Boys Life

couple of months. Gonna have a nice exhibition room.”
    “I’ve heard about it,” Mom said. “Good luck.”
    “Thank you. Well, I’ll let you know when the openin’ ceremony’s gonna be. Remember what I’ve told you, Mr. Mackenson.” She offered her violet-gloved hand, and my father took it. He might be fearful of the Lady, but he was first and foremost a gentleman. “You know where I live.”
    The Lady rejoined her husband and Mr. Damaronde, then they walked out into the warm, still night. We went out soon after them, and we saw them drive away in not the rhinestone Pontiac but a plain blue Chevrolet. The last of the attendees were talking on the sidewalk, and they took the time to tell me again how much they’d enjoyed my reading. “Keep up the good work!” Mr. Dollar said, and then I heard him brag to another man, “You know, I cut his hair. Yessir, I’ve been cuttin’ that boy’s hair for years!”
    We drove home. I kept my plaque on my lap, clenched with both hands. “Mom?” I asked. “What kind of museum’s gonna be in Bruton? They gonna have dinosaur bones and stuff?”
    “Nope,” my father told me. “It’s gonna be a civil rights exhibit. I guess they’ll have letters and papers and pictures, that kind of thing.”
    “Slave artifacts is what I hear,” Mom said. “Like leg chains and brandin’ irons, would be my guess. Lizbeth Sears told me she heard the Lady sold that big Pontiac and donated the money toward the buildin’ costs.”
    “I’ll bet whoever burned that cross in her front yard isn’t exactly whistlin’ ‘Dixie’ about this,” Dad observed. “The Klan’ll have somethin’ to say, that’s for sure.”
    “I think it’s a good thing,” Mom said. “I think they need to know where they’ve been to know where they’re goin’.”
    “Yeah, I know where the Klan wishes they’d go, too.” Dad slowed down and turned the pickup truck onto Hilltop Street. I caught a glimpse of the Thaxter mansion through the trees, its windows streaming with light. “She had a hard grip,” Dad said, almost to himself. “The Lady, I mean.” We knew who he was talking about. “Had a hard grip. And it was like she was lookin’ right into me, and I couldn’t stop her from seein’ things that-” He seemed to realize we were still there, and he abruptly canceled that line of thought.
    “I’ll go with you,” Mom offered, “if you want to go see her. I’ll stay right by your side the whole time. She wants to help you. I wish you’d let her.”
    He was silent. We were nearing the house. “I’ll think about it,” he said, which was his way of saying he didn’t want to hear any more talk about the Lady.
    Dad might know where the Lady lived, and he might need her help to exorcise the spirit that called to him from the bottom of Saxon’s Lake, but he wasn’t ready yet. Whether he was ever going to be ready or not, I didn’t know. It was up to him to take the first step, and nobody could make him do it. I had to concern myself with other problems for now: the dream of the four black girls, the Demon’s crush on me, how I was going to survive Leatherlungs, and what I was going to write about next.
    And the green feather. Always the green feather, its unanswered questions taunting me from one of the seven mystic drawers.
    That night, Dad hung the plaque on a wall in my room for me, right over the magic box. It looked nice, up there between the pictures of a large fellow with bolts in his neck and a dark-caped individual with prominent teeth.
    I had been charged with power and tasted life tonight. I had taken my own first step, however awkward, to wherever I was going. This feeling of sheer exhilaration might fade, might wane under the weight of days and dimmish in the river of time; but on this night, this wonderful never-to-be-again night, it was alive.

IXX – Dinner with Vernon
    TO SAY THE DEMON PESTERED ME IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS ABOUT coming to her birthday party is like saying a cat has a fondness for the company of mice. Between the Demon’s insistent whispering and Leatherlungs’ window-shaking bellows, I was a bundle of nerves by Wednesday, and I still couldn’t divide fractions.
    On Wednesday night, just after supper, I was drying the dishes for Mom when I heard Dad say from the chair where he was reading the paper, “Car’s stoppin’ out front. We expectin’ anybody?”
    “Not that I know of,” Mom answered.
    The chair creaked as he stood up. He was