Mercy on These Teenage Chimps (9 page)

I was in the refrigerated section of the market when I spotted Coach Bear. He saw me as he let the fogged glass door close.

"Hi, Coach." I approached him, not really happy about this encounter, but seeing no way to escape. I had learned details about his personal life and his separation from his wife. I had witnessed his tantrum at the gym. I wondered if my face gave away my embarrassment.

"Is Joey still in the tree?" He was gripping a jar of tartar sauce.

I told him, yes, he was still in the tree.

Coach Bear sighed and dropped the tartar sauce into his basket.

"You know, I think I was too rough on him," he admitted.

My silence indicated that I agreed. It was clear that Coach hadn't gone to see Joey yesterday, but maybe he still would.

"Coach," I started, "I delivered some cosmetics to your wife. My mom sells the stuff." I was mindful that he was a bearish man with thick fur, and maybe my Cupid's arrow wouldn't pierce him. Still, in my mind's eye, I pulled back my bow and aimed one at him.

He stopped in his tracks and touched his heart. "You did?" he responded in a shaky voice. "She said some boy came over yesterday."

"That was me." I swallowed a sour gob of fear and braved, "You have a nice wife."

"
Did
have, you mean."

"Nah, Coach, she's still your wife."

Coach Bear looked down at his basket of food. There were a couple of lemons, parsley, asparagus, lettuce, ranch dressing, vanilla ice cream, and the tartar sauce.

"I'm having dinner with her."

"You are!" I cried gleefully. I imagined them seated together, Coach Bear's elbows up on the small table.

"She doesn't know it yet, but I'm gonna cook for her." He gazed in the direction of a soft drink sign shouting in loud letters TWO FOR ONE.

"What are you gonna cook?"

"Remember those fish?"

"You know how to cook fish?" I asked.

"Yeah, you gut them, which I already took care of yesterday, and fry them in a pan with hot oil." He described his secret flavoring and the side dishes of asparagus and a green salad with croutons.

"I gotta go," he said and proceeded toward the checkout.

"I gotta go, too." Mrs. Fuller and her insistence on correct grammar came to mind. I could even smell her perfume and feel that powerful grip on my forearm. I let that image recede, like bathwater down a drain.

I trailed Coach Bear to the cashier, where he took my soda and sunflower seeds from me. "Let me pay for them," he said. It was the least he could do, he remarked, for my work at the awards banquet.

From the market, I hadn't clip-clopped more than six steps toward my bike when I encountered Cory. Had he been following me?

"Hey, Ronnie," he crowed. "I want to talk to you."

While I prepared to turn and run, I forged ahead with a question. "Why?"

"I can't tell you here."

I didn't have much choice, so he hopped onto the handlebars of my bike and we rode to the school yard, which, being Sunday, was locked. But we slipped in, bike and all, through an opening cut in the chain-link fence. We perched on the top of the bleachers at the baseball diamond. The white lines had been swept away by wind. A bird stood on the pitcher's mound and was joined by another bird. They were pecking at sunflower seed shells and kicking up tiny clouds of dust.

"What do you want, Cory?" I asked. "And, hey, your friends really punished me." I rolled up my sleeve and showed him a bruise the size of Texas.

"You're the only one I can talk to," Cory confided desperately. "Sorry about your bruises. I got some, too." He looked around, as if someone might overhear. "I turned thirteen today," he whispered. "Something happened."

I took a swallow of my soda and waited.

"I think I got what you got..."

A burp slowly made its way up my throat and actually fluttered my lips. I wondered what I had that made him so spooked.

"Ronnie, I think I'm a monkey like you and Joey."

A second burp followed, but this one blasted from the depths of wherever burps are created.

"Chimp, Cory," I corrected. "Not monkey. Monkeys got tails, and they're not as smart." I burped again.

Any other time, Cory would have made a nasty comment about my burp or, not to be outdone, would have produced a majestic reply. But he had grown sullen. He examined his palms, where the lines were dark and filled with sweat. He munched pensively on the inside of his cheek.

"When did it start to happen?" I asked.

"Last night. You remember how we were playing football?"

I nodded.

"I got home and was just going to eat and go to bed, but then I suddenly wanted to take a shower. I only shower three times a week, and never on Saturday."

I nodded again in sympathy.

