The crowd applauded. A couple of men jumped the pit to slap Stokes on the back. Stokes was elated-he was on his way. He went down on his knees and took Digger's head gently in his hands, careful not to touch the raw flesh.
Tears rose in his eyes. He kissed the dog. "That's my baby, that's my love." Digger swished his tail and licked Stokes' face. Stokes lifted him out of the pit and turned him over to a friend, who began flooding the animal's wounds with hydrogen peroxide.
Stokes went to Murphy and shook his hand. "He was some kind of dog, Gene.
All heart. Guts right to the end. I'm sorry you had to lose him."
"It goes that way," Murphy said. "You got a real animal there. You think he'll make it?"
"I don't know. I never saw a skinning like that. The leg don't look good either. I'm going to get him over to Worcester. We'll give him the best we can."
The crowd was garrulous and happy, only the heavy losers were subdued.
It had been a hell of a match. Charlie Daws had snapped a roll of film. His camera hung from his neck and he was scribbling notes in a pad. He looked up as Stokes passed. "Congratulations," he said. "One hour and sixteen minutes of top-of-the-line action. I'm giving feature coverage to this one."
Stokes collected his winnings. He carried Digger out to the truck and made a bed of an old blanket on the cab floor. He started for Worcester, sixty miles away, where there was a vet who'd treat pit dogs without filing a report. "Hang on, old friend," Stokes said tenderly..
"We're going to get you taken care of."
Most of the bandaging was off. Jeff's left cheek was taped with gauze from the bottom of his eye down past his jaw to the top of his throat.
Bauer had changed the dressing at noon. It was the first time he'd seen the wound since the attack and his stomach had lurched. There was a great swollen semicircle of ravaged flesh crossed with ugly, knotted black sutures. The infection was under control but the wound still oozed a viscous yellow fluid and the dressing had to be changed frequently, ointment applied.
Bauer suppressed an impulse to crush his son to his chest and weep over him.
"It's coming along pretty well," he said, trying for an easy tone.
"It doesn't hurt a lot anymore, only a little." Jeff was beginning to regain his weight and color.
Ursula had taken him down to New York to a plastic surgeon. He was going to need four or five operations over the next few years, and Bauer ached for him, but the surgeon was optimistic.
Ursula was still determined to win sole custody, and Bauer's lawyer was in consultation with hers, but at least her attorney had convinced her that it was to her benefit not to interfere with Bauer's visitation privileges until the case went before a judge.
She wouldn't forgo making a point of her anger, though. She left the house before Bauer arrived and had Janie turn the children over to him.
She refused to speak to him on the phone, Bauer was furious with her; it was making the children withdrawn and wary. He'd written to her in reasonable words, but she hadn't acknowledged the letter.
The boys had agreed to spend the Saturday with him, but neither was willing to stay the night at his cabin, they wanted to go home at the end of the day. He took them to Lake Kilmer and rented a boat and cane poles. They fished the shoreline and weed beds and filled a stringer with pan fish Jeff liked being on the water and got excited when he caught a fish, beamed as Bauer unhooked it and put it on the stringer.
While Bauer threaded a worm onto his hook Jeff said, "I can't do that yet. I'd stick myself with the point. But in a couple years, when I'm as old as Michael I'll be able to, won't I?" Jeff was resilient and irrepressible, a relentless positivist. He was no longer much more impressed by his mauling than he would have been by a skinned knee. Bauer marveled at him, and marveled that the boy was his son. They played rhyming games while they fished, and improvised dialogues for imaginary characters.
Words were delightful toys to Jeff, his imagination a playground.
Pleasuring in Jeff, Bauer worried about Mike. He was tense, wouldn't smile, and responded with short, polite answers. Bauer tried to draw him out, but didn't push. Mike walled himself in when he felt pressured, and no threat, bribe, or amount of love would persuade him to remove the barricades.
Though he didn't have the necessary coordination, he wouldn't let Bauer hook his worms or secure his fish to the stringer. He jabbed himself with the hook a couple of times, bringing a bright pearl of blood to his fingertip.
Late in the afternoon he landed a bluegill the size of a cake plate, far the biggest they'd caught. He jumped up from his seat and nearly fell out of the boat. "Look at that, look at that! I bet he's the biggest bluegill in the whole entire lake!" He pulled the stringer in and unhooked the fish with nervous fingers. Trying to work the stringer clip into the mouth, his hand slipped, he squeezed down on the fish in panic, and the bluegill popped over the side into the water. He wailed. Bauer grabbed the net and plunged it down, where the fish, dazed, was just beginning a slow glide to the bottom. He scooped it up and back into the boat again.
"Got 'im. And he is the biggest in the lake, no question. Here you go." He passed the net to Mike. "Do you want me to put him on the stringer for you?"
Mike hesitated, then nodded.
The boat was quiet the next quarter hour. Mike stole glances at his father.
Bauer smiled when their eyes met.
"Hey," Mike said. "Do you, uh, do you want to hear a new one Billy told me?" Mike collected jokes, laboriously printed them into notebooks, which he kept on a shelf over his bed.
"Sure," Bauer said.
Mike told the joke. Bauer laughed. Jeff did too, though he didn't understand it.
Bauer told Mike a joke. Mike liked it and had Bauer repeat it so he could remember it. They swapped another set, then Mike began telling Bauer stories about school and his friends. He was happy when they rowed the boat in. Bauer displayed their catch to a couple of fishermen on the dock and pointed out his son's giant bluegill. An old man said it was the biggest he'd ever seen come out of this lake. Mike was thrilled.
Bauer put the fish atop an old newspaper in the trunk. They were going to stop at his place for sandwiches and to clean the fish and wrap them for Ursula's freezer.
Suddenly Mike spun back against the car lashing his foot out. "No! Not Not"
A Dalmatian had come sniffing up to him. The dog backed away and cocked its head bewilderedly. Its tail gave a tentative wag.
"Get awayl" Mike screamed. He grabbed a handful of gravel and flung it at the dog.
Jeff reached for Bauer's hand, but was otherwise calm.
"Mikel" Bauer put his hand on Mike's shoulder and interposed himself between his son and the dog. "It's all right, he's not going to hurt you."
Mike covered his face with his hands and cried.
Jeff's mouth trembled.
A man came running from the public boat landing and took hold of the Dalmatian's collar. The dog snapped its head around in surprise, then wagged its tail and licked the man's hand.
Bauer had an arm around each of his children. "They were attacked by a dog," he said.
The man was embarrassed. "He's really very friendly, he wouldn't hurt anyone. I'm sorry he-he's deaf and he wanders away sometimes, that's a problem with Dalmatians, deafness, it comes from inbreeding-I'm really sorry, I…,› "Well damn it," Bauer said in frustration, "you ought to keep an eye on him."
The man bobbed his head, apologized, and led his dog away.
"He's gone," Bauer said. "He was just a friendly dog, he didn't mean any harm."
Mike was shaking.
"He's deaf," Jeff offered. "That means he can't hear. He wasn't going to bite. He just wanted to play, Mike."