Stay with Me (26 page)
Authors: Paul Griffin
“Boo.”
He cocks his head, puts his nose under my elbow, and flips up my arm for me to pet him.
“Where you from, boy? What’ve you seen?”
He licks my Adam’s apple.
I massage the scars around his torn-up ear. “You lived a thing or two, huh? How you stay so happy, man? How you forget the bad stuff?”
He cocks his head the other way and puts his huge paw on my chest. He trembles from tail wagging, has to be three hundred switches a minute.
“How you make friends so fast and deep, man? I’d tell you that you ought to be careful about that, but it would ruin you. Hurts, though. Get ready.” Then I stop talking, because talking too much to a dog only confuses him.
Why’d I let myself fall in love with her when I knew we never should be together? Why’d I let her love me back? She never said the words, but she wore that stickpin every change of shirt. Still, would have been beautiful to hear her say it.
Boo looks from my right eye to my left and back, and I swear he’s reading my mind. He nudges my chin with his nose.
“What you want, boy? You want a cookie?” I dunk one in peanut butter, and he takes it nice and polite and tosses it to the side.
“What’s up, boy? You want to go out and tag your table again, right?” I open the door to swing him out to the caged-in porch, but this time he won’t leave the bathroom. He sits on my foot and looks up at me.
I crouch close to him to look into his eyes, but I can’t read him. “I don’t know what you want, boy.”
He wiggles himself into me so I have to hug him, and when I do, he rests his head at my neck and sighs. I swear this dog is the easy side of God. When I stroke his shoulders, he sighs happiness, and I believe this is what he wants me to know: That this right here, this minute of him and me being lumped up on a prison bathroom floor is all we need, and more than anything we could ever want. That’s when I hear, “Mister
Morse
.”
Morse
.”
Thompkins points for me to sit. Wash sits next to me. Boo jumps up into my lap to lick my ears.
“The animal is not supposed to be in the chair,” Thompkins says.
“Down.”
Boo pops down to wrestle my sneaker. I claw him till he goes over for a belly scratch, farting up a peanut butter cloud, tell you what.
Thompkins stares at me. Frowns. Left hand hidden in his right. “What’s this
spot
peeing business? Hey, don’t turn away from me.”
spot
peeing business? Hey, don’t turn away from me.”
And here it comes, the hissing.
“The training manuals very specifically tell you how to paper train the animal. The pictures show you how to do it. I could not have made it simpler. Did you study the manual, the part about laying out a ten by ten foot square of newspaper?”
“Boo won’t go on paper, sir.”
“After you
feed
him, he will have to
eliminate
. You walk him to the
paper
—”
feed
him, he will have to
eliminate
. You walk him to the
paper
—”
“He holds it in.”
Thompkins squints. “The guard told me you are trying to get the animal to eliminate in the shower drain. He says you are trying to show the animal by example, acting like a dog as you do.”
“Mister Thompkins,” Wash says. “This young man is special. He understands these dogs in ways you and I can’t. Give him another chance.”
Thompkins eyes Boo, then me. “If the dog is not eliminating on the paper, then where is he eliminating?”
By now Boo’s sniffing the table.
“I’m cleaning it up real good,” I say.
“Mister
Morse,
I asked you a question. You are
evading
it, and there you go again, pinching your wrist.”
Morse,
I asked you a question. You are
evading
it, and there you go again, pinching your wrist.”
Boo trots around the table.
“Boo, come,” I say.
But he’s up on the table and letting loose, splattering me, Wash, and Thompkins. When he finishes he crawls into my lap and yawns and nuzzles his way to sleep.
“Mister Thompkins—”
He silences me with a wave of his hand. He grabs some paper towels and wipes his arms, careful to hide his left hand. He makes a note into his book and packs up his case. “Gentlemen, I have worked very hard to develop this program. Nowhere in the protocol books I gave Mister Morse does it say the boy and the animal should be hiding out in a bathroom for twenty-odd hours. Nor is there anything in the books about training the dog to eliminate on top of a
table
.”
table
.”
“Listen,” Wash says. “If you boot this kid from the program, he’s going back into the tent. This is a very sensitive young man.”
“They’re
all
sensitive, Sergeant.”
all
sensitive, Sergeant.”
“Agreed, but this fellow has a hard time
hiding
his sensitivity. He has a contract out on him. Then again, I suppose you don’t know about the tent, do you, Mister Thompkins?”
hiding
his sensitivity. He has a contract out on him. Then again, I suppose you don’t know about the tent, do you, Mister Thompkins?”
“Actually, Sergeant, I do. And I am genuinely sorry for Mister Morse’s predicament. But what you and Mister Morse need to understand is that I have to deliver these dogs to our veterans. I don’t know if you are aware of it, but there is a war on.”
“I am aware of that fact, sir.” Wash frowns that one away. “Give the boy another couple of days.”
“We would only be delaying the inevitable.”
“Give him till tomorrow.”
Thompkins heads for the cell door. “To process the termination paperwork will take that long anyway. Will you please inform the assistant warden he will be hearing from me tomorrow morning?” The guard opens the cage door and lets the man out.
“Son?” Wash says. “Seems to me you have until tomorrow morning to get that dog housebroken. Can you do it?”
The building trembles. I look out the window. An older, noisier 747 just clears the dome. Boo is playing chase with a big black fly.
Another guard comes to the bars. “Morse. Visitor.”
“He reminds me of you,” I say.
“Yeah?” Vic says.
“He’s real cool, but he’s sneaky. Wash isn’t afraid to bend the rules a little.”
“Sounds like a great man. Potent, this Old Dogs thing. You found your calling.”
“Had to get locked up to do it.”
“You’ll be out sooner than you think,” Vic says.
“So I been told.”
“By people who aren’t locked up, right? When you get out, you come see me. I’ll help you get that dog training company started. You’ll make us millionaires.”
I study him: pushing seventy. He isn’t in great shape at all. Twenty-five years from now? “I appreciate that, man. Thank you.” My lips are trembling.
“Hey?” he says. “What’s up?”
“Things aren’t looking great right now.”
“They never do, till they’re great,” he says. “You watch: You’re gonna be okay.”
He thinks I’m upset because I’m locked up. Better to let him think it’s that. He can’t help me with the fact Thompkins is about to fire me. “Tell me more about Tony.”
“He says he wants you to know he’s there for you.”
I look away. “Tell him I said thank you.”
Vic nods for a while. “I need a favor.”
“Anything, man.”
“Just for a few minutes, I need you to let Céce sit with you.”
“Anything but that.”
“This is a matter of honor. Hers. Yours. One last visit. You need to do this.”
“Vic, ten minutes ago, when they said I had a visitor, I was ready to cartwheel down here. But now I got my senses back. I can’t see her. She’s almost through it. The forgetting. Why stir up all the feelings again when her and me can never be together?”
“Because you need to say good-bye,” he says. “I don’t tell somebody to do something unless I’m one hundred percent sure it’s—”
“Look, man, I have to get back to my dog.”
“You’re gonna see her, kid, whether you like it or not.”
“Damn, man, my plate’s full, okay? I appreciate you coming down here, but just leave it alone, all right?” I fish my pocket for that letter I wrote, and I push it across the table to Vic. “For Tony.”
“Kid, there’s three ways to do things: the wrong way, the right way, and my way. Wrong way: Make her hate you. Right way: Be a gentleman and sit with her for ten minutes, let her say what she needs to say.”
“And your way?”
“You don’t want to know.”
I kick back out of my chair and slam it into the table, and I’m so gone.
(Saturday, August 15, just before dinner shift)
CÉCE:
Bobby drops a tray of glasses. “Yup, yes, yet again,” he says. Five minutes later, he spills ice all over the kitchen floor. “I am so sorry about that. It’s an age-old problem.”
If you’re a certified klutz, why would you seek employment in a restaurant, which is pretty much about carrying stuff from one place to another without spilling it? He’s an excellent cheesecake pal, though. We go into the walk-in and eat and we don’t care that we’re licking our fingers in front of each other. A minute later Ma’s in with us, because the air conditioner is broken again. She’s sipping iced coffee, hungover but sober for half a day and still promising to stay that way. A minute later Vic comes in, and he’s huffing and sweating.
“What happened to you?” Ma says.
“Car broke down again. Get this: The tow truck crapped out.
He
had to get a tow. And when he dropped the Olds at the gas station, it started.”
He
had to get a tow. And when he dropped the Olds at the gas station, it started.”
“You just have to hit it really hard with a cinderblock,” Ma says. “Passenger side, front quarter panel. It restarts like maybe thirty-five percent of the time. I left the brick in the trunk.”
“Good to know.”
“You need help unloading the stuff?” I say.
“What stuff?” Vic says.
“The Costco crap.”
“Yeah, no, it was too crowded. I’ll go tomorrow. Hand me a piece of cake there, kid.”
Bobby reaches for the box and knocks over a bucket of mushrooms soaking in wine. “Yup, yes, yet again. I am so sorry about that.”
The new waitress cracks the door.
“Grab a spot of Parmesan wheel, Jeannie,” Ma says.
“Um, Carmella, I . . .” She opens the door, and this older guy is standing there. He’s in a U.S. Army uniform. The nametag. Anthony’s recruiter. He searches our faces and decides my mother is the person he’s looking for. “Mrs. Vaccuccia?”
“No,” Ma says. “Please, no.”
And then I hear myself saying, “The hell are you doing here? He’s still in boot camp. It isn’t time yet.”
My big brother, my mother’s only son, Anthony James Vaccuccia, was “seriously injured.” Part of his face was burned in the explosion, though that wound is supposedly minor. Also burned were two fingers on his right hand, the one that launched how many touchdowns I can’t remember. Those burns were so bad, the fingers had to be amputated, along with his legs, which were pulverized. Shrapnel lacerated his larynx, but doctors are hopeful that surgery will restore part of my brother’s voice box.
No roadside bomb in some faraway land. No grenade. No sniper fire aimed at a Humvee gas tank. An insanely random accident. No one to blame, except Anthony.
My brother and his platoon were leaving their barracks for a workout. A maintenance vehicle crashed into the barracks. The old man behind the wheel was having a heart attack. Anthony being Anthony went to help the old man. The truck was on fire, but Anthony couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—leave the man. The truck door jammed in the crash. Anthony was climbing into the truck to kick out the door when the fire lit up a propane tank.
I did not see this coming. I can only conclude, definitively, that ESP is a crock of shit.
Vic closes the restaurant for the night and drives us home—after Ma smashes the engine with the cinderblock. Vic takes the long way, for some reason, all the way around the reservoir. We’re riding for a while, nobody saying anything, until Ma says, “You guys mind I put on the radio?”
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