The stage was set. The die was cast.

On the thirteenth of October, when I walked into the front door after school, I found Dad home from work early and waiting for me. "Son," he began. That word instantly told me something terrible had happened.

He took me in the pickup truck to Dr. Lezander's house, which stood on three acres of cleared land between Merchants and Shantuck streets. A white picket fence enclosed the property, and two horses grazed in the sunshine on the rolling gra.s.s. A kennel and dog exercise area stood off to one side, a barn on the other. Dr. Lezander's two-storied house was white and square, precise and clean as arithmetic. The driveway curved us around to the rear of the house, where a sign said PLEASE LEASH YOUR PETS. We left the pickup truck parked at the back door, and Dad pulled a chain that made a bell ring. In another minute the door opened, and Mrs. Lezander filled up the entrance.

As I've said before, she had an equine face and a lumpish body that might've scared a grizzly. She was always somber and unsmiling, as if she walked under a thundercloud. But I had been crying and my eyes were swollen, and perhaps this caused the transformation that I now witnessed.

"Oh, you poor dear child," Mrs. Lezander said, and such an expression of care came over her face that I was half stunned by it. "I'm so, so sorry about your dog." Dok, she p.r.o.nounced it. "Please come in!" she told Dad, and she escorted us through a little reception area with portraits of children hugging dogs and cats on the pine-paneled walls. A door opened on stairs leading to Dr. Lezander's bas.e.m.e.nt office. Each step was a torture for me, because I knew what was down there.

My dog was dying.

The truck bringing soft drinks from Birmingham had hit him as he'd run across Merchants Street around one o'clock. Rebel had been with a pack of dogs, Mr. Dollar had told Mom when he'd called the house. It was Mr. Dollar who had heard the shriek of tires and Rebel's crushed yelp as he'd been coming out of the Bright Star Cafe after lunch. Rebel had been lying there on Merchants Street, the rest of the dogpack barking for him to get up, and Mr. Dollar had gotten Chief Marchette to help him lift Rebel onto the back of Wynn Gillie's pickup truck and bring him to Dr. Lezander. Mom was all torn up about it, too, because she'd meant to put Rebel in his pen that afternoon but had gotten wrapped up in "Search for Tomorrow." Never in his entire life had Rebel roamed as far away as Merchants Street. It was clear to me that he'd been running with a bad bunch, and this was the price.

Downstairs the air smelled of animals; not unpleasant, but musky. There was a warren of rooms lit up with fluorescent lights, a shine of scrubbed white tiles and stainless steel. Dr. Lezander was there, wearing a doctor's white coat, his bald head aglow under the lights. His voice was hushed and his face grim as he said h.e.l.lo to Dad. Then he looked at me, and he placed a hand on my shoulder. "Cory?" he said. "Do you want to see Rebel?"

"Yes sir."

"I'll take you to him."

"He's not... he's not dead, is he?"

"No, he's not dead." The hand ma.s.saged a tight muscle at the base of my neck. "But he's dying. I want you to understand that." Dr. Lezander's eyes seized mine and would not let me look away. "I've made Rebel as comfortable as possible, but... he's been hurt very badly."

"You can fix him!" I said. "You're a doctor!"

"That's right, but even if I operated on him I couldn't repair the damage, Cory. It's just too much."

"You can't... just... let him die!"

"Go see him, son," Dad urged. "Better go on." While you can, he was saying.

Dad waited while Dr. Lezander took me into one of the rooms. Upstairs I could hear a whistling noise: a teakettle. Mrs. Lezander was above us, boiling water for tea in the kitchen. The room we walked into had a sickly smell. There was a shelf full of bottles and a countertop with doctor's instruments arranged on a blue cloth. And at the center of the room was a stainless steel table with a form atop it, covered by a dog-sized cotton blanket. My legs almost gave way; blotches of brown blood had soaked through the cotton.

I must've trembled. Dr. Lezander said, "You don't have to, if you don't-"

"I will," I said.

