Homebodies Read online

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Let me go help the customer, and then I’ll turn on the tag machine for you, and you can make Red whichever one you want.”

  Emily felt like the insides of her chest were suddenly larger than her rib cage could manage. “Really, Todd?”

  He squeezed her arm. “Yeah, just stay here okay? Shut the door behind me.”

  He left with his axe, and she shut the door. Red laid down on the floor. Emily sat down on Todd’s desk to wait for him and stole a cookie to share with Red, who seemed unhappy with the cinnamon but ate his half anyway. Todd came back in less than five minutes. His shirt was badly stained.

  “All done?” She pointed to the stains on his shirt. “What happened?”

  “Nothing interesting. I hate it when people just come in to bitch with no intention of buying anything.” Todd laid the axe down and a black pool formed beneath it on the floor. “They’re gone now. Come with me.”

  He reached out a hand for her to take, which she looked at with about the same skepticism as he had the cookies. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d held hands, even for a few minutes. She slid her fingers inside his and remembered with no small degree of delight how much larger his hands were than hers, and the feeling of her hand disappearing in the heat of his. He led her to the front of the store where the tag machine was set up. It wasn’t an easy task to plug it in; the wall socket was behind the machine, and Todd struggled to move it out far enough to slide his hand behind it. He explained that people didn't ask for it very often, so there was no reason to keep it going. She thought it was probably easier to keep it going than to have to move a small mountain every time someone wanted a three-dollar dog tag but didn’t say anything.

  She picked out a red tag shaped like a bone, and they watched in silence as the machine engraved Red’s name and address on the tag. When it was done, it dropped into a tray, and Todd fished it out with two fingers. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” She took the tag and attached it to Red’s collar while he sat panting. The tag looked good, but he was going to need a new collar soon. She didn’t think it was the time to bring that up. She’d already had one bit of progress and didn’t want to push her luck. “It looks really good.”

  Todd looked at the dog with indifference. For a while, all they had to listen to was the disgruntled moaning of Todd’s zip tied employee. The silence went on so long she started to feel uncomfortable. “Todd?”

  He sighed and stared at the concrete. “I’m sorry too, Em. I mean, if you feel like you want to take my head off, it’s probably my fault.”

  Emily laughed a little, which, given the source of her amusement, was a rare and marvelous thing. “It’s like you read my mind.”

  The cashier grunted and pulled against the zip tie, waiving his loose arm frantically.

  Todd glared at the cashier, but his face was gentler when he spoke to her. “I should get back to work but thank you for the cookies. I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk. Let me try to make it up to you?”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a while since we went out somewhere together. Didn’t you say you wanted some new clothes?”

  Emily stared at him with so much skepticism she thought he might suffer spontaneous combustion. “You want to take me shopping?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to. I hate shopping, but you hate baking, so that’s kind of the point, if that’s what you want…”

  “Shopping is good.” She rushed to get the words out before he changed his mind.

  “I’ll see if I can get tomorrow off, okay?”

  “Is there someone to cover you?” From the grim faces she’d seen on the cashier and the other employees, she didn’t think any of them would be willing to do him a favor.

  “I’ll work it out,” he kissed her forehead, “for you.”

  “Thanks, Todd.”

  “I better get back.” Todd looked over his shoulder at the cashier again.

  “I understand. I’ll see you at home.” Em kissed Todd on the cheek and waved goodbye to the cashier, who barely lifted an arm in response.

  The first steps she took were toward home, but Emily felt better. It was a lovely day. It may have also been a lovely day because she felt better. The sky was mostly cloudless, and it was blue and breezy. Red was still bounding with energy, and it seemed a shame to go home to the confines of the house when it was so delectably fine out.

  She decided without a full second’s deliberation to take the long way home. When it was time to take the shortcut through an unfinished portion of the subdivision where the block walls had not yet been built, she walked past to circle around the block. Red wove around her, sniffed the grass, and peed on half the neighborhood.

  The subdivision where they’d bought the house was part of a large master planned community. All of the houses were basically just copies of each other from the outside but scattered far enough apart from their clones that it seemed less factory generated. All the lawns had rules about the number and type of plants each person had to maintain, rules about where to park the cars, rules about keeping garbage cans off the street, even rules about drilling for oil and starting mining operations, because apparently if those things weren’t expressly forbidden, some person would undoubtedly decide that a subdivision geared for families was the perfect place to drop an oil rig or drill for diamonds. There were parks and greenbelts scattered throughout which put additional space between houses, made the neighborhood attractive, and provided a romping place for unsupervised children. Red particularly enjoyed the greenbelts. Every time he came to one, he would dash across it and back several times until he wheezed with exhaustion, but by the next green place, he was always ready again.

  She liked watching him play. There was something free in a wagging tail she thought she’d probably never feel except vicariously. Even in the dump, he hadn’t seemed unhappy, even if he’d been in a hurry to adopt her as his own. It would be nice if people treated each other the way they treated good dogs. She wished that Todd would open the front door and call for her; she’d be so happy to see him that she’d barrel through the house and jump up on him, so he could rub and kiss her and tell her she was a good human. Even though things were better for the moment, she doubted Todd would ever be that eager to see her, and even more so doubted that she would ever be happy enough to wag her tail for him.

