The sooty walls are scrubbed clean, the supplies restocked; I’ve even been given new old clothes. There’s been plenty of talk of me “learning my lesson,” as if injury is a lesson. He thinks he rescued me, when the truth of the matter is that the fire rescued me from him, from needing him.
I don’t need you anymore.
It’s only when he spins around that I realize I am speaking aloud again. More and more the stuff inside my head and the stuff outside my head swap places. Thoughts are more real to me than concrete walls.
Dobbs is unpacking more than the usual provisions. A dozen boxes of mac and cheese, beef jerky, enough canned beans to last a year. “I’m going away again.”
“Where do you keep going?”
“This is the last long trip. Before you know it, I’ll be back.” He turns from me. Dobbs is a hundred evil things all rolled up together, but one thing he cannot do is lie to my face.
I get up and confront him. “What’s going on, Dobbs?”
“I told you.” He starts chewing on the corner of his recently grown mustache. It looks ridiculous. All he needs is a pair of black plastic glasses to look like a man in a cheap disguise. “Nothing’s going on. I’m taking a business trip.”
“You’re lying.”
He gives me a tube of ointment that’s supposed to help with the burn scars. “Use it twice a day.”
“Are you going on vacation?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Dobbs finishes his task and then looks like he’s going to embrace me. I step back.
“Good-bye, Blythe.”
The second he leaves, I realize what it is. I rush up to the door as he’s locking it. “Are you going to prepare another place for us?” I yell.
I turn around and hug myself. He is. He’s going to take me above. I don’t care where he takes me. Sunlight. Wind. Air. Faces.
For the first time, a dream with no pictures, just sounds. Only one sound, actually—the sound of a very small child crying.
I try reaching for him. He keeps crying, and my eyes keep staring into the dumb darkness. I want the crying to go on, because it is at least a voice, one that isn’t mine.
Then, another voice, the one I know only too well. “Shut up, already.”
The light snaps on. I am still in the same cell. The same captor has returned only to take up the bulk of the space with his bloated enthusiasm. Wedged between us, impossibly, is a curly-haired boy. Has he climbed out of my dream, out of my head, into this room? Snot is running into his mouth. He’s been crying for a long time.
“Mama.” He wails at the ceiling.
“Hey, little guy.” My voice only makes him cry louder.
“What’s going on?” I ask Dobbs, and am given that you-got-eyes face.
“Little boy?” The child rolls into a ball the moment I make a move toward him. Pill-bug boy.
I glare at Dobbs, who pats his hair back in place. He smiles, frowns, then shrugs, running through an inventory of expressions. But what is the right one for this, whatever this is?
“Who is he? A relative?” Dobbs doesn’t have siblings.
“He’s a kid, what’s it look like?”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Don’t you start now,” he says. “Bad enough having to put up with his bawling for two hours.” Dobbs peels off his wet jacket.
The boy is soaked, too. For a moment, I am distracted by the presence of rain.
“See if you can get him to stop blubbering.”
As soon as I move toward the child, his shivers turn to full-scale quakes. It occurs to me how frightening I must look to him.
“He’s not going to listen to me. He wants his mama.”
“Let’s get some water on the boil.” When Dobbs comes back downstairs, it’s with a gas tank. He connects it to the burners. Apparently, I’m to be trusted with a flame again.
“What have you gone and done, Dobbs?”
“It’s always the grand inquisition with you, isn’t it? How about, ‘Nice to see you after such a long time, Dobbs. How was your trip?’ ”
I rub my eyes. I am quite certain now that I am awake.
“Are you going to make him something to drink or not?”
I crawl closer to the boy to see if I can get him to unfurl a little. “Hello?”
“I want my mama.”
“Well, your mama’s not here!”
“Don’t yell at him!” My hand pets the air above the boy’s head. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” Even without being touched, he cringes.
Dobbs tosses me a red backpack. It has a picture of a cartoon car on the front of it. “I’ve got the other stuff in the car. I’ll get it in a minute.”
In the backpack is a brown sweater, a pair of Pull-Ups, and Goofy. I hand the boy the stuffed toy. “Here’s your friend. Why don’t you hang on to him, while I help you get on this nice warm sweater.”
A tiny hand snatches the toy and it disappears into the folds of a toddler. The crying dies down, but not the tremors. He lets me pull off his jacket but refuses the sweater. I drape a quilt over his shoulders.
I storm Dobbs. “Who is he?”
“You should probably make him something to eat. Maybe all that yowling is ’cause he’s hungry.”
