Boys Life

the womb. He was leaning over, examining something he held close to his face, and we had quite a view of his rear end.
    Mr. Pritchard cleared his throat. Vernon turned around, a locomotive in his hand, and he smiled so wide I thought his face would split. “Oh, there you are!” he said. “Come on in!” We did. The room had no furniture but a huge table on which toy trains were chugging across a green landscape of miniature hills, forest, and a tiny town. Vernon was attending to the locomotive’s wheels with a shaving brush. “Dust on the tracks,” he explained. “If it builds up, a whole train can crash.”
    I watched the train layout with pure amazement. Seven trains were in motion at the same time. Little switches were being thrown automatically, little signal lights blinking, little cars stopped at little railroad crossings. Sprinkled throughout the green forest were red-leafed Judas trees. The tiny town had matchbox houses and buildings painted to resemble brick and stone. At the terminus of the main street there was a gothic structure with a cupola: the courthouse where I’d fled from Mayor Swope. Roads snaked between the mounded hills. A bridge crossed a river of green-painted glass, and out beyond the town there was a large oblong black-painted mirror. Saxon’s Lake, I realized. Vernon had even painted the shoreline red to represent the rocks there. I saw the baseball field, the swimming pool, the houses and streets of Bruton. Even a single rainbow-splashed house, at the end of what must be Jessamyn Street. I found Route Ten, which ran along the forest that opened up a space for Saxon’s Lake. I was looking for a particular house. Yes, there it was, the size of my thumbnail: Miss Grace’s house of bad girls. In the wooded hills to the west, between Zephyr and the off-map Union Town, there was a round scorch mark where some of the little trees had burned away. “Somethin’ caught fire,” I said.
    “That’s where the meteor fell,” Vernon replied without even glancing at it. He blew on the locomotive’s wheels, a naked Amazing Colossal Man. I found Hilltop Street, and our own house at the edge of the woods. Then I followed the stately curve of Temple Street, and right there stood the cardboard mansion my father and I were standing in.
    “You’re in here, Cory. Both of you are.” Vernon motioned toward a shoebox beside his right hand, near a scatter of railroad cars, disconnected tracks, and wiring. On the shoebox’s lid was written PEOPLE in black crayon. I lifted the lid and looked down at what must’ve been hundreds of tiny toy people, their flesh and hair meticulously painted. None of them wore any clothes.
    One of the moving trains let out a high, birdlike whistle. Another was pulled by a steam engine, which puffed out circles of smoke the size of Cheerios. Dad walked around the gigantic, intricate layout, his mouth agape. “It’s all here, isn’t it?” he asked. “Poulter Hill’s even got tombstones on it! Mr. Thaxter, how’d you do all this?”
    He looked up from his work. “I’m not Mr. Thaxter,” he said. “I’m Vernon.”
    “Oh. All right. Vernon, then. How’d you do all this?”
    “Not overnight, that’s for sure,” Vernon answered, and he smiled again. From a distance his face was boyish; up close, though, you could see the crinkly lines around his eyes and two deeper lines bracketing his mouth. “I did it because I love Zephyr. Always have. Always will.” He glanced at Mr. Pritchard, who’d been waiting by the door. “Thanks, Cyril. You can go now. Oh… wait. Does Mr. Mackenson understand?”
    “Understand what?” Dad asked.
    “Uh… young master Vernon wants to have dinner alone with your son. He wants you to eat in the kitchen.”
    “I don’t get it. Why?”
    Vernon kept staring at Mr. Pritchard. The older man said, “Because he invited your son to dinner. You came along, as I understand, as a chaperon. If you still have any… uh… reservations, let me tell you that the dining room is next to the kitchen. We’ll be there eating our dinner while your son and young master Vernon are in the dining room. It’s what he wants, Mr. Mackenson.” This last sentence was spoken with an air of resignation.
    Dad looked at me, and I shrugged. I could tell he didn’t like this arrangement, and he was close to pulling up stakes.
    “You’re here,” Vernon said. He put the locomotive down on a track, and it clickety-clicked out from under his hand.