Dr. Lezander gently lifted part of the blanket. "Easy, easy," he said, as if speaking to an injured child. The form shivered, and I heard a whine that all but tore my heart out. My eyes flooded with hot tears. I remembered that whine, from when Dad had brought Rebel home as a puppy in a cardboard box and Rebel had been afraid of the dark. I walked four steps to the side of the table, and I looked at what Dr. Lezander was showing me.

A truck tire had changed the shape of Rebel's head. The white hair and flesh on one side of the skull had been ripped back, exposing the bone and the teeth in a fixed grin. The pink tongue lolled in a wash of blood. One eye had turned a dead gray color. The other was wet with terror. Bubbles of blood broke around Rebel's nostrils, and he breathed with a painful hitching noise. A forepaw was crushed to pulp, the broken edges of bones showing in the twisted leg.

I think I moaned. I don't know. The single eye found me, and Rebel started struggling to stand up but Dr. Lezander grasped the body with his strong hands and the movement ceased.

I saw a needle clamped to Rebel's side, a tube from a bottle of clear liquid feeding into his body. Rebel whimpered, and instinctively I offered my hand to that ruined muzzle. "Careful!" Dr. Lezander warned. I didn't think about the fact that an animal in agony might snap at anything that moves, even the hand of a boy who loves it. Rebel's b.l.o.o.d.y tongue came out and swiped weakly at my fingers, and I stood there staring numbly at the streak of scarlet that marked me.

"He's suffering terribly," Dr. Lezander said. "You can see that, can't you?"

"Yes sir," I answered, as if in a horrible dream.

"His ribs are broken, and one of them has punctured his lung. I thought his heart might have given out before now. I expect it will soon." Dr. Lezander covered Rebel back over. All I could do was stare at the shivering body. "Is he cold?" I asked. "He must be cold."

"No, I don't think so." Zo, he p.r.o.nounced it. He grasped my shoulder again, and guided me to the door. "Let's go talk to your father, shall we?"

Dad was still waiting where we'd left him. "You okay, partner?" he asked me, and I said I was though I was feeling very, very sick. The smell of blood was in my nostrils, thick as sin.

"Rebel's a strong dog," Dr. Lezander said. "He's survived what should have killed most dogs outright." He picked up a folder from his desk and slid a sheet of paper out. It was a preprinted form, and at the top of it was Case #3432. "I don't know how much longer Rebel will live, but I think it's academic at this point."

"There's no possibility, you mean?" Dad asked.

"No possibility," the doctor said. He glanced quickly at me. "I'm sorry."

"He's my dog," I said, and fresh tears streamed down. My nose felt clogged with concrete. "He can get better." Even as I said that, I knew all the imagination in the world could not make it so.

"Tom, if you'll sign this form, I can administer a drug to Rebel that will... um..." He darted another glance at me.

"Help him rest," Dad offered.

"That's right. Exactly right. If you'll sign here. Oh, you need a pen, I think." He opened a drawer, fished around, and brought one up.

Dad took it. I knew what this was about. I didn't need to be lulled and coddled as if I were six years old. I knew they were talking about giving Rebel a shot to kill him. Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it was humane, but Rebel was my dog and I had fed him when he was hungry and washed him when he was dirty and I knew his smell and the feel of his tongue on my face. I knew him. There would never be another dog like Rebel. A huge knot had jammed in my throat. Dad was bending over the form, about to touch pen to paper. I looked for something to stare at, and I found a black and white photograph in a silver frame on the doctor's desk. It showed a light-haired, smiling young woman waving, a windmill behind her. It took me a few seconds to register the young apple-cheeked face as being that of Veronica Lezander.

"Hold on." Dad lifted the pen. "Rebel belongs to you, Cory. What do you have to say about this?"

I was silent. Such a decision had never been offered to me before. It was heavy.

"I love animals as much as anyone," Dr. Lezander said. "I know what a dog can mean to a boy. What I'm suggesting be done, Cory, is not a bad thing. It's a natural thing. Rebel is in terrible pain, and will not recover. Everything is born and dies. That is life. Yes?"