“He’s not going to eat, look at him. He’s upset. Why have you brought him here? His family is going to get worried.”
Dobbs starts pacing. “How hard is it to make the kid a sandwich, for chrissake?”
“Why won’t you tell me what he’s doing here?”
“Fine. I’ll fix it myself.” Dobbs finds a box of crackers, tears open a package. He scrapes the last of the peanut butter from the jar.
I snatch the spoon out of his hand. “Where is this child’s mother, Dobbs?”
“You’re his mama now! You want an explanation, there it is!”
Oh. But no.
“You didn’t—You—? You couldn’t have. Please, please—oh, please, tell me you did not take this boy.”
Dobbs comes to a stop, and I know the answer by the way he stands: legs shoulder-width apart, arms crossed on his chest, like he’s standing over a deer he’s just shot, like he’s thinking how nice its head is going to look mounted on the den wall.
“You take him back where he belongs! Right this minute, you take him back where you got him from!”
The boy has settled into a soft whimpering.
“I brought him for you. I’m not taking him nowhere.”
“Yes, you are. Because this is wrong. This is evil.”
He steps over the boy, throws his index finger in my face. “Don’t you use that word around me again, you hear? I’m tired of it! You think I didn’t do my homework? You think I just took a drive to Kansas City this morning and pulled up at the first preschool I came across and snatched the first kid I saw? Is that the kind of dumb-ass you take me for?”
Oh God, if he didn’t do that, then it is worse than I can possibly imagine.
He points at the crumpled heap scampering to the corner, backpack clutched to his chest. The child is rail-thin, like he’s not had a decent meal in months. “He’s crying for his mama now, but do you know what he’s got waiting at his home? A woman with a hypodermic needle in her arm and some cokehead banging away on top of her. That’s what this little prince has waiting for him at home.”
At this the boy starts crying all over again.
The child cowers when Dobbs walks over to him.
“No!” I rush up to Dobbs. “Don’t you lay a hand on him!”
Dobbs gets down on his haunches and gestures with his thumb over his shoulder to where I stand. “You got to listen to your new mama now, like we already discussed. She’s going to take care of you—real good care. But you got to do your part, be a good boy and all. You understand?”
The boy continues to stare at the floor in front of him. Thunderstorm tears plop down on his knees.
“No, Dobbs,” I insist. “I won’t be part of this. I won’t do it. You take him back where he belongs. He’s a child. He’s innocent. He’s done nothing to you.”
The boy looks at me. He has beautiful hazel eyes and long black lashes curling up into his eyebrows. A dimple creases one cheek. He reminds me so much of Theo.
“Have you forgotten how you were moping over the other one, as though you’d never see the likes again? You’ve been starving yourself to
death over it, telling me to lock you up and throw away the key. Made out as if your life was over, tried to kill yourself. Well, here’s your second chance. You wanted a baby, you got a baby. Go to town.”
I’ve had a baby, but that doesn’t make me a mother. Mothers make the world a better place. How could I possibly make this a better place for this child?
When Dobbs comes back a few minutes later, he has a box. It’s filled with clothes, a coloring book, a box of crayons, and a bottle of medicine. “That’s supposed to make them go to sleep. Get some down his gullet, and he’ll feel much better when he wakes up.” Dobbs walks to the door. I grab hold of his shirt. When he turns around, I do what I have not done for myself in a long time: I beg.
“Get off your knees, for pity’s sake! You’re making a fool of yourself.”
“Please, Dobbs. Please. Let this boy go. I’ll never mention the baby again. Ever. I’ll eat. I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you say, I’ll do it. Please, please, please just take him back to where you found him.”
He frees himself from my grip. “I’m this kid’s last hope. He was a goner in that pigsty. Even if the state stepped in, it would have only made matters worse for him. I know people who’d sooner die than get dragged through the foster system. And what do you think his chances are when the End comes? Who is going to look out for a runt nobody wants in the first place?”
I care not one bit for his use of that word, but when I look again at the child, there is no mistaking just how sickly he appears. He’s got the look of those boys they use in commercials for relief funds. Just thinking of myself as an aid worker has me shaking my head. “He needs his family,” I insist.
“You’re not hearing me. The End is not some far-off date; it’s right around the corner. He’s receiving a double blessing, and you’d just as soon turn him out to fend for himself?”
I mention again his mother, but Dobbs cuts me off. “He’s young. Not long from now, he won’t remember any of this. He’ll only know you as his mama.”
