Boys Life

“Might as well stay.”
    “Might as well,” I echoed to Dad.
    “You’ll enjoy the food. Gwendolyn’s a fine cook,” Mr. Pritchard added.
    Dad folded his arms across his chest and watched the trains. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I guess.”
    “Good!” Now Vernon truly beamed. “That’s all, Cyril.”
    “Yes sir.” Mr. Pritchard left, and the doors closed behind him.
    “You’re a milkman, aren’t you?” Vernon asked.
    “Yes, I am. I work for Green Meadows.”
    “My daddy owns Green Meadows.” Vernon walked past me and around the table to check a connection of wires. “It’s that way.” He pointed off the table with one of his skinny arms in the direction of the dairy. “You know there’s a new grocery store opening in Union Town next month? They’re almost finished with that new shopping center there. Going to be what they call a supermarket. Going to have a whole big section of milk in-can you believe this?-plastic jugs.”
    “Plastic jugs?” Dad grunted. “I’ll be.”
    “Everything’s going plastic,” Vernon said. He reached down and straightened a house. “That’s what the future’s going to be. Plastic, through and through.”
    “I… haven’t seen your father for a good long while, Vernon. I talked to Mr. Dollar yesterday. Talked to Dr. Parrish and Mayor Swope today, too. Even went by the bank to talk to a few people. Nobody’s seen your father for two or more years. Fella at the bank says Mr. Pritchard picks up the important papers and they come back signed by Moorwood.”
    “Yes, that’s right. Cory, how do you like this bird’s-eye view of Zephyr? Kind of makes you feel like you could fly right over the roofs, doesn’t it?”
    “Yes sir.” I’d been thinking the exact same thing just a minute or so before.
    “Oh, don’t ‘sir’ me. Call me Vernon.”
    “Cory’s been taught to respect his elders,” Dad said.
    Vernon looked at him with an expression of surprise and dismay. “Elders? But we’re the same age.”
    Dad didn’t speak for a few seconds. Then he said, “Oh” in a careful voice.
    “Cory, come here and run the trains! Okay?” He was standing next to a control box with dials and levers on it. “Express freight’s coming through! Toot toot!”
    I walked to the control box, which looked as complicated as dividing fractions. “What do I do?”
    “Anything,” Vernon said. “That’s the fun of it.”
    Hesitantly, I started twisting dials and pushing levers. Some of the trains got faster, others slower. The steam engine was really puffing now. The signal lights blinked and the whistles blew.
    “Is Moorwood still here, Vernon?” my father asked.
    “Resting. He’s upstairs, resting.” Vernon’s attention was fixed on the trains.
    “Can I see him?”
    “Nobody sees him when he’s resting,” Vernon explained.
    “When is he not restin’, then?”
    “I don’t know. He’s always too tired to tell me.”
    “Vernon, would you look at me?” Vernon turned his head toward my dad, but his eyes kept cutting back to the trains. “Is Moorwood still alive?”
    “Alive, alive-o,” Vernon said. “Clams and mussels, alive, alive-o.” He frowned, as if the question had finally registered. “Of course he’s alive! Who do you think runs all this business stuff?”
    “Maybe Mr. Pritchard does?”
    “My daddy is upstairs resting,” Vernon repeated with firm emphasis on the resting. “Are you a milkman or a member of the Inquisition?”
    “Just a milkman,” Dad said. “A curious milkman.”
    “And curiouser and curiouser you get. Pick up the speed, Cory! Number Six is running late!”
    I kept twisting the dials. The trains were zipping around the bends and racing between the hills.
    “I liked your story about the lake,” Vernon said. “That’s why I painted the lake black. It’s got a dark secret deep inside, doesn’t it?”
    “Yes, si-Vernon,” I corrected myself. I’d have to get used to being able to call a grown-up by his first name.
    “I read about it in the Journal.” Vernon reached out toward a hillside to straighten a crooked tree, and his shadow fell over the earth. Then, the task done, he stepped back and gazed down upon the town. “The killer had to know how deep Saxon’s Lake is. So he has to be a local. Maybe he lives in one of those houses, right there in Zephyr. But, if I’m to understand the dead man was never identified and nobody’s turned up missing since March, then he must not have been a local. So: