Boy's Best Friend (7 page)

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That evening after dinner, Mr. Masson brought up the caterpillars. “It looks like it's caterpillar time,” he said. “And you know what that means?”

George did know. Each spring when the caterpillars left their nests they would crawl along the cement foundation of the house. There were hundreds of them. And if they weren't stopped they would begin to eat the greenery. So George's father paid the children to pick them off the foundation and collect them in coffee cans.

“I've upped the ante this year,” said Mr. Masson. “I'm paying a nickel per caterpillar.”

“Wow,” said Vivien, impressed. “Can we invite friends?”

“The more the merrier,” said Mr. Masson.

George's mother followed George up to his room with a clothes basket. She opened his dresser and stacked a pile of T-shirts in the drawer.

“Do your homework,” she said to George.

“How do you know it's not already done?” said George.

His mother raised her eyebrows and gave George one of her knowing looks.

George closed the dictionary and took out his homework. Maybe George couldn't prove that mothers had eyes in back of their heads, but they sure seemed to know what was going on.

Dear Dr. Sheldrake,

First I'd like you to know that my experiment with Bart, my dog, is going very well and I'm keeping a logbook. I know you do some experiments on staring. They seem really fun and I'd like to ask you something about them. I think people in some professions develop telepathy. Like teachers and maybe mothers. They always seem to know what's going on. It's like they have eyes in back of their head. Have you ever done any experiments with teachers or mothers?

Sincerely,

George Masson

Dear George,

Lots of people can tell when they're being looked at from behind. Most people have had this experience, as I think you'll discover if you ask your friends and members of your family. Surveys conducted in the state of Ohio showed that more than 90 percent of both grownups and children often had this experience. So there does seem to be a way in which we can feel when people are looking at us.

I've done many experiments to test this and it seems that many people really do have “eyes in back of their head.” Some people can even detect when they are being watched through a closed-circuit TV system.

I think teachers can feel what's happening behind them because they develop this sensitivity through practice, and they may be better at it than people who don't have to stand at the front of classrooms. It would be interesting to set up a test comparing the sensitivity of teachers with that of other grownups who are not teachers. As far as I know no one has done this yet.

Certainly in the animal kingdom mothers seem to be able to influence their children by some degree of telepathy. There is a wonderful study of foxes by a great American naturalist named William Long who wrote a book called
How Animals Talk
. In it, he describes how a vixen, a mother fox, controls her young just by her look. If one is getting too far away or playing too boisterously she just looks at him and “the eager cub suddenly checks himself, turns as if he had heard a command, catches the vixen's look, and back he comes like a trained dog to the whistle.”

If you are interested in reading more about how animals communicate, I think you'd enjoy William Long's book.

Best wishes,

Rupert Sheldrake

 

13

After school on Wednesday, Lester left the schoolyard and turned onto Cherry Street. He'd decided to kill time by wandering around the neighborhood before heading home. On Monday he'd taken a longer route, but Bill Gates had still gone out to the gate within minutes of his leaving school. On Tuesday Lester had ridden his bike and left school at 3 p.m. sharp, racing home as fast as he could. Bill Gates had been waiting 9 minutes—the exact time it had taken Lester to bike home.

Lester had noticed that a lot of the streets in his new neighborhood were named after fruits, or had something to do with them. He lived on Fig Street, but there was a Grove, Plum, and Orchard too. There was a playground on Orchard Street and Lester stopped and plopped himself into the bucket of one of the swings. Then he pumped high into the air and let go. He liked flying through the air. It made him feel like a bird.

Lester climbed the slide and threw himself down several times, once headfirst. Then he stopped to watch a group of kids playing tag, wondering if they might ask him to join them. But no one did.

Lester walked across a wide expanse of green grass hemmed in by a bike path.

“Bill Gates would love this,” he said out loud.

Lester sat down on a park bench. A whirlybird floated down from a maple tree above him. Lester opened its pod and felt the sticky stuff inside. It looked like mayonnaise. Lester leaned back and watched the world go by. Then he heard someone shout, “Isn't that the fat guy with the mustard?”