With his head half-cocked, he looks as if he’s measuring this, to see if it will hold water.
I have to get the level just right. “I made you do this. I see that now. This is my fault. And I’m so sorry I forced you to do this. I should be punished. You take him home and come back here and punish me.”
Too much.
Dobbs sneers at me, gathers his jacket, and heads for the door.
“What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You can’t leave him here!”
Dobbs slams the door on my protests. The lock clicks over. A few seconds later there is a sound the boy probably can’t hear, yet—the second door. There will be a third, and its sound is left only to the ear of the imagination.
The child will not return my look. He fiddles with the zipper of his backpack. Sniffling, he seems a little calmer now that Dobbs is gone.
I sit on the floor across from him, a few yards away. It doesn’t take nearly as long as I would have guessed for his gaze to wander over to me. For a few deep breaths, he keeps his gaze at my lap, and then, in one quick leap, it bounds up to my face.
I can’t believe what I see. Boy.
It’s been so long since I’ve talked to anybody other than Dobbs that my mouth can’t seem to stay shut. The boy may or may not be listening. All manner of promises tumble out of me from who knows where, like I’m one of those underground springs, gurgling nonstop.
I ask him what his name is, but he won’t tell me.
“How old are you?”
He holds up three fingers, looks at them, and then sticks up another one.
“You’re a big boy. Are you hungry? I’m sure you must be starving by now. I know I am.” Who knew a bag of bones could be this ravenous? I go to the kitchen and start holding up items. “How about some crackers? They’re good for settling your stomach.” I take a mouthful of them. “You want some cookies? These aren’t too stale. No? That’s okay. How about some macaroni and cheese? Do you like beans? These are kidney beans. I prefer pinto, but he always gets the two mixed up and brings me the wrong ones.”
To every box and can of food I hold up, the boy shakes his head. I take this is as progress.
“Something to drink, then? Let me mix up some Kool-Aid. It’s strawberry-cherry flavor. No? Well, I’ve never really liked that flavor,
either. Let’s see. You ever tried powdered milk? Look, it’s magic. See here: You put a little of these granules in some water and give it a stir. . . . Bingo! I’ve got a little bit of Nesquik left over. You like chocolate milk shakes?”
The glass I hand him might as well be filled with dirty dishwater.
The boy takes it and puts it on the floor next to him, mouths his thank-you. Polite little kid.
I rummage through some of the boxes I haven’t bothered to open in ages. Perhaps if I keep this up, he will be distracted from the fact that there are no windows. In one of the old cereal boxes is a puzzle. It is of a tractor in a wheat field, with big round hay bales in the foreground.
“I know! Let’s make a puzzle.”
He looks over at the picture on the back of the box, and his eyes, just for a moment, flash interest.
“You like tractors? I like tractors. My grandfather has one, except his is green. He taught me how to drive one. Have you ever been on a tractor?”
The boy shakes his head.
“Well, don’t worry, there’s plenty of time for that. When you go home, you have your mama take you to the county fair in the summer. They have tractor rides. You can also go feed the hogs, and usually there are baby piglets they’ll let you hold. They’re my favorite.”
I sprinkle puzzle pieces on the table, then sit cross-legged across from him on the floor.
“If you and I are going to build a tractor together, we have to get better acquainted, don’t you think? My name’s Blythe. And this is where I live, and you don’t need to be afraid because you’re as safe as can be.”
The boy’s face is streaked with dirt, but there are no fresh tears.
“Now, can you tell me your name?”
He nods but says nothing.
“Okay, when you’re ready, then. You want to see about that tractor?”
He nods.
I go to the table, gesturing for him to follow me. Years go by before
he comes over to the seat. He still keeps a tight hold on his backpack. I scoot his chair up to the table. It barely comes to his nose. I stack two pillows under him. Every act makes me think of Theo. It’s about all I can do not to take him in my arms and smother him with kisses.
“There, now. The only thing we need is our milk shakes.” I slide his glass over to him and take a big glug from mine to show him how it’s done. He takes a sip of his, and after thinking it over, finishes the rest all in one go.
“Well, all right then.”
We turn all the pieces faceup. “Want that cookie now?”
He nods.
I bring over the bag and open it. “It’s a big tractor; we’re going to need plenty of energy if we’re going to get the job done today.”
He nibbles the first one hesitantly, but the next five go down the hatch without touching sides.
“How about I look for all the edge pieces and you hunt for the ones with red in them.”
Before long, he puts his backpack on the floor at his feet.
