Judy Budnitz - Flying Leap

“Rats deserting a sinking ship,” says my dad. “They know something we don’t know.”

So we wait and watch the skies, watch the roads, watch the ground—who knows, they could tunnel straight through the earth and surprise us that way, where we least expect it. Technology, the technology can do anything these days, my father says. I picture technology as a big transformer robot crushing cities, slicing the sky. Germ warfare, Dad warns us. When I drink water, I try to filter it through my teeth, screen out the germs. Surely they are big germs, heavily armed. We try to hold our breath.

I think radiation, when it comes, will rain down glowing like the juice inside neon signs.

No one seems to know who we’re fighting. Pat says it could be anyone. America has been number one for too long, and now all the little countries are ganging up on us. Anyone could be an enemy. Your next-door neighbor could be a spy.

Pat says, “Your own sister could be a spy, even.”

“Am not ,” I say, and hit him in the gut.

“I was just kidding , sport,” he says, and whacks me a hard one. Pat has straight greasy brown hair. It hangs in his face. He hasn’t had a haircut for a long time.

Eliott doesn’t like to talk about who we’re fighting. He is almost old enough to get drafted. My dad says they haven’t started drafting people yet, but they may, soon. He keeps telling Eliott to walk around barefoot all the time, so then maybe he’ll develop flat feet and they won’t want him in the army. I can’t tell anymore when my dad is kidding. His eyes are always shiny. He watches us all without blinking. My mother says he has begun to grind his teeth in his sleep, keeping her up all night.

In August the beggars started coming around. My mom calls them unfortunates; my dad calls them bums. They don’t have anywhere to live; they don’t get government rations. They came wandering from I don’t know where. First they came around asking for work, a night in the garage. Now they ask for food, scraps, even a glass of water. Now there’s nothing left, and still they come by. All they seem to want is the human interaction—a little attention, some eye contact, conversation. Even when you yell at them, they seem to like it.

This one is the dog suit is a new thing.

He comes back again the day after we feed him that first time. It is almost nice to see an animal again, even if it’s not a real one. He’s well trained. He sits up and begs. My mother puts a morsel in his mouth. He rolls over.

“How adorable,” says my mother.

“He’s trying to look up your skirt,” I say.

“You’d better look out; he’s some nut,” says Pat. “Some crazy. Some loony who hasn’t seen tail in a long time. Yeah, and I don’t mean a dog tail, either.”

My mother turns around and stares at him. “Where did you learn to speak like that ?” she says. Pat hunches over and slinks away without answering.

I could tell her where Pat learns things. Pat and Eliott spend their nights sitting in the basement reading old Playboys by the light of the moon. There’s a curfew now at night, so everybody has to be home, inside, before dark. Army trucks patrol the streets.

My mother strokes the man’s head for a moment. Then she goes back inside. She finds things to do—she cleans the house; she keeps busy. We haven’t gotten mail for months, but she still checks the mailbox. There’s nothing to do, 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.