Boys Life

she stepped. If I’d had a tail, I would’ve wagged it. “I don’t live too far,” Chile Willow said, and I answered, “That’s good.”
    On a dirt road stood a tarpaper shack with a chicken coop next to it and a rust-eaten car hulk sitting on cinderblocks in the weedy yard. The place was even worse than the rundown house where Granddaddy Jaybird had lost his shirt playing poker. I had already taken notice that Chile’s jeans were patched and ragged, and there were dime-sized holes in her T-shirt. The house she lived in made the poorest dwelling in Bruton look like a palace. She opened the screen door on squalling hinges and said into the gloom, “Momma? I found somebody!”
    I entered the house after her. The front room smelled of harsh cigarette smoke and turnip greens. A woman was sitting in a rocking chair, knitting as she rocked. She stared at me with the same cornflower blue eyes as her beautiful daughter, from a face seamed with wrinkles and burned dry by hard work in the sun. “Throw him back,” she said, and her needles never stopped.
    “He’s lost,” Chile told her. “Was lost, I mean. Says he came from Zephyr.”
    “Zephyr,” the woman said. Her eyes returned to me. She wore a dark blue shift with yellow needlework across the front, and she had on rubber flipflops. “You’re a long way from home, boy.” Her voice was low and husky, as if the sun had dried up her lungs, too. On a scarred little table near at hand was an ashtray full of cigarette butts, and half a cigarette still burning.
    “Yes, ma’am. I sure would like to call my folks. Can I use your phone?”
    “Ain’t got no phone,” she said. “This ain’t Zephyr.”
    “Oh. Well… can somebody take me home?”
    Chile’s mother plucked the cigarette from the ashtray, took a long pull on it, and set it back down. When she spoke again, the smoke dribbled from her mouth. “Bill’s took the truck off. Be back directly, I reckon.”
    I wanted to ask how long “directly” might be, but that would be impolite. “Can I have a glass of water?” I asked Chile.
    “Sure thing. You ought to take off that shirt, too, it’s wringin’ wet. Go on, take it off.” While Chile went back to the dismal little kitchen, I unbuttoned my shirt and peeled it away from my skin. “Done got yourself in some thorns, boy,” Chile’s mother said, her mouth leaking smoke again. “Chile, bring the iodine in here and doctor this boy.” Chile answered, “Yes’m,” and I folded my sweat-drenched shirt up and stood waiting for pleasure and pain.
    Chile had to pump the water out of the kitchen faucet. Coming out, the water spat and gurgled. When it got to me, it was warm and tinged with brown and contained in a jelly glass with a picture of Fred Flintstone on it. I took a taste and smelled something foul. Then Chile Willow’s face was near mine, and the sweetness of her breath was like new roses. She had a swab of cotton and a bottle of iodine. “This might hurt a little bit,” she said.
    “He can take it,” her mother answered for me.
    Chile went to work. I winced and drew in my breath as the stinging started and then deepened. As the pain progressed, I watched Chile’s face. Her hair was drying, falling in golden waves over her shoulders. Chile got down on her knees before me, the red cotton swab leaving streaks of red across my flesh. My heart was beating harder. Her pale blue eyes met mine, and she smiled. “You’re doin’ just fine,” she said. I smiled back, though I was hurting so bad I wanted to cry.
    “How old are you, boy?” Chile’s mother inquired.
    “Twelve.” Another white lie rolled out: “I’ll be thirteen soon.” I kept looking at Chile’s eyes. “How old are you?” I asked her.
    “Me? I’m an old lady. I’m sixteen.”
    “You go to the high school?”
    “Went one year,” she said. “That was enough for me.”
    “You don’t go to school?” I was amazed at this fact. “Wow!”
    “She goes to school,” the mother said, her needles at work. “School of hard knocks, same as I did.”
    “Aw, Mom,” Chile said; from her cupid’s-bow mouth, two words could sound like music.
    I forgot about the stinging. Pain was nothing to a man like me. As Chile’s mother said, I could take it. I looked around the gloomy room, with its stained and battered sticks of furniture, and when I looked at Chile’s face again, it was like seeing the sun after a long, stormy night. Though the iodine was cruel, her touch