Boys Life

of the overall plan; we’d learned she despised the smell of grape bubble gum, and so almost every day somebody became a purple-mouthed martyr.
    Behind me, I heard a faint sniff.
    That was all. But it was a heart-aching sound, to think that fifteen cents could buy a happy tear.
    At recess, on the dusty playground behind the school, the Demon fluttered from kid to kid showing them the card. Everybody had the good sense to pretend they already knew about it. Ladd Devine, a lanky kid with a red crew cut who was already showing signs of being a football star in his quick feet, loping passes, and general fondness for mayhem, began telling all the girls he’d bought the card when he heard they thought it was sweet. I didn’t say anything. The Demon was already staring at Ladd with love in her eyes and a finger up her nose.
    On Saturday evening, at the appointed time, Mr. Pritchard arrived at our house in the long black car. “Watch your manners!” Mom cautioned me, though it was meant for Dad, too. We weren’t dressed up in suits; “casual wear” meant comfortable short-sleeved shirts and clean blue jeans. Dad and I climbed into the back of the car and the impression I had was of finding yourself in a cavern with walls of mink and leather. Mr. Pritchard sat divided from us by a pane of clear plastic. He drove us away from the house and took the turn up onto the heights of Temple Street, and we could hardly hear the engine or even feel a bump.
    On Temple Street, amid huge spreading oaks and poplars, were the homes of the elite citizens of Zephyr. Mayor Swope’s red brick house was there, on a circular driveway. Dad pointed out the white stone mansion of the man who was president of the bank. A little farther along the winding street stood the house of Mr. Sumpter Womack, who owned the Spinnin’ Wheel, and directly across the way in a house with white columns lived Dr. Parrish. Then Temple Street ended at a gate of scrolled ironwork. Beyond the gate, a cobblestoned drive curved between rows of evergreens that stood as straight as soldiers at attention. The windows of the Thaxter mansion were ablaze with light, its slanted roofs topped with chimneys and bulbous onion-shaped turrets. Mr. Pritchard stopped to get out to open the gate, then he stopped again on the other side to close it. The car’s tires made pillows out of the cobblestones. We followed the curve between the fragrant pines, and Mr. Pritchard pulled us to a halt under a large canvas awning striped with blue and gold. Beneath the awning, a stone-tiled entryway led to the massive front door. Before Dad could unlatch the car’s door, Mr. Pritchard was there to do it for him. Then Mr. Pritchard, moving with the grace and silence of quicksilver, opened the mansion’s front door for us, and we walked in.
    Dad stopped. “Golly,” was all he could say.
    I shared his sense of awe. To describe the interior of the Thaxter mansion in the detail it deserves is impossible, but I was struck by the vastness of it, the high ceilings with exposed beams and chandeliers hanging down. Everything seemed to be shining and gleaming and glinting, and our feet were cushioned by gardens of Oriental weave. The air smelled of cedar and saddle soap. On the walls pictures in gilded frames basked in pools of light. A huge tapestry showing a medieval scene adorned one entire wall, and a wide staircase swept up to the second floor like the sweet curve of Chile Willow’s shoulder. I saw textures of burled wood, burnished leather, crushed velvet, and colored glass, and even the chandelier bulbs were sparkling clean, not a cobweb between them.
    A woman about the same age as Mr. Pritchard appeared from a hallway. She wore a white uniform and had her snowy hair in a bun clasped with silver pins. She had a round, pretty face and clear blue eyes, and she said hello to us in the same accent as her husband. Dad had told me it was British. “Young master Vernon’s with his trains,” she told us. “He’d like you to join him there.”
    “Thank you, Gwendolyn,” Mr. Pritchard said. “If you’ll follow me, gentlemen?” He began walking into a corridor flanked with more rooms, and we were quick to keep up. It was obvious to us that you could put several houses the size of ours in this mansion and still have room left over for a barn. Mr. Pritchard stopped and opened a pair of tall doors and we heard the tinny wail of a train whistle.
    And there was Vernon, naked as the day he escaped