"He might not die," I murmured.

"Say he doesn't die for another hour. Or two, or three. Say he lives all night. Say he manages somehow to live twenty-four more hours. He can't walk. He can hardly breathe. His heart is beating itself out, he's in deep shock." Dr. Lezander frowned, watching my blank slate of a face. "Be a good friend to Rebel, Cory. Don't let him suffer like this any longer."

"I think I need to sign this, Cory," Dad said. "Don't you?"

"Can I... go be with him for a minute? Just alone?"

"Yes, of course. I wouldn't touch him, though. He might snap. All right?"

"Yes sir." Like a sleepwalker, I returned to the scene of a bad dream. On the stainless steel table, Rebel was still shivering. He whined and whimpered, searching for his master to make the pain go away.

I began to cry. It was a powerful crying, and would not be held back. I dropped down to my knees on that cold hard floor, and I bowed my head and clasped my hands together.

I prayed, with my eyes squeezed tightly shut and the tears burning trails down my face. I don't recall exactly what I said in that prayer, but I knew what I was praying for. I was praying for a hand to come down from heaven or paradise or Beulah land and shut the gates on DEATH. Hold those gates firm against DEATH, though DEATH might bl.u.s.ter and scream and claw to get in at my dog. A hand, a mighty hand, to turn that monster away and heal Rebel, to cast DEATH out like a bag of old bleached bones and run him off like a beggar in the rain. Yes, DEATH was hungry and I could hear him licking his lips there in that room, but the mighty hand could seal shut his mouth, could slap out his teeth, could reduce DEATH to a little drooling thing with smacking gums.

That's what I prayed for. I prayed with my heart and my soul and my mind. I prayed through every pore of my flesh, I prayed as if every hair on my head was a radio antenna and the power was crackling through them, the mega-megamillion watts crying out over s.p.a.ce and eternity into the distant ear of the all-knowing, all-powerful Someone. Anyone.

Just answer me.

Please.

I don't know how long I stayed there on the floor, bowed up, sobbing and praying. Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe longer. I knew that when I stood up, I had to go out there where Dad and Dr. Lezander waited, and tell them yes or- I heard a grunt, followed by an awful sound of air being sucked into ruined, blood-clogged lungs.

I looked up. I saw Rebel straining to stand on the table. The hair rippled at the back of my neck, my flesh exploding into chill b.u.mps. Rebel got up on two paws, his head thrashing. He whined, a long terrible whine that pierced me like a dagger. He turned, as if to snap at his tail, and the light glinted in his single eye and the death-grin of his teeth.

"Help!" I shouted. "Dad! Dr. Lezander! Come quick!"

Rebel's back arched with such violence I thought surely his tortured spine would snap. I heard a rattle like seeds in a dry gourd. And then Rebel convulsed and fell onto his side on the table, and he did not move again.

Dr. Lezander rushed in, with my father close behind. "Stand back," the doctor told me, and he put his hand to Rebel's chest. Then he got a stethoscope and listened. He lifted the lid of the good eye; it, too, had rolled back to the white.

"Hold on, partner," Dad said with both hands on my shoulders. "Just hold on."

Dr. Lezander said, "Well," and he sighed. "We won't be needing the form after all."

"No!" I cried out. "No! Dad, no!"

"Let's go home, Cory."

"I prayed, Dad! I prayed he wouldn't die! And he's not gonna die! He can't!"

"Cory?" Dr. Lezander's voice was quiet and firm, and I looked up at him through a hot blur of tears. "Rebel is-"

Something sneezed.

We all jumped at the sound, as loud as a blast in the tiled room. It was followed by a gasp and rush of air.

Rebel sat up, blood and foam stringing from his nostrils. His good eye darted around, and he shook his grisly head back and forth as if shaking off a long, hard sleep.

Dad said, "I thought he was-"

"He was dead!" Dr. Lezander wore an expression of utter shock, white circles ringing his eyes. " Mein... my G.o.d! That dog was dead!"

