A path worth taking

The dog started showing up at the end of August, just as school started. He waited for Devon every Tuesday at the corner of 5th Avenue and Bannantyne. How did it know it was Tuesday? How did it know he had a pound of hamburger for the family's weekly tacos? How did it know it was 3:30 pm?! Animals can tell time. Someone should write a PhD about that.

At first, Devon ignored the dog; he didn't want to share. If anything, he wanted the one-pound bloody package to be more voluminous!

But, as the trees dropped their bounty of leaves, as schoolchildren dressed up as ghosts and celebrated the dead by rotting their teeth, he finally gave in. At first, he gave the dog a small handful. One day, only half the package arrived home, and his mother wasn’t pleased. By the end of November, he collected empty cans and purchased a weekly soup bone for his friend. He’d pet the dog for thirty minutes, telling it his woes: his sister working as a stripper, his mother's shame, how he missed his father, the racist politicians on the news, etc. He rhymed for him:

"There's a man on TV

He isn't running, is he?

His skin is orange

His mind is deranged

We all know he's a bully."

The dog always listened, and Devon felt better.

But the dog wasn’t here today. Devon searched everywhere, waving the bone above his head to seed the scent in the wind. He stopped when he spotted a pair of beady eyes from the gutter grate; the smell had alerted every living rat above and below ground, but still, no dog.

With leaded feet and heart, he decided to go home. Absorbed by sad thoughts of his caramel-coated scoundrel lost or captured, Devon didn’t see what awaited him at the end of the dirty walkway that led to the projects. Putrid slouched in front of the door. At his feet, on the cement slab where he plied his drug-dealing trade, the dog lay. Dead. A few aspiring gangsters stood nearby.

Devon could not hold his tears. Big sobs threatened to escape his lungs. He clamped his hands on his mouth, fighting to regain control. A strong buzz ran through his brain.

Eventually, he became aware of Putrid's dominating presence. The taller boy, who had acquired his nickname from ever-present halitosis, was telling him to "stop crying like a pussy."

At ten years old, Devon stood 5 feet tall and weighed 120 pounds. At his school, he was a poor candidate for bullying. But he looked like a dwarf compared to tall, push-up-addicted Putrid, who would no longer be a teenager by the new year.

"I can't. I loved that dog," he managed, regretting the words as soon as they left his lips.

When his father was alive, he often said that integrity was the only wealth poor people like them would ever have. "You must always tell the truth, Devon, no matter how inconvenient." He could barely remember his father's face, but he aspired to live by his principles.

All the variations on the "mama’s boy" epithets shouted by the hecklers should not have affected his resolve. Yet, word by word, they chipped at his heart like a steel chisel.

Putrid's talon circled the back of his neck.

"Pick up that dog and throw him in the container, boy!"

Putrid's shoved him forward. Devon fell into a puddle, skinning his palms pretty badly. The drug dealer had killed the dog out of boredom. Just because he could. Devon’s pain suddenly metamorphosed into white anger.

All was still. The few dudes who worked for Putrid or mooched from him were quiet. The pigeons stopped cooing. A negative charge filled the air.

The resolve to live an honest life was almost all gone, burned on the altar of fury. He now understood why gun-carrying young men end up with LWOP sentences. But when violence is not an option, what is the solution?

The ripples on the puddle's surface diminished. Devon caught sight of his face: round, with smooth brown skin and big, expressive eyes. He wondered what kind of man he would become. A good son. A righteous person? Would he keep the kind heart that made him feed a starving dog when he could? Or would he remain the raging animal who wanted to open Putrid's throat right now?

Devon rolled on his back. From the ground, he said:

"Putrid got caught red-handed

With a girl, so he said

But the girl, it appeared

Had a voice that was weird

'cause the girl was a boy instead."

The little posse chuckled. Putrid's face darkened. The lid of his left eye began to nictate. He stopped breathing.

Devon watched, astonished at the effect of his audacity. He had rapped verses randomly, but he might as well have thrown a grenade: Putrid’s arrogance, as he knew it, evaporated. Was the tough pusher a closeted homosexual? Did it still matter? Does anyone care? Even at his young age, Devon suspected that some “professional milieus” frowned upon love between two men. Drug dealing, it seems, is one of them. Conservatism works in mysterious ways.

Devon stood up and walked slowly to the dead dog. Its eyes, where a milky film had started to form, stared blindly. Devon petted the matted fur. Nobody mocked him. One guy even put a hand on his shoulder, whispering:

“I wasn’t there when it happened. I would have stopped him.”

Another one added:

“Putrid’s girlfriend dumped him this afternoon. He’s got insane rage, man.”

Devon took off his coat and wrapped it around the dog’s body. His mother would be furious, but he didn’t mind freezing for a while. He welcomed the physical hardship.

“What was his name?” someone asked.

“Just Dog. I didn’t think it was important,” whispered Devon.

Somewhere inside him, a door closed, leaving behind a vague aroma of cotton candy and sun-burned chlorine.

He didn't know if he could live up to his father's standards, and he wasn’t sure that always telling the truth was worth the trouble. But he knew rhyming limericks quenched anger, and that was a path worth taking.