Boys Life

numbers on the wall. We know that this year people want murder mysteries, and your town would make a wonderful setting for one. Murder mysteries, they said. Thrill people. We’re having to compete with television now, they said. It’s not like it used to be, when people had time to read. People want murder mysteries, and we have charts and graphs to prove it. They said if the boy would fit a murder mystery into the book-and it wouldn’t be too difficult, they said, it wouldn’t be too hard at all to do-then they would publish it with the boy’s name right there on the cover. But they said they didn’t like the title Moon Town. No, that wouldn’t do. Can you write hard-boiled? they asked. They said they needed a hard-boiled writer this year.”
    “Did he do it?” I asked.
    “Oh, yes.” Vernon nodded. “Oh, he did it. Whatever they wanted. Because it was so close, so close he could taste it. And he knew his daddy was watching over his shoulder. He did it.” Vernon’s smile was like a fresh wound in scar tissue. “But they were wrong. It was very, very hard to do. The boy got a room in a hotel, and he worked on it. That hotel… it was all he could afford. And as he worked on that rented typewriter in that mean little rented room, some of that hotel and some of that city got into him and made its way through his fingers into that book. Then one day he didn’t know where he was anymore. He was lost, and there were no signs telling him which way to go. He heard people crying and saw people hurt, and something inside him closed up like a fist and all he wanted to do was get to that last page and get out of it. He heard his daddy laughing, late at night. Heard him say you fool, you little fool you should’ve stood your ground. Because his daddy was in him, and his daddy had come with him all that way from Zephyr to New York City.”
    Vernon’s eyes squeezed shut for a few agonized seconds. Then they opened again, and I saw they were rimmed with red. “That boy. That stupid little foolish boy took their money, and he ran. Back to Zephyr, back to the clean hills, back where he could think. And then that book came out, with the boy’s name on it, and he saw that cover and knew he had taken his child and he had dressed that beautiful child up like a prostitute and now only people who craved ugliness wanted her. They wanted to wallow in her, and use her up and throw her away because she was only one of a hundred thousand and she was crippled. And that boy… that boy had done it to her. That evil, greedy boy.”
    His voice cracked with a noise that startled me.
    Vernon pressed his hand to his mouth. When he lowered his hand, a silver thread of saliva hung from his lower lip. “That boy,” he whispered. “Found out very soon… that the book was a failure. Very soon. He called them. Anything, he said. I’ll do anything to save it And they said we have the charts and tables, and numbers on the wall. They said people were tired of murder mysteries. They said people wanted something different. Said they’d like to see his next book, though. He had promise, they said. Just come up with something different. You’re a young man, they said. You have lots of books in you.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand: a slow, labored movement. “His daddy was waiting. His daddy grinned and grinned and kept on grinning. His daddy’s face got as big as the sun and the boy was burned every time he looked at it. His daddy said you’re not fit to wear my shoes. And I paid for those shoes. Yes I did. I paid for that shirt and those pants. You’re not fit to wear what good money buys you. All you know is failure and failure and that’s all you’ll ever know for the rest of your life, and he said if I died in my sleep tonight it would be because you killed me with your failures. And that boy stood at the foot of the stairs, and he was crying and he said go on and die, then. I wish to God you would die, you… miserable… sonofabitch.”
    On that last terrible, hiss-breathed word I saw the tears jump in his eyes as if he’d been speared. He made a soft moaning sound, his face in torment like a Spanish painting I’d once seen of a naked saint in National Geographic. A tear streaked down to his jaw, followed by a second that got caught in a smear of chocolate batter in the corner of his mouth.
    “Oh…” he whispered. “Oh… oh… no.”
    “Young master Vernon?” The voice was as soft as his, but spoken