ONE

The dog was the problem. It was always there, next door, sometimes on a chain, always behind the hurricane fence, but it seemed to hate young Becker with a fury that made both leash and fence doubtful deterrents. When he left for school and when he returned, when he ventured into his own front yard for any reason, the animal hurled itself against the woven wire, teeth bared, saliva flying, snarling like death's last warning. A year earlier, when they had first moved to their new home, Becker's fear was so great that he frequently wet himself as he stood, paralyzed, eyes closed, even his vocal cords frozen, halfway to the perceived safety of his porch, until his mother, summoned by the dog's rage, came out and rescued the boy. It was only when he was safely indoors that the shame of having peed in his pants would hit him.

"He can't really get at you," his mother would say. It was small comfort to a boy of six.

"I know."

"He's just, I don't know, excited. He's never that bad with anyone else."

But then no one else was quite as terrified as he, Becker thought. The dog was a bully and recognized weakness in his victims.

"I know."

"I've spoken to Mr. Gault." Gault was the neighbor, the dog's owner, scarcely less intimidating to the boy than his dog itself. The boy had watched with wonder as the man had stood at the length of the dog's chain and waved a rag just beyond the animal's reach. On his knees, snarling and taunting the dog as it lunged and snarled at him, Mr. Gault had seemed to be of a kind with the beast, vicious, dangerous, hungry for something he could not quite get to!!!

"He's certain the dog won't hurt you," his mother said.

His mother was also certain there were no ghosts in the closet, no goblins under the bed. Such certainties from an adult were worse than useless; they not only made him feel foolish for expressing his fears but also cast all grown-up assurances in doubt.

The dog became a phobia, a waking nightmare from which even his mother could not release him. Although he was one of the blessed children who likes school and whose mind absorbed knowledge like a sponge, on his worst days he would feign illness just to avoid passing by the fence, the sudden, explosive rush of fury, the rage for his blood that lived!!!, always, only a split second from his throat. At night the dog pursued him in a thousand venues and hurled itself at him in a thousand ways, but never did it transmogrify into spectral shapes or other horrors of sleep. It was always just the dog, the same dog, as if the demonic maker of his dreams could manufacture nothing more horrifying than the beast that lived next door.

This was before his father returned to them. He had been gone during John's earliest years, away on assignments that took him all over the country for extended stays; and then there were the months in the hospital when John and his mother would travel three hours each way to Omaha to visit him in his hospital bed. The older man's greeting was often little more than a weak smile for the boy, once or twice a tousling of his hair, with scarcely more animation spared for his wife.

"He's getting better," his mother would say on the long ride home. "Every time he's a little better than before. You can see that, can't you, Johnny?"

He could not, but said he did to please her. The lengthy absences had rendered his father a stranger and whatever had consigned him to a hospital had also made him a sad, moribund specimen of the half living. He reminded Johnny of the drained, depleted victims he had seen in vampire movies, or the lethargic zombies who moved in slow, impassive motion on their quests through the grave yard-except his father never left the hospital bed.

"He'll be back home with us again real soon," she said often. "Don't worry."

"I'm not worried."

She looked at him sideways.

"He's a very brave man, you know. He's a fighter. He's going to make it back."

Johnny didn't know what foe his father was fighting, his mother was never specific, and he was not worried because he didn't really care if the weary man from the hospital came home or not. He was an alien being to the boy, more an idealized notion promoted by his mother of courage, nobility and power promoted than anyone Johnny could really concern himself about. But his mother cared. Tears would fall on the drive home and he could hear her crying in the night, but her attitude was always positive and her expression, even as she wept, was twisted into a brave smile for her son.

And then one day his father was home. The patterned hospital gown had been exchanged for the pale brown of a policeman's uniform and he stepped out of a squad car, miraculously whole and healthy. Only a complexion pale as the daylight moon and a certain hesitancy in his stride remained as reminders of the man who had lain in bed for a year.

The uniform was a happy surprise. Policemen were good, Johnny had always been told, policemen were his friends, policemen would protect him. If ever he was lost, his mother said, he should tell a policeman.