  The longer she walked, the more she had time to think, the worse she felt. She found herself wanting to be shut up again, regretting everything she’d done that day including apologizing. They were a few blocks from home when they spotted another grassy area nestled between houses. Red trotted ahead in anticipation of another insane doggy dash, but he didn’t sprint as usual.

  She slowed as he slowed. He stopped at the edge of the house that bordered the park and growled. He got a Mohawk between his shoulder blades when he growled, like a K-9 early warning system for danger, and she knew something was wrong. She pulled the gun from her hip holster and walked slowly up to where red was sounding the alert. Even before she could see around the fence, she heard the squeal of metal on metal. “Red, quiet.”

  Red managed to lower the volume of his growl at almost the same moment that she saw what he was so upset about. There was a little boy tangled in a rusty swing. On one side, the chain had broken, and he’d gotten caught up in it like some snared wild animal in the jungle. He couldn’t have been more than four or five, and he hissed and kicked his little feet without being able to reach the ground. He was wearing a red shirt, and the chain was wrapped several times around his chest and arms, but she could see the emblem of a superhero printed there.

  Now he flew like his hero, and she thought that should make her happy, that the little boy was playing and had learned to fly. Happiness was fluid and she was full of holes. The little boy’s face was nearly black with veins; one of his shoes was gone, and one of his socks was soaked with red and black beneath
a hunk of him that was missing from his upper leg. They were full of holes together.

  “Hello.” She sounded so sad that she was worried she would frighten him. She tried to pull her voice up, even if her heart felt like a sack of bricks clunking in her chest. “Are you alone?”

  He snarled, his voice high pitched and innocent. She took a step toward the boy, but Red scooted in front her like a yellow roadblock. “We have to get him down Red. He can’t stay that way.”

  The little boy twisted his head so far to one side she thought his neck might break.

  “Where’s your mother?”

  He kicked so hard he rattled the remaining chain, and the motion caused him to oscillate back and forth. With the swaying; he became a blur and watching him swing was so hypnotic she became a blur as well. She heard kids laughing and someone calling her name. She blinked and shapeless faces whirled by; she wondered if she knew them.

  She wanted to know where her mother was, and she began to doubt that she’d ever really been a child. There was so much she’d forgotten. If she’d had a mother, she couldn’t remember the woman’s face. Grey hair? Short, hunched shoulders from working. Aged hands washing dishes in the sink. She could almost feel her mother’s hands, squeezing her shoulders and pulling her away from the little boy writhing in the chains.

  Red roared like he was made more of bear than dog; Emily felt cold. Why were her mother’s hands so cold? Fingers dug into her shoulders, and the pain made everything come into focus again.

  She twisted, trying to heave the cold hands away. The mother was much too strong, and had her hands twisted into Emily’s shirt. Emily drove an elbow backward into the woman who had come to claim her son, but the blow did very little to aid escaping. She didn’t have time to think about anything but gnashing teeth as she struggled, but she saw Red, a yellow lightning bolt, fly up and into the fray. The force of him knocked the mother and Emily both to the ground, but the mother lost her grip as they fell, and Emily was free.

  Emily rolled across the tall grass and lifted up to see the face of the woman who’d left her son alone. The woman had the same eyes, the same childlike mouth as the boy in the swing. Emily had dropped the gun when she’d hit the ground, and her eyes darted between it and the woman who crawled closer. She thought about diving for the gun, but Red was faster than she could ever be. Red sank his teeth into the back of the woman’s neck. She opened her mouth in fury and pain, but with a few vicious jerks of Red’s teeth, she was still.

  Slowly, Emily climbed to her feet. She walked with caution to her weapon and picked it up with one hand; with the other, she wiped away the memory that had almost made her forget herself by dusting the grass off her jeans. She gripped the gun and leveled it at the back of the woman’s head, pulled the trigger, and watched broken skull scatter across the grass.

  The boy in the swing wailed, and the mournfulness of his voice made her chest feel like she’d been shot herself. Emily sat down and pulled her knees to her chest. “I’m sorry,” she rubbed her eyes with the back of one wrist. The boy screamed so loud he couldn’t have heard her apologize again. “So sorry.”

  Red came to Emily, hovering by her side, his fur still spiked like he was ready to join a punk band. She stroked his shoulders, and after a minute or two, she felt him begin to relax. “You were a good boy. You saved me even when I couldn’t see.”

  Red stared at the little boy, frenzied on his chain leash; Emily followed his gaze to the boy’s wild face. “We can’t leave him now that his mother is gone.”

  Red sat down in the grass beside her, and looked over his shoulder, down the road that would take them home. “He’s too small to be on his own.” She stood up with a small groan. Her shoulders ached where the mother had gotten hold. Emily’s shoes were speckled with black, and Red would certainly need another bath.

  She walked over to the boy thrashing in the chains and reached above him to grip the chain at the boy’s back and hold him somewhat still. “It’s okay, baby.” She took aim again, but her hand was shaking; she took a breath and looked away. She couldn’t do it, not that way. Emily took off her backpack and got a knife. It seemed gentler, somehow more humane, even as the bright sun danced along the blade. She went back to the boy, held the chain again, and brought the blade down into the base of his skull.

