Boys Life

man?” Dad asked. “You saw his face?”
    “No sir, I didn’t see his face.”
    Dad shook his head. His jaw muscle twitched again, and a pulse throbbed at his temple. “I wish to God,” he said, “that we’d never driven along that road. I wish to God I’d never jumped in after that car. I wish to God that dead man at the bottom of the lake would leave me alone.” He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again they were bleary and tortured. “Cory, I don’t want you showin’ this to anybody else. Hear me?”
    “But… I was gonna enter it in the con-”
    “No! God, no!” He clamped a hand to my shoulder. “Listen to me. All this happened six months ago. It’s history now, and there’s no need dredgin’ it all up again.”
    “But it happened,” I said. “It’s real.”
    “It was a bad dream,” my father answered. “A very bad dream. The sheriff never found anybody missin’ from town. Nobody missin’ from anywhere around here who had a tattoo like that. No wife or family ever turned up huntin’ a lost husband and father. Don’t you understand, Cory?”
    “No sir,” I said.
    “That man at the bottom of Saxon’s Lake never was,” Dad said, his voice hurt and husky. “Nobody cared enough about him to even miss him. And when he died, beat up so bad he hardly looked like a man anymore, he didn’t even get a proper burial. I was the last person on this earth to see him before he sank down forever. Do you know what that’s done to me, Cory?”
    I shook my head.
    My father looked at the story again. He put the two pages back on my desk, next to the Royal typewriter. “I knew there was brutality in this world,” he said, but he kept his eyes averted from mine. “Brutality is part of life, but… it’s always somewhere else. Always in the next town. Remember when I was a fireman, and I went out when that car crashed and burned between here and Union Town?”
    “Little Stevie Cauley’s car,” I said. “Midnight Mona.”
    “That’s right. The tire tracks on the pavement said that another car forced Stevie Cauley off the road. Somebody deliberately wrecked him. The car’s gas tank ruptured, and it blew sky high. That was brutality, too, and when I saw what was left of a livin’, breathin’ young man, I-” He flinched, perhaps recalling the sight of charred bones. “I couldn’t understand how one human bein’ could do that to another. I couldn’t understand that kind of hate. I mean… what road do you take to get there? What is it that has to get inside you and twist your soul so much you can take a human life as easily as flickin’ a fly?” His gaze found mine. “You know what your granddaddy used to call me when I was your age?”
    “No sir.”
    “Yellowstreak. Because I didn’t like to hunt. Because I didn’t like to fight. Because I didn’t like to do any of the things that you’re supposed to like, if you’re a boy. He forced me to play football. I wasn’t any good at it, but I did it for him. He said, ‘Boy, you’ll never be any good in this life if you don’t have the killer instinct.’ That’s what he said. ‘Hit ’em hard, knock ’em down, show ’em who’s tough.’ The only thing is… I’m not tough. I never was. All I ever wanted was peace. That’s all. Just peace.” He walked to my window, and he stood there for a moment listening to the cicadas. “I guess,” he said, “I’ve been pretendin’ for a long time that I’m stronger than I am. That I could put that dead man in the car behind me and let him go. But I can’t, Cory. He calls to me.”
    “He… calls to you?” I asked.
    “Yes, he does.” My father stood with his back to me. At his sides, his hands had curled into fists. “He says he wants me to know who he was. He wants me to know where his family is, and if there’s anybody on this earth who mourns for him. He wants me to know who killed him, and why. He wants me to remember him, and he says that as long as whoever beat him and strangled him to death walks free, I will have no more peace for the rest of my life.” Dad turned toward me. I thought he looked ten years older than when he’d taken the two pages of my story in his hand. “When I was your age, I wanted to believe I lived in a magic town,” he said softly, “where nothin’ bad could ever happen. I wanted to believe everyone was kind, and good, and just. I wanted to believe hard work was rewarded, and a man stood on his word. I wanted to believe