To be honest, I might not have been too impressed with that dubious two hundred bucks we spent, but there was one part I’ll always cherish; it was Rory at the kitchen window, the morning we’d brought him home.
As was common for a Saturday, he staggered through the hallway around eleven, then thought he was still drunk, and dreaming.
Is that?
(He shook his head.)
What the hell?
(He wrung his eyes out.)
Until finally he shouted behind him:
“Oi, Tommy, what’s goin’ on ’ere?”
“What?”
“What-a-y’ mean what, are you shitting me? There’s a donkey in the backyard!”
“He’s not a donkey, he’s a mule.”
The query was stuck to his beer breath. “What’s the difference?”
“A donkey’s a donkey, a mule’s a cross between—”
“I don’t care if it’s a quarter horse crossed with a Shetland bloody pony!…”
Behind them, we were in stitches, till Henry eventually settled it. “Rory,” he said, “meet Achilles.”
By the end of the day he’d forgiven us—or at least enough to stay in. Or at least to stay in and complain.
In the evening we were all out back together, even Mrs. Chilman, and Tommy was going, “Hey, boy, hey, boy,” in the most loving voice you can imagine, and patting the scruff of his coat. The mule stood calmly eyeing him, while Rory was grumbling to Henry.
“Next he’s gonna take the bastard out to dinner, for Christ’s sake.”
In the night he lay smothered by Hector, and Rosy lay lightly snoring. From the left-hand bed you could hear it—an anguished but quiet muttering. “These animals are Goddamn killing me.”
* * *
—
In his running, I thought Clay might have lessened, or loosened, now that State was over, and the mule was in our keeping. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. If anything he was running harder, which somehow seemed to bother me.
“Why don’t you take a break?” I said. “You just won State, for God’s sake.”
He stared down the rest of Archer Street.
All that time and I’d never noticed it.
That morning was no exception:
It burned inside his
pocket.
“Hey, Matthew,” he said, “you coming?”
* * *