TUESDAY
At one o’clock in the morning, Danny woke to high-pitched cries coming from the kitchen. He got up, went out, and without turning the light on, stepped into Ruby’s pen.
“Kind of lonely out here?”
He picked her up and nestled her in his lap. She licked his fingers and curled into a ball. Danny thought about taking her back to his room, but no, she might piddle.
“This will be the hardest night,” Danny said. “I promise you’ll get used to it.”
He leaned back against the refrigerator. Banjo had whined a bit, too, when Danny first got him. He was bigger, but he still got lonesome.
“You lonesome, Ruby?”
Danny grabbed the tug-of-war rope from Ruby’s corral and whipped it across the kitchen. He laid his head back on the refrigerator and closed his eyes.
I’m sorry, Banjo. I’m so, so sorry.
Eventually Ruby fell asleep and Danny set her down. He went to his room and put on his jeans, boots, and T-shirt.
Outside, a banana moon cast just enough light to make shadows in the yard. The night air was warm.
Danny headed into the barn. Tyrell had a set of weights and a boxer’s heavy bag over in one corner that he slammed and hammered to build his strength and endurance.
Danny took off his T-shirt and put on a pair of boxing gloves. For a moment, he stood hugging the bag, listening to the rustling sound of some rodent in the barn.
He pushed the bag away, and when it swung back he laid into it.
Whack!
Whack!
Whack!
The bag swung out and came back, and Danny danced around it and poured his power into it.
Whack!
Whack-whack!
It felt good, especially when he hit it solid and the impact shot back through his arm to the muscles in his shoulders and his back.
Whomp! Whomp! Whomp-whomp!
Soon sweat stained the top of his jeans, and his bare chest and arms glistened. He bobbed in and out and around, raising dust around his boots, pummeling the bag.
For Banjo!
For Banjo!
For Banjo!
After ten minutes nonstop, he let the bag swing into him, grabbed and hugged it against his heaving, sweating chest.
Then he went at it again.
In a while he became aware of Dad leaning on the wall. That made him hit harder. His swelling fists inside the gloves were hot and sore.
The next time he looked, Dad was gone.
Enough…enough.
As he pulled the gloves off and hung them on the peg, a sense of peace fell over him. He was so tired nothing seemed to matter.
Under the open sky outside the barn, a star streaked across the night and vanished. All in all, that’s about as long as his life would be. Then he’d be gone.
Not a whole lot of time to make things right.
He wiped the sweat and dirt from his face with his T-shirt, then took a deep breath and went inside.
Dad was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and his magazine. Without looking up, he said, “Feel better?”
“I do.”
Dad nodded.
Danny looked at him, drinking coffee in the dead of night because he cared about his lying, cruel, mean-spirited, mixed-up son.
“Well…g’night,” Danny said, turning to leave.
Dad stood and took his cup to the sink. “Praise be. I was starting to think I might need another cup.”
Danny sat on his bed. He had to make things right.