Boys Life

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “It’s not Martians. It was a meteor, that’s all.”
    He didn’t answer.
    “A meteor’s just a big hot rock,” I said. “There’re no Martians inside it.”
    Ben was silent; his thoughts had him.
    “Your dad’ll be okay,” I said.
    Ben spoke, in a voice terrible in its quiet: “He’ll come back changed.”
    “No, he won’t. Listen… that was just a movie. It was made up.” I realized that as I said this I was letting go of something, and it felt both painful and good at the same time. “See, there’s not really a machine that cuts into the backs of people’s necks. There’s not really a big Martian head in a glass bowl. It’s all made up. You don’t have to be scared. See?”
    “He’ll come back changed,” Ben repeated.
    I tried, but nothing I could say would make him believe any differently. Mrs. Sears came in, and her eyes looked swollen, too. But she managed a brave smile that hurt my heart, and she said, “Cory? Do you want to take the first bath?”
    Mr. Sears was not home by ten o’clock, when his wife switched off the light in Ben’s bedroom. I lay under the crisp white sheet beside Ben, listening to the night. A couple of dogs still conversed back and forth, and every once in a while Tumper offered a muttered opinion. “Ben?” I whispered. “You awake?” He didn’t answer, but the way he was breathing told me he wasn’t sleeping. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Okay?”
    He turned over, and pressed his face against his pillow.
    Eventually I drifted off. I did not, surprisingly, dream of Martians and X-shaped wounds on the backs of loved ones’ necks. In my dream my father swam for the sinking car, and when his head went under, it did not come back up. I stood on the red rock cliff, calling for him, until Lainie came to me like a white mist and took my hand in a damp grip. As she led me away from the lake, I could hear my mother calling to me from the distance, and a figure stood at the edge of the woods wearing a long overcoat that flapped in the wind.
    An earthquake woke me up.
    I opened my eyes, my heart pounding. Something had crashed; the sound was trapped inside my head. The lights were still off, and the night still reigned. I reached out and touched Ben beside me. He drew in a sharp breath, as if my touch had scared the wits out of him. I heard an engine boom, and I looked out the window toward Deerman Street to see a Chevy’s taillights as Donny Blaylock pulled away.
    The screen door, I realized. The sound of the screen door slamming had jolted me awake.
    “Ben?” I rasped, my mouth thick with sleep. “Your dad’s come home!”
    Something else crashed down in the front room. The whole house seemed to shake.
    “Sim?” It was Mrs. Sears’s voice, high-pitched. “Sim?”
    I got out of bed, but Ben just lay there. I think he was staring at the ceiling. I walked through the hallway in the dark, my feet squeaking the boards. I bumped into Mrs. Sears, standing where the hall met the front room, no lights on anywhere.
    I heard a hoarse, terrible breathing.
    It was, I thought, the sound a Martian might make as its alien lungs strained on earthly air.
    “Sim?” Mrs. Sears said. “I’m right here.”
    “Right here,” a voice answered. “Right… here. Right… fuckin’… here.”
    It was Mr. Sears’s voice, yes. But it was different. Changed. There was no humor in it, no fun, no hint of a preacher joke. It was as heavy as doom, and just as mean.
    “Sim, I’m going to turn on the light now.”
    Click.
    And there he was.
    Mr. Sears was on the floor on his hands and knees, his head bowed and one cheek mashed against the rug. His face looked bloated and wet, his eyes sunken in fleshy folds. The right shoulder of his jacket was dirty, and dirt was smeared on his jeans as if he’d taken a fall in the woods. He blinked in the light, a silver thread of saliva hanging from his lower lip. “Where is it?” he said. “You see it?”
    “It’s… beside your right hand.”
    His left hand groped. “You’re a goddamned liar,” he said.
    “Your other hand, Sim,” she told him wearily.
    His right hand moved toward the metal object lying there. It was a whiskey flask, and his fingers gripped it and pulled it to him.
    He sat up on his knees and stared at his wife. A fierceness passed over his face, ugly in its swiftness. “Don’t you smart-mouth me,” he said. “Don’t you open that big fat smart mouth.”
    I stepped back