Boys Life

we’ll see you in the morning.
    Just a bad, bad dream.
    And then the boy got up in the dark, peered through his telescope, and saw a flying saucer descending from the stormy night sky into a sand hill behind his house.
    The End?
    The lights came up. Saturday afternoon at the movies was over.
    “What’s wrong with them?” I heard Mr. Stellko, the Lyric’s manager, say to one of the ushers as we filed out. “Why’re they so darned quiet?”
    Sheer terror has no voice.
    Somehow we managed to get on our bikes and start pedaling. Some kids walked home, some waited for their parents to pick them up. All of us were linked by what we had just witnessed, and when Ben, Johnny, and I stopped at the gas station on Ridgeton Street to get air put in Johnny’s front tire, I caught Ben staring at the back of Mr. White’s neck, where the sunburned skin folded up.
    We parted ways at the corner of Bonner and Hilltop streets. Johnny flew for home, Ben cranked his bike with his stumpy legs, and I fought the rusted chain every foot of the distance. My bike had seen its best days. It was ancient when it came to me, by way of a flea market. I kept asking for a new one, but my father said I would have to do with what I had or do without. Money was tight some months; going to the movies on Saturday was a luxury. I found out, sometime later, that Saturday afternoon was the only time the springs in my parents’ bedroom could sing a symphony without me wondering what was going on.
    “You have fun?” my mother asked when I came in from playing with Rebel.
    “Yes ma’am,” I said. “The Tarzan movie was neat.”
    “Double feature, wasn’t it?” Dad inquired, sitting on the sofa with his feet up. The television was tuned to an exhibition baseball game; it was getting to be that time of year.
    “Yes sir.” I walked on past them, en route to the kitchen and an apple.
    “Well, what was the other movie about?”
    “Oh… nothin’,” I answered.
    Parents can smell a mouse quicker than a starving cat. They let me get my apple, wash it under the faucet, polish it, and then bring it back into the front room. They let me sink my teeth into it, and then my dad looked up from the Zenith and said, “What’s the matter with you?”
    I crunched the apple. Mom sat down next to Dad, and their eyes were on me. “Sir?” I asked.
    “Every other Saturday you burst in here like gangbusters wantin’ to tell us all about the movies. We can’t hardly stop you from actin’ ’em out scene by scene. So what’s the matter with you today?”
    “Uh… I guess I… don’t know, exactly.”
    “Come here,” Mom said. When I did, her hand flew to my forehead. “Not runnin’ a fever. Cory, you feel all right?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “So one movie was about Tarzan,” my father plowed on, bulldog stubborn. “What was the other movie about?”
    I supposed I could tell them the title. But how could I tell them what it was really about? How could I tell them that the movie I had just seen tapped the primal fear of every child alive: that their parents would, in an instant of irreversible time, be forever swept away and replaced by cold, unsmiling aliens? “It was… a monster movie,” I decided to say.
    “That must’ve been right up your alley, then.” Dad’s attention veered back to the baseball game as a bat cracked like a pistol shot. “Whoa! Run for it, Mickey!”
    The telephone rang. I hurried to answer it before my folks could ask me any more questions. “Cory? Hi, this is Mrs. Sears. Can I speak to your mother, please?”
    “Just a minute. Mom?” I called. “Phone for you!”
    Mom took the receiver, and I had to go to the bathroom. Number one, thankfully. I wasn’t sure I was ready to sit on the toilet with the memory of that tentacled Martian head in my mind.
    “Rebecca?” Mrs. Sears said. “How are you?”
    “Doin’ fine, Lizbeth. You get your raffle tickets?”
    “I sure did. Four of them, and I hope at least one is lucky.”
    “That’s good.”
    “Well, the reason I’m callin’ is, Ben got back from the movies just a little while ago and I was wonderin’ how Cory is.”
    “Cory? He’s-” She paused, and in her mind she was considering my strange state. “He says he’s fine.”
    “So does Ben, but he acts a little… I don’t know, maybe ‘bothered’ is the word I’m lookin’ for. Usually he hounds the heck out of Sim and me wantin’ to tell us about the movies, but today we can’t get him to talk.