Boys Life

father would step outside the gas station’s office into chilly wind or blowing sleet or cold pale sun. He would watch the Trailways bus-ol’ number thirty-three with Cornelius McGraw at the wheel-as it approached, his heart beginning to pound.
    But it didn’t stop. Not once. It always kept going, bound for somewhere else.
    Then Dad would return to the office, where he was likely to be playing dominoes with Mr. White, and he would sit down in a creaky chair and wait for the next move.

XXX – The Stranger Among Us
    JANUARY ADVANCED, COLD AS THE TOMB.
    At eleven o’clock on the morning of Saturday, the sixteenth, I said good-bye to Mom and left home on Rocket to meet Ben and Johnny at the Lyric. The sky was plated with clouds, the threat of freezing rain in the air. I was bundled up like an Eskimo, but I’d soon be shedding my coat and gloves. The movie for today was called Hell Is for Heroes, the poster of which showed the sweating faces of American soldiers crouched down behind machine gun and bazooka, awaiting the enemy attack. To accompany this carnage, there would be a program of Daffy Duck cartoons and the next chapter of Fighting Men of Mars. The last chapter had ended with the Fighting Men about to be crushed by a falling boulder at the bottom of a Martian mine shaft. I’d already plotted out their escape; they would scramble into a previously hidden tunnel at the very last second, thus escaping a flattening fate.
    On my way to the theater, I myself took a fateful turn.
    I pedaled to Dr. Lezander’s house.
    I hadn’t seen him at church since Christmas Eve. Since I’d called him “Birdman,” and looked him in his eyes of stone. I was beginning to wonder if he and Mrs. Lezander hadn’t flown the coop. Several times I’d started to tell Dad my suspicions, but he had thirty-three on his mind and I had nothing but a green feather and two dead parrots. I stopped Rocket at the bottom of the driveway and sat there watching the house. It was dark. Empty? I wondered. Had the doctor and his wife cleared out in the dead of night, alerted by whatever it was I might know? I kept watch; there was no sign of light or life. The heroes and the fighting men could wait. I had to find out, and I began to pedal Rocket up the driveway to the house. I went around back. The PLEASE LEASH YOUR PETS sign was still up. I eased Rocket down on the kickstand and peered into the nearest window.
    Dark upon dark. At first I saw only shapes of furniture, but as my eyes grew used to the gloom I was able to make out the twelve ceramic birds perched atop the piano. It was the den where the bird cages were. Dr. Lezander’s office was below, closer to hell. I couldn’t help but see Mrs. Lezander sitting at that piano, playing “Beautiful Dreamer” over and over again as the green and the blue parrots flapped wildly in their cages and shouted curses came up through the air vent. But why were the curses in German?
    Lights hit me. My heart hammered; I felt like a prisoner in a jailbreak movie, caught by the roaming circle. I twisted around, and there were a car’s headlights as the car pulled up to the back porch. It was a late-model steel-gray Buick with a chrome radiator that resembled a grinning mouthful of silver teeth; the doctor’s work was well paid. I made a move toward Rocket, but it was too late to get the kickstand up before I heard a voice say “Who is that?” Mrs. Lezander got out, her bulk made bearish in a brown overcoat. She must’ve recognized my bike, because my collar was turned up. “Cory?”
    I was caught. Easy, I thought. Just take it easy. “Yes ma’am,” I answered. “It’s me.”
    “This is providential,” she said. “Will you help me, please?” She went around to the passenger side and opened the door. “I’ve got some groceries.”
    Rocket might have whispered to me in that second. Rocket might have said in a silken, urgent voice Get away, Cory. Get away while you still can. I’ll take you, if you’ll just hang on.
    “Help me, please?” Mrs. Lezander hefted the first of a half-dozen burdened paper bags. On all of them, printed in red letters, was Big Paul’s Pantry.
    “I’m goin’ to the movies,” I said.
    “It’ll just take a minute.”
    What could be done to me in broad daylight? I took the bag. Mrs. Lezander, a second bag under one arm, slid her key into the back door’s lock. A gust of wind blew around us, and I saw the folds of her overcoat move and I knew she had been the