Good Boy - Jennifer Finney Boylan Page 0,18

his leash, which was still attached to his collar, trailing loosely on the ground. I patted him on the head.

I nodded to Lloyd, like, Let’s go. Lloyd gave me such a look, like, We could sit here watching lesbians make out with each other, and you want to go play with the dog?

But then he relented, and we headed down the path together.

My family would leave this place in just another year or two. The descendants of Governor Earle sold that whole tract of land to developers. One weekend surveyors’ posts began appearing in the forest, with red streamers attached to them. Then there were bulldozers and guys with chain saws. Governor Earle’s ruined mansion was demolished, along with all of the old houses. Earle’s Lake, where I’d caught brown trout with my cousin Peg, became a sewage treatment plant. The last time I drove down Sawmill Road, it looked like any other suburb in Delaware County. The new development was called Greene Countrie Village. The only sign of the former world was in the backyard of one of the McMansions, where the fireplace of the old house was still standing. Everything else was gone—the milk house, the springhouse, and the old stone ruin itself, of course. But the fireplace they left.

We got back to the house. My mother was making Shake ’n Bake chicken. My sister was in the basement, cleaning her tack. Lloyd shot himself up with some insulin and then sat down to practice the cello, Saint-Sa?ns’s The Swan. My father came in and sat in his chair, listening. After a while he got down on his hands and knees and wrestled with the dog. It was such a strange scene—my diffident, gentle father rolling around with the snarling dalmatian, Lloyd’s cello swooning with The Swan, the air redolent with Shake ’n Bake.

Afterward, my father lay on the floor, rubbing the dog’s pink belly and stroking his ears. “You’re the best dog,” he told the dalmatian. “You’re the very best dog.”

And suddenly I was so angry I had to get up and leave. I went into my room and picked up an iron doorstop shaped like the Santa Maria and threw it against the wall. The ship clanked against the wall of my room and then fell onto the wooden floor. My ears rang. For a moment, Lloyd’s bow lifted from his cello.

The pair of boxing gloves hung from the corner of my bed. I put them on but did not lace them up.

I sat there on the side of my bed looking at the gloves and the inscription on the back: CHAMP. The laces dangled down.

II

Sausage, 1973

My father shrugged. He’s not much, he said.

My sister was going around and around. First the vertical planks, then the pair of Swedish oxers, then the diagonal double back over to the wall. Next: the combination, another plank, the in-and-out. A timer at one end of the ring counted off the seconds. There was a terrifying, ringing knock as Checkmate’s hoof hit a fence rail, like a mallet ringing a wood block. The rail did not fall. There was a slow murmur from the grandstand as it became clear that she’d take over first place now if she completed the round without any faults. The horse thundered over the water jump, another vertical, a combination. I could hear her encouraging Checky quietly as she raced toward the finish. Come on, come on, like a stage whisper. Now the oxers again, back to the in-and-out, and finally the set of jokers bearing the name of the sponsor, Anheuser-Busch.

By the old barns surrounding the ring waited the Clydesdales, hauling their ornate carriage. The huge, heavy horses shook their heads, the reins flapping against their broad, shining necks.

Cyndy crossed the finish line. “And we have a new leader,” said the announcer as the grandstand went wild. Beyond the judge’s booth rose a Ferris wheel, the flashing lights of the midway. “Cyndy Boylan on Checkmate: no faults!”

Everyone cheered. I turned to GI Joe. No, he was not a doll, he was an action figure, let’s make that clear. He was happy, too, in his way. “Bravo Zulu,” said Joe, by which he meant Good job.

Joe had his own way of talking. A lot of it was in code.

* * *

It was good that GI Joe gave my sister the old Bravo Zulu, because to me this endless circling was all the same. My complete indifference was awkward for my parents and, to a lesser