Dogs Read online

  So where’s Mr. Sinclair? He knows I’m coming.

  What if he had a heart attack? What if he’s dead in there?

  I knock hard on the back door. “Mr. Sinclair?”

  Maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he’s dying.

  I pull out my phone to call Mom, then remember the lamp by the barn. Why do I scare myself? He’s probably finishing up some chores.

  I run into the barn. It’s different than ours. The floor is concrete instead of dirt and there aren’t any cow stalls. I see a light coming from a room at the back and hear a throbbing hum that sounds like an engine.

  “Mr. Sinclair?”

  No answer. Maybe he didn’t hear me. I go to the room. Mr. Sinclair’s not here—but oh my God. On the right are a bunch of refrigeration units. On the left, a table runs along a wall of knives, cleavers, mallets, and saws. Ahead of me, a large, cast-iron laundry tub is filling with chewed-up flesh squeezed out of a large motorized grinder.

  I gotta get out of here. I whirl round. Mr. Sinclair’s blocking my way.

  He steps toward me. “I wondered how long it’d take you to get here.”

  14

  “Mr. Sinclair. I…I…”

  “Spit it out.”

  I back up into the room. “My mother knows I’m here.”

  “Of course she does. She phoned me last night. Got tired of waiting for you at the house, thought I’d finish grinding some beef.” He turns abruptly and walks over to a refrigerator, takes out a square plastic pail, and brings it to the tub. Then he grabs a flat metal scoop from the table and begins to shovel the meat into the pail.

  I breathe a little easier. “I didn’t see you when I arrived.”

  “That makes two of us. I was next door in the drying room.” I must look pretty clueless because he adds, “It’s where I hang the meat.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  He snorts. “You one of them kids who think your burger just shows up in the grocery store? Think your eggs grow on trees?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Bet you never seen a grinder like this.”

  “You’re right.”

  Mr. Sinclair wipes a slick of hair off his forehead with the back of his arm. “It’s old, that’s for sure. My father bought it back in the fifties. Used to grind things for the fellow who lived over at your place—McTavish. Frank McTavish.”

  Jacky’s father. My heart races. “What sort of things did he grind?”

  “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  I hope he’s joking.

  Mr. Sinclair scoops the last of the burger meat into the pail. “When I was a boy, food was local, especially in the country. Each farm’d have a few crops, a henhouse, maybe some hogs or dairy. My father butchered the odd cow for the neighbors in exchange for meat. He used the leftovers to make sausages.”

  He seals the pail and puts it in the fridge. “Mixed farming—gone the way of the dodo. But a few folks still like to know what they’re eating. So what the heck? In between planting and harvesting, what else do I have to do but watch the corn grow and worry ’bout the weather?”

  Mr. Sinclair glances in my direction. I shrug helpfully like I don’t know what else he could be doing either. “Come up to the house,” he says. “I pulled out an old photo album with some pictures you might want to see. You were asking about the boy.”

  “You remembered.”

  “Why wouldn’t I? You think I lost my marbles?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I hope you’re right.” He shoots me a look. “That was a joke. You can laugh.”

  “Yes, sir.” I smile like I think it was funny.

  He shakes his head and we go to the house. It’s full of dust, plus that smell that old people get. There’s a flypaper strip over the kitchen table that looks like it’s been there since last spring.

  Mr. Sinclair sits beside me and opens the album. He clicks his tongue as he flips through until he finds the page he’s looking for. He taps a picture. “First things first. See anything you recognize?”

  “Wow. Our farmhouse in the old days.” When it wasn’t so rundown. There’s a trellis of morning glories on either side of the kitchen window, and the grass has been cut. Three adults sit around a picnic table staring at the camera. I spot Jacky’s parents from their wedding picture; neither of them is smiling.

  “That’s McTavish, in the straw hat, the fellow I told you about,” Mr. Sinclair says. “And that’s his wife in the polka dots.”

  I point at the third person in the picture, a chubby woman holding a baby. “Who’s that?”

  “My mother.”

  “Is that you she’s holding?”

  “Well, it isn’t the pope.”

  It’s strange seeing grown-ups as babies. I like to imagine them being born with their adult heads, but with Mr. Sinclair that’s just too weird.

  “And your father?” I ask. “Is he the one taking the picture?”

  “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes.”

  I blush. “So your parents were friends of the McTavishes?”

  “My father was best man at their wedding, if that’s what you’re asking. I expect it was on account of they were neighbors and McTavish didn’t have anyone else to ask. He was a strange bird. My mother never liked him.”

  Jacky’s parents stare at me from the snapshot. What are they thinking? I flash on Mom and Dad. They had friends who went to their wedding too, friends who came for dinner and took their pictures. Did their friends know about their fights? Did they do or say anything? What about the Sinclairs? Did they know the McTavishes had the kind of problems that made Jacky draw his pictures?

  I flash on something else. Cody thinks there was a murder. I thought Jacky got killed, but what if it was his mother? Jacky says she “went away,” but what mother runs off without her kid?

  “You’re pretty quiet all of a sudden,” Mr. Sinclair says. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing. I was just wondering…where’s Jacky?”

