Boy's Best Friend (8 page)

“What's up?” chirped Carlos.

“Lester wants a cracker,” said Lester, reaching into the cupboard. He prepared himself a snack—crackers spread with almond butter and a tall glass of milk. Then he leaned down and looked at the world upside down for a few seconds. The room seemed strange. It reminded Lester of something his father had once said. “Things appear different depending on how you look at them.” Lester righted his head. He preferred the view from that angle. He guessed that was because he was used to it.

“Probably if I stood on my head for a week, then I'd get used to the way things looked that way too,” he said to Bill Gates.

Lester filled in his logbook, then started down Chestnut Street, Bill Gates in tow. “There must be some chestnut trees around here,” he said, “or they wouldn't have named it that.”

Lester looked upward. A bird was building a nest on a branch in a tree overhead.

“I bet she's going to lay some eggs,” said Lester. “But we won't be here to see them. We'll be in Denver.” Lester gave Bill Gates a reassuring pat. “But birds hatch eggs there too. Hey, that's something these two places have in common.”

Lester turned the corner onto Acorn Street. “Chestnuts, acorns,” he said. “More nuts.” He slowed down next to a van parked along the side of the road. It had pastel cupcakes, tarts, pies, and cakes with candles painted on one side.

“Yum,” said Lester.

A little girl poked her head out from behind the van. “Hi,” she said. “I'm Vivien.”

“Hi,” said Lester, peering into the window of the van. “Is it your birthday or something?” he asked.

“No,” said Vivien. “That's my mom's delivery van. She's a pastry chef.”

“Jeez,” said Lester. “You're lucky.”

“You too,” said Vivien, turning to Bill Gates. “You have such a cute dog. Can I pet him?”

“Sure,” said Lester. “He loves attention.”

“I love dogs,” said Vivien. “What's your dog's name?”

“Bill Gates,” said Lester.

Suddenly George appeared. “Hey, Lester,” he said. “What's up?”

“I'm taking Bill Gates for a walk,” said Lester. “Where's Bart?”

“Napping,” said George.

“Oh, so you must be the new boy in George's class,” said Vivien. “The one who came from that place with the long street.” She picked up her jump rope and began to swing it in circles. “Why did you name your dog Bill Gates?” she asked.

“I wanted to name him after a great man who changed our lives,” said Lester. “And that's Bill Gates.”

“I wonder if Bill Gates knows there's a dog named after him,” said Vivien.

Lester shrugged.

“You could write and tell him,” said Vivien. “George writes to famous people all the time, don't you?” Vivien looked at George.

“Not really,” said George.

“You wrote to that Rupert Sheldrake person,” said Vivien.

“He's nowhere near as famous as Bill Gates,” said George.

“Did he write you back?” asked Lester.

George nodded.

Lester looked impressed. “Maybe I will write to Bill Gates,” he said. His eyes traveled up the walkway to the front porch. “I used to have a porch just like that. In Denver,” he said, his eyes becoming watery. George noticed that they were greenish-blue, just like the cordgrass on the marsh. Lester continued. “Bill Gates misses Denver,” he said. “He had a lot of nice friends there.”

“We have lots of nice dogs here too,” said Vivien. “And people,” she added, crossing her arms and hopping through the loop she'd made with the rope. “We're nice, aren't we, George?”

“I guess so,” said George, leaning over to pet Bill Gates. He was feeling a little uncomfortable. Maybe he hadn't been as nice to Lester as he could have been.

“Do you want to come and collect caterpillars with us tomorrow?” asked Viven. “This year we get a nickel apiece for each one. We put them in coffee cans and my dad takes them to caterpillar city.”

“Caterpillar city?” said Lester. “Where's that?” He guessed it must be somewhere on Cape Cod.

Vivien was thoughtful. “I don't know,” she shrugged. “It's somewhere, though.”

“Well,” said Lester, remembering his trip to Denver. “I think I might be going away. But if I'm here, sure, I'll come.”

