The Day Benji Chose Them

Benji had been watching the boy for forty-five minutes before he decided he needed help.

This was not something he enjoyed admitting. He was perfectly capable of handling most situations on his own — a fact he had demonstrated many times, in many neighbourhoods, across most of Portmore. But this particular situation had a problem that his four legs and amber eyes and extremely good nose could not solve alone: he needed someone with hands.

Specifically, he needed someone with hands who would actually pay attention.

He looked around the Cliffside Saturday market. Adults everywhere — Miss Icie with her pastry table, Miss Hyacinth with her hard dough bread, Mr. Beresford at the domino table, the market ladies in their rows. All of them busy. All of them loud. All of them completely failing to notice what Benji had noticed the moment he arrived at the square that morning: that the boy near the back fence was moving too slowly, positioning himself too carefully, and reaching — quick as a shadow, small as nothing — into the change tins of the market ladies every time something louder than usual happened nearby.

Three tins so far. Small amounts from each. Not enough for any one person to notice. Enough, added together, to matter.

Benji had watched the boy for forty-five minutes. He had watched him choose his moments. He had watched him count the coins in his pocket when he thought no one was looking.

No adult in the square was going to see this unless Benji created a reason for them to look in the right direction at the right moment.

He needed help.

He needed the right kind of help.

He looked around the square again, this time differently. Not at the adults. At the children.

There were two boys sitting on the wall near Mr. Chin’s shop. One tall and watchful, with a small notebook in his back pocket. One shorter, legs swinging, talking constantly about something the first boy wasn’t listening to. They’d been there twenty minutes and in that time the short one had noticed three things happening in the square for no reason except that he noticed things, and the tall one had written something in his notebook.

Good.

And coming across the square from the direction of the lane, moving with the specific purpose of a person who was sent to do one thing and intended to do exactly that thing and nothing else: a girl, a year or so younger, money folded in her hand for the bread table. Eyes already scanning the square the way a person scanned it when they expected their Saturday to be uncomplicated.

Her eyes moved across the square and landed, for just a moment, on the boy near the back fence.

Moved on.

Moved back.

She’d seen something. She hadn’t known yet that she’d seen it, but she had.

That was the one he needed most.

Benji made his decision.

He looked at Miss Icie’s table.

He looked at the coconut drops.

He looked back at the three children he had selected.

He was going to need one of those coconut drops.

He did feel slightly bad about this. Only slightly.

The trouble started, as most trouble in Cliffside did, on a Saturday.

At least, that was how Omar told it afterward. He left out the part where Benji had been watching him for five minutes before the coconut drop went missing, because he only understood that part later.

Omar was at the market for a coconut drop. His mother had said homework first, but the smell of Miss Icie’s table had come in through his window and the homework was going to be there on Monday the same as always and the coconut drops were only there on Saturday.

Clevie was already on the wall.

“Wah gwaan,” Clevie said.

“Nothing.”

“You see the dog under the poui tree?”

Omar looked. Brown dog, white patches, one ear up and one ear down, sitting very still in the shade. Amber eyes fixed on Miss Icie’s table with the concentration of someone working through a difficult problem.

“Looks like it’s planning something,” Omar said.

“Dogs don’t plan,” Clevie said.

The dog moved.

It did not run. It walked across the square at a pace that was ordinary enough to notice nothing, performed a movement that Omar could not fully describe afterward — something sideways, something with its neck — and then one coconut drop was gone and the dog was back under the poui tree eating it before Miss Icie had registered that her table had fewer things on it than before.

Miss Icie registered approximately four seconds later.

“THIEF! DOG THIEF!”

The square erupted.

Miss Icie came around from behind her table. Mr. Beresford stood up from the domino table. Two market ladies joined in because something was happening and it was Saturday.

The dog looked at all of them.

Then it looked directly at Omar and Clevie.

It looked at them with an expression that was not the expression of a dog that had stolen a coconut drop. It was the expression of a dog that had done something on purpose and was now waiting to see if they were smart enough to understand that.

Then it ran — not away from them. At them.

Nadine had not come to the market to chase any dogs.

She had come for the hard dough bread, same as every Saturday. She had the money. She had a direct route. She had a grandmother waiting.

The brown dog ran straight at her, cut left around the back of Mr. Chin’s shop, and disappeared into the gap between the fence and the wall.

The two boys from the wall arrived four seconds later.

“You see where it went?” the tall one said.

“The gap.” She pointed. “Between the shop and the fence.”

They looked at the gap. It was wide enough for a medium-sized dog and no one else.

“I can fit,” the shorter one said.

“You cannot fit,” the tall one said.

“Watch me.” He began edging in sideways. “I definitely fit. I’m in. I’m — okay, I’m stuck.”

Nadine looked at the gap. She looked at the two boys. She looked back at the gap, and she thought about the dog’s eyes when it had run past her — not frantic, not frightened. Purposeful.

She had also thought, in the half-second before the chaos started, that the boy near the back fence was moving strangely. She hadn’t been sure enough of it to stop walking. Now she was turning it over.

“Move,” she said to the tall one. She put her head down and went in after the dog.

The alleyway behind the shops was shaded and smelled like cardboard and old mango. The dog was sitting in the middle of it, eating the last of the coconut drop, and it looked at Nadine with amber eyes that were not the eyes of a dog that had stolen something.

They were the eyes of a dog that was waiting for her to catch up.

“You ran straight at me,” she said.

The dog looked at her.

“You could have gone anywhere. You ran straight at me.”

The dog glanced at the far end of the alleyway.

