“You know, this is crazy,” I said. “But I’m just a tiny bit hungry. Did we even have dinner?”

30

I KEPT MY SPOT by the fence while Lawrence ran back to the cabin for the tools of his trade. He was back in under ten minutes with his two cases. From the larger one he pulled out the laptop, which he made sure, when he opened it, wasn’t facing the house. Didn’t want them seeing a tiny square of blue light off in the distance. In the same case he had two sets of headphones and some other gear. He handed me one set of phones, which I slipped around my neck, and he did the same with his. He got his shotgun microphone from the other case and gave it to me.

“Point that at the house, holding it steady as you can. I’m not quite ready yet, but it’ll help me do other stuff if you can do that.”

“Sure,” I said, holding the gun with both hands. “This is about my skill level right here.”

Lawrence began tapping away at the laptop, moving the cursor around, opening boxes. I didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was doing. “Do I need to have any of this explained to me?” I asked.

Lawrence didn’t even look at me. “No.” He slipped on his headphones, as if doing a test, then took them back off. “The first thing we’re going to want to know is whether the dogs scarfed down those bugs without destroying them.”

I watched the farmhouse. Soft sounds emanating from within, a shadow passing by a window. The dogs appeared out of the darkness, bounding up the porch steps and scratching at the front door, bumping into one another. Someone, I couldn’t tell who, opened the screen enough to let them slip inside. “Hey, boys!”

“They’re back in,” I said.

“I think we’ve only got one,” Lawrence said, pulling one side of the headphones away from his ear. “I’m picking up one mike, but not the other. It must have got chewed right through.”

“Can I listen?”

Lawrence told me to slip my phones on. This is what I heard:

“Pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump.”

“What the hell is that?” I whispered. There was another background sound, too, harder to pin down, but regular, almost a whistle.

“That would be DOS,” Lawrence said. “Dog Operating System. Heartbeat, breathing. I’m gonna see what I can do to filter some of that out.”

I listened some more. “Pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump and that’s all pa-thump, pa-thump homework pa-thump dishes, beer over here pa-thump, pa-thump.”

“This is crazy,” I said. “You can’t hear a damn thing for the heartbeat. And it sounds like whichever dog swallowed the mike is roaming from room to room.”

“Zack, just chill,” Lawrence said, fiddling some more with his computer. “Okay, I’ve got your shotgun mike working now, so just focus it on the house. I’ll start coordinating the mikes, aim for the same thing from different directions. The dogs have had a good runaround. At some point, they should collapse and snooze. If one does, the other probably will.”

“They do share a brain,” I said.

On the headphones: “Hey, boy, howya doing. Fuck, what did you get into?”

Slightly muffled, but an actual entire sentence. Timmy, I figured, or one of Charlene’s sons. Commenting, no doubt, on the dog’s breath. After a meal of fish guts, you really needed a mint.

“There’s a blanket on the floor in the kitchen,” I whispered. “They curl up there.”

Lawrence stayed focused on his screen, which looked like a graph with different bars sliding up and down depending on what sounds came through the headphones. He made some adjustments with the cursor. The heartbeats, while still there, receded faintly into the background.

With the headphones on, my hands wrapped tightly around the shotgun mike, and watching the house so intently, I jumped when Lawrence tapped my knee. “Shit!” I said. “You just gave me a fucking heart attack.”

“Aim the mike more toward the back of the house. I think that’s where the kitchen is.”

“That’s right,” I said, recalling the layout from the dinner. I adjusted my aim ever so slightly. Lawrence held up his hand, indicating I should stop.

“Jeffrey!” Timmy, no doubt about it. Some shuffling, footsteps.

“Yeah?”

“…what…you…doing out of your room?”

“…get some water…”

“You’re grounded, buster…want out, you’ll hand over those figures.”

Lawrence shook his head. “Aww man, I never meant to get the kid in trouble,” he said softly. “Couldn’t he have just hid them from the get-go? Shit…”

Jeffrey again. “But I really like them.”

“Yeah, well, no water, no dessert, no nothing for you till you hand them over to me.”

“Jeez, Dad.” A different voice, not so deep, softer. This had to be May, unless Charlene liked to call her husband “Dad,” which seemed unlikely. I whispered to Lawrence, “The daughter, Jeffrey’s mom.”

May said, “What’s the big deal about a couple of little figures? So what if they’re black? They’re just-”

“As long as he’s…my roof, he’s going to live by my rules, and that…for you, too. Am I gonna have to take…belt to ya?”

“It’s…fucking nigger’s fault.”

Wendell or Dougie.

“…go back and kick his black ass…”

Lawrence didn’t flinch, just kept listening.

“No,” said Timmy. “We got more important things…do.”

“It’s not right, him gettin’ away with that. My neck’s still hurtin’.”

“Yeah.” The other brother. “And my back, I think it might be broken or something.”

“If your back was broken, you wouldn’t be standing there.” Timmy.

“You shoulda seen it,” Jeffrey said. “He had both of them on the ground in like seconds.” I thought I could detect a hint of admiration coming through.

Then some shouting. “Sorry,” Jeffrey said.

“It was wrong, what he did.” Another woman, but not May. Charlene. “You can’t tell my boys they can’t make this right. It’s their pride.”

A bang. Someone bringing a fist down on a table, maybe. “Not now!” Timmy, for sure.

I whispered to Lawrence, “You’re always causing trouble. I thought it was just me.” Lawrence waved at me to shut up.

“Put him to bed,” Timmy said. “Little shit’s gonna learn…for…all…”

Lawrence fiddled with his settings. We were losing the conversation. “Dog’s on the move,” Lawrence said. “Come on, boy, go back to the kitchen. Shit!”

The voices largely faded away. The little bit we were getting, I guessed, was from the shotgun mike in my hand.

For the next five minutes we got little more than the sounds of a dog patting around the house, a voice occasionally coming in, then fading out. We each had one ear covered with a headphone, the other exposed so we could talk more easily to one another.

“This is hopeless,” Lawrence said. “We’re going to have to come up with another plan.”

“Like what? Wanna say sorry to the boys with a delivery of Big Macs, you can sneak some bugs into the special sauce?”

Lawrence looked pissed and frustrated. And then, from the headphones, clear as a bell:

“I’m gonna head out to the barn.” Wendell, I thought. “I could use a hand.”

“Yeah,” said Timmy.

The dog had returned to the kitchen, and was, I suspected, curled up again on the rug. I was steadying the shotgun mike, about to slip the other half of the headphones into place, when I heard some rustling behind me.

“Lawrence,” I said.

A few feet off, something bumping into branches. I set the shotgun mike onto the forest floor and reached slowly into my inside jacket pocket, where I’d tucked the can of bear spray Dad had found in Leonard Colebert’s backpack.

“There’s something out there,” I whispered. I was holding my breath, and I was betting Lawrence was, too. More rustling in the trees, about fifteen yards off to the left, it sounded like. The idea of encountering the bear in the daytime was scary enough. But the thought of running into him at night, that was truly terrifying.