"Like, I wanted to be clean." He wiped his palms on his pants. "Yeah, it was really strange. When I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror I saw I was a chimpanzee. I'm ugly."

I could see, in fact, some chimp features in his face. Then again, his long eyelashes reminded me of a camel. He was still evolving. "You're not that ugly," I countered, and then added, "Chimps are smart. And there are worse things."

"Like what?"

I paused before I said, "You could be a rhino like Jason."

He moaned.

"Or you could be a weasel like Robert. Or like Daniel, who's a snake and a big fat liar."

He moaned louder and kicked at a peanut shell at his feet.

We sat in silence, twin souls in rare convergence. For years Cory had bullied me and more than once hammered me into the ground like a stake. The two birds on the mound were joined by two other birds, and soon they were brawling.

"Look at 'em," I told Cory.

Cory refused and kept watching his feet.

"They're fighting like you and me and your friends." I imagined that the combative scene among the birds might bring Cory around.

More silence. The birds flew away, and wind swept the diamond. I studied my own palms with their own sweaty lines filled with dark shadows.

Our silence deepened when Cory's friends stepped through the rip in the chain-link fence. I could see that Cory was nervous that they would see us sitting together in the bleachers.

"Keep quiet," Cory whispered.

I didn't have to be told.

Jerome and Scott walked past us. They were still twelve, not ready for that big change in life. They sought the far end of the baseball diamond, where they started pushing each other and then began to wrestle in the mud. Like boys their age, they had to return home exhausted, bruised, and muddy in face, hands, and knees. They had to prove to their parents—especially their mothers—that they were still just boys.

Cory and I
dragged our shadows from the bleachers after Jerome and Scott left.

"I'll see you later," Cory bid in a sorrowful whisper. When he pulled his hands from his pockets to punch my forearm in friendship, they were wet with sweat. "I gotta get out of these clothes." His shirttail hung sloppily from his pants.

"Okay," I said. "Don't worry too much, Cory. It's not bad."

I risked a return home, sneaking up the lawn like a ninja. I heard Mom in the backyard, where I suspected she was splashing water on her new tomato plants. I slipped unnoticed through the front door, stripped my body of my Sunday clothes, sniffed the pile of T-shirts on my bedroom floor to find the cleanest smelling one, pushed my legs into some old pants, and tiptoed to the kitchen. There, I opened the refrigerator and the light shone on my face. I poured a glass of pineapple smoothie, scoured the pantry for a bag of pretzels, and crept away from the house.

I had two hours before my rendezvous with Jessica. I still couldn't see Joey, who was probably wondering where I was. I was considering how to fill my time when a car pulling a trailer stopped in the middle of the street. The driver's door opened.

"Get," a voice growled as a hand deposited a small collie on the road. The door closed and the car drove off, shifting smoothly into second and third. It rattled around the corner, leaving a small puff of blue smoke hanging in the air.

I scampered up to the dog, which seemed dazed and shrunken, as if it had gone through the hot cycle of a washer.

"You okay?" I asked.

The dog's eyes were momentarily crossed. An ear was flopped in a strange way.

"You okay?" I repeated. I bent down, adjusted the ear, and let the dog sniff my hand. "Come on," I warned when I heard an approaching car. But then I recognized the car and realized that there was no danger. It was Mrs. Pinker, a widow for as long as I could remember and the granddaughter of Colonel Homer J. Pinker, founder of the town. Mrs. Pinker drove a long Oldsmobile that was responsible for most of our town's air pollution—the thing smoked like a locomotive. I led the little collie to the curb, where I checked the tags. Her name was Tammy and she lived at 237 Vine Street.

"How come they did that?" I inquired. It was a question only the owner could answer.

My mind began to spin with theories of why she had been abandoned. The owner was moving out of town—that's why the trailer was piled with stuff—and didn't want to take the dog.
What a loss,
I thought. What meanness! After all, little Tammy was young, frisky, and very polite. As distinguished ambassador for her special kind—shrunken collies—she shook my hand three times. She fetched. She rolled onto her back to bicycle her legs. She was multitalented.

"Let's see if I can get you back home."

Tammy wheeled up on her hind legs, dropped back to all fours, and trotted at my side, occasionally looking up at me in what I judged to be appreciation—no, friendship—no, just plain ol' love.

