“You got it backward, boy,” he said. “Jesus wants me to win, and so do you. That’s how your father says it.” He looked like he was using his dying strength to tell me off. His face turned red, and he’d raised himself up on his elbows to get a good look at me.
“How do you do, sir. I’m Jesse Pegler.”
“I know who you are,” he said. “Want a dog?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I asked you if you wanted a dog!”
I was taking out one of our gold-plated charms when he said, “You can keep that gold thingamajig. If you want to give me something, give me peace of mind.”
He couldn’t hold himself up any longer, so he sank back into the pillows while I moved closer to him. “I’m worrying about my dog,” he said. “I’m heading for the barn, boy. I got carted over here early this morning and they put my dog in the animal shelter.”
I remembered what my father said when he gave me the Godspeed money, and I reached in my pocket for my ACE notebook. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Willard Peyton. My dog’s named Yellow.”
I started taking down the information, telling him not to worry.
“He’s an old dog,” he said. “It’ll be hard to find him a home.”
“We’ll find him one.”
He told me he went to church at The Helping Hand Tabernacle, but since he’d been sick he’d been watching It’s Up to You.
Behind me, people were starring to line up for charms.
“Yellow’s fourteen years old,” he said. “I don’t know who’ll want a dog that old.”
“Mr. Peyton,” I said, “I’ll see that Yellow has a good home, if I have to take him myself.”
“You promise me, boy?”
“I promise you,” I said, and I didn’t have any doubt I could keep the promise, knowing Seal’s soft side when it came to animals.
I left the old man with a smile on his face.
It’d been a long time since I’d felt that good about anything I’d done in the name of ACE.
On my way back into Seaville, I stopped at the animal shelter, which was closed for the day. I left a note saying I’d pick up the dog the next morning.
Then I went to a pay phone and called the Challenge hot line, knowing Seal was on duty. I asked her if she wanted to go to Sweet Mouth.
“Your father’s just had a crank call,” she said. (“Crank call” was ACE’s euphemism for anything from a stream of obscenities to a death threat. We got a lot of crank calls.) “I’ve also got a battered woman calling back in half an hour. Your mother’s calling around to find a family to take her in for the night. Are you finished at the hospital?”
I told her she had a new dog named Yellow, filling her in on all the details while I fed another quarter to the coin box.
“You’d better let the Ringers know he’s at Oceanside Hospital,” she said. “Now’s your chance to invite Opal to the Cheeks’ dinner, and The Last Dance.”
“Seal, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. I don’t even know Opal.”
“Get to know her,” Seal said. “Ask her to go to Sweet Mouth with you.”
“I wish you could get away,” I managed to get in before she said, “Jesse, please, we’re so busy here I can’t stay on the line. Arnelle’s been super to my family! Another call’s coming in now, Jesse. … Will you do that for me?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Do it for ACE,” she said. “ACE owes the Ringers something.”
“If I do it,” I said, “I’ll do it for you.”
I don’t think she even heard me.
Nine
OPAL RINGER
“I HOPE THIS IS going to be all right with Daddy,” Mum said. “What’d he say again?”
I was tearing things off hangers, trying them on, throwing them on the bed, seemed like nothing was right to wear with him.
“First he said Willard Peyton was at Oceanside, said we ought to know that.”
“That’s on Daddy’s message sheet. They took him over early this morning.”
“Then he just says would you like to go to Sweet Mouth?”
“In his car?”
“I don’t know in his car.”
“He come in his car last time.”
Right after he called, Mum came home from the von Hennigs and found me running around my bedroom like a chicken with her head cut off, trying to get dressed. Daddy and Bobby John were down in The Hollow on a sick call. Mum had said she didn’t like it that I’d said I’d go out with him when I didn’t have permission. I said back who was I going to get permission from?
She put her coat away and brought her Good Living Comic in to look at, while she sat in my rocker. She was trying to finish the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. Daddy got back issues with the covers off from The Upper Room, and when we finished with them we gave them out at The Hand.
“A boy that calls the same day for a date isn’t showing respect, though,” Mum said. “Your daddy called a week ahead.”
“Mum, please. I’ve got to find something to wear! Help me.”
“Wear that nice red wool sweater Seal gave you, honey.”
“And let him know I wear her hand-me-downs?”
“It don’t have her name on it.”
“She could be there in The Sweet Mouth.”
“The thing I think about is who’s going to get the blame if Daddy don’t like it when he gets home.”
“Well don’t think about it, then.”
“I think about it. Right here after they pulled Daniel up from the pit with all the lions? Well, then they put his accusers and their families in the pit and the animals tore them to pieces instead. Someone always pays.”
“Mum, I’m going out on a date. I’m not being
