Page 5 of Scout Takes the Lead
I moved over to my weight bench. I was proud of the body I’d built in the Army and I wasn’t going to let it go to seed. Maybe someday, when I was ready, it would help me attract a girlfriend. For a moment, Grace’s face flashed in my brain. No, I wasn’t going to ask her out. Not for a long time. I needed to work on my demons before I was ready to inflict them on someone else.
It was nearly midnight by then. My usual pattern was to take a few hours of calls, watch TV or YouTube videos until dawn, and finally go to sleep. But I’d had a lot more human contact during that day, from the animal shelter to the pet store, than I’d had in a long time, and I was tired.
I managed to sleep for a couple of hours, but around four I woke up abruptly, surprised by a noise outside the house. My body was rigid, my heart pounding. Somehow that noise had entered my dreams, becoming a Taliban commando sneaking around my apartment complex looking for a place to set off a bomb that would kill or maim me and dozens of my neighbors.
That wasn’t unusual. Nearly every day, I was tormented by memories of my time overseas. I couldn’t shop in crowded stores, too worried about potential suicide bombers. Almost every public place bothered me.
When he knew I was awake, Scout sat on the floor beside me and licked my face, and my heart rate began to slow. It was like he was telling me that he was there, walking point like a good scout, aware of any dangers that were lurking around. The way ahead was clear, he seemed to say.
“You’re a good boy, Scout.” I scratched behind his ears, and he yawned, stretching out his long pink tongue.
He climbed on the bed and snuggled next to me, his back against my stomach, and I managed to get back to sleep for another hour or so.
When I woke again, Scout was sitting up on the bed staring at me through those big brown eyes. “You probably want to go out, don’t you?” I asked. I got up, used the bathroom and took my morning pills, then took Scout out for a long walk around my neighborhood.
I liked to get out in that brief time between when the night workers came home and the hubbub of ordinary folks leaving for work. Scout pulled on the lead, but each time I tugged back, said, “No pull,” and then praised him when he walked normally. It felt like we were making progress.
Time moved by more quickly now that I had Scout to put me on a regular schedule. He needed to be fed and walked and played with, and we began to bond over the next couple of days.
On Thursday morning, my coffee maker stopped working. No warning, no red lights. Just wouldn’t turn on. “What am I going to do, Scout?” I asked. “I need my caffeine.”
He grabbed his lead with his jaws. “You want to go out?”
I remembered a piece of homework D’eriq had assigned me. He wanted me to go somewhere, a bar, restaurant, or coffee shop, and interact with an employee. It didn’t have to be an in-depth conversation, he said. But something more than simply placing my order and saying thank you.
Java Boys was a coffee shop that I passed often on my walks. From the outside, it looked like a big, open space, with lots of room between tables so I wouldn’t feel crowded. I hooked Scout’s lead and said, “Homework time.”
We walked easily down the street to the coffee shop. A couple of posters in the window advertised poetry readings, game nights, and a collection of towels for baby turtles.
When I looked in the window, there was no one in line at the order station, so I left Scout outside, his lead tied to a table leg. “You be a good boy,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I stroked his soft fur and he sprawled onto the pavement.
I felt comfortable as soon as I walked in. One of those sixties songs my parents had listened to was playing on the stereo, and it looked like a comforting environment where I could be around other people but without any threat. The room smelled like coffee and chocolate, and the buzz of the bean grinder and the whoosh of the milk foaming made a pleasant backdrop.
A lanky black guy in his early twenties with tattoos up and down his arms was on duty by the register. The name tag on his green apron read “Akimbo.”
“Good morning, my man,” he said, with a pleasant island lilt. “What can I get for you?”
“I’ll have a coconut dark chocolate coffee, extra-large.”
“An excellent choice. Your name?”
“Alex.”
He wrote my name on a paper cup and checked a couple of boxes on it. I stuck my credit card in the chip reader and when the charge had gone through, Akimbo asked if I’d like a receipt. I said no thanks, and he told me to have a wonderful day, and that he hoped to see me again. I thanked him, proud that I’d been able to accomplish this small interaction without feeling stressed.
It wasn’t exactly what D’eriq had assigned me, but it was a start.
I looked out through the window and saw Scout sitting up and watching me, and I smiled. While the older guy behind the coffee bar made my drink for me, I looked around. Hollywood was a diverse neighborhood, and when I went on long walks I heard different accents, from Spanish to Russian to Haitian creole. There was a mix of ages and races, people who looked like they had been sick, people with handicaps. Ordinary-looking people, including many women. For the first time I felt like I might belong in my own neighborhood.
I sat at a table outside the front window with Scout by my side and sipped my coffee. On our way home, we were waiting at the traffic light by the shopping center when a beefy guy in a Miami Hurricanes ball cap, camouflage T-shirt and loose nylon shorts stepped up right beside me. He had one of those rubber bracelets for a cause and what looked like a metal charm bracelet on his right wrist.
I don’t like to stand too close to other people, and when someone tries to crowd my space I back away. He moved with me, though.
“Nice guns, dude,” he said in a low voice. “You work out?”
I hated it when guys called biceps “guns.” To me, guns were weapons used to kill people. The guy reached over to squeeze my left bicep and I reacted instinctively, karate chopping his arm down and then twisting it behind his back.
“Ow! Crap! Let me go, you nut job!”