"He's alive," I said. I sniffled and grinned. "See? I told you!"

"Impossible!" Dr. Lezander had almost shouted it. "His heart wasn't beating! His heart had stopped beating, and he was dead!"

Rebel tried to stand, but he didn't have the strength. He burped. I went to him and touched the warm curve of his back. Rebel started hiccuping, and he laid his head down and began to lick the cool steel. "He won't die," I said confidently. My crying was done. "I prayed Death away from him."

"I don't... I can't..." Dr. Lezander said, and that's all he could say.

Case #3432 went unsigned.

Rebel slept and woke up, slept and woke up. Dr. Lezander kept checking his heartbeat and temperature and writing everything down in a notebook. Mrs. Lezander came down and asked Dad and me if we would like some tea and apple cake, and we went upstairs with her. I was secure in the knowledge that Rebel would not die while I was gone. Mrs. Lezander poured Dad a cup of tea, while I got a gla.s.s of Tang to go with my cake. As Dad called Mom to tell her it looked like Rebel was going to pull through and we'd be home after a while, I wandered into the den next to the kitchen. In that room, four bird cages hung from ceiling hooks and a hamster ran furiously on a treadmill in his own cage. Two of the bird cages were empty, but the other two held a canary and a parakeet. The canary began to sing in a soft, sweet voice, and Mrs. Lezander walked in with a bag of birdseed.

"Would you like to feed our patients?" she asked me, and I said yes. "Just a little bit now," she instructed. "They haven't been feeling well, but they'll be better soon."

"Who do they belong to?"

"The parakeet belongs to Mr. Grover Dean. The canary there-isn't she a pretty lady-belongs to Mrs. Judith Harper."

"Mrs. Harper? The teacher?"

"Yes, that's right." Mrs. Lezander leaned forward and made tiny smacking noises to the canary. That noise was strange, coming from such a horsey mouth. The bird picked delicately at the seed I'd poured into its feedtray. "Her name is Tinkerbell. h.e.l.lo there, Tinkerbell, you angel you!"

Leatherlungs had a canary named Tinkerbell. I couldn't imagine it.

"Birds are my favorite," Mrs. Lezander said. "So trusting, so full of G.o.d and goodness. Look over here, at my aviary."

Mrs. Lezander showed me her set of twelve hand-painted ceramic birds, which rested atop a piano. "They came with us all the way from Holland," she told me. "I've had them since I was a little girl."

"They're nice."

"Oh, much better than nice! When I look at them, I have such pleasant memories: Amsterdam, the ca.n.a.ls, the tulips bursting forth in spring by the thousands." She picked up a ceramic robin and stroked the crimson breast with her forefinger. "They were broken in my suitcase when we had to pack up quickly and get out. Broken all to pieces. But I put them all together again, each and every one. You can hardly see the cracks." She showed me, but she'd done a good job of repairing them. "I miss Holland," she said. "So much."

"Are you ever goin' back?"

"Someday, maybe. Frans and I talk about it. We've even gotten the travel brochures. Still... what happened to us... the n.a.z.is and all that terrible..." She frowned and returned the robin to its place between an oriole and a hummingbird. "Well, some broken things are not so easily mended," she said.

I heard a dog barking. It was Rebel's bark, hoa.r.s.e but strong. The sound was coming up from the bas.e.m.e.nt through an air vent. Then I heard Dr. Lezander call, "Tom! Cory! Will both of you come down here, please?"

We found Dr. Lezander taking Rebel's temperature again, by the bottom route. Rebel was still listless and sleepy, but he showed no signs of dying. Dr. Lezander had applied a white ointment to Rebel's wounded muzzle and had him connected now to two needles and bottles of dripping clear liquid. "I wanted you to see this animal's temperature," he said. "I've taken it four times in the last hour." He picked up his notebook and wrote down the thermometer's reading. "This is unheard of! Absolutely unheard of!"

"What is it?" Dad asked.

