Chapter 43

Jimothy Whyte

Talking to Elizabeth always made Jimothy feel better. Crying made him feel better too. His paintings for his friends were gone, and now they would not be finished in time for his birthday. But they could be done later, and it would be okay. But Hazel could not come back, and that was not okay.

He put Michael’s phone in his pocket, grabbed his cane, and stood. The black cane had been in the back of Mike’s car. He didn’t like the black cane as much as the wooden cane, which was now probably gone forever. What was fun about the wooden cane was that Hazel liked to try to bite it whenever Jim was walking with it, which made things interesting. Thinking about Hazel made him start sniffling again. He went to the bathroom and blew his nose on some toilet paper.

Their motel room was tiny and had only one bed, but that was fine. Mike thought they should only use cash, but he didn’t have very much. Mike worried about this, but Jim didn’t. Mike would figure it out. Mike always figured something out.

Their room smelled like cigarettes, and the windows were dirty, and everything was slightly greasy. A small TV sat sad and alone on a chipped dresser, but it was broken. Mike had brought in a bag full of rocks he’d collected from outside, since Jim didn’t have much to do without his phone, or his paints, or Hazel. These rocks lay scattered over the desk. Jim had spent most of the morning stacking and re-stacking them in different ways. There were a lot of red and yellow and orange rocks, and also a lot of rocks with stripes, which Jim liked. One time he had made a tower eight rocks high before it fell. He wanted to tell Mike about that.

He exited their motel room into a warm sunny day. The air was dry, and everything out here was bright. He put a hand up to shade his eyes and looked around. He stood on the sidewalk by a parking lot. Mike’s car was right in front of him. Across the lot was a street, and across the street were some houses and small shops. The street ended a few blocks down to the right. The town ended there too. A grassy reddish landscape stretched beyond into a vast desert. They had sure driven a long way overnight.

The trees were budding here. Jimothy imagined them like paintbrushes. He saw them dipped into pots of ink the size of swimming pools, then scraped across the sky, their skeletal branches leaving scratchy swaths of color over the blue, the white, the distant red of the hills. If he were big enough to paint with trees as paintbrushes, it would be difficult to stack little rocks. He’d have to stack boulders instead. And where would he get all the paint? And what canvas would be large enough? He imagined a great white sheet of paper stretched across the plains—a whole blank landscape his to color. It made him smile.

Jim had no idea where Mike had gone, but the town wasn’t very big. Mike hadn’t said anything about Jim having to stay in the hotel room all day, although that was probably what he meant when he’d said to “lay low” before sleeping all morning.

But the day was beautiful. And the air smelled good. Jimothy looked at the ball in his hand, which he had brought out from the room. He tried bouncing it on the sidewalk. This worked well. His attempt to catch it at the height of its bounce met with less success, and he instead knocked it away into the parking lot.

He used the black cane to help him dismount the curb onto the pavement of the parking lot. When he looked up to locate the ball, there it was: bouncing in front of him, rising up to eye level with each bounce. It seemed to Jimothy that the ball noticed it had been seen, and it began to move back and forth a little with each bounce as though excited.

It began to move away very slowly across the parking lot. It went about ten feet before stopping.

Jimothy checked around to see if anyone was watching. No signs of human life nearby, except for a few cars passing down the town’s main street a block to his left. He followed the ball. It took him around the corner of the motel to a grassy area like a park. A few stained wooden picnic tables squatted on an expanse of yellowish grass, shaded by trees. No sign of Mike, but there was a white dog resting in the shade beneath a tree. Its chest rose and fell rapidly, panting away the midday heat. This dog’s fur was not merely white—it was absolutely white. Pure white all over, like a freshly opened bottle of white paint. Jim had seen only one other creature in his life that looked like that.

The ball stopped being possessed as soon as Jim set foot in the park. It fell to the dry grass, inert. Jim was careful when he bent down to pick it up. He fell over anyway on accident, rolling onto the grass. He laughed, sat up, and picked up the ball.

The dog, alerted to wakefulness by Jim’s laugh, raised its head. Its ears twitched and its tail wagged as it looked directly at Jim. Jim could plainly see that this dog had no eyes. The fur went smoothly over the place where they should have been.

Jim could also see that apart from the eyelessness and white coloration, this dog looked exactly like Hazel.

“…Hazel?” he said.

The dog’s head swung around in violent circles, unable to contain its excitement. It leapt to its feet and ran to Jimothy in a wild prance, giving every appearance of being so happy that it could not quite remember how to use its legs. Exactly like Hazel.

The dog bowled Jim over backwards and licked his face. The dog’s tongue, though white, was warm and wet. Its fur was soft. Jim hugged it and laughed as the dog squirmed around in his grasp. This was Hazel. Somehow.

“Just to be clear,” he said as he scratched Hazel, “I don’t actually think you’re an angel though. Not a real one.”

Elizabeth had just said something about this. He would have to call her back soon. But for now, he would play with Hazel.

Jimothy took hold of the blue rubber ball and tossed it across the park. Hazel knew immediately what game this was: this was the one where he chased down the ball and then ran all over the place with it for about five minutes before dropping it somewhere and forgetting about it.

