Boys Life

someday?”
    “I guess,” I said. “I mean… if I could be.”
    “Your story was good. I used to write stories. My daddy said it was fine for me to have a hobby like that, but never to forget that someday all this would be my responsibility.”
    “All what?” I asked.
    “I don’t know. He never would tell me.”
    “Oh.” Somehow this made sense. “How come you didn’t write another book?”
    Vernon started to say something; his mouth opened, then closed again. He sat for a long moment staring at his hands, his fingers smeared with cake batter. His eyes had taken on a shiny glint. “I only had the one in me,” he said at last. “I looked and I looked for another one. But it’s not there. It wasn’t there yesterday, it’s not there today… and I don’t think it’ll be there tomorrow, either.”
    “How come?” I asked. “Can’t you think of a story?”
    “I’ll tell you a story,” he said.
    I waited.
    Vernon drew a long breath and let it go. His eyes were unfocused, as if he were struggling to stay awake but sleep was pulling him under. “There was a boy,” he began, “who wrote a book about a town. A little town, about the size of Zephyr. Yes, very much like Zephyr. This boy wrote a book, and it took him four years to get everything exactly right. And while this boy was writing his book, his daddy…” He trailed off.
    I waited.
    “His… daddy…” Vernon frowned, trying to find his thoughts again. “Yes,” he said. “His daddy told him he was nothing but a fool. His daddy said it night and day. You fool, you crazy fool. Spending your time writing a book, when you ought to know business. That’s what I raised you for. Business. I didn’t raise you to spend your time disappointing me and throwing your chances away, I raised you for business and your mother is looking at you from her grave because you disappointed her, too. Yes, you broke her heart when you failed college and that’s why she took the pills that reason and that reason alone. Because you failed and all that money was wasted I should’ve just thrown it out the window let the niggers and the white trash have it.” Vernon blinked; something about his face looked shattered. “‘Negroes,’ the boy said. We must be civilized. Do you see, Cory?”
    “I… don’t…”
    “Chapter two,” Vernon said. “Four years. The boy stood it for four years. And he wrote this book about the town, and the people in it who made it what it was. And maybe there wasn’t a real plot to it, maybe there wasn’t anything that grabbed you by the throat and tried to shake you until your bones rattled, but the book was about life. It was the flow and the voices, the little day-to-day things that make up the memory of living. It meandered like the river, and you never knew where you were going until you got there, but the journey was sweet and deep and left you wishing for more. It was alive in a way that the boy’s life was not.” He sat staring at nothing for a moment. I watched his chocolate-smeared fingers gripping at the table’s edge. “He found a publisher,” Vernon went on. “A real New York City publisher. You know, that’s where the heart of things is. That’s where they make the books by the hundreds of thousands, and each one is a child different and special and some walk tall and some are crippled, but they all go out into the world from there. And the boy got a call from New York City and they said they wanted to publish his book but would he consider some changes to make it even better than it was and the boy was so happy and proud he said yes he wanted it to be the very best it could be.” Vernon’s glassy eyes moved, finding pictures in the air.
    “So,” Vernon said in a quiet voice, “the boy packed his bags while his daddy told him he was a stupid fool that he’d come back to this house crawling and then we’d see who was right, wouldn’t we? And the boy was a very naughty boy that day, he told his daddy he’d see him in the bad place first. He went from Zephyr to Birmingham on a bus and Birmingham to New York City on a train, and he walked into an office in a tall building to find out what was going to happen to his child.”
    Vernon lapsed into silence again. He picked up his batter bowl, trying to find something else to lick. “What happened?” I prodded.
    “They told him.” He smiled; it was a gaunt smile. “They said this is a business, like any other. We have charts and graphs, and we have