Boys Life

away. “I’ll get my jacket!” He rushed up the porch steps and into the house. Before the screen door could slam, Ben was running after his father.
    Mr. Sears went back to the bedroom he shared with his wife. He opened the closet, got his brown poplin jacket, and shrugged into it. Then he reached up onto the closet’s top shelf, his hand winnowing under a red blanket. As Mr. Sears’s hand emerged, Ben walked into the room behind him and caught a glint of metal between his father’s fingers.
    Ben knew what it was. He knew what it was for.
    “Daddy?” he said. “Please stay home.”
    “Hey, boy!” His father turned toward him, grin in place, and he slid the metal object down into his jacket and zipped the jacket up. “I’m gonna go see where the comet comes down with Mr. Blaylock. I won’t be but a little while.”
    Ben stood in the doorway, between his father and the outside world. His eyes were wet and scared. “Can I go with you, Daddy?”
    “No, Ben. Not this time. I gotta go now.”
    “Let me go with you. Okay? I won’t make any noise. Okay?”
    “No, son.” Mr. Sears’s hand clamped down on Ben’s shoulder. “You have to stay here with your mother and Cory.” Though Ben stiffly resisted, his father’s hand moved him aside. “You be a good boy, now,” Mr. Sears said as his big shoes carried him toward the door.
    Ben made one more attempt by grasping his father’s fingers and trying to hold him. “Don’t go, Daddy!” he said. “Don’t go! Please don’t go!”
    “Ben, don’t act like a baby. Let me go, son.”
    “No, sir,” Ben answered. The wetness of his eyes had overflowed onto his pudgy cheeks. “I won’t.”
    “I’m just goin’ out to see where the comet falls. I won’t be gone but a little while.”
    “If you go… if you go…” Ben’s throat was clogging up with emotion, and he could hardly squeeze the words out. “You’ll come back changed.”
    “Let’s hit the road, Sim!” Donny Blaylock urged from the front porch.
    “Ben?” Mr. Sears said sternly. “I’m goin’ with Mr. Blaylock. Act like a man, now.” He worked his fingers free, and Ben stood there looking up at him with an expression of agony. His father scraped a hand through Ben’s cropped hair. “I’ll bring you back a piece of it, all right, Tiger?”
    “Don’t go,” the weeping tiger croaked.
    His father turned his back on him, and strode out the screen door to where Donny Blaylock waited. I was still standing with Mrs. Sears in the yard, watching the fiery thing in its last few seconds of descent. Mrs. Sears said, “Sim? Don’t do it,” but her voice was so weak it didn’t carry. Mr. Sears did not speak to his wife, and he followed the other man to a dark blue Chevy parked at the curb. Red foam dice hung from the radio antenna, and the right rear side was smashed in. Donny Blaylock slid behind the wheel and Mr. Sears got in the other side. The Chevy started up like a cannon going off, shooting black exhaust. As the car pulled away, I heard Mr. Sears laugh as if he’d just told another preacher joke. Donny Blaylock must’ve stomped the gas pedal, because the rear tires shrieked as the Chevy tore away up Deerman Street.
    I looked toward the west again, and saw the fiery thing disappear over the wooded hills. Its glow pulsed against the dark like a beating heart. It had come to earth somewhere in the wilderness.
    There was no sand anywhere out there. The Martians, I thought, were going to have to slog through a lot of mud and waterweeds.
    I heard the screen door slam, and I turned around and saw Ben standing on the front porch. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He stared along Deerman Street, as if he were tracking the Chevy’s progress, but by that time the car had turned right on Shantuck and was out of sight.
    In the distance, probably up in Bruton, dogs were still baying. Mrs. Sears released a long, strengthless sigh. “Let’s go in,” she said.
    Ben’s eyes were swollen, but his crying was done. No one seemed to want to finish the game of Scrabble. Mrs. Sears said, “Why don’t you boys go play in your room, Ben?” and he nodded slowly, his eyes glazed as if he’d taken a heavy blow to the skull. Mrs. Sears went back to the kitchen, where she turned on the water. In Ben’s room, I sat on the floor with the Civil War cards while Ben stood at the window.
    I could tell he was suffering. I’d never seen him like this before, and I had to say something.