Alligator - Lisa Moore [102]
Valentin gave up. He accepted that he could not close the door to the truck and that the boy was alive and he could already hear the fire trucks and the police and it was over and then he saw the boy’s sneaker was in the way.
He pushed the boy’s foot in and slammed the door. There was another low deep boom from inside the house and black smoke was dragged across the lawn and shifted direction and lifted itself up over the burning trees. Two people were running toward Valentin’s truck and he got in behind the wheel and one of the men was waving him down with a baseball cap.
Valentin tore out of the driveway and took off down Morris Avenue. He drove through a red light and nearly side-swiped the fire truck and a fireman in his yellow gear looked into Valentin’s face as he went past. They saw each other.
He pulled into the Bannerman Park parking lot to stop from trembling. He was trembling all over, especially his hands. He sat there with the truck idling and saw teenagers hanging off the monkey bars. He would take Frank to the ship in Harbour Grace and keep him there until he was certain he had got away with it. No one had followed him. He could put Frank in his old bunk on the ship until he knew for certain what would happen next. If he got caught, it would be better for the boy to be alive. They would have the make and colour of his truck, but he had removed the licence plates. He would put the plates back on when he got to the highway. He needed to stop trembling in order to drive. He needed to drive slowly.
He reversed the truck and slowly pulled out of the lot. He drove down Monkstown Road and when he was near the Riverdale tennis courts he saw there were women playing tennis under big lights. They wore white shorts and tiny white T-shirts and one woman jogged over to the chainlink fence and she was waving her racket, trying to tell him something.
He rolled down the window and the breeze revived the boy; the boy started coughing and muttering again.
Watch out for the dogs, the woman shouted to him. She dipped the racket downward, pointing to the road in front of his truck.
The dogs are fucking, the woman called. She covered her mouth with her hand; she was giggling. Then she trotted back over the courts and her ponytail swung and she bent, lifting one foot in the air, and picked up a luminous yellow ball and she whacked it to the other woman and he heard her racket cut through the warm night air.
There were two dogs mating in the centre of the road, right in front of his truck. A small white poodle so closely shaven Valentin could see the pink of her skin under the silky, silver sheen of fine hair, what was left of her coat. The dog on top of her was twice her size and black and white and it hung on to her and jerked with a deliberate and awkward ferocity. The poodle tried to withstand the weight of the male, but her front legs, which were straight against the asphalt, threatened to buckle and she stepped daintily forward to maintain her balance. She turned toward Valentin’s headlights and her eyes went a weird luminous green and the tuft of white on top of her head was incandescent.
Valentin realized the radio was on and had been on the whole time and there was talk about an all-expense-paid trip for two to Orlando, Florida, for the first caller who could name all the songs on the countdown.
The boy began to mutter and Valentin heard the word har-monica. Frank was pawing his chest as if he had something in his shirt. He was calling for his mother. His eyes were still rolled back in his head, but the pupils became visible for a moment and the boy looked at Valentin. He looked at him and said he needed a harmonica. Then he was convulsing with a fit of coughing.
Valentin had dropped Isobel before a curve in the road near her aunt’s house in Old Perlican. She had come out of the water at the beach with the red dress clinging to her and her hair gleaming and in the truck she smelled of seawater. The cat was pressed against his leg because Isobel was wet. She was