Even more amazing than the reincarnation of his father as a policeman was the gun he wore on his hip. His father was a hero after all, just as his mother had always said, a giant who had returned from the hospital, armed and more than an equal to Gault and his beast. A gun could relieve Johnny's life from fear and shame. A gun could kill the dog.

For several weeks Becker studied the older man, this wan Lazarus who shared his mother's bedroom and snored through the night with ripping, startling noises that Johnny thought must surely wake them both yet rose again each morning to appear in the kitchen in his crisp uniform, the fascinating weapon riding on his hip. His mother seemed very happy as she poured his coffee, buttered his toast and generally catered to him with a doting attention that Johnny thought rightly belonged only to himself.

Becker watched with a welter of emotions, jealousy, awe, caution, pride, curiosity-and envy of the pistol,FIX wield it like Excalibur!!!

Spying on the man without detection was easy enough. When her husband was present, his mother had eyes only for him and for his part he scarcely seemed to notice Johnny at all, as if his son were part of the new ambience to which he was accustoming himself, of no more real interest than the squirrels scampering across the yard from tree to tree, or the invalid patients shuffling past his room in the hospital.

"He's still getting used to you," his mother explained. "Remember, he hasn't really known you for a long time. And you're still getting used to him, too, aren't you?"

"What's wrong with him?"

"There's nothing wrong with him," she said sternly.

"Why is he so white?"

"He was sick, you know that. His color will come back."

"He moves funny."

Rising and sitting down his father exercised a caution the boy had seen only in the elderly, and he negotiated his way around the house as if the furniture could not be trusted to remain stationary, touching the backs of chairs, counter tops, the sides of tables and doorways before easing past them. In the open there was a slight list to his walk and a hesitancy that suggested he was learning the process anew.

"He does not move funny," she said with annoyance. "He's your father. He was in bed for a long time, that's all. Now stop this silliness. He loves you and you love him." After a pause, as if to herself, she added, "Everything's going to be fine."

Becker knew that he loved his father because his mother had been telling him that all eight years of his life. He knew that his father loved him because of the same, insistent, maternal message although he had yet to feel the warmth, the affection, or even the interest that he associated with his mother's love.

The warmth and affection never came, but the interest arrived in a sudden, life-altering blast.

Coming home from school, running past the fence, Becker tripped and stumbled as the dog launched itself towards him. He fell towards the fence and landed on his side, facing the snarling animal only feet away, closer than he had ever been. Immediately he pulled himself into a fetal position, eyes closed, certain that the beast would get him this time.

"What the hell is this?"

Becker barely heard the voice over the sound of his own whimpering. He squeezed his eyes more tightly shut but could not escape the last image registered before he closed them--the muzzle of the dog, slavering for him. He tried to cry out to his mother for rescue but his throat closed.

"You hurt?"

The voice was directly over him now, but he knew it was not his mother. Strong hands grasped him under his arms and lifted him. Becker flung himself onto his father's neck.

"Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you?"

"It's the dog," his mother said. "He's petrified by the dog."

"The dog? Christ."

"I'll take him," she said.

Becker reached out for her but his father pulled him back roughly.

"Come here. You're scared of this mutt?"

Becker managed to nod agreement, still reaching hopefully for his mother.

"I'll take him," she repeated. "It's all right."

"It's not all right," said his father. "I don't accept it and I'm not going to put up with it."

He turned Becker's shoulders until the boy was face to face with the dog that was still howling his thirst for boyish blood.

"No, no," his mother said. "He's too young."

"He's too old, Teena. No kid of mine..."

Becker tried desperately to wrest free but the grip on his shoulders was too strong.

"Let's get over this nonsense now," his father said. He grasped the boy's head in one hand and held it facing the dog. "Open your eyes. You got to face it. Open your eyes."

"Please, I'll take him," she said.

"I'll bring him in the house when I'm through. You can wipe his nose then."

His father knelt beside the boy, his breath on Becker's ear.

"This isn't going to end until you open your eyes, so you might as well do it now."