but still she bustles around all day, stays on her feet, is exhausted by evening.
My dad reads the paper every day, then goes out with his gun. He’s looking for anything: a pigeon, a rabbit, a squirrel, someone’s pet chicken. There’s nothing out there.
Pat and Eliott keep to themselves. They don’t talk to me. They wear the same clothes, day after day. Back in May they traded most of their clothes to a friend for some joints. I heard them talking about it. Now they wear the same sour-smelling jeans and T-shirts. When I go down to the basement, they chase me out.
That is why I sit there on the stoop after my mother goes back inside. I sit next to the man in the dog suit. I tell him things. He cocks his head at me like he’s listening, but he doesn’t really understand—which is okay.
I stroke his head. It is a hot day. His nose is shiny with sweat. He pants.
It must be hot in the dog suit.
He smells worse than before. His teeth are yellow and his gums are black.
After a while I push him away. He looks back at me, wiggling his stump of tail. I chase him away again. He crawls off, whining and sobbing.
I go inside and find my mother straightening up closets. “Why does he do that, Mom? Why does he pretend he’s a dog? Is he crazy?”
My mother sighs and sits back on her heels. “If he thinks he’s a dog, why can’t we let him think that? If that’s what he wants, is it so hard for us to go along with it? It’s the polite thing to do, don’t you think?”
“I guess,” I say, though it doesn’t seem polite to me, exactly.
“If he thinks he’s a dog, then he is a dog,” my mother says, in a way that means, That’s final.
“Okay,” I say. Then I look down and see what she’s doing. She’s sweeping out little dried carcasses from the back of the closet. Dead beetles or roaches or something. Dozens of them, curled up and hollow, legs in the air.
Now it is September. Now the man in the dog suit comes to our house every day.
My mother feeds him bits and crumbs of things. Then I play with him, tell him things. He is a good listener. I show him the bruise Pat gave me the day before, pushing me out of the basement. They don’t want me down there, but sometimes I sit at the top of the stairs and listen to their voices.
I tell the man in the dog suit all this, and also about the limp dark hairs on Eliott’s upper lip. And about the dark cloud that always settles in the room where my father is. I tell him about Rick Dees, my favorite DJ on the radio, before the power went out. Rick Dees, I tell him, has a slick, handsome voice and he must be a slick, handsome man, with sunglasses and movie-star eyes.
The man in the dog suit nods.
I decide to give him a name. Prince.
I tell my mother and she says, “Good. That’s a good name for a dog.”
Then the day comes when my father comes home too early and finds Prince on the front steps, and my mother and me stroking his back.
“What’s this?” says Dad, his face going darker than ever. He’s got his gun pointed at Prince, at us. His shirt is unbuttoned, so I can see the tuft of fur peeking out. Prince freezes.
“Oh, Howard,” says my mother, “he’s not hurting anything. Really.”
“What’s that you’re giving him?” Dad says.
“Just trash,” my mother says. “He’s helping me clean up.”
“He’s dangerous. He could hurt you,” says my dad, aiming with the gun.
“He keeps the other beggars away,” says my mother.
This is true. Since Prince started coming, the other beggars have avoided our house. “Like a guard dog,” I say.
My dad looks at us, squinting, like he’s aiming.
“Howard, let him stay. He’s not doing any harm,” says my mother.
“Please, Dad,” I say.
And Dad—I don’t know why—cocks his head and says okay and stomps into the house. A moment later he calls to my mother to find him something to eat.
I sit on the stoop with Prince. We listen and wait. We watch the sky.
October now. We’re still holding our breath, waiting. Nothing happens. It is still hot. Nobody tells us anything: how the war’s going, or when school will start, or how many people are dead. I think the war is getting bigger, coming closer. No one has told me this, but I can feel the waiting, the tension buzzing in the air around my head like a hornet.
I think people are moving away. I don’t see our neighbors peering from behind their curtains anymore. “They’re dead,” says Pat, “The government comes with trucks and clears them out in the middle of the night, when we’re asleep.” I think he’s teasing. Maybe not.
I play in the yard with Prince. I throw the ball. He chases it, brings it back to me in his mouth.
My dad, watching us, says, “He’s not a dog, he’s a man, for God’s sake. Treat him like a man.”
But we ignore him. I throw, Prince fetches. We are having an all-American good time, just like Dick and Jane and Spot in the reader. After my dad leaves, I sing all of Rick Dees’s favorite songs for Prince. Prince likes that. He barks with me.
I tell Prince all kinds of things. I know he won’t laugh, like Eliott, or punch me, like Pat does. He presses against me, all warm and furry. He would never hurt me. I am taller than he is anyway.
His face is so kind: warm, wet, blank eyes.
I have little pink bumps on my legs. Fleabites, I think, but I won’t tell my mother.
“If he ever hurts you, tell me right away,” says my dad.
Prince would never hurt me.
My dad thinks everybody thinks like him.
One day I see my dad in the yard, talking to Prince. “You’re a human being, for God’s sake. Stand up like a man. Listen to me! Take off that Halloween costume shit. I’ll give you my own clothes if you’ll take it off and stand up like a man and talk to me. I know you can talk. Come here, you.” And he grabs for the dog suit, tries to pull it off. Prince runs away.
One night Eliott says, “Well, you know what they say. Man’s best friend.”
Pat says, “Don’t let him touch you. You want to end up with a litter of puppies?”
He and Eliott snigger and lean in together, their faces all twisted. Pat’s face is rotten with pimples. He doesn’t have any cream to put on them, so they are getting worse and worse.
Sometimes at night I creep downstairs and out on the porch, and Prince is there sleeping or waiting. I curl up beside him and
