Mandy said, “A great story, Billy. A very touching story. Look, you want a tissue or something?”
And moving quickly, she opened up her purse and took out a small, nickel-plated semiautomatic pistol.
“Sorry, Billy, but this is how it’s going to be. You’re going to give me back my box, you’re going to take me back to the dock, and if you’re a good boy, I’ll make sure only a leg or an arm gets broken. How’s that for a deal?”
I thought for a moment, now staring at a face I didn’t recognize, and said, “I’ve heard better.”
And I tossed the box and the morphine syrettes into the dark waters.
She screamed and shouted something, and I was moving quick, which was good, because she got off a shot that pounded over my head as I ducked and grabbed something at the bottom of the boat, tugging it free, then dropped overboard. The shock of the cold water almost made me open my mouth, but I was more or less used to it. I came up coughing, splashing, and my flashlight was still on the boat, still lit up, which made it easy for me to see what happened next.
The skiff was rocking and filling with water as Mandy moved to the rear, trying to get the engine started, I think, but with her added weight at the stern, it quickly swamped and flipped over, dumping her in. She screamed. She screamed again. “Billy! Please! I can’t swim! Please!”
I raised my hand, holding the drain plug to the rear of the skiff, and let it go.
She floundered some more. Splashing. Yelling. Coughing. It would be easy enough to get over there, calm her down, put her in the approved life-saving mode, my arm about her, to pull her safely to shore. So easy to do, for I could have easily found her in the darkness by following the splashes and yells.
The yells. I had heard later, from someone in my brother’s platoon, how much he had yelled toward the end.
I moved some, was able to gauge where she was, out there in the darkness.
And then I turned and swam in the other direction.
THE REWARD
BY STEWART O’NAN
Brookline
Sometimes Boupha honestly found them. She thought it was a gift. Her father said she wasn’t so special-anybody could. He should know because it was his game; he’d been running it since he’d been driving a cab. After a while you developed an eye, like a hunter.
“American people don’t see anything,” he said. “People like us, we have to.”
He’d taught her well, as he never tired of reminding her. Late August, when the college kids moved in, she watched the park. Winter she cruised the potholed lots behind the apartments on Jersey. In spring the long flats of Beacon beyond Kenmore were littered with the dead-worth just as much, and less trouble, besides the smell. In her trunk she kept garbage bags and rubber gloves, an aerosol can of Oust.
Each season brought a new crop, that was the genius of it. Her father was the one who’d realized the possibilities. Now that he could no longer drive, Boupha used his badge, working twelve-hour shifts to pay his hospital bills. After all his talk about keeping her eyes open, he’d been going fifty on Storrow Drive in the rain when he rear-ended a stopped tow truck. His head bent the steering wheel. The wheel could be fixed but not her father. The doctors had saved his life so he could lie in a special bed and watch TV. “Boupha!” he called when he needed anything. “Boupha!” Their apartment wasn’t large enough to escape his voice. He’d had a sly sense of humor before the accident, a con man’s easy charm. Now her smallest mistake sent him into a rage. She hated leaving him alone because sometimes, for no reason, he screamed. The upstairs neighbors had complained.
On his best days, he obsessed over money and cigarettes. He didn’t care about food or temple anymore. His friend Pranh no longer visited.
“How much you make today?” he asked when she came home, already reaching for his Newports. Every dollar, every pack was an offering to him.
Like driving, so much of the game was being in the right place. That night she wasn’t even looking. She’d dropped a silent fare at Beth Israel and stopped at the Store 24 on Beacon when the shepherd limped out of an alley directly into her path, as if it didn’t see her.
Even with the shadows she could tell it was an older male, rheumy-eyed and white around the snout. Its haunches were matted black and it was hobbling so badly that she thought it had been hit. One of her father’s cardinal rules was that a hurt animal wasn’t worth the trouble. She’d once found a cat on Park Drive with its back legs smashed, writhing and spitting. It had no collar, so it was worthless, but Boupha couldn’t leave it in the street. As she tried to slide it to the curb on a pizza box, it snarled and clawed her arm, opening three beading lines she now wore as scars. “I tell you,” her father had said, “but you’re too smart, you don’t want to listen.”
Normally strays shied away, distrustful of people, but the shepherd just waddled along ahead of her. Its back was slick with blood; it shone under the streetlights. She was almost beside her car. Thinking of the cat lashing out, she stopped.
The dog stopped and looked back as if they were going for a walk and she needed to catch up. Its tag glinted.
She had treats in the glove compartment, a leash with a muzzle. She could quote her father back to him: older dogs were worth more. The owners had more invested in them.
But the blood. The blood was a problem.
The dog turned to watch her open the passenger door, cocking his head.
“Hey. I’ve got something for you. Here you go.”
She tossed him a treat. He waddled over and nosed it, keeping his eyes on her the whole time. Finally he took the biscuit, crunching it with his head lowered.
“Good boy, yes.”
The second one she dropped halfway between them. This time he didn’t hesitate.
“That’s a good dog,” she said, and squatted down to show she was no threat. With the leash behind her back, she set a treat on the sidewalk right in front of her.
As he came closer, he hunched lower and lower until he lay down and rolled on his side, panting, his tongue flopping out of his mouth.
“It’s all right, you’re okay,” she said, and hooked the leash to the ring on his collar.
She pushed the treat toward him and he rolled and took it and got to his feet, chomping. She waited till he was finished to pet him. His tag said his name was Edgar and he belonged to the Friedmans. The phone number was a Brookline exchange, a point in her favor.
He was still panting, so she took the bowl from the trunk and gave him some water. As he lapped, she inspected his haunch, pouring the rest of the bottle over it. She rinsed most of the blood off but there wasn’t enough light to see where it was coming from.
“I know it hurts, Edgar,” she said, drying him with an old towel, but he didn’t seem to mind. He stood still for her as if he was getting a bath. Maybe he was senile, or maybe he was just good-natured.
He looked good enough. She laid a trash bag and another towel across the backseat for him and drove straight home. It took only five minutes this time of night, but in the lot, when she opened the back door, his rear was matted again and the towel was bloody.
Later she realized this was where she should have cut him loose, but she’d already made her decision, and the possibility never crossed her mind. She thought she’d saved him. He had the tag, the tag had the number. That was the game. The only thing she was worried about was her father.