and some biscuits and a long training lead. The lady there knew about Father Jasper. She says he knows what he’s talking about.”

  “Wally want a biscuit?” I asked, bending close to the dog.

  Wally looked good and happy, not quite as spazzy as he had been. The warm sun had heated his fur and he seemed to enjoy the decent weather. Danny already had him off his pole. He made him sit before we gave him a biscuit.

  “That Father Jasper guy says you should always attach a reward to anything he does,” Danny said. “Even just a simple sit.”

  “Did you read the whole thing?”

  “Yep. It was good once you got into it. It makes sense. It’s all obvious once you know about it.”

  “Wally could be a great dog,” I said.

  “Sure he could. You want to work on him awhile?”

  Danny did most of the work, because Wally’s strength made him a risk to knock me over. But we worked together, coaching each other and coaching Wally, too. We started with simple sit, crossing our hands in front of our waist in a slicing motion. Hand signals were important because a dog can’t always hear you, or there might be a loud noise covering everything, and so we did sit about a thousand times until Wally began sitting as soon as we crossed our hands close to our belt line.

  Then we made him go on our left side, and we walked in circles, stopping now and then to sit. Wally got that pretty easily, so then we did sit-stay, making him sit while we walked to the edge of the lead, waited, then called him and let him come. The first couple times he wanted to climb up Danny, but Danny was consistent and kept Wally on the ground and Wally got the knack of things readily. Despite his appearance as a kind of goofy lug, Wally seemed pretty smart to me. Father Jasper was correct: Dogs want to have some direction. Without direction they don’t know how to behave, or how to get along with people, so they act every which way and get themselves into trouble. Inside of a half-hour, Wally acted more confidently, did not jump up in neediness, behaved as a companion, not a nut.