  “Jacky?”

  “Wasn’t that the name of their son?”

  “You do your homework.” Mr. Sinclair sits back in his chair. “What else do you know?”

  My forehead tingles. What if his family’s mixed up in the murder? I thought he agreed to see me to tell me stuff. What if he agreed so he could find out how much I know?

  “Not much,” I say. “Just his name.”

  “You sure?”

  “Honest.”

  Mr. Sinclair tilts his head. He doesn’t believe me. “Jacky was a year younger than me. He’d have been born a year after this shot was taken.”

  He flips to a page farther back. The pictures used to be in color, but now they’re bleached out. I see a snapshot of two boys playing. They look like ghosts on a pale yellow background. One of them has a Davy Crockett cap. Jacky. Is that the face I saw when I closed my eyes?

  I point at the kid, barely able to breathe. “That’s him?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The raccoon-skin cap.”

  “What makes you think Jacky had a raccoon-skin cap?”

  “I don’t know. Just guessing.”

  “Well, guess again,” Mr. Sinclair says. “I’m the one with the cap. When I was really little, every boy wanted to be Crockett, but Frank McTavish didn’t have time for things like that. Jacky must’ve been the only kid without one.”

  What? If Jacky didn’t have a cap, then what I’d imagined was all in my mind. There isn’t a ghost after all.

  “Happy ending though,” Mr. Sinclair continues. “By the time I was twelve or so, the fad was dying out, so I gave my cap to Jacky. He wore it every day. Why, you’d think he’d died and gone to heaven.”

  “You played with him a lot then?”

  “Some. In those days, you didn’t have much choice who you
played with. It was mostly kids a couple of farms up or down. There wasn’t an Internet and only one phone, a landline, for special occasions.” He flips through more pages. “See this? Each winter my father made a skating rink in the yard. Jacky and me, we’d pass a puck back and forth. Jacky slid on his boots, no skates. In summer we’d toss a baseball or climb hay in his loft. He was a strange kid. I seem to recall he liked to draw.”

  “What happened to him?” I ask, all innocent.

  “Don’t know. His mother ran off, took him with her. Hadn’t thought about him much till you asked the other day. Don’t have time for memories, too busy making them… That’s another joke.”

  “Sorry.” I’m thinking too hard to smile. “What happened to Mr. McTavish?”

  “Oh, that was a terrible thing.” Mr. Sinclair shakes his head. “Without his wife and boy, McTavish went squirrelier than he already was. Bought a dozen guard dogs. Wild things. My father told me never to go near the place.”

  He turns the page and taps a picture of the field between his farmhouse and ours. A pack of dogs is running on the bare ground. “Within a few months, those dogs went crazy. Tore him to shreds.”

  I stare at the dogs. “When did it happen?”

  Mr. Sinclair shrugs. “Who knows? Nobody saw it.”

  “I mean the date.” With the date, I can go to the Weekly Bugle. I can look up Mr. McTavish’s obituary and see if there were suspicions about a murder in the months before he died.

  “The date?” Mr. Sinclair shoots me a sly smile. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to figure out my age. Let’s just say early nineteen sixties.” He switches the subject to barn raisings, fall fairs, and strawberry socials. He tells me about playing in the hayloft, a girl who fell down an abandoned well, and a man who went to milk his cows in a whiteout and froze to death.

  I nod, but I’m hardly listening. All I can think about is Jacky. Jacky, his father, and the dogs.

  15

  I say good night and head back to my place. Good thing I have a flashlight. Mr. Sinclair’s corn rises above my head, a forest of darkness. The only sound is my feet on the stones at the side of the road.

  Thoughts echo inside my head. When did Mr. McTavish get killed by the dogs? Where was Jacky? Gone with his mother, or dead and buried?

  A cornstalk snaps in the field. I stop. Whatever I heard stops too. I scan my light across the cornstalks. Is something hiding in there?

  Who cares? It’s likely a rabbit or coyote. Either way, they’re scared of people.

  I walk faster. There’s another crunch from the field. Whatever’s out there isn’t scared. It’s following me. Sounds of panting. Dogs. The dogs. I start to run. So do they. They bound through the stalks beside me.

  No, there’s nothing there. It’s all in my mind—just my sleeves rubbing against my jacket, my feet on the gravel, my breathing.

  I hear Jacky: “I told you. It’s all right. They won’t hurt you. I won’t let them.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “But you’re my friend.”

  “Stop! You’re freaking me out. Go away!”

  I run up the lane to our farm, cornstalks on either side—see the glow of the house lights over the tassels—make the yard—barrel to the door—race inside.

  Mom looks up from the sink. “What’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I’m fine.” I take off my jacket.

  Mom smiles. “Maybe next time you’re out at night you’ll want a ride.”

  “No, I won’t, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Cameron, I’m teasing. We both know you have an imagination.”

  “Right.” Does she have to remind me I’m crazy?

  “So how was your chat with Mr. Sinclair?”

  “Okay.” I grab a Coke from the fridge and head upstairs.

