Once Posie had become eight years old Mom had begun looking at him strangely, had become afraid to play with him, to leave the house with him, and eventually to leave the house at all. The Man in the Gray Suit also began behaving differently. Most often they would continue their walks and talks—but never at home—the man simply handed Mom an envelope and she would return to her room and her TV—that small box like TV.

After the tragedy of the lady’s sandwich and the raccoon The Game began. The Man in the Gray Suit was mostly not around. Perhaps twice a month he would come see Posie. Otherwise mom homeschooled him and seemed pained at her inability to play with him, and even more pained when Posie would ‘get rambunctious’ and climb the fence to explore the neighborhood. The Man in the Gray Suit discovered this and addressed it.

“Posie, your explorations of the world are permitted. Friends are not. They would eventually disappoint in any event. At midnight climb out of your window and check the mailbox down by the street. On occasion there will be a note paper within. You shall do as the notepaper specifies. This will prepare you for success as an adult.”

“Yes Sir,” Posie had chirped, standing attentively as he had been taught.

Most nights there was no night. Some nights there were. Some nights, he discovered, there were lady’s foot prints around the mail box. He counted these nights, and noted the details such as weight shift, time passed since the footprints had been made, etc. The Man in the Gray Suit was pleased.

One night there was a note that read:

Walk along Peninsula Highway, avoiding police, until you come to the wrecking yard. Burrow under the fence and befriend the dog. Remain with the dog until dawn. Climb the fence with the dog. Let the dog go free. If the dog is cut on the razor wire you shall receive no Reese’s Cups when next we meet.

So, silently, the notepaper had said these things according to the way of the walking stick-figure print of The Man in the Gray Suit—a man, that for all his wisdom—who could not write in the flowing way of Mom, or later, after Mom’s accident, Tina.

The dirt under the fence tasted kind of foul, and the wire bottom that stuck him in the back tasted funny, not like good steel, but some phony yucky steel all mucked up so it would not rust. As he stood up on the inside of the fence he could hear the dog—a massive scraggly-haired dog who stood as tall as Posie and was three times his size. The dog slathered and snarled, stalking slowly toward him. Unphased Posie walked up to the dog and thought, I’m sleepy, let’s curl up. When the sky brightens we will run free.

The great dog whined and licked his face, and Posie hugged his new friend.

It was so nice sleeping with his new friend that they missed dawn by a few crow caws, and piled out of the doghouse together. He looked around and saw a point in the high razor-topped fence line where it neared a dirt rutted hill of weeds where older boys sometime rode their four-wheelers and BMX bikes, and Posie had only been allowed to run.

The dog stood by attentively as Posie arranged a stairway of rubber tires that would permit them to walk up to the razor wire. If one could get past the razor wire he would be able to leap onto the hillside and run free, free and fast! After the crows stopped cawing they stood and admired the tire staircase.

Then came the metal sound, and the smell of steel chain links pulling apart, and the heavy scuff of a man’s boots. “What in hell is you doin’ here boy?” came the snarl of a gruff sounding man.

Posie turned and saw the man standing there, a big black man with a beard and overalls, glaring at him, and at the dog. He snarled to the dog, “I will tan your hide Buster and then sell you to the pit handlers if this is all the good you for!”

Run, run with me!

The dog hesitated and then took off gingerly up the holey tire ramp. The man was cursing down behind and dragging the gate chain, swishing it like a whip.

Scruffy—who had to have a name better than Buster, so was named by Posie on the spot—slipped and one foreleg plunged down in between two tires. He began to panic and thrash. Posie knew that if the dog rolled over his leg would break as he went falling off the edge. He hooked his little arms under Scruffy’s chest, heaved him overhead, and set him on his shoulders and began to run up the tire stair.

The man was cussing differently now, hesitantly. When they came to the wire, Scruffy’s heart was beating at twice the rate it should be so he thought, Free, with me

He set Scruffy down before the razor wire, thought intensely about leaping to the hill just beyond the fence, and then laid down on the razor wire. He could feel the razors pushing into his skin, the man’s heavy feet pounding up the tire stair, and Scruffy’s paws digging into his back and pushing off.

He saw Scruffy hit the weed-grown clump of dirt he had named a hill, and make his way to its top with his long shaky legs. The dog turned to look at him and waited. That is when he felt the massive hands grab his ankles and lift him with a welter of blood dripping through his shredded shirt.

“I’m sorry kid—Good Lord look at you. I’ll have to catch Buster later. You need looking after—off to the hospital with you son. Then it’s the police and yo Daddy—come whoopin’ that lille’ ass I bet!”

Posie was now standing on the top tire in front of the man, who was so heavy that his own footing was none too good. The man then touched his shoulders lightly with his big hands and then began using them to speak, “What on earth are you doing boy. You could have been kilt over dat mangy hound.”

He heard Buster whine. He then apologized to the big man who seemed so concerned over him and so uncaring where his own dog was concerned. “I’m sorry Mister.”

Posie then cranked a round kick to the inside of the man’s booted foot and sent that foot and the leg attached to it plunging down in a tire hole, and through a gap in the tires below.

“Boy,” the man bellowed, “I’ll be whoopin Buster fo dat and turning you ova to Juvy Hall!”

The man’s hands waved as Posie kicked the other foot into a hole and he fell into a seated split.

“I’m not sorry about that then, Mister.”

The man was now his own height and just looked into his eyes with a big unasked question, and asked another one instead, “Wa’s da mata wit you boy?”

Scruffy whined again, wanting to go, worried about another mean dog-bossing man. So Posie, bleeding from numerous cuts, shirt soaked red, answered the big junkyard man whose legs were jammed down into the tire pile, and winced over a twisted ankle, “I’m special, and not sorry about it. I am sorry about this.”

With that Posie jumped one-footed onto the man’s big shoulder, and then with the other foot on top of his big grippy-curled head, and leaped for the hillside, clearing the razor wire even as he heard the man’s cry of pain, “Ahyye!”

He landed as another deep voice sounded down in the yard. He tore Scruffy’s collar off without even unbuckling it, just be tearing the leather, and they were off, running together for freedom over the hill as the junkyard man yelled after him, “You evil lille muvasucka! My neck is spraineded!”

Scruffy had never been so happy. On the way across the desolate bike trails and heaped mounds of weed-sprouting dirt Posie thought of the Lady with the Gray Hound, of how nice she was, of how much Scruffy would like living with her and her pretty dog.

“Muvasuca!” came the call of the parting wind as they charged across the grassy wasteland toward Peninsula Highway and the park beyond.