Mercy on These Teenage Chimps by Gary Soto Page A

me. I was sadder that my trike was gone from my life. The boy seemed deserving of a trike, but he didn't know that Eric had probably copped it from a church. I was sure he had given it to the little boy to get on the good side of Alyssa. But as I walked away with Tammy on my left and Jessica on my right, I wondered how much of a good side Alyssa had.

    "Don't feel bad," Jessica cooed.
    We had returned to batting the balloon in the air, but it was I who failed to keep it afloat. My mood had darkened.
    "I can't help it," I replied. "He's a bully. Just because he has a truck!"
    I scratched Tammy's head and hoped that I could live up to what my new dog thought of me. Why couldn't I be brave instead of a wimp pushed around by a bully? A bully who was also a thief!
    "Alyssa's not nice either." Jessica released a sigh. "I know you're feeling bad."
    "I am," I admitted. I was tired of my role as Cupid and tired of climbing onto roofs and turning on valves and rescuing cats.
    We stood in silence, or near silence, as Tammy had cornered a flea in her shoulder and was attacking it with chomping teeth.
    "Let me show you something," Jessica said after a while. She pulled on my arm and started in a direction that wouldn't lead us to Joey's place.
    "What about Joey?" I was determined to deliver Jessica to Joey and then go my own way, which for me would be a Sunday meal and an hour of
Animal Planet.
"Don't you want to see him?"
    "He's not going anywhere," she retorted. "You said he's not coming down."
    We hurried six blocks to the industrial part of Pinkerton and stopped in front of an abandoned broom factory. A portion of the roof was missing and through these holes birds entered and exited. A stray cat lurked near an oil barrel. And were those bats hanging in the eaves?
    "I remember this place," I remarked. "They gave away a bunch of brooms when they shut down. We got red ones."
    "My grandfather started the factory."
    "No!"
    "He did. He made brooms that went all over the place. In fact, when I went to see the
Queen Mary
in Long Beach, I saw one of his brooms. A sailor was using it."
    "Wow," I uttered. It struck me as amazing that all the things made in this town—brooms, baseball caps, computers, or boxes of raisins—could circle the globe.
    We ducked our heads and scooted through the chain-link fence. We walked around the outer grounds of the factory. A couple of rusty trucks sat with flat tires in the shadow of a tall smokestack. A rusty gasoline pump looked ready to fall over.
    "That's where they put the straw," Jessica pointed out. "And that's where they lay my dog when he got killed. That's what Dad said."
    I eyed Jessica, confused. I was suddenly overwhelmed by the smell of hay, though the pile that filled the bin was mushy in its state of decomposition.
    "My dad used to be the foreman here." She petted Tammy, who had sidled up next to her. "He used to take Mercury—that was my dog—to work. One day, Mercury got killed when a roll of baling wire fell on him."
    I swallowed and wasn't sure what to say. I had lost a cat once—to old age—and had begun to understand mortality when one morning I found my hamster, Melvin, on his back, with his eyes open and sort of grinning. I had lost a lot of playground fights. But a dog getting killed? And in an accident? That would be the worst.
    "He was a great dog. He could swim." Jessica described how she and Mercury would paddle in Bass Lake. He was also the perfect alarm clock. In the mornings, she recalled with a big smile, he scratched at her bedroom door at exactly a quarter to seven. And for comfort, what was a better shoulder than a dog's?
    "Poor Mercury," I said. At that moment I wished I had had a dog when I was little. "How old was he?"
    "Six, I think. He was so cute."
    I observed a roll of baling wire next to the bin where straw was kept. I wondered whether it was the same roll that had killed Mercury. I wondered whether his body was buried near the factory, or maybe