"Rebel's body temperature has been dropping. It seems to have stabilized now, but half an hour ago I thought he was going to be dead." Dr. Lezander showed Dad the readings. "See for yourself."

"My G.o.d." Dad's voice was stunned. "It's that low?"

"Yes. Tom, no animal can live with a body temperature of sixty-six degrees. It's just... absolutely impossible!"

I touched Rebel. My dog was no longer warm. His white hair felt hard and coa.r.s.e. His head turned, and the single eye found me. His tail began to wag, with obvious effort. And then the tongue slid from between the teeth in that awful, flesh-ripped grin and licked my palm. His tongue was as cold as a tombstone.

But he was alive.

Rebel stayed at Dr. Lezander's house. Over the following days, Dr. Lezander st.i.tched his torn muzzle, filled him full of antibiotics, and was planning on amputating the crushed leg but then it began to wither. The white hair fell away, exposing dead gray flesh. Intrigued by this new development, Dr. Lezander postponed the amputation and instead wrapped the withering leg to monitor its progress. On the fourth day in Dr. Lezander's care, Rebel had a coughing fit and vomited up a ma.s.s of dead tissue the size of a man's fist. Dr. Lezander put it in alcohol in a bottle and showed it to Dad and me. It was Rebel's punctured lung.

But he was alive.

I began riding Rocket over to Dr. Lezander's every day after school to check on my dog. Each afternoon, the doctor wore a freshly puzzled expression and had something new to show me: pieces of vomited-up bones that could only be broken ribs, teeth that had fallen out, the blinded eye that had popped from its socket like a white pebble. For a while Rebel picked at strained meat and slurped a few tonguefuls of water, and the newspapers at the bottom of his cage were clotted and soaked with blood. Then Rebel stopped eating and drinking, wouldn't touch food or water no matter how much I urged him. He curled up in a corner, and stared with his one eye at something behind my shoulder, but I couldn't figure out what had his attention. He would sit like that for an hour or more, as if he'd gone to sleep with his eye open, or he was lost in a dream. I couldn't get him to respond even when I snapped my fingers in front of his muzzle. Then he would come out of it, all of a sudden, and he would lick my hand with his tombstone tongue and whine a little bit. Then he might sleep, shivering, or he might slide off into the haze again.

But he was alive.

"Listen to his heart, Cory," Dr. Lezander told me one afternoon. I did, using the stethoscope. I heard a slow, labored thud. Rebel's breathing was like the sound of a creaking door in an old deserted house. He was neither warm nor cold; he just was. Then Dr. Lezander took a toy mouse and wound it up, and he set it loose to twist and turn right in front of Rebel, while I listened to his heartbeat through the stethoscope. Rebel's tail wagged sluggishly. The sound of his heart never changed an iota from its slow, slow beating. It was like the working of an engine set to run at a steady speed, day and night, with no increase or decrease in power no matter what the engine's job required. It was the sound of a machine beating in the darkness without purpose or joy or understanding. I loved Rebel, but I hated the hollow sound of that heartbeat.

Dr. Lezander and I sat on his front porch in the warm October afternoon light. I drank a gla.s.s of Tang and ate a slice of Mrs. Lezander's apple cake. Dr. Lezander wore a dark blue cardigan sweater with gold b.u.t.tons; the mornings had taken a chilly turn. He sat in a rocking chair, facing the golden hills, and he said, "This is beyond me. Never in my life have I seen anything like this. Never. I should write it up and send it to a journal, but I don't think anyone would believe me." He folded his hands together, a tawny spill of sunlight on his face. "Rebel is dead, Cory."

I just stared at him, an orange mustache on my upper lip.

"Dead," he repeated. "I don't expect you to understand this, when I don't. Rebel doesn't eat. He doesn't drink. He voids nothing. His body is not warm enough to sustain his organs. His heartbeat is... a drum, played over and over in the same tattoo without the least variation. His blood-when I can squeeze any out-is full of poisons. He is wasting away to nothing, and still he lives. Can you explain that to me, Cory?"