Boys Life

death-grin of his teeth.
    “Help!” I shouted. “Dad! Dr. Lezander! Come quick!”
    Rebel’s back arched with such violence I thought surely his tortured spine would snap. I heard a rattle like seeds in a dry gourd. And then Rebel convulsed and fell onto his side on the table, and he did not move again.
    Dr. Lezander rushed in, with my father close behind. “Stand back,” the doctor told me, and he put his hand to Rebel’s chest. Then he got a stethoscope and listened. He lifted the lid of the good eye; it, too, had rolled back to the white.
    “Hold on, partner,” Dad said with both hands on my shoulders. “Just hold on.”
    Dr. Lezander said, “Well,” and he sighed. “We won’t be needing the form after all.”
    “No!” I cried out. “No! Dad, no!”
    “Let’s go home, Cory.”
    “I prayed, Dad! I prayed he wouldn’t die! And he’s not gonna die! He can’t!”
    “Cory?” Dr. Lezander’s voice was quiet and firm, and I looked up at him through a hot blur of tears. “Rebel is-”
    Something sneezed.
    We all jumped at the sound, as loud as a blast in the tiled room. It was followed by a gasp and rush of air.
    Rebel sat up, blood and foam stringing from his nostrils. His good eye darted around, and he shook his grisly head back and forth as if shaking off a long, hard sleep.
    Dad said, “I thought he was-”
    “He was dead!” Dr. Lezander wore an expression of utter shock, white circles ringing his eyes. “ Mein… my God! That dog was dead!”
    “He’s alive,” I said. I sniffled and grinned. “See? I told you!”
    “Impossible!” Dr. Lezander had almost shouted it. “His heart wasn’t beating! His heart had stopped beating, and he was dead!”
    Rebel tried to stand, but he didn’t have the strength. He burped. I went to him and touched the warm curve of his back. Rebel started hiccuping, and he laid his head down and began to lick the cool steel. “He won’t die,” I said confidently. My crying was done. “I prayed Death away from him.”
    “I don’t… I can’t…” Dr. Lezander said, and that’s all he could say.
    Case #3432 went unsigned.
    Rebel slept and woke up, slept and woke up. Dr. Lezander kept checking his heartbeat and temperature and writing everything down in a notebook. Mrs. Lezander came down and asked Dad and me if we would like some tea and apple cake, and we went upstairs with her. I was secure in the knowledge that Rebel would not die while I was gone. Mrs. Lezander poured Dad a cup of tea, while I got a glass of Tang to go with my cake. As Dad called Mom to tell her it looked like Rebel was going to pull through and we’d be home after a while, I wandered into the den next to the kitchen. In that room, four bird cages hung from ceiling hooks and a hamster ran furiously on a treadmill in his own cage. Two of the bird cages were empty, but the other two held a canary and a parakeet. The canary began to sing in a soft, sweet voice, and Mrs. Lezander walked in with a bag of birdseed.
    “Would you like to feed our patients?” she asked me, and I said yes. “Just a little bit now,” she instructed. “They haven’t been feeling well, but they’ll be better soon.”
    “Who do they belong to?”
    “The parakeet belongs to Mr. Grover Dean. The canary there-isn’t she a pretty lady-belongs to Mrs. Judith Harper.”
    “Mrs. Harper? The teacher?”
    “Yes, that’s right.” Mrs. Lezander leaned forward and made tiny smacking noises to the canary. That noise was strange, coming from such a horsey mouth. The bird picked delicately at the seed I’d poured into its feedtray. “Her name is Tinkerbell. Hello there, Tinkerbell, you angel you!”
    Leatherlungs had a canary named Tinkerbell. I couldn’t imagine it.
    “Birds are my favorite,” Mrs. Lezander said. “So trusting, so full of God and goodness. Look over here, at my aviary.”
    Mrs. Lezander showed me her set of twelve hand-painted ceramic birds, which rested atop a piano. “They came with us all the way from Holland,” she told me. “I’ve had them since I was a little girl.”
    “They’re nice.”
    “Oh, much better than nice! When I look at them, I have such pleasant memories: Amsterdam, the canals, the tulips bursting forth in spring by the thousands.” She picked up a ceramic robin and stroked the crimson breast with her forefinger. “They were broken in my suitcase when we had to pack up quickly and get out. Broken all to pieces. But I put them all together again, each and