Boys Life

catfish. The Lady had just walked in.
    She was dressed in violet, with a pillbox hat and gloves. There was a veil of fine netting over her face. She looked frail, her bluish-black arms and legs as thin as sticks. Supporting her with an ever-so-discreet hand to her elbow was Charles Damaronde, he of the massive shoulders and werewolf’s eyebrows. Walking three steps behind the Lady was the Moon Man, carrying his cane and wearing a shiny black suit and a red necktie. He was hatless, his dark-and-light-divided face and forehead there for all to see.
    I think you could’ve heard a pin drop. Or, more precisely, a booger fall from the Demon’s nose. “Oh my,” Mom whispered. Dad shifted nervously in his chair, and I believe he might’ve gotten up and walked out if he hadn’t had to stay for me.
    The Lady scanned the audience from behind her veil. All the chairs were taken. I got a quick glimpse of her green eyes-just a glint-but it was enough to make me think I smelled steamy earth and swamp flowers. Then, suddenly, Vernon Thaxter stood up and with a bow offered his chair to her. She said, “Thank you, sir,” in her quavery voice and sat down, and Vernon remained standing at the back of the room while Charles Damaronde and the Moon Man stood on either side of the elegant Lady. A few people-not many, only five or six-got up not to offer their chairs but to stalk out. They weren’t scared of her like Dad was; it was their indignation that black people had entered a room full of whites without asking permission. We all knew that, and the Lady did, too. It was the time we lived in.
    “I guess we can get started,” Mayor Swope began. He kept looking around at the crowd, then toward the Lady and the Moon Man, back to the crowd again. “I want to welcome you all to the awards ceremony of the 1964 Zephyr Arts Council Writing Contest. First off, I’d like to thank every one of the participants, without whom there could be no contest.”
    Well, it went on like that for a while. I might have drowsed off if I hadn’t been so full of ants. Mayor Swope introduced all the judges and the Arts Council members, and then he introduced Mr. Quentin Farraday, from the Adams Valley Journal, who was there to take pictures and interview the winners. Finally, Mayor Swope sat down and Mrs. Prathmore took his place at the podium to call up the third-place winner in the essay division. An elderly woman named Delores Hightower shuffled up, took her essay from Mr. Dean, and read to the audience for fifteen minutes about the joys of an herb garden, then she was given her plaque and she sat down again. The first-place essay, by a beefy, gap-toothed man named George Eagers, concerned the time he had a flat tire near Tuscaloosa and the one and only Bear Bryant had stopped to ask him if he needed some help, thus proving the Bear’s divinity.
    The poetry division was next. Imagine my surprise when the Demon’s mother stood up to read the second-place poem. This was part of it: “Rain, rain, go away,”/ said the sun, on a summer day./ “I have lots of shinin’ to do yet,/ and those dark clouds make me get/ To cryin’.” She read it with such emotion, I feared she was going to get to crying and rain on the whole room. The Demon and her father applauded so loud at the end of it, you’d have thought it was the Second Coming.
    The first-place poem, by a little wrinkled old lady named Helen Trotter, was in essence a love letter, the first rhyme of which was: “He’s always there to show he cares,/ whatever’s right, that’s what he dares,” and the last rhyme: “Oh, how I love to see the smiling face/ Of our great state governor, George C. Wal-lace.”
    “Groan,” Dad whispered. The Lady, Charles Damaronde, and the Moon Man were gracious enough to make no public comment.
    “And now,” Mrs. Prathmore announced, “we move into the short-story division.”
    I needed that cork. I needed it bad.
    “This year we have the youngest winner ever on record since we began this contest in 1955. We had a little difficulty deciding if his entry was a short story or essay, since it’s based on an actual event, but in the end we decided he showed enough flair and descriptive imagination to consider it a short story. Now, welcome if you will, our third-place winner, reading his story entitled ‘Before the Sun’: Cory Mackenson.” Mrs. Prathmore led the applause. Dad said, “Go get ’em,” to me, and somehow I stood up.
    As I walked to the