John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

The woman who owned Boo decided he would come along quicker if he were boarded at Bad Dogs and trained daily. He became Brian's main responsibility.

"If you can't teach him to attack," said Mr. Pettit, "at least get him to quit wagging his damn tail at everybody."

The idea was that Brian would train the dog to obey him and that obedience would then be transferred to his owner. It was the lady's idea, not Mr. Pettit's.

"Sit," Brian would say, and rap the dog on the croup. Boo would sit.

"Good dog, Boo," Brian would say, and Boo would jump up and wag his tail with pleasure.

"No, sit, Boo," he would say, and rap again, and Boo would sit again, looking up at Brian with his head slightly lowered, yawning nervously. "That's right, Boo, good dog."

Boo would whuff and jump up against him.

"No, Boo, sit. Sit."

They went to the shack together on nights when there was a football game or dance Serena could tell her parents she was going to. They liked to know where she was.

"I'm going out, Ma," Brian would say halfway down the stairs to the front door, and she would say okay from wherever she was and when he got home she would make noises from her bedroom so he'd know she heard him come in.

They'd meet in front of old St. Patrick's school. The only hassle was if they were using Wotan on guard that night. Brian would have to lay the voice on him full force and if necessary threaten to hit him. The dog would stand aside, anger humming deep in its chest.

Serena would hurry her clothes off and get under the covers and shiver till Brian was ready. They didn't talk much in between, Brian could never think of anything that didn't sound obvious or cornball. If he didn't feel a certain way about her he wouldn't be there, would he? She understood that, he could tell.

They tried a couple different ways he had heard of but the cot was too small and too shaky so mostly it was the regular way. It always got them warm. Once he asked if he was big enough for her and she said she would fit whatever size he was, that's how women were. Brian wondered if it was true or if it was just Serena.

When basketball tryouts started he cut Boo down to one hour a day, after practice. It was a drag, but the insurance for the old man was still hung up and they needed the money. The railroad and the insurance company were claiming it was suicide, that passing out drunk in a boxcar headed for Michigan and freezing to death could be nothing but an intentional act. The caseworker said they were just trying to bully his mother into accepting a lower, out-of-court settlement. They were doing a pretty good job of it.

It was Barry Feingold, the manager, who clued Brian in. Brian was always the last one out of the locker room, and Feingold would sit by him while he dressed to talk about the team and things. Brian figured it was cause he didn't throw towels at Barry or call him names or because he was afraid to sit by the black kids on the team.

Feingold could never sit still on the locker bench, he rocked and squirmed and straddled, checked his watch to make sure it was still ticking and his wallet to make sure it was still there, pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose and ran his hand through his curly yellow hair. He looked like a third-base coach giving steal signals.

"Do you know what I saw," Barry would say kicking his pile of wet towels, "in Coach's practice book?"

"What?" Brian would say in the disinterested style he was working on.

"I saw the first cut list," Barry would say and pause a second. "You're all right. You made it."

Brian would grunt and pull on a sock.

"Do you know," Barry would say playing with his clipboard, "what I heard Coach tell Mr. Fuqua today?"

"Nope."

"He told him you'd probably be one of his starters."

Brian would grunt and tuck in his shirt.,

"Do you know," said Barry, staring at the ceiling because Brian was powdering his balls with Desenex, "what I heard in homeroom today?"

"Nope."

"I heard that Ditty Stack likes you."

Brian grunted. He slipped on his underpants. He shook some powder under his arms.

"Who said that?"

Barry got up and spun the dial on a combination lock. "Barbara Fazzone and this other girl were talking about who liked who and they said it. They said she likes you. And Barbara is her best friend, just about."

Brian grunted and pulled his pants on.

Brian didn't know Ditty Stack or any of her friends. She was one of the ones who planned the dances and pep rallies, who were cheerleaders, who had parties at their homes, who rode down Central Avenue honking horns after football victories, who sat at the showcase table for lunch, the first table at the bottom of the cafeteria stairs, where nobody coming or going could miss them. Ditty had straight blond hair and real grown-up woman's breasts that swung and bounced and bobbled when she led the "Let's Go Offense" cheer.

"No cotton there," Russ Palumbo would say to the kid across the aisle in study hall, "those babies are the real McCoy. McCoys."

Russ Palumbo said a lot of other things about her, but with somebody as popular and hard to get close to as Ditty Stack you knew it was just guessing.

The last Brian had heard she was going with this guy who played fullback and who was an All-State wrestler. Though wrestling wasn't a popular sport.

In the cafeteria one day he heard giggling as he passed the showcase, and a voice whispered, "That's him. That's the one."

In study hall Russ Palumbo said, "McNeil, I heard Ditty Stack has the hots for you. You fart."

In the hall one day she passed him with some of her friends and smiled and said hi.

He had only been to the shack with Serena twice since basketball had started. There wasn't any football or dances for an excuse to get out and he was tired. Practice tired him out, and work. It was too cold to walk to school together, they caught different buses.

He wished he was Russ Palumbo and knew which girls would do what without having to go with them to find out.

Barbara Fazzone casually, almost accidentally fell into step beside Brian on his way to second-period class.

"I saw your name in the paper."

"Yuh."

There had been a preseason roundup article in the sports section the night before, and Coach had listed Brian as one of his starting five.

"Do you think we'll be good this year?"

"We'll be okay."

He knew Barbara a little, they had been in the same catechism Confirmation class.

"I can't wait till the season starts. I like it a lot better than football. You get to see everybody's face and it's not so hard to follow the ball."

"Yeah. I suppose it is."

"And then cheerleading is much better inside. You're much closer to the people."

"Uh-huh."

"Listen," she said, smiling and letting her arm brush his, teasing a little, "can I ask you a personal question?"

Brian shrugged. "I guess so," he said, then tried to think how he should answer it.

"What do you think of Ditty Stack?"

There were several things he thought of her, but he didn't know which one was right to say.

"I don't know her very well."

Barbara nodded seriously, filing it away. "I wonder if we'll win the league," she said.

"But," said Brian, "I'd probably like to get to know her better."

Barbara smiled. "Listen, don't tell anybody I said this, she'd kill me if she found out, but I think Ditty really likes you a lot."

"Oh."

"It's hard on her because she's so shy," said Barbara, "but she's really very friendly."

Brian had never thought of her as being shy. She did an awful good job covering it up.

"Uh-huh."

"And you know, if I were you, I wouldn't be afraid to just go right up to her and say that you'd like to get to know her."

Brian considered this.