Who, me? thought Lester glancing around. Two guys whizzed past on skateboards.

“I hate mustard,” said one of them.

“It stinks,” said the other.

“Hey,” cried Lester. “It doesn't stink as much as the marsh.”

Lester stood up. He was ready to go home. He realized that he hadn't been repeating his mantra. “Moving is fun. Change can be positive,” he said halfheartedly.

Bill Gates was waiting on the walkway when Lester arrived.

“He's been there for 7 minutes,” said Lester's mother, grinning widely. Lester looked at his watch. It had taken him 12 minutes to walk from the park home.

“Come on, big guy,” said Lester. “Let's go for a walk. I found the perfect place. Almost,” he added, remembering the skateboarders.

Lester led Bill Gates toward the park. Bill Gates stopped once to sniff some weeds growing along the sidewalk and a second time to bark at a squirrel. Then he trotted on. When they got to the park Lester tossed a stick into the wide sea of green grass and Bill Gates bounded after it.

“Hey, you,” cried a groundsman. “No dogs allowed on the green. Get your mutt off there.”

“Is he talking to us?” said Lester, corralling Bill Gates. He looked around. There was no one on the green but them and the groundsman, who was strolling their way. He nodded stiffly.

“Can you imagine what this green would look like if everyone let their dogs on it?” he said.

Lester could imagine. It would look like the green in his neighborhood in Denver—a big patch of blotched grass and a lot of people and dogs having fun.

“I don't make the rules,” said the groundsman. He reached down and gave Bill Gates a pat.

At least he's friendly, thought Lester.

“Sorry,” said Lester.

“I'm sorry too,” said the groundsman.

They started home. “You can't do much here, can you?” said Lester. He repeated his mantra a few more times. “Moving is fun. Change can be positive.” Halfway home he stopped to pet Bill Gates.

“Don't worry about the green,” he said out loud. “Everyone makes mistakes.” At least people in Denver made mistakes. He wondered if maybe people from Cape Cod didn't.

Lester followed the maze of streets back to Fig, where he turned into his driveway, which ran alongside the house. His father had just gotten in from a run. “They have some fantastic trails for jogging here,” he said.

“Maybe,” said Lester. “But you're not allowed on the public grass.”

“That's a shame,” said Mr. Shoe. Then he added, “But the rules are different in every state, and in every town. And I guess we have to respect them, don't we?”

“I guess,” said Lester.

Lester and his father went into the kitchen. “I bet you didn't know that it's against the law to spit on the ground in some states,” his father said. He opened the refrigerator and downed a fruit smoothie.

Lester shook his head. He didn't know that. “I think they're all ketchup guys here,” he said.

“Ketchup guys?” said his father, looking puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“No one here likes mustard,” said Lester.

“I believe mustard's an acquired taste,” said Mr. Shoe. “I'd check back with them in a few months' time.”

Lester sighed. He wondered if Cape Cod was an acquired taste.

Lester rested his eyes on a mound of oatmeal cookies on a white porcelain plate on the kitchen counter. Ordinarily they would have set his mouth watering and he would have dived in. But now he wasn't very hungry. He still had that empty feeling that gnawed away at his insides. But he wasn't craving food. He was craving Denver.

Bill Gates hovered around his water bowl and food dish. He didn't seem hungry either.

Lester went upstairs and filled in his logbook. “You know when I'm coming home, buddy, don't you?” he said. “There's just one problem. This doesn't feel like home.” Lester sighed. “I miss Denver.”

That night Lester lay in bed and cried for the first time since he'd moved to Cape Cod. He felt the tears stream down his face, big bubbles of loneliness, of missing all the things that were familiar. “Maybe I am a little overweight,” he said to Bill Gates. “And maybe you have some mutt in you. But that didn't bother anyone in Denver.”

Lester dropped his head into Bill Gates's fur. It felt soft and warm. “I just want to go back to my real home,” he said. “Denver.”