  “Did he have lots to tell you for your essay?” Mom calls after me.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I can’t wait to read it.”

  You mean I actually have to write it? Really? Is everyone’s mom like this?

  I sit at my desk and look out at the hole in the barn wall where I first thought I saw Jacky. Mr. Sinclair said that before Jacky disappeared, he had a raccoon-skin cap. That fits with what I saw, but lots of kids had caps like that, so maybe it means nothing. He also said Jacky left with his mom. So what’s the truth? Did Jacky’s father kill him? Or did he just move away?

  “Jacky?” I whisper. “Jacky?”

  Silence. What did I expect?

  I have to talk to Cody. What does he know or think he knows? My heart beats faster. How do I talk to Cody without making him mad?

  I wake up with the answer. If I can get Cody alone, he won’t have to act tough for his gang; and if I tell him I believe in the murder, he won’t feel embarrassed. He’ll think I’m on his side. Who knows? Maybe he’ll start to like me. Or at least stop picking on me.

  At lunch, Cody’s gang heads to the highway for a smoke. I wait inside the door, sweating. When they start to swagger back, I go out to intercept them. A couple of them bark when they see me coming.

  I stick my hands in my pockets so the gang won’t see them shake. “Yeah, yeah, the dogs, big deal,” I say, like I don’t care. “I heard the story. I also heard there’s coyotes around. You guys had me going though. And you’re right about the house. I want to move—only a freak would wanna live there.”

  “No kidding,” Cody says without smiling. He and his buddies keep walking.

  “Hold up.”

  Cody swings round like he’s getting orders from a bug. “Huh?”

  I look him in the eye and try not to crap on myself. “Can I talk to you, please?”

  Sarcastic “Ooohs” come from the gang.

  Cody cocks his head. “What about?”

  “It’s sort of private.”

  Cody waves the guys off. They step back. “Okay. What’s so private?”

  “It’s about the murder at my farm,” I whisper.

  “What murder?” Cody’s voice is dead cold.

  “You know, the murder back in the sixties. You think there was a murder at my place, right?”

  “Who says?”

  “I don’t know. I just heard.”

  His fists tighten. “From who? What did they say?”

  “Nobody. Nothing.”

  “They talk about my great-grandma?”

  “What? No!”

  “Don’t lie to me. If they talked about the murder, they talked about her.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Liar.” Cody shoves me hard on the chest. I go back a few steps. “Who told you? What did they say?”

  “Nobody. Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just wanted to say, I think it’s true.”

  “About my great-grandma?”

  “No, the murder. I think it happened.”

  “I’ll bet you do.” He shoves me again. I fall down. He jumps on top. “Don’t ever laugh at my great-grandma. Don’t ever talk about my family, you little punk. Got that?”

  “I haven’t. Not her, your mom, not anybody.”

  He lifts my shoulders and slams them into the ground. “Why would you talk about Mom?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Then why did you say ‘your mom’?”

  “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t know anything!” He punches me in the face. I hit back without thinking. He pounds and pounds. A bunch of kids run out to see the show.

  “Boys. That’s enough.” It’s Mr. Abbott, a math teacher.

  Cody’s buddies yank him off me.

  “To the office. Both of you. Now.”

  “Why?” Cody rubs his knuckles. “He started it.”<
br />
  Mr. Abbott takes us to the vice principal. He tells him that Cody did most of the hitting, but he saw me land a punch too.

  “What started it?” the VP asks.

  “He was talking about my family,” Cody says. “Making fun of my great-grandma. Talking about my mom.”

  “Is that true, Cameron?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Cody glares at me. “I got witnesses.”

  The VP shoots him a look. “Cody.” He looks at me over his glasses. “What do you mean, ‘Not exactly’?”

  How can I explain without mentioning Benjie, or talking about the murder and sounding nuts? I stare at my hands. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Things didn’t come out how I wanted.”

  There’s a zero-tolerance policy for fighting. We both get suspended till the end of the week: three days. The office calls Mom to pick me up.

  The drive home takes forever. I try telling Mom it was all a misunderstanding, but she won’t listen. “You don’t get suspended for nothing.” I want to say I was bullied, but it’s too embarrassing. If she believed me, she’d think she had to do something, and that would make it worse.

  Besides, how do I tell her what got said? Even to me it doesn’t make sense. What would Cody’s great-grandmother have to do with a murder that no one thinks happened? And why would that make Cody go ballistic?

  “A fistfight,” Mom says quietly. “That’s how it starts.”

  I feel sick to my stomach. She thinks I’m turning into Dad.

  16

  After supper I go to my room and google Benjie’s number. There’re only three Dalberts in the area, and the other two are in town. I make the call.

  “I told you not to ask Cody about the murder,” Benjie says.

  “No, you didn’t. All you said was, ‘Don’t tell him there wasn’t one.’”

  “Oh. Right. I should have been clearer.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Sorry,” Benjie says.

  “Anyway, I acted like it was true. And now I’m beat up and suspended, and Mom cries when she looks at me. So what’s the deal?”

  “Well, first thing you should know: Cody’s great-grandma is ninety and deranged. A total whack job.”