“If you're here,” said Vivien, “we're starting at around ten.”

*   *   *

George had never invited anyone to collect caterpillars before, except for Kyra. And he had never told anyone but her what happened to them. The truth was that his father burned them, and George hated the thought of it.

“Why did you ask Lester to come collect caterpillars?” George asked Vivien after Lester and Bill Gates had left.

“Because Dad said we could invite anyone we wanted,” said Vivien. “And I wanted to ask Lester.” She picked up her jump rope and started jumping again. “Don't you think Bill Gates looks like Lester?” she said.

“Maybe,” said George. They were both kind of disheveled and messy-looking. “Do you think I look like Bart?”

Vivien stopped jumping long enough to look at Bart, then back at George. “No,” she said. She sounded pretty sure. Then she asked, “Why don't you like Lester?”

“Who said I don't like Lester?” said George.

“It just seems like you don't,” said Vivien.

George was relieved to be interrupted by the huffing and puffing of Mr. Alvaros, their next-door neighbor, wobbling past, overloaded with grocery bags.

“I'll get those for you,” said George, offering Mr. Alvaros a hand. He took two of the bags.

“Thank you, son,” said Mr. Alvaros, patting George on the cheek. His hand was dry and cool.

“I can help too,” said Vivien.

“Bless your soul, Vivien,” said Mr. Alvaros, handing Vivien a canvas handbag.

George and Vivien left the groceries in Mr. Alvaros's entranceway and headed back down the walkway.

“Why did he call you son?” asked Vivien. “You're not his son.”

“It's just a figure of speech,” said George.

“What's that?” asked Vivien.

“An expression,” said George.

Then Vivien asked, “What's a soul?”

George frowned. He had wondered the same thing, but he didn't want to admit he didn't have a good answer.

“It's the part of you that you can't see,” said George. Vivien sat down on the front steps and dropped her chin into her hands. She looked down at herself, puzzled, and then back at George. George tried again. It was a hard question.

“It's the part that feels,” he said at last.

“Oh,” said Vivien. “Does everyone have one?”

“I think so,” said George. Vivien looked relieved.

“Does Bart have a soul?” asked Vivien.

“Sure,” said George. He thought Bart must have a soul. All of a sudden he wondered if caterpillars had souls. He guessed they probably did.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, Lester wove back through the streets of nuts. He couldn't stop thinking about caterpillar city, wondering where it was and what it was like. There were caterpillars in Denver but he'd never heard of a city named after them.

“If you want,” he said to Bill Gates, “we could postpone our trip to Denver half a day. Then we could collect caterpillars with George and Vivien. It might be fun.”

When Lester arrived home, Carlos was sitting on the window ledge. “What's up?” he chirped.

Lester looked out the open window into the backyard. His neighbor Mrs. Robarts had just closed the door of her toolshed and was hurrying back to her house.

 

16

“Why don't I like Lester?” George asked himself that night. He stood before the bathroom mirror brushing his teeth. It wasn't really that he didn't like Lester. It was just that he felt that if he liked Lester then Lester would in some way be taking Kyra's place.

“And that place is sacred,” George said. He wasn't really sure what that word meant, but he'd heard it on television and it sounded good. That reminded George that he'd heard Lester talking to himself out loud. He'd even seen him running around the schoolyard shouting “The sky is falling.” Maybe that was weird. But George was weird too sometimes. He got compulsions to do things that other people might think were strange, like spinning like a top.

George climbed into bed and checked the clock. At exactly 9 p.m. he began to think of a fruit. It was a game he sometimes played with Kyra—another experiment, really. Before falling asleep, one of them would think of a fruit for ten minutes, and the other would have to guess which fruit it was. Tonight it was George's turn to guess what fruit Kyra was thinking about. George waited, but nothing came to mind. Finally he texted “purple grapes.” He waited for Kyra to text back. “Lime,” she wrote. He'd gotten it wrong. George took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes he felt he was totally connected and that he had a clear and present line right through to Kyra. Then other times he couldn't capture that feeling. George wondered why he couldn't will it. How much depended on him and how much on Kyra? And how much on things that were completely beyond his control? Maybe it was some combination of things.

