Brad Felver - The Dogs of Detroit

Walter stares at our sign, and he gets this look on his face like he’s trying to do long division homework. “Where’s the horn?” he asks, and I tell him it’s already in there, cooking, and that he’s a dummy who smells like armpit fungus. Everyone knows you put the horn in first because it gives everything more flavor.

“God-lover,” Bev says, and she belts him in the arm.

Walter stands there, straddling his ten-speed and rubbing his arm. “I don’t get it,” he says.

Bev yanks him off his ten-speed and puts him into a headlock and starts cranking. She does it fast, like she was looking for a reason to go after Walter. And while she’s holding him, I ball up my fist and noogie him till my knuckles burn. It’s a big problem, the way some kids act when their dumb divorced parents start buying them expensive crap.

Bev lets go, and Walter tries to fix his hair and stand up straight like maybe we were just palling around on him.

“You should probably stir it some,” he says.

Bev and me look at each other. We haven’t thought of this, and even though we should bash Walter’s shoulder, we don’t because he’s probably right.

“If you have a big spoon,” Bev says, “I guess we could let you help out.”

So Walter pedals away toward his house. As he’s turning the corner, Bev shouts at him to bring some of those gummy worms too.

We stare down at our pot of unicorn stew. We’re out of ingredients to drop in, so we start in on handfuls of crabgrass and dandelion heads and thistles.

Someone gets a hit, probably the other team, and the radio voice jumps loud for a minute. Bev’s mom isn’t smoking anymore, but she’s still sitting in the car. She looks over at us with this sort of sad, drooping face, like maybe she just woke up. Bev waves at her and then says, “My mom’s a dumbo. I’d smoke in the house if I wanted to.”

I don’t say anything, but I also don’t believe her. Her dad scares me. He’s awfully big, way bigger than my dad, and even though he smells like cotton candy, he’s mean. He’s always calling Bev’s mom a shit-cow and shouting at Bev to run down to the packie for him. When he drives away in his big blue truck, he always squeals the tires. One time after he elbowed Bev’s mom in the face, he got all serious, saying how sorry he was, and why did she make him do ugly things like that to prove how much he loved her and how much it made his heart hurt? Another time Bev stayed home from school for a whole week because she said she had bronchitis. Her dad wouldn’t even let me in our room to see her. I’m pretty sure she didn’t really have bronchitis, though, because I stood outside the door and never heard any coughing. And when I finally got in to see her, she had this mashed up pinky toe. What I think happened was her dad was working on the big blue truck, and Bev asked him some question, and I guess it was the wrong question because he dropped one of his hammers on her toe, which broke it hard. I’m not saying he hit her with it, but her toe was in bad shape. Even now it hasn’t really healed, just seems like bone dust wrapped in skin, like a sugar packet, maybe. So Bev always wears her mom’s old sneakers tied double-tight.

Our dads used to be pals. They both worked at the candy plant and liked to come home and sit on the curb and toss rocks into the sewer grate. Then when it rained the water didn’t drain right, and Bev and me could jump around in this huge, muddy puddle. Sometimes we’d tie yarn to sticks and pretend to fish in it. They were both a little nicer then, I think because having a friend makes you nicer. But then my dad decided to become a trucker and Bev’s dad didn’t, so they aren’t really friends anymore. Now Bev’s dad is meaner. My dad comes back for a weekend every couple months, and he takes me to Dairy Queen and the movie theater, but then he drops me back off at Bev’s house and doesn’t come inside. He says he likes to sleep in his truck now. Bev’s dad never comes out to talk to him. Bev thinks my dad just wanted to leave Chelsea, and maybe she’s right. She says that one time when he’s back, we should be real nice to him at first. Wait till he’s sleeping in his truck and then do something really bad, like hit him with a baseball bat or dump a bucket of puke on his head. But I don’t think I could do that.

Walter Sullivan comes back, pedaling extra hard. He hands Bev an oar that he stole from his dad’s canoe. Bev looks at me and shrugs. “The gummy worms?” she says.

Walter reaches into his pocket and pulls out a fresh pack and starts opening it.

“We’ll do the ingredients,” Bev says and grabs them up.

Then we start stirring it with the oar and dropping in gummy worms. So the rule becomes this: every tenth circle around the pot, you get punched because we do still need to keep making these bruises even if we are pretty fantastic chefs.

But Walter doesn’t like this. Bev bashes his shoulder, and he starts to tear up. None of the other kids ever hit Walter Sullivan because then they won’t get to play with his toys.

“I don’t want to stir anymore,” Walter says.

“You don’t stir, you have to leave,” Bev says.

Walter reaches for the canoe paddle, but Bev steps in front of him. “We’ll bring it back to you when we’re done,” she says.

Then he squats down for his bike, but Bev stomps on the front tire. “We need to borrow this too,” Bev says.

Walter looks over at me, like he’s hoping I’ll help him out, but I don’t say anything. “Come on, guys,” he says and pulls on the handlebars a little harder.

Bev just shakes her head at him.

By now Walter Sullivan is crying and yelling something about sending his dad down here just as soon as he gets home from work. Then he just runs off without his bike.

I keep stirring the unicorn stew while Bev rides Walter’s bike around. She does all kinds of wheelies and jumps off the curb. Then she starts going all the way to the end of the street and turning around, pedaling as fast as she can, and by the time she gets back, she’s flying. Then she jams on the brakes and turns sideways and skids out. It leaves these long black marks in the road, and every time she does it, she makes one a little bit longer. Then it’s my turn to make the skid marks. It feels good to ride fast because it’s like wind, but I can’t seem to skid out as good as Bev. She has longer legs and goes faster, I guess. So I go back to our unicorn stew and leave the bike riding to her.

Bev’s mom is still in the car, still listening to the Sox. She watches us riding Walter Sullivan’s bike, but she doesn’t get out and say anything. It’s almost five o’clock, which means Bev’s dad is coming home soon, and after working all day in the candy plant, he’s pretty grumpy, and he’s liable to call people shit-cows or mash their toes up if his boss was an extra big jerk today, which he usually is.

At twelve minutes after five the big blue truck rumbles way down at the other end of the street. Bev drops Walter’s bike and faces the opposite way, like maybe if she doesn’t look, he doesn’t exist. He doesn’t stop all the way at the intersection, and then he guns it, and the big blue truck sounds like a space rocket or maybe Godzilla.

He squeals the tires when he stops and gets out of the big blue truck and hikes his pants up. I can tell that his boss was a jerk today. We stop stirring the unicorn stew and stand there extra quiet. He spits into the street and arches his back. Then he hears the radio and looks over toward Bev’s mom in the car, and he stomps over there and heaves the door open, and this tornado of smoke pours out, and the Sox game gets louder. He swipes his hand in front of his face and leans back.

“Fucking Christ!” he says, and Bev’s mom jumps over into the passenger seat.