Lester closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep. He dreamed he was a bird, swooping and soaring in and among the clouds. Beneath him was Denver and the green, burnished from wear and tear, where he used to take Bill Gates for a walk. When Lester woke up in the morning he'd made a decision. He didn't know how that could happen in his sleep, but it had. He reached into his desk drawer and took out the wad of money he'd been saving for an aquarium.

“We're going back to Denver,” he said to Bill Gates. He didn't think about what he'd do when he got there. He didn't really care.

 

14

The next day after school Lester stopped at the bus station before going home.

“I'd like a ticket to Denver,” he said to the woman at the window. “For Saturday morning.”

“How old are you?” asked the woman.

“Almost eleven,” said Lester.

The woman shook her head. “You have to be sixteen or traveling with someone who is sixteen or older.”

“I'm traveling with Bill Gates,” said Lester.

“Bill Gates?” said the woman, raising an eyebrow.

“He's a dog and he's seven,” said Lester, nodding. “But in dog years that's at least forty, so he's an adult.”

“Sorry, young man,” said the woman. “I can't sell you a ticket.”

“She didn't have to rub it in by calling me young,” Lester said to Bill Gates when he got home. Bill Gates had been waiting 14 minutes for Lester's arrival, three minutes less than the time it had taken Lester to walk from the bus station to his house. Lester opened his logbook and recorded his data. Then he closed it and opened his notebook. His eyes skimmed his list of virtues. He'd checked off a few but there were plenty left. He obviously hadn't given the mantra enough time to unleash them.

“I guess we'll just have to go on foot,” said Lester, scratching Bill Gates under the chin. “It might take days, or even weeks.” Lester stopped himself before he got to months. “There are tons of stories about dogs who find their way back home over thousands of miles. If they can do it, you can do it.” Lester rubbed Bill Gates's back. “And we can lose weight too,” he added. “That's what they call killing two birds with one stone.”

Lester followed Bill Gates into the backyard. Above him a swarm of birds soared across the sky, dipping and turning in perfect unison.

“They're returning from their winter home,” said Lester's mother, who was filling a bird feeder hanging from a tree.

“So I guess they have two homes,” said Lester. “One in the north and one in the south.” He reflected on how Denver was west and Cape Cod was east. But he didn't take that thought any further.

Lester went up to his room and stuffed a change of clothing into a backpack, along with a map, his travel toothbrush and toothpaste, a pack of Bill Gates's favorite biscuits, and his notebook. “This is good practice,” he said to Bill Gates. “Just taking the things you need. You really don't need too much,” he added. Then he rolled up his sleeping bag and his pup tent and strapped them to his backpack. The last thing he took was his house key, which was attached to a key chain with a rubber frog.

Suddenly, Lester was reminded of a book he'd had when he was little. It was called
A Boy, a Dog, a Frog, and a Friend.
He was a boy, Bill Gates was a dog. And there was a frog on the end of his key chain. The only thing missing was a friend.

 

15

Bill Gates was waiting on the walkway when Lester arrived home from school on his bike. It was Friday, day 9 of his experiment.

“He's been there 10 minutes,” said Lester's mother. She was standing on a ladder with a brush, putting the finishing touches on her studio. She'd painted it a bright sunny yellow.

Lester leaned down and nuzzled Bill Gates's nose. “I know what you're waiting for,” he said softly. “You're waiting to go to Denver. Me too. But you have to wait until tomorrow. Hey,” said Lester to his mother. “I thought you were painting your studio blue.”

Lester's mother smiled. “I thought so too,” she said. “But I had a change of heart.”

Lester stood in the middle of the freshly painted room. Sunshine poured through the window like a spotlight, bathing him in a golden halo.

“Maybe I could paint my room yellow,” he said aloud. Then he added quietly, “If I weren't going to Denver, which I am. Right, Bill Gates?”

Bill Gates got to his feet and followed Lester into the kitchen.