Boys Life

a man was a Christian every day of the week, not just Sunday, and that the law was fair and the politicians wise and if you walked the straight path you found that peace you were searchin’ for.” He smiled; it was a difficult thing to look at. For an instant I thought I could see the boy in him, trapped in what Mrs. Neville’s dream-shape had called the clay of time. “There never was such a place,” my father said. “There never will be. But knowin’ can’t stop you from wishin’ it was so, and every time I close my eyes to sleep, that dead man at the bottom of Saxon’s Lake tells me I’ve been a damned fool.”
    I don’t know why I said it, but I did: “Maybe the Lady can help you.”
    “How? Throw a few bones for me? Burn a candle and incense?”
    “No sir. Just talk,” I said.
    He looked at the floor. He drew a deep breath and slowly freed it. Then he said, “I’ve gotta get some rest,” and he walked to the door.
    “Dad?”
    He paused.
    “Do you want me to tear the story up?”
    He didn’t answer, and I thought he wasn’t going to. His gaze flickered back and forth from me to the two sheets of paper. “No,” he said at last. “No, it’s a good story. It’s true, isn’t it?”
    “Yes sir.”
    “It’s the best you can do?”
    “Yes sir.”
    He looked around at the pictures of monsters taped on the walls, and his eyes came to me. “You’re sure you wouldn’t rather write about ghosts, or men from Mars?” he inquired with a hint of a smile.
    “Not this time,” I told him.
    He nodded, chewing on his lower lip. “Go ahead, then. Enter it in the contest,” he said, and he left me alone.
    On the following morning, I put my story in a manila envelope and rode Rocket to the public library on Merchants Street, near the courthouse. In the library’s cool, stately confines, where fans whispered at the ceiling and sunlight streamed through blinds at tall arched windows, I handed my contest entry-marked “Short Story” on the envelope in Crayola burnt umber-to Mrs. Evelyn Prathmore at the front desk. “And what little tale might we have here?” Mrs. Prathmore asked, smiling sweetly.
    “It’s about a murder,” I said. Her smile fractured. “Who’s judgin’ the contest this year?”
    “Myself, Mr. Grover Dean, Mr. Lyle Redmond from the English department at Adams Valley High School, Mayor Swope, our well-known published poet Mrs. Teresa Abercrombie, and Mr. James Connahaute, the copy editor at the Journal.” She picked up my entry with two fingers, as if it were a smelly fish. “It’s about a murder, you say?” She peered at me over the pearly rims of her eyeglasses.
    “Yes ma’am.”
    “What’s a nice, polite young man like you writin’ about murder for? Couldn’t you write about a happier subject? Like… your dog, or your best friend, or-” She frowned, at her wit’s end. “Somethin’ that would enlighten and entertain?”
    “No ma’am,” I said. “I had to write about the man at the bottom of Saxon’s Lake.”
    “Oh.” Mrs. Prathmore looked at the manila envelope again. “I see. Do your parents know you’re enterin’ this in the contest, Cory?”
    “Yes ma’am. My dad read it last night.”
    Mrs. Prathmore picked up a ball-point pen and wrote my name on the envelope. “What’s your telephone number?” she asked, and when I told her she wrote that underneath my name. “All right, Cory,” she said, and she summoned up a cool smile, “I’ll see that this gets where it needs to go.”
    I thanked her, and I turned around and walked toward the front door. Before I got out, I glanced back at Mrs. Prathmore. She was bending the envelope’s clasp back to unseal it, and when she saw me looking she stopped. I took this as a good sign, that she was eager to read my entry. I went on out into the sunlight, unchained Rocket from a park bench, and pedaled home.
    No doubt about it, summer was on the wane.
    The mornings seemed a shade cooler. The nights were hungry, and ate more daylight. The cicadas sounded tired, their whirring wings slowing to a dull buzz. From our front porch you could look almost due east and see a single Judas tree up in the forested hills; its leaves had turned crimson almost overnight, a shock amid all that green. And the worst-the very worst for those of us who loved the freedom of summer’s days-was that the television and radio trumpeted back-to-school sales with depressing fervor.
    Time was running out. So one evening at