Boys Life

wearing jeans and a red-checked shirt. “Hey, Donny!” Mr. Sears greeted him. “Come on in, you buzzard!”
    Mrs. Sears was watching her husband and the man named Donny. I saw her jaw tense.
    Donny said something in a low voice to Mr. Sears, and Mr. Sears called to us, “Me and Donny are gonna sit on the porch for a while. Y’all go on and play.”
    “Hon?” Mrs. Sears drew up a smile, but I could tell it was in danger of slipping. “I need a partner.”
    The screen door closed at his back.
    Mrs. Sears sat very still for a long moment, staring at the door. Her smile had gone.
    “Mom?” Ben said. “It’s your turn.”
    “All right.” She tried to pull her attention to the Scrabble tiles. I could tell she was trying as hard as she could, but her gaze kept slipping back to the screen door. Out on the porch, Mr. Sears and the wiry man named Donny were sitting in folding chairs, their conversation quiet and serious. “All right,” Ben’s mother said again. “Let me think now, just give me a minute.”
    More than a minute passed. Off in the distance, a dog began barking. Then two more. Tumper took up the call. Mrs. Sears was still choosing her tiles when the door flew open again.
    “Hey, Lizbeth! Ben! Come out here, and hurry!”
    “What is it, Sim? What’s-”
    “Just come out here!” he hollered, and of course we all got up from the table to see.
    Donny was standing in the yard, looking toward the west. The neighborhood dogs were really whooping it up. Lights burned in windows, and other people were emerging to find out what the uproar was about. Mr. Sears pointed in the direction Donny was looking. “You ever seen anythin’ like that before?”
    I looked up. So did Ben, and I heard him gasp as if he’d been stomach-punched.
    It was coming down from the night sky, descending from the canopy of stars. It was a glowing red thing, purple spears of fire trailing behind it, and it left a white trail of smoke against the darkness.
    In that instant my heart almost exploded. Ben took a backward step, and he might have fallen had he not collided with one of his mother’s hips. I knew in my hammering, rioting heart that everywhere across Zephyr kids who had been in the Lyric theater that afternoon were looking up at the sky and feeling terror peel the lips back from their teeth.
    I came very close to wetting my pants. Somehow I held my water, but it was a near thing.
    Ben blubbered. He made mangled sounds. He wheezed, “It’s… it’s… it’s…”
    “A comet!” Mr. Sears shouted. “Look at that thing fall!”
    Donny grunted and slid a toothpick into the corner of his mouth. I glanced at him and by the porch light saw his dirty fingernails.
    It was falling in a long, slow spiral, ribbons of sparks flaying out in its wake. It made no noise, but people were shouting for other people to look and some of the dogs had started that kind of howling that makes your backbone quiver.
    “Comin’ down between here and Union Town,” Donny observed. His head was cocked to one side, his face gaunt and his dark hair slick with brilliantine. “Comin’ down like a sonofabitch.”
    Between Zephyr and Union Town lay eight miles of hills, woods, and swamp cut by the Tecumseh River. It was Martian territory if there ever was, I thought, and I felt all the circuits in my brain jangle like fire alarms going off. I looked at Ben. His eyes seemed to be bulging outward by the cranial pressure of pure fear. The only thing I could think of when I stared at the fireball again was the tentacled head in the glass bowl, its face serenely evil and slightly Oriental. I could hardly stand up, my legs were so weak.
    “Hey, Sim?” Donny’s voice was low and slow, and he was chewing on the toothpick. “How about we go chase that bugger down?” His face turned toward Mr. Sears. His nose was flat, as if it had been busted by a big fist. “What do you say, Sim?”
    “Yeah!” he answered. “Yeah, we’ll go chase it down! Find out where it falls!”
    “No, Sim!” Mrs. Sears said. In her voice was a note of pleading. “Stay with me and the boys tonight!”
    “It’s a comet, Lizbeth!” he explained, grinning. “How many times in your life do you get to chase a comet?”
    “Please, Sim.” She grasped his forearm. “Stay with us. All right?” I saw her fingers tighten.
    “About to hit.” Donny’s jaw muscles clenched as he chewed. “Time’s wastin’.”
    “Yeah! Time’s wastin’, Lizbeth!” Mr. Sears pulled