Brad Felver - The Dogs of Detroit

“Inside!” he yells at her, which doesn’t seem quite fair to me because I thought the deal was that she just couldn’t smoke in the house. But that’s just like Bev’s dad—always making a deal and then breaking it.

He moves over to the passenger side of the car, and Bev’s mom jumps back to the driver’s seat. They go on like this for a few times, and it’s kind of funny to see Bev’s dad look like the dumb craphead he is, but it’s also kind of not funny because once he gets a hold of her, he’s liable to punch her in the neck until she cries. Pretty soon he gets tired of chasing her, so he just stands there in front of the car and spreads his legs wide like some bandit in the Wild West. Then he looks over at us for the first time. He looks at us, and then he looks at Bev’s mom, and then he looks back at us.

Bev’s mom gets out of the car and walks out into the street and stands kind of in between us and Bev’s dad. She probably doesn’t want him ruining our unicorn stew after seeing all the work we’ve put in to getting it just right. Bev’s dad leans into the car and grabs the pack of cigarettes and lights one for himself.

“You,” he says to me. “Bev’s little boyfriend. Head down to the packie and get me a grinder and some Blatz. We need to have a family meeting.” He hands me a wad of bills and shoves me toward the store.

The radio is still going, and I can hear it pretty clear with the doors wide open. He looks into our pot of unicorn stew and cracks his fat knuckles. “What’s all this shit?”

“We’re making unicorn stew,” Bev says, and I think she speaks up just so she can look tough in front of me, but it’s a risky thing to do, talking to Bev’s dad when he’s upset.

“Bev’s little boyfriend,” he says to me, “go to the packie.”

Then he turns to Bev. “Time to come inside,” he says. He takes one last puff of his cigarette and tosses it right into our pot of unicorn stew. Then he crumples up the rest of the pack and throws that in there, too, and that rubs me hard because you don’t get to just ruin other people’s unicorn stew.

Bev looks over at me. She has this sad face on, like her mom’s, but I really don’t know what to do. Everybody says you need to stand up for yourself, but they forget that when you’re in the fifth grade, most people are bigger than you. And I have to sleep somewhere. So I just stand there. Bev hands me the oar and walks inside without saying goodbye or anything. And as soon as Bev leaves, so does her mom. Then it’s just me and Bev’s dad, which is not the kind of situation you want to get yourself into if you like your toes.

“Where’d all this come from?” he says, meaning our unicorn stew.

I was counting on Bev doing the talking because I’m not very good at talking to her dad. “We didn’t pay for anything,” I say.

And he glares at me with his mean glare, the kind where his lips sort of curl in around his teeth and make his mustache stand out even more. It probably didn’t matter what I said.

“That was Bev’s idea, eh?” he says, and I don’t exactly nod, but I don’t say no either, and so he knows everything, I guess.

He turns to go inside, but right then Walter Sullivan and his dad come around the corner. Walter’s dad works at the candy plant, too, so I guess it didn’t take Walter long to tell on us. His dad looks mad, but I think if we had some kind of contest to see who could be the meanest or the maddest, Bev’s dad would beat just about anybody no problem.

“That’s my kid’s bike,” Walter’s dad says. He’s tall and skinny and has this huge nose. He looks a little like the Fruit Loops bird, except for he isn’t blue.

Bev’s dad looks down at me. “He let Bev borrow it,” I say, which is definitely what Bev would say.

“My kid says he was just borrowing it,” Bev’s dad says.

“Your kid’s lying.”

Bev’s dad takes a step forward, so he’s right in front of Walter’s dad. And when he does that, I follow him, take a step toward Walter. They don’t move, like they don’t really know what to do. “My kids don’t lie,” Bev’s dad says.

“Look, Jake,” Walter’s dad says, “Either way, it’s my kid’s bike, and he wants it back now.”

“Sure,” says Bev’s dad. But then he doesn’t step aside. “Just apologize to my kid for saying he’s a liar.”

Walter’s dad gives him this awful look, like he’s trying to eat a handful of gravel. And the way Walter stares at his dad makes me feel pretty awful. I don’t know why Bev’s dad always has to get the push on people, but he does.

For a minute nobody moves. Then Walter’s dad squats down in front of me, just about eye level, and looks right at my face. “I’m sorry I called you a liar, pal. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Then he stands up, glares at Bev’s dad again, and they’re gone. We watch them for a minute, Walter riding on the bike while his dad walks just behind.

“And that’s how you deal with a bully,” Bev’s dad says. He musses up my hair, which kind of hurts because his hands have these sharp calluses that scrape on my skull. But I just let him do it anyway. Then he goes inside, and I rub my head and think on the way he stood up for me and called me his kid. I start walking down to the packie with the money he forgot to take back to get some stew ingredients for tomorrow. That way Bev and me can get an early start. I pull my t-shirt out like a pouch and fill it with packs of Necco Wafers since they’re the cheapest thing around, and the whole time I’m thinking about how I’m glad to be gone right now because Bev’s dad still has about a zillion things to be mad about. I take our candy up to pay and dump it on the counter and unwad the dollar bills, and that’s when I see the rainbow sherbet behind the ice cream counter. It’s in this big, frosty bucket. I know I shouldn’t put back any of our stew ingredients, I know we’ll need them, but I can’t help it. It’s so hot out. I put back half the candy, and I stand in front of the counter and point to the rainbow sherbet and the guy fills me up a big cone. I walk toward Bev’s house, and it starts dripping in the heat, sliding all down my arms, all the way to my armpits. I can feel it sticking to my face and drying like syrup. I’m in no rush to get back, I keep licking around the edges of the cone where it’s all melted, but I can’t keep up with the heat, and before long my shirt is lined with all these bright-colored stains that will be impossible to hide.

At Mother’s wake, I threw stones at the sky. It was dark, deep snow trenches wrapping around everything like an acoustic damper. Even the hollow wail of coyote flattened into a muffled echo. I threw stones, chucking them high into the darkness, where they seemed to lodge, like stars that had forgotten how to glow or perhaps young stars that hadn’t yet learned.

I hid outside in the dark while all those aunts and uncles, scary strangers, roamed our hallways and ate potato salad and made sad faces at Father, like apologies. I threw stones until my shoulder ached and thought about how I kind of liked the pain right then, like it was helping somehow.

“Come say goodbye now,” Father said later, leaning out the back door.

“I want to stay out here,” I said.

He hesitated on the back steps. He hadn’t put a jacket on. “Caleb,” he said.

“It’s scary in there,” I said.

He let the door close behind him and sat next to me. We were both of us out of the light that spilled from the door, but if you looked long enough, you could probably see our breath. “It is scary,” he said. “I’d hoped you might save me by coming back in.”

“Sorry.” I wasn’t, though. I was glad to be outside, away from all that, glad to have him sitting next to me, not quite touching but almost, like I could feel his heat. I rubbed on my shoulder.