“Oh, good eye—you found the steering wheel. That one’s always the hardest to find.”
He looks at me, smiles.
“I had no idea I was on a team with a champion puzzle builder. You neglected to tell me that.”
The corners of his mouth fall, like he’s made a mistake.
Quickly, I reassure him. “Ah, but I didn’t tell you something, either. When it comes to puzzles, I have magical powers.”
His smile returns, this time head-on. It’s like looking into headlamps. “No, you don’t,” he says.
Oh, what a sound. Even with a voice crackled from crying, this must surely be what God heard when the clay throat first spoke.
“Sure I do.”
He leans on one elbow, like I am now supposed to pull a coin from his ear.
“My powers only work when no one is looking.”
He laughs, and a meadow springs up around us. “You can’t do magic.”
“You just wait, young man. Come on, let’s see about this tractor of yours.”
After he has grouped a dozen red pieces together, he cannot keep his eyes from closing. Where his forehead meets the table, sleep draws over. For a long time, I watch him, listen to him sleep, listen to the air being shared among us. What miracle is this before me? What magic have I conjured? What awful terror?
Carrying the weight of the world, that’s what I feel like I’m doing when I lift the boy up in my arms. I lay him on my cot and cover him with the quilt, and then force myself back to the kitchen seat so I won’t be tempted to pick him up and hold him some more.
I snap with purpose. “Rise and shine, young man, and see what magic I did while you were sleeping.”
Reluctantly, he comes to the table. “That’s not magic.” He runs his hands over the puzzle. The fingers come to rest in the gap I have left for him.
“It’s not?” I pretend to be disappointed.
“No.”
“Well, what is magic, then?”
“It’s when you make something come out of the air.”
Like you, I do not say. You, my magical little friend.
“Oh.” I tap my finger against my cheek. “You mean, like this?” I tweak his ear and the missing puzzle piece is tucked between my fingers.
That does it. “Again!” He claps. Theo loved this trick, too.
“Go ahead, finish the puzzle so we can see what it looks like.”
He is very pleased with himself. For a while we admire the finished product. Before the idea of wide-open fields occurs to him, I say, “Right. Breakfast.”
“Is it morning?” He looks around for a window.
“Sure is. How about some cereal? Cheerios?”
“Okay.”
I fish out a couple of plastic bowls and start mixing up some milk.
“Miss Blythe?”
“Yes?”
“Am I going home after breakfast?”
It is too early for such a question, and my answer too late in coming. “We’ll see.”
He looks down at his lap, while I stir and stir.
It’s almost like being home, Mama leaving the job of tending Theo to me. After breakfast, I have him help me fill a basin of water. “First, we’ll wash ourselves, and then we’ll let the dishes have a turn.” I give him a demonstration, wiping my face with the cloth. “Under the armpits, too.” I thread the face cloth through the top of my shirt and hold up one arm, then the other. I rinse the cloth, wring it out, and hand it to him.
He takes it and hesitates.
“How about you just give the old mug a wipe for now, and we’ll call it good.”
He is still reluctant to move, so I offer to do it for him. He lets me.
“Oh, yes. Much better.”
“What about teeth?”
“Teeth. Of course. Can’t forget about them.” I fish around in the supply basket for an extra toothbrush but come up empty. I take the tube of toothpaste. “You ever been camping?”
He shakes his head.
I give him a brief description involving tents, fishing poles, and campfires. “You’ve got to think of this as a campout. Okay? And when you go camping and you forget your toothbrush, you know what you use?”
Again, he shakes his head.
“Voilà.” I hold up an index finger and promptly stick a dollop of paste on it. “Come on, show me your toothbrush.”
He holds up his finger. Clearly, he is concerned about the state of my mental health.
I pretend to inspect it. “Not bad.” On goes a bead of toothpaste.
He completes his task earnestly.
For a while, I show him how to tie different knots with his shoelaces. After each try, he ends up with a ball of chaos, which I praise mightily. And then I think of all the games Theo used to love playing whenever we took a car trip: I Spy, Guess What I Am, the Silent Game, which is a mistake because the child wins hands down and has to be coaxed into speaking again.
We spend a lot of time discussing the Hundred Acre Wood. He tells me Eeyore is his favorite character.
“But he’s always so sad.”
“That’s because the others don’t play with him. Everyone’s always forgetting him.”
I can’t help but wonder if he’s talking about himself. “Mine’s Owl.”
“Because he can fly?”
“Yes.”