  To her horror, the boy still squirmed and wailed. She’d only injured him and made him more afraid. She was too weak inside to be strong for him, and she had to pull the knife out and try again to get it in his brain. This time she blinked away tears as she watched the knifepoint slide into the boy and felt the thump of the knife hilt as it hit the boy’s skull. He went limp and wasn’t crying or flying anymore. Carefully, she untangled him from the mess of chains and swing. He weighed almost nothing as she laid him down beside his mother.

  “See? It’s better this way.”

  Red leaned against her leg.

  “We did the right thing.” Even as she said the words, it didn’t feel right. She looked up at the sky, which was cloudier than she remembered, and shivered in the breeze that chilled her much more than it had only minutes before. She couldn’t stand to stay in the park another second, or she thought she might lay down next to the boy and his mother and never get up again.

  She rushed home, practically at a run, Red a few paces behind her. She didn’t even bother to wave to the neighbors as she passed. It was like there were no neighbors at all, and she and Todd were the only people in the world. At home, she locked the door behind Red and he went directly upstairs to the bathroom, as eager to be clean of what had happened as Emily. She climbed into the tub with Red and tried to wash away everything they’d seen.

  When they had exhausted the hot water, Emily shut off the shower and grabbed towels for them both, wrapping her hair in one, and Red in the other. “It’s better if we don’t tell Todd,” She said, squatting down to rub him with the towel. “We’ve only just made things okay with him.”

  When Todd got home that night, Emily had dinner waiting on him, as usual, but she couldn’t think of eating anything herself. She tried to seem as happy as she’d been at the store when they said goodbye and hoped he wouldn’t notice that anything had changed. He told her that he got the day off, like they wanted, and she told him she was excited to go shopping.

  “Then why are you so dreary?” He cocked an eyebrow her way.

  “I’m not dreary.” She snapped a little and tried to restrain the defensiveness in her voice. “I took Red on a long walk today.”

  “You shouldn’t wander too much. It isn’t safe.”

  “Nothing happened. Nothing important anyway.” She decided it was better to escape the conversation than lie to him further. “I think I’ll turn in early, so I can be awake for our date.”

  “Is it a date?” Todd said, bemused.

  “I’ve heard that’s what happens when people like each other.”

  “We can call it a date.”

  7

  They got to the mall about 10:30 and it was mostly dead. The glass doors were unlocked, but the inside was a mausoleum, dark and silent. Many of the metal security screens were pulled down in front of shops, and there was no power. Since there weren’t really any windows either except the entrance doors, they immediately turned on the large camp lanterns they’d brought from home. There were no sales people, no customers except the two of them.

  “It’s so sad.” Even though she spoke softly, her voice bounced around in the space. “Why have so many places closed?”

  Todd shrugged. “A lot of stuff didn’t survive the recession I guess. I mean that’s why SolarStar closed.”

  He didn’t sound confident in his answer, and she thought, he’d never admit it, but he was probably feeling as strange in that empty space as she did. “Right. I didn’t think of that.”

  She stood there, a statue of wonder and sadness, looking around at the dark signs of the nearby stores. There was an old camera place that did repairs, some kind of kitchen supply pla
ce where they sold quirky kitchen décor. She thought about seeing if she could open the gate, because they probably had some of the cow stuff she collected, but Todd had agreed to take her shopping for clothes, not another kitchen cow. When she didn’t move, Todd tried to sound cheerful. “So where do you want to shop?”

  “I don’t know.” She peered through the dark window of a jewelry store, but there was no one inside and even the diamonds were dull in the unlit cases. Emily didn’t wear a wedding band. She couldn’t remember why. She knew Todd had bought her one once, a little diamond solitaire shaped like a teardrop. She didn’t even know where the ring had ended up, but Todd wore his wedding band, and she supposed that was good enough for both of them.

  By degrees, they meandered deeper into the empty mall, their footsteps seemingly louder on the floor the deeper into the darkness they went. Emily wandered through one or two stores she thought she remembered liking once but didn’t see anything that felt both practical and beautiful as her tastes seemed lately to run. She didn’t even try anything on; she just flipped through racks and stacks of clothes.

  “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Look through everything on the rack. They put everything together. The shirt behind the shirt is the same shirt.”

  “Not always,” Emily said stubbornly. “Sometimes they do them by color, or the style varies slightly.”

  “So…the same shirt…only in a different color.” Todd turned away, she suspected, to avoid her seeing him roll his eyes.

  Todd didn’t understand the difference between a sweater and a cardigan any more than she understood why farts were funny. By the third store, Todd had already had his fill of shopping. He started sighing with impatience and throwing his weight periodically from one foot to another. He didn’t say he wanted to leave of course, because he’d gotten himself into the position of having to take her shopping and would never admit such a defeat. The feeling, however, was completely mutual. If he’d said he’d wanted to leave, she might have immediately walked out of the store, not because she’d had enough shopping, but because she’d had quite enough of him.