Boys Life

found him-if we ever did-he’d have known we were comin’ long before we got there. See my problem, Cory?”
    “Yes sir. The Blaylocks are bigger than the law.”
    “Not bigger than the law,” he corrected me. “Just a whole lot meaner.”
    A storm was coming. The wind was in the trees. Rebel got up and sniffed the air.
    Sheriff Amory stood up. “I’ll be goin’ now,” he said. “Thanks for helpin’ me.” In the fading light he looked old and burdened, his shoulders slightly stooped. He called good-bye to Mom and Dad through the screen door, and Dad came out to see him off. “You take care of yourself, Cory,” he told me, then he and Dad walked together to his car. I stayed on the porch, stroking Rebel, as Sheriff Amory and Dad talked a few minutes more. When the sheriff had driven off and Dad returned to the porch, it was he who appeared burdened. “Come on in, partner,” he said, and held the door open for me. “It’s gonna get bad out.”
    The wind roared that night. The rain pounded down, and the lightning was scrawled like the track of a mysterious finger over my hometown.
    That was the night I first dreamed about the four black girls, all dressed up and with their shoes shined, who stood beneath a leafless tree calling my name again and again and again.

XVI – Summer Winds Up
    AUGUST WAS DYING. So WAS SUMMER. SCHOOLDAYS, GOLDEN rule days; those lay ahead, on the gilded rim of autumn.
    These things happened in the last days of summer: I learned that Sheriff Amory had indeed visited Mr. Hargison and Mr. Moultry. Their wives had told the sheriff that both men were home all night that particular night, that they hadn’t even set one foot outside their front doors. The sheriff couldn’t do anything else; after all, I hadn’t seen the faces of the two men who’d accepted that wooden box from Biggun Blaylock.
    The September issue of Famous Monsters came to my mailbox. On the envelope that bore my name there was a long green smear of snot.
    Mom answered the telephone one morning, and said, “Cory! It’s for you!”
    I came to the phone. On the other end was Mrs. Evelyn Prathmore, who informed me that I had won third place in the short-story division of the Zephyr Art Council’s Writing Contest. I was to be given a plaque with my name on it, she told me. Would I be prepared to read my story during a program at the library the second Saturday of September?
    I was stunned. I stammered a yes. Instantly upon putting the telephone down, I was struck first with a surge of joy that almost lifted me out of my Hush Puppies and then a crush of terror that about slammed me to the floor. Read my story? Aloud? To a roomful of people I hardly knew?
    Mom calmed me down. That was part of her job, and she was good at it. She told me I had plenty of time to practice, and she said I had made her so proud, she wanted to bust. She called Dad at the dairy, and he told me he’d bring me home two cold bottles of chocolate milk. When I called Johnny, Davy Ray, and Ben to tell them the news, they thought it was great, too, and they congratulated me, but all of them quickly pricked the boil of my nascent terror by reacting dolefully to the fact that I had to read my story aloud. What if your zipper breaks and it won’t stay up? Davy Ray asked. What if you start shakin’ so hard you can’t even hold the paper? Ben asked. What if you open your mouth to talk and your voice goes and you can’t even say a single word? Johnny asked.
    Friends. They really know how to knock you off your pedestal, don’t they?
    Three days before school started, on a clear afternoon with fleecy clouds in the sky and a cool breeze blowing, we all rode our bikes to the ball field, our gloves laced to the handlebars. We took our positions around the diamond, which was cleated up and going to weed. On the scoreboard was the proof that our Little League team was not alone in agony; the men’s team, the Quails, had suffered a five-to-zip loss from the Air Force base team, the High Flyers. We stood with pools of shadow around our ankles and threw a ball back and forth to each other as we talked with some sadness about the passing of summer. We were in our secret hearts excited about the beginning of school. There comes a time when freedom becomes… well, too free. We were ready to be regulated, so we could fly again next summer.
    We threw fastballs and curves, fly balls and dust-kickers. Ben had the best wormburner you ever saw, and Johnny