“My daddy was going to take me flying in his airplane, but he can’t anymore because he died in the war and he’s in heaven now.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Mama says we’re all headed for heaven, some are lucky and get there first.”
Some headed for hell, too, if I get in any deeper with this kid. “You must miss him very much.”
“I miss home.”
Me, too.
“Here. It’s not Winnie the Pooh, but I think you’ll like it.” I move to the shelves and select Kipling. After three chapters of
The Jungle Book
, he is asleep once again. We’ve made it through the day. When I get up, my knees creak and his eyes flutter open.
“Miss Blythe?”
“Ssh, go to sleep.”
“I miss my mommy.”
“I know. You’re going to see her soon, real soon.”
“The Sleepy Man’s not going to come as long as you keep talking.”
“My name is Charlie.”
“Well, howdy-do, Charlie. Glad to make your acquaintance.”
He falls asleep during our handshake.
Stuck by myself like a chicken bone in Father Time’s throat is better than this, having the boy in here with me. This is worse because I am starting to think of him as
my
boy, like he did just tumble out of my dreams. It is worse because I am going to love him. If I’m not careful, I am about to sin something terrible, loving someone else’s child. I can picture Reverend Caldwell at the beechnut-wood pulpit, sweating up his favorite gray suit. One hand has a firm grip on the Bible, the other churns the air like the paddle on Mama’s cake mixer. From the way his body bucks, you can’t help thinking it would like to break free of its restraints and go galloping off. “It starts with coveting, brothers and sisters. It starts with desiring what you don’t have, eyeing what belongs to your neighbor. The tempter snares you the minute you desire what is not rightfully yours. Desiring leads to acquiring, and acquiring leads to pride, and pride, dearly beloved, is a long and deep well the devil aims to push you down.”
Often on the way home from church, Daddy would tell us not to take Reverend Caldwell’s words to heart. “You have to remember the man’s up to his waist in muck, day in and day out,” he’d say, as though saving souls were akin to slopping hogs. Daddy would remind us: “There’s goodness in the world, too. You remember that.”
I look at this boy, goodness all right. I cannot go sullying it with my loving. Sullying it with sin, because he is not mine to love. It is only fooling myself to think he is mine. Madness to think I conjured him. Even though he can’t get farther than a dozen yards from me, rightfully, I can claim not one inch of him.
We have established a routine. Once Charlie is awake, we eat breakfast—or rather, I eat breakfast and he pushes his food around his plate. Then he helps me with the chores—making beds, washing clothes, compacting the trash. After that, we color pictures and make up stories to go with them. To keep myself from sitting and watching him when he sleeps, I think up more activities for the next time he wakes. I try to think, too, of ways to get him to eat. Dobbs says I shouldn’t go making a melodrama out of every mealtime. When I tried to reason with him about how malnourished Charlie looks, he thanked me for proving his point. He expects Charlie to shake his hand one day and thank him for his kindness. For all his convincing, I still see Charlie headed downhill.
I am afraid to go to sleep. Ever since Charlie arrived, the sounds in the night have come back. I’ll wake up in the dark to panting. Even if I turn on the flashlight, I can hear it: sometimes it gasps; sometimes it chokes. It doesn’t help to tell myself this is just me being a crazy person. Insanity is no match for how frightened I am for this child. Until I have found a way to set this boy free, my mind will not let me rest, especially now that it has figured out how to climb out of my body. It will just sit and pant beside me, waiting for me to do something. It’s easier not to go to sleep than to wake up and have it beg-beg beside me.
I can’t imagine how we can keep this up much longer. Clearly, Charlie is sick. Now, maybe Dobbs is right in saying the cause of Charlie’s ailments are to do with malnourishment and having an addict for a mother, but instead of getting better down here, he is getting worse. As am I. My symptoms, though, are quite the opposite of his. I cannot sleep, I cannot sit still, I am about to scream from the constant ringing
in my ears. Alarm bells, is what they are. I tell Dobbs as much the moment he walks in.
“You have to take him back with you. He can’t stay here anymore. Something bad’s going to happen!”
Along with groceries, Dobbs has brought more clothes for the boy. “It’s just a matter of adjusting, is all. He’ll come around, soon as he quits being so picky about food.”
“It’s not that, Dobbs. You have to get him out of here.”
It amazes me that Charlie sleeps through this.
“Don’t be stupid. The whole county’s looking for him. What do you think? I can just walk him up to the nearest police station and say, ‘Here we go, Officer, I believe you’re looking for this.’ ”
“You could take him now, while he’s still sleeping. You could drop him off someplace where nobody will see. The Baptist church or the school or in the park—it wouldn’t be long before someone found him.”
