'It was my mother,' he said in a near whisper, checking to be sure the coast was clear. 'Spying on me.'
'Oh. Well, my folks don't care as long as he wears pants, combs his hair, and is rich. Dad figures I should be married a year after graduation.'
'I thought you were going to school.'
'I am. He just doesn't believe it yet. God, the man lives in the last century, I swear.'
'Boy, tell me about it.'
'Yeah, for sure.' She yelled something at her older sister, and he could hear her mother fussing in the background. A deep voice chimed in-her father venturing an opinion about the family going to hell.
'So,' he said, 'what were you saying?'
'The walk. Where did you go?'
'Out. The park.'
'Wow!' A pause, more whispering. 'Wow, Don, don't you ever listen to the news?'
He looked back toward the kitchen, at his mother's radio on the counter.
'Nope. Don't have time.'
'Well, you better,' she told him, her voice low. 'Somebody was killed in there tonight. A couple of hours ago. My father just came in and-' She stopped. 'Jesus, you were there then!'
He put a hand to his cheek and scratched lightly. 'I didn't see anything. I didn't hear anything.' The hand pressed a bit harder. 'What happened?'
'I don't know. My father isn't talking. The radio said that this kid, from North, he was walking home from work, and he got it. They said ...
they guessed it was the Howler. Gross.'
'Yeah.'
Iron striking iron.
'Boy, you could be a witness or something.'
'But I didn't see anything, Tracey! Jesus, don't tell your father.'
'Okay, okay.' Her mother interrupted, and she snapped at her, groaning about how great it must be to be an only child. 'Hey, Vet? What's your favorite animal?'
He sniffed, combed his hair with one hand while he drew on his imagination to put images in the air before him. 'I never thought about it, you know that? Gee, that's funny but I never thought about it.' His bedroom came to mind and he sorted through the posters and prints and figurines he had. 'Horses, I guess. I don't know. Leopards and panthers.'
She laughed, and someone in the background laughingly mocked her. 'I didn't know you rode.'
'Panthers? You don't ride panthers.'
'No, stupid, horses. I didn't know you rode horses.'
'I don't.'
There was a pause, and a man's voice began grumbling.
'Then why horses?'
'I don't know.' He saw the poster, the horse, and shrugged to the empty foyer. 'They look ... I don't know, they look so big and powerful, y'know? Like they could run right over you and not even notice.'
'A horse?'
'Sure.'
'But they're stupid.'
'I guess.'
'I mean, they're-' The man's voice was louder, and she covered the mouthpiece. He tried to make out the words but all he heard sounded like an argument. 'Don, I have to go.'
'Okay, sure.'
'See you tomorrow?'
'Sure! Sure. I'll-'
She hung up and he stood in the middle of the floor and stared at the front door until his father walked by on his way upstairs and reminded him gently that he started detention the next day.
Don nodded.
Norman, halfway up the stairs, looked down and frowned, started to say something, and changed his mind.
Don didn't notice.
He was looking at the door, at the black horse imposed on it, with Tracey Quintero riding on its back.
Five minutes later Joyce pinched his rump as she walked by and he jumped, blushed at her laugh, and nodded when she asked him to check the lights and lock up. As he did, he thought about Tracey, and about the kid who had been killed. It could be that what he had heard was the murderer himself, thinking there had been a witness and coming to kill him. He felt cold, and he stayed to one side when he drew the draperies and double-checked to make sure the bolts on the front and back doors were turned over. Then he ran upstairs and into his room, considered telling his parents, and changed his mind. Mom would only get excited and demand they call the police; and Dad would tell them both there was nothing to worry about, the boy is all right, and since he didn't actually see anything, there was no sense their getting involved.
And he would be right; there would be no sense at all.
A wash, then, and a careful scrutiny to be sure his face hadn't broken out since that morning and that his eye wasn't getting any worse. Then he closed his door and sat cross-legged on the bed. He was in nothing but his underwear, and he looked around him-at the panther, the bobcat, the elephants, rejecting each one silently until he came to the poster over the desk.
There, he thought; there's what I need.
'Hey, look,' he said to the barely visible horse, 'I hope you don't mind if I don't give you a name. I mean, I suppose I could, but all the good ones are already taken, and half of them sound like you're in the movies or something anyway. Besides,' he added with a look to the panther lying in the jungle over his bed, 'I don't want to make the other guys mad.'
He grinned, and rolled his eyes, muffling a laugh in a palm.
'But you don't need one anyway, right? You're too tough for a stupid name. What you want to know is, how come you and not the black cat over there, right? Well, because you're big, and you're strong, and ... just because. Besides, Tracey likes horses, and you're a horse, and she'll like you, and if she likes you she'll like me and then we'll all be pals, right? Right. And boy would you scare the shit outta that kid with the dumbass hat.'
He grinned again and rocked back, struck his head against the wall and didn't feel a thing.
He didn't think his other pals would mind, him singling out just one, just this once. They would understand. They always had, and they would this time.
'So listen up, old fella,' he said, looking to the ceiling where Tracey floated on a cloud, 'you're gonna have to teach me a few things, y'know, because I figure you've been around, if you know what I mean. Give me some hints and stuff, okay? And if you take care of me, I'll take care of you. That's what pals are for, right? Right.'
And he slipped off the bed, kissed the tips of his fingers, and placed his hand on the horse's head.
'Pals,' he said. 'Pals.'
'He's talking to those animals again,' Norm complained while Joyce was brushing her teeth. She mumbled something, and he shook his head, pointing to his ear.
'I said,' she told him after spitting out the toothpaste, 'kids talk to themselves all the time. It's like thinking out loud. You should hear my classroom sometimes.'
'Yeah, but you teach flakes.'
'Budding artists are flakes?'
'Look in the mirror.'
She threw her hairbrush at him, launched herself after it, and they wrestled on the bed until he had her pinned under him.
'Norm?' she said, putting a hand on the hand that was covering her breast.
'What?'
The willow at the corner of the house scratched lightly at the window, and he could hear the cooing of the grey doves that nested in the eaves of the garage.
