Boys Life

One was a policeman’s kit, complete with honorary badge, fingerprint powder, handcuffs, burglar dust that got on the shoes of burglars and only showed up under ultraviolet light, and a policeman’s handbook. The other was a wooden display case with little shelves in it, to show his arrowhead collection. He filled it up except for one shelf, which was reserved for a certain smooth black arrowhead if Chief Five Thunders ever decided to give it up again.
    A question remained about Mr. Lightfoot and the bomb. Mom voiced it two nights after Christmas, as a cold rain fell on Zephyr.
    “Tom?” she said. We were all sitting in the front room, with the fireplace blazing. You couldn’t have pried The Golden Apples of the Sun out of my hands with a crowbar. “What made Mr. Lightfoot go to Dick Moultry’s house, anyway? I wouldn’t have thought that was somethin’ he might’ve volunteered to do.”
    Dad didn’t answer.
    Just as parents have sixth senses about their children, so, too, do children about their parents. I lowered my book. Dad continued to read the newspaper.
    “Tom? Do you know what made Mr. Lightfoot do it?”
    He cleared his throat. “Kind of,” he said quietly.
    “Well, what was it?”
    “I guess… I had somethin’ to do with it.”
    “You did? How?”
    He lowered the paper, realizing there was no way out but the truth. “I… asked the Lady for help.”
    Mom sat in stunned silence. Rain struck the windows and the fireplace log popped, and still she didn’t budge.
    “I figured she was the only chance Dick had. After what she did with Biggun Blaylock’s ammo bag… I thought she could help him. And I was right, it appears. She called Marcus Lightfoot while I was there at her house.”
    “Her house? I can’t believe this! You went to the Lady’s house?”
    “Not just to it. Inside it. I sat down in her chair. I drank a cup of her coffee.” He shrugged. “I suppose I was expectin’ shrunken heads on the walls and black widow spiders in every corner. I didn’t know she was religious.”
    “To the Lady’s house,” Mom said. “I just can’t believe it! And after all this time when you were so afraid of her!”
    “I wasn’t afraid of her,” Dad corrected Mom. “I was just… a little skittish, that’s all.”
    “And she said she’d help Dick Moultry? Even when she knew he’d had a hand in settin’ that time bomb?”
    “Well… it wasn’t quite that simple,” my father admitted.
    “Oh?” Mom waited. When Dad offered no more information, Mom said, “I’d like to hear it.”
    “She made me promise to come back. She said she could look at me and tell I was bein’ eaten up alive. She said it showed in your face and in Cory’s, too. She said we were all livin’ under the strain of that dead man at the bottom of Saxon’s Lake.” Dad put the newspaper down and watched the fire. “And you know what? She’s right. I promised to go back to see her tomorrow evenin’ at seven o’clock. I was gonna tell you, eventually. Or maybe I wasn’t, I don’t know.”
    “Pride, pride,” Mom scolded him. “You mean to tell me you did for Dick Moultry what you wouldn’t do for me?”
    “No. It’s just that I wasn’t ready. Dick needed help. I found it for him. And now I’m ready to find it for myself and both of you, too.”
    Mom got up from her chair. She stood behind my father, and she put her hands on his shoulders and leaned her chin against his head. I watched their shadows merge. He reached up and put his arm around her neck. They stayed that way for a moment, heart-close, as the fire cracked and sizzled.
    It was time to go see the Lady.
    When we arrived at her house at ten minutes before seven o’clock, Mr. Damaronde answered the door. Dad had no qualms about crossing the threshold; his fear of the Lady was gone. The Moon Man came out, clad in his robe and slippers, and offered us some pretzels. Mrs. Damaronde put on a pot of coffee-the New Orleans kind with chicory, she said-and we waited in the front room until the Lady was ready to see us.
    I was keeping my suspicions about Dr. Lezander to myself. I still couldn’t let my heart believe that Dr. Lezander, who had always been so kind and gentle to Rebel, might be a murderer. I had the connection of the two parrots, but there was nothing to connect Dr. Lezander with the dead man except a green feather, and that was just my theory. So he didn’t like milk and he was a night owl; did that make him a killer? Before I