Nadine looked.

At the far end, half-hidden behind the rubbish bins, the boy from the back fence was there. Counting. Small green money, moving through his fingers too quickly. Market-day money. Multiple people’s market-day money.

Her mind moved through it fast: the chaos in the square, everyone looking at the dog, everyone not looking at the change tins on the market ladies’ tables. The dog running directly to this alleyway. The dog waiting for her in specifically this spot.

She looked at the dog.

The dog looked back at her, steady and patient, and she was eleven years old and she knew perfectly well that dogs didn’t plan things.

But she also knew what she was looking at.

“You saw him,” she said quietly. “Before any of this. You saw him and you needed us to see him too.”

The dog’s tail moved once.

“And you needed the commotion so we’d follow you and he’d come here to count it.”

The tail again.

She sat down on an old crate and looked at the dog with complete attention, the way she looked at things she was trying to understand properly.

“Why us?” she said. “Out of everyone in that square.”

The dog looked toward the fence gap. From behind it came Omar’s voice: “Is she talking to the dog?”

“You’re still stuck,” Clevie said.

“I know I’m still stuck. I’m asking about the girl.”

The dog looked at the fence gap. Looked at her. Looked back.

Them, she understood. Not just her. All three of them.

“Benji,” she said suddenly.

“What?” Clevie said.

“Not you.” She was still looking at the dog. “You. Benji.”

The dog did not react to this name. Then again, she thought, he wouldn’t, would he. He didn’t need a name to know she was talking to him.

“We need to get Sergeant Peart,” she said, at normal volume, toward the fence gap.

“What?” Omar said.

“Sergeant Peart. He’s at the market every Saturday. Tell him there’s a boy in the alleyway behind Mr. Chin’s shop with market money that isn’t his. Go now. Both of you.”

A pause.

“How do you —”

“Clevie.” Omar’s voice, flat and certain. “She knows. Go.”

The sound of someone extracting themselves from a fence with difficulty. Then running.

Nadine sat in the alleyway with the dog that had planned all of this. The boy at the far end was still counting, still not looking up.

“Good plan,” she told Benji.

Benji set the last piece of coconut drop down in front of her feet.

She looked at it. She looked at him.

“I’m not eating stolen property,” she said.

He looked at her with enormous patience.

“Fine,” she said, and picked it up.

The boy’s name was Rohan, and he was fourteen and from the next neighbourhood, and the money was from four different vendors’ change tins — small amounts from each, taken in the commotion while every eye in the square was on a brown dog with a coconut drop. Sergeant Peart was not pleased. The vendors were very pleased. Miss Icie, when she understood the full situation, stood very still for a long moment.

“The dog thief the real thief?” she said.

“The dog,” Omar said carefully, “appears to have had a strategy.”

“The dog,” Miss Icie said, “is getting a coconut drop.” She pointed at him. “Come.”

Benji walked across the square without hurrying and accepted the coconut drop from her hand. He ate it with dignity.

“Still a thief,” Miss Icie said. She said it in the voice she used for things she had decided to allow.

Afterward the three of them sat on the wall — Omar, Clevie, and Nadine, who had introduced herself by now — and Benji sat below them on the ground.

“So,” Clevie said. “The dog planned it.”

“Yes,” Nadine said.

“The dog saw the thief. Made a commotion. Led us to the alleyway.”

“Yes.”

“To catch the thief.”

“Yes.”

Clevie looked down at Benji. “You planned it,” he said.

Benji looked away.

“He’s not going to confirm it,” Omar said.

“He doesn’t have to,” Nadine said. “We were there.”

Omar had his notebook out. He was writing something. Clevie leaned over to look.

“What are you writing?”

“‘Benji plans things.’” He looked up. “Is that his name? Benji?”

“It is now,” Nadine said.

Clevie looked down at the dog. “Benji! Come here, Benji!”

The dog looked at Clevie. Looked away.

“That’s not —”

“Benji,” Nadine said.

The dog stood up and walked over and sat at her feet.

“That’s extremely unfair,” Clevie said.

“It’s very fair,” Nadine said.

Benji looked up at Nadine. Then at Omar. Then at Clevie. His tail moved — once, twice, three times. One beat for each of them.

Decided.

Omar finished what he was writing: Benji plans things. He picked us specifically. I don’t know what that means yet but I think it means we’re going to be useful to him on a regular basis.

He was, as it turned out, exactly right.

On Sunday morning, Benji was outside Omar’s gate.

Monday, he was outside the school.

Tuesday, he followed all three of them home and then lay down in the lane between their three yards, equidistant, like he had measured it.

“He’s decided,” Nadine said.

“Decided what?” Clevie said.

“That we’re his.”

“His what?”

Benji looked at Clevie with amber eyes.

“His,” Omar said simply.

Miss Gloria, Nadine’s grandmother, came out of her yard and observed the dog in the lane with the particular expression she used for things she intended to form an opinion about.

“That dog,” she said.

“Benji,” Nadine said.

Miss Gloria looked at Benji. Benji looked at Miss Gloria. An assessment was made on both sides.

“Mm,” said Miss Gloria. She went back inside.

Everyone agreed, later, that this was the highest possible approval from Miss Gloria.

And so began the arrangement: Benji finds the trouble. Benji recruits the crew. The crew does the parts that require hands.

It worked out fine, mostly.

Mostly.

Next: Benji and the Blue Mountain Bus — in which something is wrong with the luggage on the school trip, Benji was definitely not supposed to be on the bus, and the crew has four hours to fix everything before anyone notices.