The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.
About anything.
“Need a poo, Todd.”
“Shut up, Manchee.”
“Poo. Poo, Todd.”
“I said
shut it.”
We’re walking across the wild fields southeast of town, those ones that slope down to the river and head on toward the swamp. Ben’s sent me to pick him some swamp apples and he’s made me take Manchee with me, even tho we all know Cillian only bought him to stay on Mayor Prentiss’s good side and so suddenly here’s this brand-new dog as a present for my birthday last year when I never said I wanted any dog, that what I said I wanted was for Cillian to finally fix the fissionbike so I wouldn’t have to walk every forsaken place in this stupid town, but oh, no, happy birthday, Todd, here’s a brand-new puppy, Todd, and even tho you don’t want him, even tho you never asked for him, guess who has to feed him and train him and wash him and take him for walks and listen to him jabber now he’s got old enough for the talking germ to set his mouth moving? Guess who?
“Poo,” Manchee barks quietly to himself. “Poo, poo, poo.”
“Just
have yer stupid poo and quit yapping about it.”
I take a switch of grass from beside the trail and I swat after him with it. I don’t reach him, I don’t mean to reach him, but he just laughs his little barking laugh and carries on down the trail. I follow after him, switching the switch against the grass on either side, squinting from the sun, trying not to think about nothing at all.
We don’t need apples from the swamp, truth be told. Ben can buy them at Mr. Phelps’s store if he really wants them. Also true: going to the swamp to pick a few apples is not a job for a man cuz men are never allowed to be so idle. Now, I won’t
officially become a man for thirty more days. I’ve lived twelve years of thirteen long months each and another twelve months besides, all of which living means I’m still one month away from the big birthday. The plans are being planned, the preparayshuns prepared, it will be a party, I guess, tho I’m starting to get some strange pictures about it, all dark and too bright at the same time, but nevertheless I will become a man and picking apples in the swamp is not a job for a man or even an almost-man.
But Ben knows he can ask me to go and he knows I’ll say yes to going because the swamp is the only place anywhere near Prentisstown where you can have half a break from all the Noise that men spill outta theirselves, all their clamor and clatter that never lets up, even when they sleep, men and the thoughts they don’t know they think even when everyone can hear. Men and their Noise. I don’t know how they do it, how they stand each other.
Men are Noisy creachers.
“Squirrel!” Manchee shouts and off he goes, jumping off the trail, no matter how loud I yell after him, and off I have to go, too, across the (I look round to make sure I’m alone)
goddam fields cuz Cillian’ll have a fit if Manchee falls down some
goddam snake hole and of course it’ll be my own
goddam fault even tho I never wanted the
goddam dog in the
goddam first place.
“Manchee! Get back here!”
“Squirrel!” I have to kick my way thru the grass, getting grublets stuck to my shoes. One smashes as I kick it off, leaving a green smear across my sneakers, which I know from experience ain’t coming out.
“Manchee!” I rage.
“Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!”
He’s barking round the tree and the squirrel’s skittering back and forth on the tree trunk, taunting him.
Come on, Whirler dog, says its Noise.
Come on, come get, come on, come get. Whirler, Whirler, Whirler. “Squirrel, Todd! Squirrel!”
Goddam, animals are stupid.
I grab Manchee by the collar and hit him hard across his back leg. “Ow, Todd? Ow?” I hit him again. And again. “Ow? Todd?”
“Come
on,” I say, my own Noise raging so loud I can barely hear myself think, which is something I’m about to regret, you watch.
Whirler boy, Whirler boy, thinks the squirrel at me.
Come get, Whirler boy. “You can eff off, too,” I say, except I don’t say “eff,” I say what “eff” stands for.
And I really, really shoulda looked round again.
Cuz here’s Aaron, right here, rising outta the grass from nowhere, rising up and smacking me cross the face, scratching my lip with his big ring, then bringing his hand back the other way, closed as a fist, catching my cheekbone but at least missing my nose because I’m falling into the grass, trying to fall away from his punch, and I let go of Manchee’s collar and off he runs back to the squirrel, barking his head off, the traitor, and I hit the grass with my knees and my hands, getting grublet stains all over everything.
And I stay there, on the ground, breathing.
Aaron stands over me, his Noise coming at me in fragments of scripture and of his next sermon and
Language, young Todd and
the finding of a sacrifice and
the saint chooses his path and
God hears and the wash of pictures that’s in everyone’s Noise, of things familiar and glancing flashes of –
What? What the forsaken –?
But up flies a loud bit of his sermon to block it out and I look up into his eyes and suddenly I don’t wanna know. I can already taste the blood where his ring cut my lip and I don’t wanna know. He never comes out here, men never do, they have their reasons, men do, and it’s just me and my dog only ever but here he is and I don’t don’t don’t wanna know.
He smiles down at me, thru that beard of his, smiles down at me in the grass.
A smiling fist.
“Language, young Todd,” he says, “binds us like prisoners on a chain. Haven’t you learned anything from yer church, boy?” And then he says his most familiar preaching. “If one of us falls, we all fall.”
Yes, Aaron, I think.
“With yer mouth, Todd.”
“Yes, Aaron,” I say.
“And the effs?” he says. “And the geedees? Because don’t think I didn’t hear them as well. Your Noise reveals you. Reveals us all.”
Not all, I think, but at the same time I say, “Sorry, Aaron.”
He leans down to me, his lips close to my face, and I can smell the breath that comes outta his mouth, smell the weight of it, like fingers grabbing for me. “God hears,” he whispers. “God
hears.”
And he raises a hand again and I flinch and he laughs and then he’s gone, like that, heading back toward the town, taking his Noise with him.
Copyright © 2008 by Patrick Ness. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
