"Did anybody else see it?" Timmy asked.
Doug shook his head. "My mom's still passed out."
"Why are you so out of breath?"
"Catcher was waiting for me when I went by. He came flying out of the driveway and almost bit my ankle."
Catcher, the bane of their existence (along with the occasional hazing from the neighborhood bullies Ronny, Jason and Steve), was a black Doberman pinscher that belonged to the Sawyer family. The Sawyers owned a dairy farm along the road between Doug 's house and Timmy's. Bowman' s Woods bordered the other side of the road. The boys had to pass through Catcher 's territory any time they went to Doug' s house or vice versa. The dog was usually near the farmhouse, but when they rode their bikes by, no matter how quietly, some sixth sense alerted him to their presence. If he was untied which was oftenhe' d charge down the driveway, barking and growling. Each of the boys had ripped sneakers and torn socks as a result, and Barry had a scar on his calf from when the dog had latched onto him almost two years ago. It was one of the few scars on Barry of which the other boys could actually identify the source.
"I hate that dog," Timmy mumbled as they reached the end of the driveway.
"Yeah. One of these days we'll teach him a lesson." Timmy nodded. Over the last few weeks, he'd been formulating a plan to do just that, but he hadn't yet told the other boys about it.
The Graco home, a onestory, threebedroom rancher with two acres of land, was built on the side of a hill. The garden was at the rear of the property, near the top of the hill, bordering Barry 's parent's home and Bill and Karen Wahl's housean elderly couple with no children left at home. Normally, Timmy and Doug would have just gone through the backyard and up the hill to Barry 's. But with Timmy's dad in the garden, pulling weeds that Timmy was supposed to pull, they followed his grandfather's advice and took the long way around.
Pedaling out into the road, they turned right onto Anson Road, a narrow twolane stretch of blacktop that cut through the countryside, giving drivers a back road shortcut from Route 516 to Route 116. They followed that to the edge of the Graco ' s property, past the acre lot his father had turned into a hillside pasture, complete with a small, twostall barn for their one cow and two sheep. To the left was Laughman Road, which led to Doug 's houseif you made it past Catcherand on their right was a narrow strip of woods. "Our woods," the boys called it, though technically, it belonged to the church. Passing these, they turned right again onto Golgotha Church Road, an even narrower road that went straight uphill. On their left stretched the cemetery. The bottom of the hill was filled with old graves and crumbling crypts from the 1800s. The upper portion of the hill and beyond was covered with newer, more durable monuments. On their right lay the woods and Timmy 's parents' property. The trees kept them hidden from Randy Graco's sight.
This was their playgroundthe woods, the cemetery, the Dugout. Occasionally, they made an excursion to the town dump to find treasures or shoot at the rats with their BB guns, or went over into Bowman ' s Woods to catch minnows and crayfish in the creek and shoot water snakes, and once a week they rode their bikes into Spring Grove to buy comic books at Mr. Messinger ' s newsstand (they left their BB guns at home, then), but for the most part, they were content to not stray from the cemetery and surrounding forest. Over the years, this area had served as everything from the Death Star to a pirate ship to Amazonian jungles complete with imaginary dinosaursto the battlefields of World War Two.
This was their world, and they ruled it; three kings who would never grow old, but remain twelve forever. Summer was just beginning, and the days were long and endless, and their cares and fears seemed like small things when cast against the backdrop of the deep blue sky overhead.
Doug wiped the sweat from his eyes. "You know the Frogger machine down at the Laundromat?"
"Yeah."
"I got the high score yesterday. But then Ronny Nace unplugged it and erased everything."
"Ronny's a dick."
"Yeah. He was pissed because I played that new Toto song on the jukebox." They hopped off their bikes and walked them to the top of the hill. Timmy could have pedaled it, but Doug was obviously tired.
Their noses crinkled as they passed by a dead groundhog, its midsection ruptured by a car tire, its flyinfested innards exposed to the sunlight and open air. Maggots squirmed through rotten meat. Though it was a disgusting sight, neither one of them could help but study it closely.
"God," Doug panted. "That stinks."
They hurried past the road kill.
"You know what's weird?" Timmy fanned the air with his hand. "That's the only one we've seen in a week. Usually, there's two or three per daypossums, skunks, groundhogs, squirrels, cats, snakes. Now, there aren 't any at all, other than that fresh one."
"Maybe the state is cleaning them up. Sending a road crew around or something."
"Yeah, maybe."
And though the boys wouldn't notice, the dead groundhog they' d just passed by would be missing the next day as well. Rotted and putrescent, it was food for something. Fodder.
"Glad my grandpa let us sneak out," Timmy said.
"Your grandpa is so cool," Doug said. "I wish mine was like that."
"Isn't he?"
Doug made a sour face. "No. When we go to visit him, all he does is preach to us about the Bible and fart a lot. My dad used to say that' s because he was full of hot air." Timmy laughed obligingly.
Doug talked about his father all the time, and it made Timmy sad. Doug seemed to believe that his dad was coming back for him, any day now, and that they'd go live in California together. According to Doug, his father called or wrote to him every week, told him stories about Hollywood, how he ' d gotten a job as a stunt man, the movies he'd worked on, the famous actors he'd met, the things he' d seen; but none of it was true. Last fall, Barry and Timmy had discovered that their friend was lying. His mother had let it slip when she was drunk. Taunted Doug with it. There were no letters or long distance phone calls. They hadn't heard from Doug 's father since he' d left town. Too embarrassed for their friend, Timmy and Barry never brought it up, allowing the charade to continue. No sense confronting him with the truth. If it made Doug feel better to believe that his father had found a career as a stunt man and that he would one day return, then that was good enough for them.
Timmy was about to ask Doug if he'd gotten any new letters when something in the cemetery caught his attention. Near one of the cracked, mossy crypts, two of the older tombstones had sunken into the earth. Only their lichencovered tops were sticking out. The ground around them was also depressed, as if a giant groundhog had burrowed under the grass.
Weird, he thought. Had they been like that yesterday? He didn't think so.
"I don't know," Doug whispered. "Sometimes I think about what it would be like if my grandpa died, and when I do, I don't feel sad."
"What do you feel?"
He shrugged. "Nothing. I don't feel anything. Is that weird?"
"Yeah, but that's okay, 'cause everybody knows you're weird anyway." Scowling, Doug punched Timmy in the arm. Timmy laughed.
As the road leveled out, they hopped back onto their bikes. The Golgotha Lutheran Church sat to their left, and Barry's house was on the righta redbrick, onestory home with a white garage off to one side and a rusted swing set in the backyard, facing Timmy ' s house on the hill below. The church parking lot served as its driveway. Barry 's father, Clark Smeltzer, was the church caretaker and groundskeeper for the cemetery.
"Besides," Timmy continued, his laughter drying up, "at least your grandpa's not as bad as…"
He didn't finish, and instead, just nodded his head in the direction of Barry's house.