Thirty-Eight

THIRTY-EIGHT

Michael heard the barking and thought of Mr. Maclachley’s junkyard. He used to pass the old man’s auto-wreckers every day after school. The chain-link fence stretched the length of the block, it being the only barrier between the eleven-year-old schoolboy in the ill-fitting clothes and the old man’s guard dog.

Before boarding the route 243 bus to town, Michael thought the worst fear he would ever experience was that evoked by Mr. Maclachley’s Rottweiler. In its bark, young Michael heard screaming, gutted children, laughing maniacs—noises that stalked him even into nightmares where he was running past the fence as fast as he could, the black monster leaping at the mesh through clouds of dust.

One day his sports sneakers fell out of his backpack. Michael hadn’t dared go back for them. When he got home, his mother yelled at him.

His father went back for the shoes.

Maclachley’s dog never attacked him, of course, or any of the other kids who had to run the dreaded junkyard