Read Online Buddy by M.H. Herlong - Free Book Online Page A

wide.
    â€œHe can’t hardly walk,” J-Boy says.
    â€œHe’s walking fine,” I say. “He just don’t go far.”
    â€œYou sold your Game Boy so you could get that
piece
of a dog?”
    I turn around and there’s J-Boy with his lip all curled up.
    â€œIf I get me a dog,” he says, “I’ll get me a
whole
dog.”
    I’m just staring at J-Boy.
    â€œI always knew you were a fool,” he says. “Now everybody else knows it, too.” He turns around and walks back around the house to the front yard.
    I hear the gate squeal and bang when he slams it open. I sit down. I’m smelling the cut-up grass stuck on the lawn mower and the gas fumes leaking out. I’m feeling the little rocks under my butt and the wood behind my back where I’m leaning against the shed.
    Then Buddy sticks his cold nose in my ear. He licks my face. He’s whining just a little bit. He limps one step closer and lays down with his head in my lap.
    My hand goes to his head. I smooth back his fur and he looks up at me with his caterpillar eyebrow cocked to one side. He’s waiting for me to talk but I can’t think of nothing to say.

12
    J-Boy’s the fool, of course. Mama and Daddy have been saying it all along and it’s for true. As it turns out, I’ve got one call waiting when I get inside and the very next day when I roll out the lawn mower, Buddy comes limping along with me. He’s doing his three-legged walk down the sidewalk and some little kid snickers and I say, “You laugh at my dog and I’ll bust your head.” That little kid’s eyes get all big and he runs inside. Buddy lifts up his tail and watches him run, and I think,
There goes that mowing job
.
    While I mow the lawn, Buddy lays down on the sidewalk. He puts his nose on his front feet and he watches me going back and forth, back and forth. When people walk down the street they’re cussing at him for laying in the sidewalk. I say, “What do you expect? He’s only got three legs.” Buddy lifts up his head and watches them walk on and I tell him, “Just you lay back down, Buddy. It’s okay to stay right where you are.”
    When we get home I fill up his water bowl and I rub his ears and we sit in the shed by the lawn mower and we talk.
    â€œIf you had four legs,” I say to Buddy, “we might walk down to the river. Mama says I can’t go that far but if you went with me, she’d have to let me go.”
    Buddy’s tail goes
thump, thump
like he’s saying he wishes he could help me.
    â€œWe could really throw the ball there. And we’d watch those barges make the turn. Jamilla and me saw that once when we were at the aquarium. Those barges coming down the river go under the bridge so fast you think they’re going to whack right into it but they don’t. After they pass under the bridge, they’ve got to swing way wide to one side to get around the bend in the river, and you’re just hoping they don’t smash into the bank, and they don’t. And then you look and you see the other barges coming
up
the river, and you think now, for sure, they’re going crash into each other. And you cross your fingers and close your eyes, and when you open them up again, there go the barges, sailing past each other like nothing ever happened. And after that, you look up and down the river, and you can’t hardly believe it because here comes a whole bunch more barges, doing it over and over again.”
    When I stop talking, Buddy thumps his tail like he wants me to go on.
    â€œWhere do you think those barges are coming from, Buddy? What do you think they’ve got in them? What do you think it would be like to ride on one of them? Jamilla said she’s going to do that one day. Start maybe all the way at the top of the river and ride all the way down. All the way out to the ocean.
    â€œWhere do you think that river starts,