Neither Dog Nor Boy

Neither Dog Nor Boy

            Worm carcasses littered the sidewalks. I wondered if there were any worms left in the world.

            “Charlie, no. Charlie!” My puppy was still new to life and wanted to sniff everything. His black nose twitched over a neighbor’s drenched tulips before I tugged back on the leash.
           “We don’t do that. No.” I tried to remember the obedience school training as I picked him up and spoke to him like he could actually understand me.  He growled excitedly and tried to thrash my damp ponytail.

            I sighed and put him down on the wet sidewalk. It wasn’t ideal weather to go for a walk, but at least it wasn’t thundering now. Before I checked the weather on my phone, I wiped my hands on my pants to dry them a bit. Charlie’s coat was the kind of color that blended with dirt and camouflaged any dirt he picked up between walks. He was so getting a bath when we got home. It was a good thing he liked them.

            Charlie barked and rushed into the street. The leash pulled out of my hands, nearly knocking the glowing screen into a puddle. “Charlie!” I called as he ran toward a small boy shooting marbles by the opposite curb. Again, I yelled and shoved my phone into my back pocket.

            There were no cars on our street usually, but I checked anyway before I darted into the street after my dog.

            The boy cried as Charlie launched his tiny furry body at his back. Marbles scattered all over the road.

            “Sorry,” I said, over and over, as I snatched up Charlie and held him to my face. “Bad dog,” I said. His sad eyes made me believe he was sorry. Then he licked my face.

            “Oh no!” the boy exclaimed. “Where is it?” He scuttled over the road, collecting marbles of various sizes and colors. “Oh no!” he moaned again. “I lost it!”

            I searched the street. Where were this kid’s parents? No one else stood nearby, near the street or the porches or anywhere down the block.

            I set Charlie down and kept a tight leash as I spoke to the boy. “What’d you lose?”

            “My marble!” He sniffed and rubbed his nose on his sleeve.

            “You have eight, nine, ten marbles.” I counted the collection in his hand.

            “The red one!” He was wailing now, in the light sprinkle that had started up.

            “Don’t worry, we’ll find it.”

            He pointed mutely at the storm drain. A small red orb sat in the dirt and leaves and gunk clogging the back of the grate.

            “Look, there it is.”

            He shook his head.

            “See? It’s not that far, if you just reach in and –”

            “No!” He jumped away and shouted.

            “Why not?” I almost took him by the sleeve before I realized he was not my kid and I could get in a whole lotta trouble just talking to him. But not another soul was in sight.

            He sniffled. A small wail rose up from his throat.

            “Why not?” I knelt down and repeated. “It’s not far away.”

            “He’ll get me.”

            So softly I could barely see his lips move, the boy said, “It’ll get me. I can’t go down there.”

            Someone stupid let this kid watch the “It” movie. For a similar reason I had not looked down a well since I was nine. There was no reasoning with a phobia.

            I gave up arguing with the kid.

            Charlie looked at me with his puppy dog eyes. It was his fault anyway, the little pupper.

            “I’ll help you,” I said. “I’ll get the marble.” I looked around for a place to tie up Charlie, but this was the part of the block where there were no street signs or trees thin enough to wrap his lease around. Unless I wanted to tie him to a fence and have him eat up some poor lady’s hydrangea’s, there were no other options.

            “Can you hold his lease for me?”

            The kid blinked. “Me?”

            “Yeah. His name’s Charlie. He’s very – friendly.”

            “Yeah!”

            Just like that I handed over my pup to an emotional seven or eight-year-old and shed my awkward rain jacket. The leash dropped almost immediately, but Charlie did not run away. He sat in a puddle and wagged his tail madly, looking up at the boy.

            Squatting down didn’t do it, so I had to press my chest against the street, squishing a couple of drowned worms. I reached out for the marble, but my hands closed around dirt, mud, and something man-made I didn’t want to name. When I glanced over, the puppy and the boy were having a good time together with the puddles. The light rain had gotten a little thicker. I needed to wrap this up.

            “I almost got it,” I said. My hand closed around a small glass ball. I went to pull back my arm, but something closed around my wrist and pulled back.

            The rain got thicker, heavier. I opened my mouth to call “Help!”, but the water rushed down both ends of the gutters, and filled my mouth, and carried me into the opening and down the sewer.

            I caught hold of a metal bar or pipe beneath the water. Liquid forces tossed and twisted me. My hand clenched tighter over the only solid thing. The supporting shoulder snapped, I screamed, and water rushed into my mouth and nose. Water threw me against a hard wall, but sputtering, screaming, I was able to breathe in the rotting odors of the slimed walls.

            The water pushed through a hole next to my neck. Standing wasn’t an option, however, bracing myself for each shove against the wall protected my injured shoulder enough for me to stay awake.

            And I waited there.

            And I waited.

            I floated in the dark. The cold rushing water wasn’t rushing so fast anymore.

            The water drained to my shoulders. I couldn’t smell anymore. My fingers looked like bloated worms under the murky water.

            Then when the water level went down to my chest, my shoulder ached without its liquid brace. My lungs could fill freely. “Help!” I called toward the window of pale day, the drain opening more than a foot over my head and behind a small lake. After each yell I listened for the reply that never came.

