Boys Life

no matter what. Even behind the face of the meanest man in the world is a scared little boy trying to wedge himself into a corner where he can’t be hurt.” She put aside the papers and folded her hands on the desk. “I have seen plenty of boys grow into men, Cory, and I want to say one word to you. Remember.”
    “Remember? Remember what?”
    “Everything,” she said. “And anything. Don’t you go through a day without remembering something of it, and tucking that memory away like a treasure. Because it is. And memories are sweet doors, Cory. They’re teachers and friends and disciplinarians. When you look at something, don’t just look. See it. Really, really see it. See it so when you write it down, somebody else can see it, too. It’s easy to walk through life deaf, dumb, and blind, Cory. Most everybody you know or ever meet will. They’ll walk through a parade of wonders, and they’ll never hear a peep of it. But you can live a thousand lifetimes if you want to. You can talk to people you’ll never set eyes on, in lands you’ll never visit.” She nodded, watching my face. “And if you’re good and you’re lucky and you have something worth saying, then you might have the chance to live on long after-” She paused, measuring her words. “Long after,” she finished.
    “How’s all this stuff supposed to happen?” I asked.
    “First things first. Enter the short-story contest, like I told you.”
    “I’m not good enough.”
    “I’m not saying you are. Yet. Just do the best you can, and enter the contest. Will you do that?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know what to write about.”
    “You will,” Mrs. Neville said. “When you make yourself sit and look at a blank piece of paper long enough, you will. And don’t think of it as writing. Just think of it as telling your friends a story. Will you at least try?”
    “I’ll think about it,” I said.
    “Don’t think too hard,” she cautioned me. “Sometimes thinking gets in the way of doing.”
    “Yes ma’am.”
    “Ah, well.” Mrs. Neville pulled in a breath and let it slowly out. She looked around the classroom at the empty desks carved with initials. “I have done my best,” she said quietly, “and that is all I can do. Oh, you little children, what years you have ahead.” Her gaze returned to me. “Class dismissed,” she said.
    I woke up. It was not quite light yet. A rooster was crowing to herald the sun. The Jaybird’s radio was on in their bedroom, tuned to a country station. The sound of a steel guitar, alone and searching over the dark miles of woods and meadows and roads, has always had the power to break my heart in two.
    Mom and Dad came to pick me up that afternoon. I kissed Grandmomma Sarah good-bye, and I shook the Jaybird’s hand. He put a little extra pressure into his grip. I squeezed back. We knew each other. Then I went out to the pickup truck with my folks, and I found they’d brought Rebel along, so I climbed into the truckbed and let my legs hang over the edge and Rebel nudged up close to me and blew dog breath in my face but it was fine with me.
    Grandmomma Sarah and the Jaybird stood on their front porch and waved good-bye. I went home, where I belonged.

XIV – My Camping Trip
    THERE IS NOTHING MORE FRIGHTENING OR EXCITING THAN A blank piece of paper. Frightening because you’re on your own, leaving dark tracks across that snowy plain, and exciting because no one knows your destination but yourself, and even you can’t say exactly where you’ll end up. When I sat down at my typewriter to chop out that story for the Zephyr Arts Council Writing Contest, I was so scared it was all I could do to spell my name. Concocting a story for yourself and a story that you know strangers are going to read are two different animals; the first is a comfortable pony, the second a crazy bronco. You just have to hold tight, and go along for the ride.
    The sheet of paper stared me in the face for quite a while. At last I decided to write about a boy who runs away from his small town to see the world. I got two pages done before it became clear my heart wasn’t in it. I started on a tale about a boy who finds a magic lantern in a junkyard. That, too, went into the wastebasket. A story about a ghost car was going pretty well until it hit the wall of my imagination and burst into flames.
    I sat there, staring at another fresh sheet of paper.
    The cicadas were whirring in the trees outside. Rebel barked at something in