It was a dark and stormy night.
Really. It was.
Outside, the wind howled and tore itself up in such a way as to become, finally, annoying. A dog its owners called Chopper barked. (Unfortunately, that night for dinner Chopper had had “Meat Flakes” brand dog food, which tended to make him wheeze. But before his asthma hit, ol’ Chopper’s bark had been really rattling the shingles.) Bushes danced down the middle of the street. Branches threatened to rip themselves from their trees and smash through people’s walls. Walls threatened to let them.
Inside his house, little Morton stood with his lips and nose flattened up against the window–palms pressed to the glass, eyeballs bulging.
He wanted out. He wanted to be a part of the tempestuousness that raged outside just like his stomach did inside whenever his mother tried to cook.
His mother.
The thought of her made him roll his eyes–which, weirdly, cooled the bottom half of his eyeballs.
“Morton?”
Morton knew that voice.
It was he, talking to himself.
“What?” he answered.
“How old are we?”
“We’re nine, or so.”
“How do we feel about being a kid, in this house, with these people?”
“We feel like we’re stuck here. And since we’re stuck here, we feel it must be good.”
“So we have faith.”
“Yes. Of course. Naturally.”
“Okay,” said Morton to himself. “Just checking.”
The next day the storm was over, and Morton wandered out into his backyard to have a seat upon the tree stump out there. A dog sauntered up to him, nudging his wet nose against his hand.
“Hey, Pal-o,” said Morton. “How’s it goin’?”
Pal-o was a dog Morton had found one day in the desert near his home, where he had gone with his friend Sal to look for coyotes.
“Look!” said Sal. “There’s one!”
But instead of a coyote, it had been Pal-o, shucking around out there, chasing rabbits, sniffing tumbleweeds, acting how dogs do. When he saw Morton and Sal he dashed right over to them, jumping up and slurping at their faces like they were all long lost friends who had finally been reunited. Before long Pal-o was living at Morton’s house, and sneaking into Morton’s bed at night. (Sal already had a dog, Barfo, and was pretty sure his parents wouldn’t let him have two dogs.)
The fact of the matter, however, was that Pal-o really was a coyote. He was just smarter than the other coyotes. When he was living out in the desert, eating old Chef Boyardee labels and dead birds and whatever else he could scrounge up, he had always known that a better life was possible. And he knew that in order to lead that life, he was going to have to be adopted by humans, who must mistake him for a dog. And that would mean acting unmistakably dog-like: innanely bounding about; standing on his back legs and letting his front ones dangle adorably in the air, rolling over, arching his back, and kicking playfully at the sky. In general, he knew, it would mean acting like a moron who craved nothing so much as he did human love and affection.
And then he would get fed regular as clockwork, in a bowl and everything.
Which is exactly what happened.
“Hey, Pal-o,” said Morton, sitting on the stump. “I saw you out here last night, staring at the moon. You looked just like those coyotes I’ve seen doing that.” He put his elbows on his knees, his hands on either side of Pal-o’s face, and looked Pal-o dead in the eye.
“I’ve always thought you might be a coyote, Pal-o” he said in a low voice. “And if you are, I just want you to know I don’t care one little bit. I love you, Pal-o. And I’ll always love you, and I’ll always feed you, even if you start wandering around the neighborhood at night, eating cars or telephone poles or whatever. I don’t care. You’re my dog. Or my whatever. But you’re mine, and we’re friends, and I’ll always be your friend.”
Pal-o, after listening very carefully, lept up and bowled Morton onto the ground, where he licked his face so hard Morton finally had to beg for mercy.
One day something wonderful happened to Morton. It involved his father, and a new attitude his father showed towards him.
“Oh, boy!” said Morton. “This is great!”
And it was, too.
The whole new thing that his father was doing with him had something to do with a bicycle–or a baseball game, or maybe going together to a movie. Somebody got somebody some popcorn. Somebody drove a car slowly, going nowhere, just for the fun of driving.
“Oh, boy!” said Morton. “We’re driving!”
And then, of course, they weren’t: the ride was over. Morton understood. It was, after all, just a car, a matter of mechanics.
And was Morton so stupid that he expected something mechanical to last forever?
“Listen,” said a voice–his own again–to him one night in his room. “You had a good time, right?”
“I sure did,” answered Morton. “It was great. He mussed up my hair and everything.”
“And he’s big, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Huge. The biggest.”
“And yet he took the time to be with you, didn’t he? When he had so many other better things to do?”
“Yes. Yes, he did.”
“All right, then,” said the voice. “That’s what love is. Get used to it.”
One day Morton got invited to a birthday party being held for a boy in his class whose parents kept his black hair shaved to a nub: the boy had heavy eyebrows, and a big gap between his front teeth. Morton always imagined him as a cab driver, chewing a cigar and laughing really loud.
“Bring a gift,” said his mother. “You’ve got to bring a gift. Let’s pick one out.”
Morton opted for a pair of “View King” binoculars. His mother, though, decided on a doll that, from what Morton could see, was probably the guy Barbie dumped for Ken.
