Boys Life

spice cake. I don’t want any apple pie, or coconut muffins, or blueberry fritters. All I want is some-” He had to stop speaking, but the rush of emotion choked him. Peace might have been the next word he was going to say. “I’m gonna go talk to Cory,” he told her, and he came to my room and knocked on the door.
    I let him in. I had to. He was my dad. He sat down on my bed, while I held a Blackhawk comic book close to my face. Before he’d come in, I’d been remembering something Vernon had said: Sheriff Amory’s a good man, just not a good sheriff. He lets the birds fly when he’s got his paws on them. I guess it could never be said that Sheriff Amory wasn’t trying to do well by his family. Dad cleared his throat. “Well, I reckon I’m lower than a snake’s pecker, is that right?”
    I would’ve laughed at that any other time. I just stared at my comic book, attempting to climb inside the world of sleek ebony airplanes and square-jawed heroes who used their wits and fists for justice.
    Maybe I betrayed myself somehow. Maybe Dad had an instant of reading my mind. He said, “The world’s not a comic book, son.” Then he touched my shoulder, and he stood up and closed the door on his way out.
    I had a bad sleep that night. If it wasn’t the four girls calling my name, it was the car going over the red rock cliff into black water, and then Midnight Mona raced through me and Biggun Blaylock’s demonic, bearded face said I threw in an extra for good luck and Lucifer’s shotgun-ripped head screamed from his grave and Mrs. Lezander offered me a glass of Tang and said Sometimes he stays up until dawn listening to the foreign countries.
    I lay staring into darkness.
    I hadn’t told Dad or Mom about Dr. Lezander’s distaste for milk or his liking to be a night owl. Surely that had nothing to do with the car in Saxon’s Lake. What earthly reason would Dr. Lezander have to kill a stranger? And Dr. Lezander was a kind man who loved animals, not a savage beast who had beaten a man half to death and then strangled the other half with a piano wire. It was unthinkable!
    Yet I was thinking it.
    Vernon had been right about Sheriff Amory. Could he be right about the milk-hating night owl, too?
    Vernon was crazy, but like the Beach Boys, he got around. Like the eye of God, he watched the comings and goings of the citizens of Zephyr, saw their grand hopes and mean schemes. He saw life laid bare. And maybe he was aware of more than he even knew.
    I decided. I was going to have to start watching Dr. Lezander. And Mrs. Lezander, too. How could he be such a monster under his civilized skin, and her not know it?
    The next day, which was cold and drizzly, I pedaled Rocket past Dr. Lezander’s after school. Of course he and his wife were both inside. Even the two horses were in the barn. I don’t know what I was looking for, I just wanted to look. There had to be more to tie the doctor to Saxon’s Lake than Vernon’s theories. That night, the silence at the dinner table couldn’t have been cleaved with a chain saw. I didn’t trust myself to meet Dad’s gaze, and Dad and Mom were avoiding looking at each other as well. So it was a merry dinner, all around.
    Then, as we were eating the pumpkin pie that we were all getting so heartily sick of, Dad said, “They let Rick Spanner go today.”
    “Rick? He’s been with Green Meadows as long as you!”
    “That’s right,” Dad said, and he picked at the crust with his fork. “Talkin’ to Neil Yarbrough this mornin’. He hears they’re cuttin’ back. Have to, because of that damn… that supermarket,” he corrected himself, though his curse was already flying. “Big Paul’s Pantry.” He snorted so hard I thought pumpkin pie might come through his nose. “Milk in plastic jugs. What’ll they figure out next to mess things up?”
    “Leah Spanner just had a baby in August,” Mom said. “That’s their third one. What’s Rick gonna do?”
    “I don’t know. He left as soon as they told him. Neil says he heard they gave him a month’s pay, but that won’t go very far with four mouths to feed.” He put down his fork. “Maybe we can take ’em a pie or somethin’.”
    “I’ll make a fresh one first thing in the mornin’.”
    “That’d be good.” Dad reached out, and he placed his hand over Mom’s. With all that had been going on-said and left unsaid-it was a heartening sight. “I have a feelin’ that’s just the start of it, Rebecca. Green