“The Webley,” he said, and Rupert said, “I know. You left it.”
They walked more slowly now. It was only half-past eight, and they wouldn’t be missed at their desks until five minutes before nine.
“I left your book bag too,” said Rupert, and Wallace said, “Fool.” It was early, but the school yard was nearly full. A group of younger boys were tossing sticks in the air, watching them whirl and spin. Leaping out of the way as they fell.
“There was a smell there,” said Wallace. “Did you smell it?” Rupert shrugged; he didn’t know if he had or not.
“Smelled like a slaughter,” said Wallace. “Like the trenches in France.”
“Maybe I did smell that,” said Rupert. The smell was all the Captain would talk about, when pressed on how it was to fight the Hun in the trenches. It smelled of slaughter, he’d said. It is a stink you never forget.
“Did you get a look?” said Wallace.
“What do you mean?”
Wallace was quiet a moment.
“We have to go back,” said Wallace.
Had they come any nearer to the school, it would have been too late; the teacher on yard duty would have seen them, and attendance would have been unavoidable. As it was, Wallace and Rupert didn’t entirely escape notice as they veered away from the schoolyard, and without another word made for a ditch behind the White Rose filling station, beneath a stretch of pine trees. It was a place where they had hid before and thought to be safe now.
“Where’s Wallace Gleason going?” said Nancy Waite, as she started the two ends of her jump-ropes twirling and she and her big sister Joan began to skip. “I think I know,” said Joan.
The lot in back of the filling station smelled of oil and gasoline and privy: this last, because the station’s toilet was an outdoor model, hiding in a cloud of bushes and flies that also hid the ditch from easy view. It was here in the ditch that Wallace and Rupert settled in, to rest up and devise their plan.
“Dog’s hurt,” said Wallace. “From the rock. That’s going to make him worse. Like a bear.”
“I just wanted to scare it,” said Rupert.
“We came to kill it,” said Wallace, glaring as he clutched his arm. As though his injury were Rupert’s fault and not his own.
Rupert just nodded. He didn’t ask why Wallace hadn’t pulled the trigger after he’d gone to the trouble of bringing a gun — why he hadn’t killed the dog, which he’d planned to do. But Wallace knew the question was in the air; something in Rupert’s nod made that clear. Wallace tried to explain it.
The first time was just to Rupert. And he didn’t get to the nub of the matter.
“It wasn’t just the smell,” said Wallace. “That was bad. But the dog. It was like hypnosis. Like when an owl spots a mouse. Under its nest. Where it’s got bones of other mice piled up.”
Rupert didn’t think that made any sense, and Wallace was inclined to agree as soon as he said the words. He had the gun. All he had to do was pull the trigger. The two sat quietly for a span.
“How’s your arm?” Rupert asked finally, and when Wallace said, “Hurts.”
Rupert said, “We should see a doctor.”
Wallace shut his eyes, and clutched his wounded arm jealously.
“We should go back, anyway,” said Rupert. “Soon. Someone might find it if we just leave it there. The Webley.”
Wallace’s eyes cracked open, and he looked at Rupert, and he said, “I can’t yet.” Rupert thought Wallace might be ready to cry. But — to his disappointment — Wallace just looked away.
“I think that dog’s a killer,” he said. “It’s a devil.”
The second time Wallace had cause to explain himself came middle morning. Wallace insisted that they keep resting. He had shut his eyes and was dozing — not dangerously, not like he might die — when Rupert shook his friend’s shoulder, Wallace mumbled that he just needed to rest up and ordered Rupert to keep a watch. This Rupert did. He lay on his belly so his eyes peered over the edge of the ditch, through the bramble — like barbed wire along a trench in the War, except that Rupert was watching the brick wall at the back of the White Rose station and not no-man’s land. When the gravel bit into his knees, he shifted to his side. Twice, when he judged things quiet enough, he got up and walked in small circles at the bottom of the ditch to stretch the cramps out of his legs, pinwheeling the soreness from his arm while his thoughts about Wallace and the Webley and the dog circled each other.
Rupert was back on his belly when Nancy Waite appeared around the side of the station. The sight of her stopped his breath.
Nancy was wearing a pale yellow dress. Her hair was combed back from her forehead, held there close to her scalp with a white ribbon. The rest fell golden and, today, unbraided down her back. She clutched a brown paper bag in front of her. She moved with great, guilty care, checking over her shoulder, peering through bushes. Rupert willed himself still, until she finally turned around and vanished around the corner of the garage.
Rupert let his breath out. He looked back and Wallace looked up at him. His friend’s eyes were pasty, and dull, and it was clear: Wallace had no idea what Rupert had seen. Rupert himself wasn’t sure — what he’d seen, who he’d seen, if he’d seen anything at all.
“Hey! What’re you doing in there?”
“Wallace?”
“Are you in there?”
Rupert turned back. It wasn’t just Nancy; Joan Waite was beside her, standing right behind the garage, in full view. Nancy giggled as she and Joan peered through the brush. Wallace rolled onto his knees and, grunting, stood up. Joan was wearing her pink sweater and the pale blue dress. Her hair was tied back. Rupert swallowed, his mouth dry as sand.
“Shhh!” said Wallace. He planted himself beside Rupert, and motioned with his good hand for the two to come over.
They bent down around the shrubbery and lowered themselves into the ditch — beside Wallace, Rupert noted.
“We saw you heading off from school,” Joan explained as she flattened out her skirts in front of her, and added: “I remembered this place.” Rupert looked at his hands, which had drawn closed into fists.
Nancy looked at his sleeve, which was now brown with old blood.
“Holy cow!” she said. “What’d you do?”
“Were you fighting again?” Joan, for the first time, looked at Rupert — a little accusingly, he thought.
“No,” said Wallace. “We—”
And Wallace paused, and thought about it for a few seconds, and he explained himself to the Waite sisters.
First, he described the dog, in such a way that Nancy made fists herself, and held them to her mouth, and even elder sister Joan gasped and looked away. He related the encounter of the day before so that Joan declared his survival a miracle. Then he got to the battle.
“Me and the dog sized each other up. It wasn’t like before, where the dog figured it could just take me. It knew I came ready. So it kept back — in behind the railings of the porch, where I couldn’t get a clear shot.”
“Did you shoot it?” asked Nancy, aghast. She seemed to relax when he shook his head.
“I couldn’t get a shot. I just kept looking at it, sitting there in front of the door. And then I saw it.”
“What’d you see?” asked Joan.
Wallace had developed dark rings around his eyes. The effect was chilling when he opened them wide. “There was a dead man,” he said, and added — before Rupert could say anything — “I was trying to figure it out. That was the smell. Death.”
The Waite sisters sat rapt, staring at Wallace. Joan’s lips parted and she clutched at her skirts in her lap. Nancy held her sister’s shoulder.