This time, though, it happened a little differently. Hazel leapt into the air in excitement and ran after the ball. Less than five feet into his journey, he vanished and appeared roughly where the ball was located, ten feet up in the air in the middle of the park. He attempted to snag the ball out of the air, failed, and fell all the way onto a wooden picnic table below. He landed on his back with a painful thud; the wood of the picnic table creaked. With a wild flail of his legs he righted himself, located the ball, and again went for it like a missile. Once more he disappeared and immediately relocated to the ball. But his momentum carried him forward and he again missed his chance to catch it in his jaws. He somersaulted off the grass onto the sidewalk.

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Jim watched this with surprise. Hazel had always been really fast, even for a dog, but he had never been that fast. Jimothy was a little worried about Hazel taking that big fall, but he seemed to be fine. Elizabeth had said once that Callie didn’t ever get hurt. But Callie also was probably less enthusiastic than Hazel. Callie was chill and classy. Like Elizabeth.

Hazel finally managed to seize the ball. He appeared up in a tree for a second, fell out of it, and landed on the hood of a parked car all the way across the parking lot. Then he was up on the roof of the motel, and then on the grass in the middle of the park. He pranced around, dropping the ball and snapping it up again a few times.

“Hazel!” said Jimothy.

Hazel dropped the ball and looked at Jim on full alert, panting with a broad grin. Jim leaned way over to one side, just in case. Sure enough, Hazel zoomed toward him and almost immediately teleported, his momentum carrying him with great speed through the place where Jim’s torso had been. Hazel recovered quickly, claws scrabbling on the sidewalk, and he shoved his head under Jim’s right arm, hauling him back into an upright sitting position. Jim scratched him on the neck and smiled while Hazel thrashed about with uncontainable energy.

He had no idea how this had happened. But he was glad it did. His vision was blurry, and there was wetness on his face.

“Jim! What are you doing?” said Mike, behind him.

Jim turned around. “Mike! Look, Mike! It’s Hazel!” Hazel wriggled out from under Jim’s arm and ran to Mike, where he darted playfully back-and-forth the way he always did.

Mike stood with his camera hanging from a strap around his neck. He stared at Hazel, his mouth open, his hands half-raised as though ready to fend off the white dog. “That’s…no. It…what?” Mike put a hand up to shade his eyes from the sun. Jim understood. The sunlight made Hazel’s fur shine so bright that it almost hurt to look at him.

“Watch!” said Jim. He intended to throw the ball, but then he realized that Hazel had dropped it thirty feet away. Instead he grabbed a nearby stick. He threw it as hard as he could. It could not go far since it was a small stick, but that didn’t stop Hazel. The dog lunged forward and disappeared. He emerged off to the left and plunged directly into a thick bush, not anywhere close to the stick. Hazel barked and growled as he wrestled with the bush. Then he appeared in the air, ten feet above the stick Jim had thrown. He descended upon it, paws and teeth ready to apprehend the targeted twig. A flurry of white hit the ground. A moment later Hazel lay on his back, the twig gripped in his teeth, his white paws clawing at it as he writhed on the grass.

Jimothy laughed and clapped his hands. Mike stepped onto the grass and sat down beside him. “Jim…what’s going on?” His voice was soft.

“Remember Callie?”

“AJ’s cat?” Mike could not take his eyes off the white eyeless dog as it grappled with the twig.

“Yeah. Hazel’s like her now. I don’t know why.”

Hazel finished subduing the stick and rested upon it, panting with contentment. His head swiveled back and forth, seeking something interesting. His lack of eyes did not seem to matter to him at all.

Mike stood up. “Jim, no. That can’t be Hazel.”

“But it is Hazel,” said Jim. “Look at him.”

“I know it looks and acts like Hazel, but it’s not. It can’t be. I think it might be dangerous.”

“Mike, Hazel wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I mean it might be dangerous just having it around.”

“Elizabeth says he’s an angel, like Callie. And Elizabeth has had Callie around for a long time. You’ve seen Callie, right?”

Mike ran a hand through his hair.

“You need a haircut, Mike,” said Jimothy.

“Jim, my phone.”

Jimothy dug it out of his pocket and handed it up to Mike. “Who are you calling?”

“AJ.”

“Do you like AJ?”

“Not now, Jim.”

“Okay.” Wait. Did he mean he didn’t like AJ right now, or he didn’t want to talk about it right now? Jimothy opened his mouth to request clarification on this, but then decided not to ask. Not now, Jim. Okay.

Jimothy turned his attention back to Hazel. Hazel was never still for very long. He appeared placid now, but…

Hazel leapt to his feet and dashed in a big circle all the way around the park. Then again. On his third round he started appearing randomly in different parts of the circuit. Finally he returned to where he had started and settled down once more in exactly the same position as before. Hazel’s motives were often mysterious. He was “possessed by the spirits of Looney-Tunes characters,” according to Isaac.

It made Jim smile. He began stacking all the little rocks within arm’s reach.