Jim Shepard - Kiss of the Wolf

“I’m goin’ to Yankee Stadium tonight,” he said. Then he realized it sounded like bragging.

“Yeah?” Brendan asked.

“You coulda come, but we couldn’t get another ticket,” Todd explained.

Brendan nodded, watching the game. “We got Ad Altare Dei tomorrow night,” he said.

Woods, with his red PEE WEE jersey, was running toward them. He planted to cut and was piled on from behind. He yelled and got up and hopped around on one leg. Todd flinched, remembering soccer tryouts the year before, his knee twisting with a little crick that sounded like someone a few feet away cracking a nut. The sound scared him down to his feet. His father had taken him to the doctor and the doctor had handled his leg casually while he talked, like a length of hose.

“He all right?” Todd said.

It looked like he was. He was walking around on both legs like he had a sliver in his foot. “Remember, before confirmation, when we heard we were gonna get slapped in the face by the bishop?” Brendan said. “And we joked about like a fight breaking out?”

“Or that he’d belt us across the face,” Todd said.

“We didn’t get anything like that,” Brendan said. He ripped up some of the wet grass and piled it on top of his sneakers.

Todd watched Woods stand on one foot and swing his other like it was a pendulum. You’re a great son, he thought. Here you’re supposed to be so upset about your father leaving and how often do you think of him?

“What’s the worst thing you ever confessed?” he asked Brendan.

The ball bounced over to them and Brendan kicked it back with his foot. “I don’t know,” he said.

“If you did something really terrible, would you confess it?” Todd said.

Brendan looked at him. “Why? You do something? What’d you do?” He sounded enthusiastic.

Todd told him nothing, but by then his face was red and he’d given himself away. Brendan stayed after him and made fun of him, and when Todd got up and said he had to get back, Brendan followed behind, guessing what it could be: Stealing? Sacrilege? Praying to Satan? It was only after Todd got home and waved good-bye and repeated that he had to go in, he had all this stuff he had to do, that he realized that none of Brendan’s guesses were as bad as the real thing.

He sat out in the front yard an hour early, waiting for Bruno to show up. He had his glove with him for foul balls. His mother was in the living room with the window open, on the other side of the screen. In the afternoon sunlight she was just a shadow that came and went.

“When’s the game start?” she asked.

He shrugged. He was matching Japanese maple leaves to one another. He’d pulled them off the little tree she’d planted.

He heard her clunk something around in the living room. “I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” she muttered.

He checked his wallet. He had only five dollars.

You have enough money?” she asked.

“I have enough money,” he said. Across the driveway, near the telephone pole, sparrows trooped around on the weedy part of the lawn.

“It’s like you’re out almost all the time now,” his mother complained.

“I’m not gonna say anything,” he finally said. She left the window.

Bruno’s Buick turned onto the street and pulled up the driveway. Bruno got out and flipped him a new Yankees cap. It sailed end over end and landed in the grass. “You wear it,” he said. “Me, I’m not committing myself till we have a five-run lead.”

He asked if Todd had his glove. Todd held it up. “Joanie?” he called.

He was looking at the side of the house and listening for an answer. Some birds cheeped. “Where’s your mother?” he finally said.

Todd said she was in the house.

Bruno looked disturbed at the news. “We’re go in’. Good- bye ,” he called. He waited another minute and gestured Todd toward the car. When they got in, he looked like he was deciding something and then started the car. “Your mother mad at me?” he asked as he backed down the driveway. “She say anything to you?”

Todd said she hadn’t. After a little while he volunteered, “I don’t think she wanted me to go tonight.”

“You got that right,” Bruno said.

“J’ou eat yet?” he asked a few minutes later.

Todd nodded. He hadn’t, though. Why he did stuff like that, he had no idea.

“We’ll grab something, anyway,” Bruno said.

Todd spread out on the leather seat. It was a dealer car and had the new-car smell.

Bruno yawned so widely his eyes watered. He made a loud chewing noise and straightened up. “When’s your birthday?” he asked. “I had a good idea for a present.”

“It’s already over,” Todd said. “May eleventh.”

“The eleventh? I was born the eleventh, too.”

“The same day?”

“The same day.”

They got up on I-95, heading south. Traffic was heavy. “It was like two weeks after my dad left,” Todd said.

“Happy birthday,” Bruno said.

“Really.”

A big red Jeep Cherokee swerved alongside them. The windows were open, and the bass whoompf of the stereo was amazing even from there.

“What a day,” Bruno sighed.

“You didn’t sell anything?” Todd asked.

“It’s not the not buying,” Bruno said. “It’s the bustin’ ’em off that gets you.”

Todd looked back at the road. He didn’t know enough to talk about it.

“One guy today, he comes back in: ‘Hey, this Skylark option package you just sold me, I just saw it in the paper a lot cheaper at Valley Motors.’ I need these comparison shoppers, right? Next he’ll be kicking the tires. I go, ‘Valley Motors, jeez, you know, you’re welcome to comparison shop with them, but it’s only fair to warn you we had some dealings with them, we found some serial numbers filed off, you know what I’m saying?’”

He hit the turn signal, and they headed off the Sears exit in Bridgeport.

“What’s that mean?” Todd said.

The Buick rolled down the ramp and stopped at the light. It was idling funny and shook. Bruno pumped the gas. He said the numbers filed off usually meant the cars were stolen. Somebody’d probably hijacked a truckload of new ones and sold them to the dealers.

How could he just tell people that about them? Todd asked. Wouldn’t they complain? Bruno said not if it was true. Todd thought about it and asked how he knew it was true.

Bruno shrugged and told him he wasn’t getting all the trade secrets tonight. The light changed and he went straight a block and hung a right. He hit the automatic door locks. Someone broke a bottle in an alley they passed.

“Where we goin’?” Todd said.

“Little diner,” Bruno said. “You’ll like it.”

They were in a lousy part of Bridgeport. Todd was still thinking about his story. “Does Valley Motors know you’re doing that?” he asked.

Bruno shrugged again. “Hey, the buyer’s gonna go, ‘Hey, I hear you have stolen cars here’?

“See, what Valley Motors gets, they deserve, because stealin’s wrong. Am I right?” Bruno asked. “What’d you, lose your voice?”

“No, it’s wrong,” Todd said. He was afraid to look up.

It was starting to get dark. They were driving along under the highway. There was nothing around but an abandoned car and a chain-link fence. A page of newspaper rose in the wind and floated in front of them. Todd was getting a clogged feeling in the back of his throat from swallowing so much. “Why’re we goin’ here?” he asked.

Bruno pulled over next to a concrete highway support that went up into the darkness and out of sight. He cut the engine.

“Why’re we stopping?” Todd asked. He had one hand on the seat next to him, the other on the door handle. His glove was on the seat between them.