"You're such a nice dog," I cooed.

Soon we were on Vine Street, one of the rougher neighborhoods in Pinkerton. Some of the houses had cars parked on dead lawns, and porch lights were on in the middle of the day. At one house, long-neglected Christmas tree lights hung sloppily from eaves and were winking pale, anemic colors. The door, I noticed, was open and slipping off its hinges. Within its walls beat heavy metal music. At another house, a blanket was hung like drapes on the front window. And was that a toilet sitting on the porch? A baby sat in a rusty swing—no, it was just a plastic doll with its eyes closed.

I located the house. The door was open and flies, like sentries, guarded its entry.

"Hello?" I called nervously from the porch. "Hello? Hello?" I pushed the doorbell, but it failed to ring. My heart beat hard. I swatted away a few muscular flies struggling to use my nose as a resting spot.

Tammy entered the house barking her hello.

"Tammy!" I called frantically. "Get out of there." I slapped my thighs and clicked my tongue as I beckoned her. I finally trumpeted through cupped hands, "Come on, Tammy! Get out of there."

But Tammy disappeared into one of the rooms. I stood on the porch, boxing flies from my face and debating whether to follow. What if I had a confrontation with a toothless criminal cradling a shotgun in his tattooed arms? He would be mumbling, "Glad you came, sonny."

I took a chance. I leaned in the doorway and called, "Anybody home?"

The house creaked.

"Anybody home?" I repeated louder.

The living room was filled with a dirty couch, folding chairs, a goosenecked lamp, boxes of old clothes, three large plastic bags filled with empty beer and soda cans, stained pillows, dozens of coffee cans set against a far wall, and just plain trash. The place held the smell of abandonment.

I entered by taking one long, careful step, and then another.

"Where are you?" I called. "Tammy, where are you?" I tiptoed to the kitchen, where I discovered her licking a dry plastic dish. "Tammy!" I called. "Come on, let's go, girl."

We peeled out of that house and went back to the market, where I bought a single can of food for my new friend. Outside, at the curb where pigeons congregated, I pulled the tab lid and the fragrance of meat had Tammy prancing in place.

"He's cute," Jessica cried joyfully.

"She," I corrected. "Her name is Tammy." I explained how she had been abandoned.

"Oh, that's cruel." Jessica petted Tammy's fur and gave her a big hug. "Poor Tammy." Then she asked, "Are you going to keep her?"

"If my mom lets me."

Four o'clock had finally come, and we were seated on Jessica's front lawn. Her mother was washing the front window with a garden hose. It was time to wipe away the winter grime.

"I'll take her, if you can't." Jessica turned her head and for a brief moment watched her mother as she stepped down from a stepladder. "If Mom lets me."

It was time to reveal why I wanted to speak with her. I hadn't practiced a speech about Joey's finer points, such as his wrestling moves and his loyalty to friends, but I had assumed my words would flow brilliantly.

I started: "Iyakindalikeyouknowjoeymyrealgoodfriendyouknowwegottoschoolandwellkindalyawantto—"

"What are you saying?" Jessica laughed with her hand over her mouth. "You are so funny."

"I'm saying, Iyakindalikeyouknowlikalikajoeyis-reallycool." I had turned to jelly, weak of body and mind, and I was rushing my words. It was awkward to declare my best friend's romantic intentions. No, nearly impossible. Also, I was scared that Joey might get mad at me for telling. I would have to make Jessica guess what I couldn't say. Maybe charades would get my meaning across. Jessica kindly got me started.

"It's about Joey, huh?"

I nodded and placed a hand over my heart.

"He likes the Pledge of Allegiance?" she ventured.

I hugged myself to show his loving nature.

"He's cold."

I laced my hands together and batted my eyelashes.

"He prays, huh? No, no, he's got something in his eye." She bit her lower lip as she lowered her face and thought deeply. She raised her face. "No, no, he's caught a butterfly and is about to release it!"

Frowning, I shook my head. I had done better when my hand was on my heart. I puckered up my face.

"He ate a really sour lemon?"

Here I began to hum the Beatles' "She Loves You." It was one of my mom's favorite songs. I was certain that I was doing a passable imitation when Tammy, who had been sleeping at my side, woke with a yawn. She sat up groggily, raised her nose, and howled. I decided to stop singing.