            “Help,” I croaked.

            The water line fell behind my back as I waited. I could stand now. My supporting hand came off the wall. In it, I clasped a marble as red as blood.

            “Help,” I wheezed.

            My voice faded with each repetition. I brought out my phone from my back pocket. The screen was smashed, but even if it weren’t it needed brand new hardware that hadn’t been submerged until it was worthless. I cast it into the water. It barely made a splash as it sunk. Only a bubble floating on the surface marked the place where it descended through the scum. Soon that broke, too.

            After a time the water was below my hips and I could stagger forward, foot following foot, to the drain. There were metal rungs bolted to the side of the sewer mouth. I drew up my foot and climbed, one arm, one foot at a time up the ladder.

            Eventually I closed my eyes against the brightness and the fresh air against my face. I pulled my leg up and over the edge and rolled out onto the roadway.

            “Charlie,” I called. I tried to sit up, but the drizzle and my shoulder made it next to impossible to move. No answering bark, no dog or boy in sight. My ponytail rested on a patch of squirming, pink worms.

            A car driving on the street stopped. I looked up at the luxe black vehicle dotted with mist. The backseat door opened and a plump white-haired man looked out into the damp world.

            “That arm looks broken. Miss, do you need a ride to a hospital?”

            I bared my teeth. My voice was rougher than I meant it. “And you are?”

            “The name’s Ted. Samson, will you help her?”

            The stocky driver got out and came to lift me into the back seat. Ted scooted to another seat, or rather, another section of the bench seating like in a limousine. He held a stiff cane over his knees with hands so trembling that the cane could fall out of reach at any moment.

            Samson spoke to me in a brisk, though not unpleasant tone. “I’m going to try not to touch your shoulder. If you put your other hand around my neck –” He guided my good arm around his upper back.

            The car was a lot roomier than I had first thought, as Samson set me surprisingly gently on a seat. Warm leather brought back my sense of smell, and of the rotting odor my clothes carried from the sewer.

            “Easy now, easy,” Ted said. “The emergency room, straight away.”

            We were off.  Now that I was actually inside the car, I could appreciate how Ted wasn’t bothered by my drowned appearance or the smell polluting his nice seats. “Thanks,” I said.

            “Of course! How heartless would I have been to see you and keep driving by? My dear, I’m glad to help. Let me know of anything else we can do for you.”

            “Did you see a small dog and a boy?” I asked.

            “Samson, did you?” Ted asked him. Samson shook his head. “Then, no, we saw neither dog nor boy. I suppose not everyone enjoys the rain as much as we do.”

            He smiled at his own joke until he figured out I was not going to smile back. I wiped back the sewage from my mouths and nose. His eyes traveled to the red orb still clenched in my fist. “I used to have a marble like that one. I loved it better than the all the rest of them put together. Where did you find it?”

            I sighed and hugged my arm close to my chest. “There was this strange little boy,” I said. “No parents, nobody watching him at all. He was out playing marbles in the street in the drizzle. I gave him my dog to hold onto until I could get this marble from the drain.” Ted’s eyes lit with interest as I continued, “He was absolutely terrified of going near there. Maybe I should have been, too.”

            The man tsked his tongue. “Sounds like he might have gotten tired of waiting for you and scampered home.”

            “I guess.” My shoulder was giving off a stabbing, aching throb. It sure felt like I had broken or sprained it.

            “Listen, I’ll tell you what.” Ted put his hands together in a very old-man gesture, and it wasn’t just because of the cane. “I’ll go looking for this little dog of yours. What’s his name?”

            “He’s Charlie.”

            “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” Ted murmured. “Nice name. I had a dog myself once, went by that name. Little fella. Short brown fur, like he’d been rolling around in the dirt. Of course, he usually was. ”

            “And a small black nose.” I sat myself up with my useful arm. The houses going by the windows were older, almost run down, but the street name was the same. Each one had a vehicle like a wave parked in its driveway.

            “Why, yes,” Ted said. “I remember he’d poke his poker into every puddle and pond we came across.” He leaned back and looked at the ceiling paneled in a single, glowing light. “I wonder why I haven’t thought about him after all these years. Seems that maybe mine was the great-great-granddaddy of your Charlie. What are the odds?”

            I glanced at the panel Samson touched as he was driving along. A liquid image glowed like frozen raindrops with the sun glinting off of them.

            “We’re nearly there, Sir,” Samson called back.

            I stared at the moving dots, until Ted said, “Do you like my car? I bought it off a classic dealer, early century, oh, about twenty years ago. Keep it running every week. That’s the key to a healthy life for any of us – just keep bobbing along.”

            “Sir, we’ve arrived.” Samson glanced back at me. “I am at your service, miss.”

            In front of what I thought might be a building, a team of people in thin metallic jackets and glowing glasses pulled a gurney out of a floating ambulance, and pushed it through bay doors waiting with its clear panels thrown open.

            “Do you need help?” Ted asked me.

            I held up the marble and trembled.

            “I think so,” I said faintly. “I think this should be yours.” I pushed it into his hand and let Samson carry me fireman style to a grand set of clear doors.

~