He shakes his head at me. “And they are going to ask him, ‘Son, who took you and where did he hide you?’ What do you suppose the kid’s answer’s going to be? ‘Santa Claus took me to the North Pole to meet his elves’?”
“He’s four, Dobbs. He’s not going to draw an Identi-Kit of you. He’s not going to draw them a street map. Besides, we could fool him, we could tell him stuff to get his facts all mixed up. I’ve given this a lot of thought and I—”
Dobbs walks over to where the boy lies and then returns to the table where he sits down. “You say all this stuff, but I can tell you want him. It’s written all over your face.”
Of course I want him. Partly because I want him so much is why he must go. “He’s not some pet, some hobby to occupy my time.”
“You’re right. He’s not a pet. Which means there’s a no-return policy.”
We go over the issue and cover the same territory once again, until Dobbs slams his hand on the table. The boy startles but doesn’t wake up.
“Look. He’s here to stay. Deal with it.”
Dobbs gets out his notes and doodles for a while before putting
them aside and opening up his newspaper. He spends less time than usual working on
The Manifesto
. He complains he can’t concentrate with me staring at him. He suggests I work on my embroidery. Knit the boy some mittens, he suggests, as though we might all go sledding in the morning. Eventually, he gives up reading and announces it’s Married Time. Because my cot has Charlie in it, Dobbs orders me to sit on his lap. He tells me to quit looking at him like that. When he still can’t get his equipment to cooperate, he shoves me aside and zips up his pants.
Before Dobbs leaves, he fishes from the bag several boxes of toys.
He walks toward the door. I stop him.
“I’m not well,” I tell him.
He tries shaking off my grip. “Get some sleep. Want me to set the timer so the lights come on later?”
“I’m trying to tell you something. My head—it’s not working right. I’ve started hearing those voices again.”
“You’re fine,” he says. “You’ve never looked happier.”
He doesn’t give me a chance to say it’s an act; it’s magic. It’s not real.
The boy wakes up to a remote control car. He looks over at me without touching it. “Can I go home now?”
The toys don’t help. You can’t call what Charlie and I do with them play. We treat them delicately. We watch them. We watch them like they might hatch.
When Charlie is awake, I smile constantly. Pop-Tart smiles, fresh and ready in seconds. When he sleeps, I make sure to cry softly. I wonder if this is what motherhood is. My mother cried only one time that I can remember. When her best friend, Livvy, was killed by a drunk driver. It was the most disturbing thing I’d ever witnessed. In place of my mother—my calm, reasonable mother—was some sort of wild animal. It didn’t help to stand in front of her saying, “Mama? Ma?” I was too
afraid to touch her. Afraid she might suddenly whip around and bite me, like Daddy rescuing that German shepherd and getting a bloodied hand for his troubles.
Fall had come early that year. Beginning in the trees, the season had a way of bronzing everything. The forest resembled a rusty junkyard, and the sun, too weak to climb the sky, set long shadows on the ground like oil stains. Not long into our walk, Daddy and I came upon the stray. It kept yanking its back leg, which was mangled in steel jaws. Worrying at the chain had made its gums bloody. We got close enough to see how it had about chewed off its leg, but it still had the cheek to give us a big show of teeth.
After Daddy used a stick to release the trap, he reached out to pick up the dog and got bit awful bad. Still, he wrapped the dog in his windbreaker and carried it home and explained that trapped animals couldn’t be blamed for the hurt they caused.
Doc Caul came by to look at it on his way home. He said the dog had been on the road a long time before it got itself snared. He inspected the leg and said the dog had to be put down.
“Can’t you amputate?” Daddy asked.
“We can try that. Odds aren’t in its favor, though. What say you we put this guy out of his misery?”
Daddy was quiet for a long time. Under my breath, I prayed the words over to him. Daddy was going to say, “Appreciate your advice, Doc, but if it’s all the same, I think we’ll go ahead and see about those odds.”
In the end, Daddy didn’t say anything.
It seemed cruel to have gotten that poor dog’s hopes up only to have them dashed once and for all. I was the one to beg the vet to spare the dog. He patted my arm. “Sometimes you got to be cruel to be kind.”
I can’t get his words out of my head. I can’t help but look at this darling boy and see him bound up in a trap. Cruel to be kind. Cruel to be kind. You have to be cruel to be kind.