and a long walk with no particular destination.
At best I judged the source of the bright light to be a couple hundred yards into the woods, and I came to the stream long before I’d trundled that far among the trees and bushes and fallen limbs. The stream was about two car lengths in width, clear water sparkling the sun in a million daggers of light, and at its center I could only just see the bottom. Vague and distorted water-rippled rocks peppered the riverbed. Fish like silvery lasers darted beneath the surface. The sound of the stream moving and rushing along its course was soft music, and a fine spray—wet and cool—carried the current’s song in the air.
Bandit had seen the fish as well, or smelled them, and he slipped into the water as silently as he walked, a phantasm entering the flow of the Styx. I settled down on a rock that seemed to be formed just for that purpose. I took off my shoes and socks, thinking I’d dip into the water also, its sharp clarity and cleanness inviting me.
Wiping sweat from my forehead, I wished I’d brought a bottle of water. I thought about leaning over to drink from the stream, but seemed to remember hearing something about fish shit in stream and river water, and it making people sick and giving them the shits. Spending the first week of summer squirting diarrhea until my ass was raw didn’t seem such a hot idea. So I didn’t drink the water, tried swallowing some spit in my parched throat instead.
Reckoning I’d have to settle for just dipping my feet in, maybe splashing about with Bandit a little to cool off, I started to do so. A shout and a loud splash from further downstream brought me to a stop with one foot in the water, the other still on the bank. Leaning in the direction of the sound, head cocked to hear better, I watched the flow of the water to where it ran around a bend in the streambed and out of sight.
Bandit’s ears pricked up at the sound also, and he started that way, forgetting the darting fish for the moment. Keeping my voice low, I called for him to wait. We moved along in the water together, boy and dog, one trying to be as stealthy as a ninja, the other naturally so.
A second cry traveled through the air around the bend and, in it this time, I distinctly heard the words “Please! Stop!” and more splashing. Despite the high-pitched whine of the voice, and a decidedly embarrassing nasally sound on the verge of being full-blown crying, I could tell it was a boy’s voice. A kid probably around my age by the sound of it.
Following the whining-almost-crying and the splashing, I heard laughter, at least two or three distinct voices, and I had a good idea of what was going on. As did Bandit, by the way his ears pressed back against his head and he lowered himself until his chest was touching the water. Ready to lunge, lips peeled back in a grimace, even I found him frightening and had to remind myself this was my dog and it wasn’t me that had to be worried.
Around the bend a twisted tree stretched out a gnarly limb as if in greeting. The stream widened here, almost becoming a proper river. The shoreline was rocky and strewn with pebbles and sticks. Three boys, taller and bigger than me, maybe sixteen or seventeen, high school kids definitely, stood among the pebbles and sticks, bending to pick some up from time to time and chucking them into the water. Their target was a fat kid in the water, stripped to his underwear, trying to fend off the incoming missiles with his forearms.
A rock hit him on the breast, a tit larger than most girls’, and he staggered. A stick sailed through the air and struck him on the shoulder. Another rock struck him squarely in his massive belly, making the flesh there ripple like a shockwave. This last impact made him stagger again, then topple, and he fell in what seemed like slow motion, hitting the water and sending a splash and wake like a tanker sinking offshore of the Pacific.
“What’s wrong, Bobby Templeton!” one of the older kids called out, a guy with greased-back hair that made me instantly think of Sarah’s boyfriend back in California. The guy wore tight jeans and a white T-shirt that showed his fairly muscled arms. The guy obviously thought he was some sort of biker or something, maybe thinking greased hair and a muscle shirt balanced out the explosion of acne that pocked his face. “Have a nice trip?”
The other two guys hooted and hollered at this, as if they’d never heard anything funnier. High fives were exchanged all around. The fat boy tried getting up, his legs and arms like dough, and he slipped again and sent up another large splash. I thought to myself that this might be kind of funny if it wasn’t so fucking sad.
“Bobby Templeton!” one of the other guys called out, slimmer than the first, wearing jeans and a suede jacket. He was also shaking with laughter, but more in control of himself as he did so, hands casually at hip pockets. He watched the whole thing with a crooked smirk that made me think of serial killers in movies. “Maybe we ought to call you Chubby Twinkie-by-the-ton!”
The third guy, ironically, not so thin himself but not nearly as fat as the kid in the stream (Bobby Templeton, I told myself), laughed and threw another rock. This one struck the fat boy on the forehead, and I watched him sort of totter there for a moment or two, a hand going to his forehead, finding blood, and then he toppled over into the water again.
As not numbering among the largest kids ever birthed, I’d been in my fair share of fistfights in school and, like then at the stream in the woods, out of school. I wish I could say I gave more than I got, but I don’t honestly know if I’d kept a win and loss scorecard of all my scraps as a kid which side would have the most marks. But Dad had taught me how to throw a punch, much to Mom’s chagrin, and also a few sneaky maneuvers with my legs that used my center of gravity and my opponent’s momentum against them and in my favor. I’d taken punches before, hard ones, and though I didn’t much like them I wasn’t scared of getting hit either.
I looked at the older, bigger kids, and knew my chances with all three of them weren’t that great: as in no chance in hell. I’d fought bigger guys before, and older guys, so I wasn’t really scared about that. It was just a practical matter. I knew I wasn’t some superhero, and held no delusions that if I took them all on I wouldn’t be leaving there with bruises or worse.
But I had Bandit, and figured that evened things out pretty squarely.
Apparently so did he, because he let out a growl so low and deep and vicious that for a moment I was again afraid of being so near him. He sounded like a wolf then, something primal and ferocious, something wild, and I thought that maybe there wasn’t any German shepherd in him at all.
The three high school kids hadn’t seen me yet. They’d squatted to choose again among the smorgasbord of missiles about their feet. Targeting the fat kid in the water once more, taking aim.
Then they heard the growl, and froze. Even the guy in the suede jacket with the Charles Manson face. It was as if a monster had just passed by, a thing from nightmares and dark places, and the primitive man in them all took note.
The three of them turned in my direction, saw me, saw my dog. Their gazes seemed more directed at Bandit than me, but eventually the Manson kid turned his eyes my way.
“Hey, kid,” he said, nodding in my direction like we were acquaintances. He tried to keep that not-so-concerned smirk on his face, like nothing really bothered him. Like he was somehow separate from the rest of the world. But I noted the bead of sweat on his forehead, watched it start to roll down his face. “Call off your dog.”
I’d known his kind before. However this ended up, he wouldn’t let it be. I’d interrupted his fun, his amusement, and he didn’t like it. It was all there in his smirk and eyes. He’d remember me. He’d marked me.
This pretty much meant I had nothing to lose.
“I have an idea,”