His name was “Volleyball Dave.”
“This’ll be perfect!” said Morton’s mom, pulling out her wallet.
Morton looked at the doll. He tried to imagine his friend the future cabbie playing with it, pretending like he was making it walk and talk–or maybe even play some volleyball.
“Come on, Dave,” his friend would say. “Let’s go for a walk. Let’s go down to the beach, and see what’s up with the boys.” He’d wobble Dave’s stiff legs back and forth while he pushed it along, while he and Dave went for a walk.
And when Dave got to the beach, and when he found all the other guys–leaning against the low cement wall bordering the sand, wearing stringy cut-offs and flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts opened to reveal their stomach muscles–what, Morton wondered, would happen next? What did guys talk about together? How did they respond to each other? What did they think was funny?
That was always the question for Morton: What did people think was funny?
When his friend the future cabbie opened Morton’s gift, and found “Volleyball Dave” standing at attention in his box, he looked questioningly at Morton. Morton shrugged his shoulders. The boy thrust the box out towards him and shook it, as if the doll had come to life and was saying to Morton, “Help! Help! Get me out of here! You caused this!”
Which Morton had.
So it was fair.
Morton pictured himself as a doll, standing stiffly in his box on a shelf in the department store, looking out through the celephane at all the shoppers going by. Above him, written in big yellow and purple letters on his box, were the words “Morton, The Doll!” He tried to imagine someone choosing him from among the other dolls, wanting to buy him. He pictured a girl his age, in a worn white sweater, reaching up for him¾her dark hair unclean and disheveled, her thick, horn rimmed glasses crooked on her nose, her red plaid skirt, her black patent leather shoes¾but that was as far as he could imagine: just her reaching up, and him watching her, and then nothing¾he couldn’t get the action to continue again, no matter how he tried. She was just stuck, like a broken movie, her hand only inches from his small, plastic feet.
And then he was back at the party, wearing his party hat with the rubber band running beneath his chin, watching the kids grabbing for the plate of cupcakes that an overweight lady in a tight grey dress had just placed on a table. Standing at the wrong place at the wrong time, he got pretty jostled. Morton couldn’t see why anybody would care what kind of cupcake they got at all. Some had sprinkles; some didn’t. But you could see they were all the same, really, that you weren’t going to be any happier with one than you would be with another. And frankly, Morton knew that nobody was going to be too happy with any of them.
Morton made his way backwards through the crowd. He ended up all the way across the room, behind an orange easy chair. He turned around, and stared up at a large painting on the wall of some flowers in a vase on a table. The frame was spray-painted gold. The flowers looked like blowzy old lady flowers, in a room that was warm and humid. Morton imagined people¾elderly people, the skinny men in black suits and bow-ties, the women¾not as old as the men¾in long print dresses¾on the floor, trying to drag themselves out of the room, but not being able to make it, because the flowers were so depressing they were sapping all their strength away.
Using one hand and then the other, they slowly pulled themselves towards the door. One after the other they gave up, collapsed, and moaned in despair.
And the flowers back there on the table, dying, but winning.
Morton’s bedroom had a door on it that sometimes locked itself shut. You could never tell when it was going to happen, when Morton was going to be locked in–or out–of his room.
“Dinner!” his mother would call. And Morton would go to the door, turn the knob, and discover that his door was locked. He’d sit on his bed, then, and wait. Sometimes his parents came to get him. Sometimes they didn’t.
Morton didn’t really care that much either way. He was not a brooder. If they didn’t come, he would stay on his bed, and through the walls listen to them eating. His father would talk. Most likely, he would tell a story illustrating the infuriating stupidity of someone wih whom he’d had dealings that day.
“Can you believe it?” he might hear his dad say.
His mother would answer with sympathetic sounds–although, Morton knew, she was probably not sympathetic. Morton knew that deep down his parents didn’t get along that well. Morton knew–or felt pretty sure, anyway–that someday they were going to get divorced.
And he was right: they did divorce, when Morton was nine or ten years old.
“Good-bye!” called his father from the front seat of his car as he backed down the driveway. “I’ll visit often!”
Morton waved goodbye. He imagined himself tied to the top of his dad’s car. Strapped down, his back pressed against the flexing metal, he would watch the sky and clouds zoom by, the wind parting his hair down the middle. He would be glad, especially when going over bumps and sharp turns, that the ropes were tied as tightly as they were. As he felt the miles go by, he would eventually begin to wonder where they were going, and when they were going to stop. He would wonder if they were ever going to stop at all. He’d worry that they weren’t.
He realized that as he had been imagining traveling on the top of his dad’s car, he had walked out into the middle of the street, and was now standing there, waving to no one. He let his arm fall to his side. He looked at his house. It was yellow, with white trim. It looked almost new. His mother was inside somewhere, alone, doing something or other¾Morton, as usual, couldn’t imagine what. His dog was in the backyard, lying on his belly, his head resting on his paws. Morton had no trouble guessing what he was doing. With his eyes open, Pal-o was dreaming, remembering what is was to run in the desert, to look up at the white cold moon and howl.