Boys Life

couldn’t have any of those things, I’d go just as crazy as-
    Vernon came to mind.
    Vernon, standing in that room with the trains circling little Zephyr.
    You know what I believe?
    I remembered the lights off, the windows of the tiny houses glowing.
    I believe if you find a night owl who doesn’t drink milk, you’ve got your killer.
    I hit the brake. The suddenness of it surprised even Rocket. The bike skidded to a stop.
    He stayed up all night listening to his radio shows, Mrs. Lezander had said.
    I swallowed hard. I might’ve had a Pet Milk can wedged in my throat.
    Sometimes he stays up until dawn listening to the foreign countries.
    “Oh no,” I whispered. “Oh no, it can’t be Dr. Le-”
    A car pulled up beside me, so close it almost skinned my leg, and then it swerved to block my way. It was a dark blue, low-slung Chevy, its right rear side smashed in and rust splotched across it like dead poison ivy leaves. A white rabbit’s head on a black square hung from the rearview mirror. The Chevy’s engine boomed and popped under the hood, and the whole car trembled with pent-up power. “Hey, boy!” the man behind the wheel said through the rolled-down window. The wheel was covered with blue fur. “You’re that little Mackenson shit!”
    His voice was slurred, the lids of his red eyes at half mast. Donny Blaylock was three sheets to an ill wind. His face was as craggy as rough-cut rock, a greasy comma hanging down from his dark, slick brilliantined hair. “I ’member you,” he said. “Sim’s house. Little fucker.”
    I felt Rocket shiver. The bike suddenly darted forward and banged into the Chevy, like a terrier attacking a Doberman.
    “Been seein’ things you shouldn’t oughta see,” Donny went on. “Been causin’ us some trouble, ain’t you?”
    “No sir,” I said. Rocket backed up and banged into the Chevy again.
    “Oh, yes you have. Biggun’s gonna be glad to see you, boy. Gonna have a talk with you ’bout them big eyes and that big ol’ mouth of yours. Get in.”
    If my heart had been pounding any harder, it would’ve pulled up its root and burst right out of my chest.
    “I said, get in. Now.” He raised his right hand.
    It gripped a pistol, and the pistol was aimed at me.
    Once again Rocket attacked the car. Rocket had saved me from Gordo Branlin, but against this dirty rat and his gun, Rocket was powerless.
    “Shoot your fuckin’ head off in two seconds,” Donny vowed.
    I was scared half to death, and the other half was terrified. That gun’s barrel looked as big as a cannon. It made a convincing argument. In my mind I could hear Mom screaming as I left Rocket and got into the car, but what choice did I have? “Goin’ for a ride,” Donny said, and he leaned across me-all but suffocating me with the foul odors of stale sweat and moonshine whiskey-and slammed the door shut. He put his foot down on the gas pedal and the Chevy growled and crawled up on the curb before he could get it straightened out again. I looked back at Rocket, which was rapidly shrinking. A little plastic Hawaiian girl did a wobbly hula in the Chevy’s rear windshield. “Sit still!” Donny snapped, and I obeyed him because the pistol was right there to jab the obedience into me. Donny’s foot pressed harder on the gas. The Chevy’s engine was wailing as we tore along Merchants Street and turned toward the gargoyle bridge.
    “Where’re we goin’?” I dared ask.
    “You just wait ’n see.”
    The speedometer’s needle climbed to sixty. We left the gargoyles gasping for breath. The Chevy’s engine was making thunder, and we were going seventy miles an hour on the curving road that led past Saxon’s Lake. When I gripped the armrest, Donny laughed. On the floorboard an empty bottle rolled back and forth under my feet and the smell of raw rotgut moonshine was harsh enough to make my eyes water.
    The woods on either side of the road passed in a yellow blur, the Chevy’s rear tires shrieking on the snake-twist road. “I’m fuckin’ alive!” Donny howled. Maybe so, but he looked near dead. His eyes were sunken, his jaw stubbled with a scraggly beard, his clothes as wrinkled and dirty as if he’d slept for three days in a pigpen. Or maybe just laid in there and drank for three days. “I saw you!” he shouted to me over the wind’s blast. “Followed you! Yessir, ol’ Donny crept up behind you and bagged him a bird, didn’t he?” He threw his shoulders into a curve that made my eyes pop.