“Tomorrow's caterpillar day,” texted George. “We invited Lester.”

Kyra texted back. “That was nice of you,” she wrote. “Say hi to him for me. And give his dog a pat.”

“Sure,” wrote George. But he was wishing Kyra were there to do those things herself.

George looked out the window and into the sky, at the stars, pulsating as though they were breathing. He linked them with his eyes as if they were dot-to-dots. The Big Dipper was right above him. It occurred to him that maybe he was connected to Kyra in the same way the stars were connected, in some sort of invisible design. Despite the distance, he knew it was true. So why did he have to do experiments? Weren't there some things people just knew? As George looked up at the sky, he knew he was looking at some strange place where science and spirit met. And even though he was outside of that space he knew that he was part of it. What was “spirit,” anyway? One of those funny words like “soul,” which was hard to define. That part of himself that he got a glimpse of every so often. It was that part of him that knew how others felt. The part of him that knew how he felt. It was the part of him that knew full well that it was not Lester's fault that Kyra had moved. It was just life. And things happened in life. And you didn't like all of them.

George sighed. He wished he could think of an experiment to prove that there was a soul.

Dear Dr. Sheldrake,

I live on Cape Cod and I'm doing an experiment with my best friend, Kyra, who moved to North Carolina. One of us thinks about a fruit from a list for ten minutes. And the other one tries to guess which fruit it is. My friend Kyra almost always gets it right so I guess she must be telepathic. How do you think that works? Do you think it's the same telepathy as dogs who know when their owners are coming home?

Sincerely,

George Masson

P.S. North Carolina is about 750 miles from Cape Cod, in case you don't know.

Dear George,

I'm glad you're trying this out with Kyra and I think it's a good experiment. The only thing is you should make sure that the fruit you think of is selected at random. Otherwise, Kyra might be getting it right just by figuring out what you're going to think of next. For example, if you thought of an apple yesterday, today she might think, “Oh, it won't be an apple because George did that yesterday.” So you should do it using a real random selection method. The easiest would be to write the names of fruits on slips of paper, mix them thoroughly, and pick one from a hat or a bowl.

Telepathy happens between people or animals that are closely bonded to each other. It happens with animals that are members of the same group, like wolves in a pack, or between animals that are very attached to a particular person, like between your dog and you, or between people who are good friends or members of the same family. “Tele” is a Greek word meaning distant, as in telephone or television, and “path” is a Greek word meaning feeling, as in sympathy or empathy. So telepathy is mainly about feelings, picking up on what another person needs, what they are doing, or what their intentions are. Bart seems to be picking up on your intention to come home and responding to that. Animals and people may also be able to respond to thoughts or pictures in our minds, and that seems to be what Kyra is doing.

Don't forget to record the results of your experiment and let me know how you get on.

Best wishes,

Rupert Sheldrake

 

17

On Saturday morning Lester pedaled into the Massons' driveway and pulled to a stop alongside Mrs. Masson's pastry van. He'd decided to postpone his trip to Denver for a few hours. That way he could see caterpillar city.

“Hey, Lester. I thought you couldn't come,” cried Vivien, running out to greet him.

“I had a change of heart,” said Lester. He liked that expression, the way it referred to a feeling, a fluttering, somewhere deep in his chest. He'd felt it when he awoke that morning and thought about going to Denver.

“Great,” said Vivien. She skipped back to the steps where she'd been making mud pies, flat pats of wet earth sprinkled with teaberries and leaves. “Want a mud pie?” she asked, holding out a plate.

“Thanks,” said Lester, taking the plate politely and going through the motions of eating. Lester rubbed his belly. “Yummm. I love pie. Maybe I can try one of your mother's.”

“Her lemon meringue is the best,” said Vivien.

“I hope I'll have enough room for it after all that mud pie,” said Lester, continuing to pat his belly.