Boys Life

But life is just as much pain and mess as it is joy and order. Probably a lot more mess than order, too. I guess when you make yourself realize that, you”-he smiled faintly, with his sad eyes, and looked at me-“start growin’ up.” He began reading an article about the Auburn football team, then he put it aside again as another thought struck him. “I’ll tell you what’s strange, Rebecca. Have you seen Moorwood Thaxter in the last two or three years? Have you seen him just once? At the bank, or the barbershop, or anywhere around town?”
    “No, I haven’t. I probably wouldn’t even know what he looks like, anyway.”
    “Slim old fella. Always wears a black suit and a black bow tie. I remember seein’ Moorwood when I was a kid. He always looked dried up and old. After his wife died, he stopped comin’ out of his house very often. But it seems like we would’ve seen him now and again, don’t you think?”
    “I’ve never seen Mr. Pritchard before. I guess they’re all hermits.”
    “Except Vernon,” I said. “Until the weather turns cold, I mean.”
    “Right as rain,” Dad said. “But I think I might ask around tomorrow. Find out if anybody I know has seen Moorwood lately.”
    “Why?” Mom frowned. “What does it matter? You’ll probably see him on Saturday night.”
    “Unless he’s dead,” came his answer. “Now, wouldn’t that be somethin’? If Moorwood’s been dead for two years or more, and everybody in Zephyr still jumps at the sound of his name because his dyin’s been kept a secret?”
    “And why would it be kept a secret? What would be the point?”
    Dad shrugged, but I could tell he was thinking in overdrive. “Inheritance taxes, maybe. Greedy relatives. Legal mess. Could be a lot of things.” A smile stole across his mouth, and his eyes sparkled. “Vernon would have to know it. Now, wouldn’t that just be a hoot if a naked insane man owned most of this town and everybody did what he said to do because we thought it was Moorwood talkin’? Like the night the whole town turned out to keep Bruton from bein’ washed away? I always thought that was peculiar. Moorwood was more interested in keepin’ his money in a tight fist than givin’ it away to Good Samaritans, even if they had to be threatened to be good.”
    “Maybe he had a change of heart,” Mom suggested.
    “Yeah. I suspect bein’ dead can do that.”
    “You’ll have your chance to find out on Saturday night,” Mom said.
    And so we would. Between now and then, however, I had to face the Demon and hear about how much fun her birthday party was going to be and how everybody else in the class would be there. Just as my father was asking around about sightings of Moorwood Thaxter, I asked my classmates at recess if they were going to the Demon’s birthday party.
    No one was. Most made comments that led me to believe they’d rather eat one of her dog dookey sandwiches than go to any party where they’d be at her booger-flicking, Munster-family mercy. I said I’d lie down in red-hot coals and kiss that baldheaded Russian guy who beat his shoe on the table rather than go to the Demon’s party and have to smell her stinking relatives.
    But I didn’t say this where she could hear me, of course. In fact, I was starting to feel more than a little sorry for her, because I couldn’t find one single kid who was going to that party.
    I don’t know why I did it. Maybe because I thought of what it would feel like, to invite a classful of kids to your birthday party, offer to feed them ice cream and cake and they wouldn’t even have to bring a present, and have every one of them say no. That is a hurtful word, and I figured the Demon would hear a lot of it in time to come. But I couldn’t go to the party; that would be begging for trouble. On Thursday after school, I rode Rocket to the Woolworth’s on Merchants Street, and I bought her a fifteen-cent birthday card with a puppy wearing a birthday hat on the front. Inside, under the doggerel poem, I wrote Happy Birthday from Your Classmates. Then I slid it into its pink envelope, and on Friday I got into the room before anybody else and put the envelope on the Demon’s desk. I thanked God nobody saw me, either; I never would’ve lived it down.
    The bell rang, and Leatherlungs took command. The Demon sat down behind me. I heard her open the envelope. Leatherlungs started hollering at a guy named Reggie Duffy because he was chewing grape bubble gum. This was part