I couldn't have said at first why we stuck, and if Doc could he didn't
volunteer. Neither of us talked about it. We just went on living the
way we were used to living, a few weeks here and a few there, all
over the States.
We'd hit the Florida west coast too late for the citrus season, so I
went in for the fishing instead. I worked the fishing boats all the
way from Tampa down to Fort Myers, not signing on with any of the
commercial companies because I like to move quick when I get restless.
I picked the independent deep-water snapper runs mostly, because the
percentage is good there if you've got a strong back and tough hands.
Snapper fishing isn't the sport it seems to the one-day tourists who
flock along because the fee is cheap. You fish from a wide-beamed old
scow, usually, with hand-lines instead of regular tackle, and you use
multiple hooks that go down to the bottom where the big red ones are.
There's no real thrill to it, as the one-day anglers find out quickly.
A snapper puts up no more fight than a catfish and the biggest job is
to haul out his dead weight once you've got him surfaced.
Usually a pro like me sells his catch to the boat's owner or to some
clumsy sport who wants his picture shot with a big one, and there's
nearly always a jackpot--from a pool made up at the beginning of every
run--for the man landing the biggest fish of the day. There's a knack
to hooking the big ones, and when the jackpots were running good I
only worked a day or so a week and spent the rest of the time lying
around the trailer playing cribbage and drinking beer with Doc Shull.
Usually it was the life of Riley, but somehow it wasn't enough in this
place. We'd get about half-oiled and work up a promising argument
about what was wrong with the world. Then, just when we'd got life
looking its screwball funniest with our arguments one or the other of
us would look out the window and see Joey Pond in his wheelchair,
waiting for a one-eyed dog named Charlie to come trotting home across
the palmetto flats. He was always there, day or night, until his
mother came home from work and rolled him inside.
It wasn't right or natural for a kid to wait like that for anything
and it worried me. I even offered once to buy the kid another mutt but
Ethel Pond told me quick to mind my own business. Doc explained that
the kid didn't want another mutt because he had what Doc called a
psychological block.
"Charlie was more than just a dog to him," Doc said. "He was a sort of
symbol because he offered the kid two things that no one else in the
world could--security and independence. With Charlie keeping him
company he felt secure, and he was independent of the kids who could
run and play because he had Charlie to play with. If he took another
dog now he'd be giving up more than Charlie. He'd be giving up
everything that Charlie had meant to him, then there wouldn't be any
point in living."
I could see it when Doc put it that way. The dog had spent more time
with Joey than Ethel had, and the kid felt as safe with him as he'd
have been with a platoon of Marines. And Charlie, being a one-man dog,
had depended on Joey for the affection he wouldn't take from anybody
else. The dog needed Joey and Joey needed him. Together, they'd been a
natural.
At first I thought it was funny that Joey never complained or cried
when Charlie didn't come home, but Doc explained that it was all a
part of this psychological block business. If Joey cried he'd be
admitting that Charlie was lost. So he waited and watched, secure in
his belief that Charlie would return.
The Ponds got used to Doc and me being around, but they never got what
you'd call intimate. Joey would laugh at some of the droll things Doc
said, but his eyes always went back to the palmetto flats and the
highway, looking for Charlie. And he never let anything interfere with
his routine.
That routine started every morning when old man Cloehessey, the
postman, pedaled his bicycle out from Twin Palms to leave a handful of
mail for the trailer-court tenants. Cloehessey would always make it a
point to ride back by way of the Pond trailer and Joey would stop him
and ask if he's seen anything of a one-eyed dog on his route that day.
Old Cloehessey would lean on his bike and take off his sun helmet and
mop his bald scalp, scowling while he pretended to think.
Then he'd say, "Not today, Joey," or, "Thought so yesterday, but this
fellow had two eyes on him. 'Twasn't Charlie."
Then he'd pedal away, shaking his head. Later on the handyman would
come around to swap sanitary tanks under the trailers and Joey would
ask him the same question. Once a month the power company sent out a
man to read the electric meters and he was part of Joey's routine too.
It was hard on Ethel. Sometimes the kid would dream at night that
Charlie had come home and was scratching at the trailer ramp to be let
in, and he'd wake Ethel and beg her to go out and see. When that
happened Doc and I could hear Ethel talking to him, low and steady,
until all hours of the morning, and when he finally went back to sleep
we'd hear her open the cupboard and take out the gin bottle.
But there came a night that was more than Ethel could take, a night
that changed Joey's routine and a lot more with it. It left a mark
you've seen yourself--everybody has that's got eyes to see--though
you never knew what made it. Nobody ever knew that but Joey and Ethel
Pond and Doc and me.
Doc and I were turning in around midnight that night when the kid sang
out next door. We heard Ethel get up and go to him, and we got up too
and opened a beer because we knew neither of us would sleep any more
till she got Joey quiet again. But this night was different. Ethel
hadn't talked to the kid long when he yelled, "Charlie! _Charlie!_"
and after that we heard both of them bawling.
A little later Ethel came out into the moonlight and shut the trailer
door behind her. She looked rumpled and beaten, her hair straggling
damply on her shoulders and her eyes puffed and red from crying. The
gin she'd had hadn't helped any either.
She stood for a while without moving, then she looked up at the sky
and said something I'm not likely to forget.
"Why couldn't You give the kid a break?" she said, not railing or
anything but loud enough for us to hear. "You, up there--what's
another lousy one-eyed mutt to You?"
Doc and I looked at each other in the half-dark of our own trailer.
"She's done it, Roy," Doc said.
I knew what he meant and wished I didn't. Ethel had finally told the
kid that Charlie wasn't coming back, not ever.
That's why I was worried about Joey when I came home the next evening
and found him watching the sky instead of the palmetto flats. It meant
he'd given up waiting for Charlie. And the quiet way the kid spoke of
moving the stars around worried me more, because it sounded outright
crazy.
Not that you could blame him for going off his head. It was tough
enough to be pinned to a wheelchair without being able to wiggle so
much as a toe. But to lose his dog in the bargain....
I was on my third beer when Doc Shull rolled in with a big package
under his arm. Doc was stone sober, which surprised me, and he was hot
and tired from a shopping trip to Tampa, which surprised me more. It
was when he ripped the paper off his package, though, that I thought
he'd lost his mind.
"Books for Joey," Doc said. "Ethel and I agreed this morning that the
boy needs another interest to occupy his time now, and since he can't
go to school I'm going to teach him here."
He went on to explain that Ethel hadn't had the heart the night
before, desperate as she was, to tell the kid the whole truth. She'd
told him instead, quoting an imaginary customer at the Sea Shell
Diner, that a tourist car with Michigan license plates had picked
Charlie up on the highway and taken him away. It was a good enough
story. Joey still didn't know that Charlie was dead, but his waiting
was over because no dog could be expected to find his way home from
Michigan.
"We've got to give the boy another interest," Doc said, putting away
the books and puncturing another beer can. "Joey has a remarkable
talent for concentration--most handicapped children have--that could
be the end of him if it isn't diverted into safe channels."