Boys Life

me, is to forget about our own homes! Yessir! Forget about our own homes and go to work to save a bunch of niggers!”
    This comment was a crack in the common clay. Some hollered that Mr. Moultry was wrong, and some hollered he was right.
    “Dick,” Mayor Swope said as he pushed his pipe into his mouth, “you know that if the river’s going to flood, it always starts in Bruton. That’s the lowland. If we can hold it back there, we can-”
    “So where are the Bruton people?” Mr. Moultry asked, and his big square head ratcheted to right and left. “I don’t see no dark faces in here! Where are they? How come they ain’t in here beggin’ us for help?”
    “Because they never ask for help.” The mayor spouted a plume of blue smoke; the locomotive’s engine was starting to stoke. “I guarantee you they’re out on the riverbank right now, tryin’ to build a dam, but they wouldn’t ask for help if the water came up to their roofs. The Lady wouldn’t stand for it. But they do need our help, Dick. Just like last time.”
    “If they had any sense, they’d move out of there!” Mr. Moultry insisted. “Hell, I’m sick and tired of that damn Lady, too! Who does she think she is, a damn queen?”
    “Sit down, Dick,” Chief Marchette told him. The fire chief was a big-boned man with a chiseled face and piercing blue eyes. “There’s no time to argue this thing.”
    “The hell you say!” Mr. Moultry had decided to be stubborn. His face was getting as red as a fireplug. “Let the Lady come over here to white man’s land and ask us for help!” That brought a storm of assenting and dissenting shouts. Mr. Moultry’s wife, Feather, stood up beside him and hollered, “Hell, yes!” She had platinum-blond hair and was more anvil than feather. Mr. Moultry bellowed over the noise, “I ain’t breakin’ my ass for no niggers!”
    “But, Dick,” Mayor Swope said in a bewildered way, “they’re our niggers.”
    The shouting and hollering went on, some people saying it was the Christian thing to keep Bruton from being flooded and others saying they hoped the flood was a jimdandy so it would wash Bruton away once and for all. My folks kept quiet, as most of the others did; this was a war of the loudmouths.
    Suddenly a quiet began to spread. It began from the back of the chamber, where people were clustered around the doorway. Somebody laughed, but the laugh was choked off almost at once. A few people mumbled and muttered. And then a man made his way into the chamber and you’d have thought the Red Sea was parting as folks shrank back to give him room.
    The man was smiling. He had a boyish face and light brown hair cresting a high forehead.
    “What’s all this yelling about?” he asked. He had a Southern accent, but you could tell he was an educated man. “Any problem here, Mayor Swope?”
    “Uh… no, Vernon. No problem. Is there, Dick?”
    Mr. Moultry looked like he was about to spit and scowl. His wife’s face was red as a Christmas beet under her platinum locks. I heard the Branlins giggle, but somebody hushed them up.
    “I hope there’s no problem,” Vernon said, still smiling. “You know how Daddy hates problems.”
    “Sit down,” Mayor Swope told the Moultrys, and they did. Their asses almost busted the bleacher.
    “I sense some… disunity here,” Vernon said. I felt a giggle about to break from my throat, but my father grasped my wrist and squeezed so hard it went away. Other people shifted uneasily in their seats, especially some of the older widow women. “Mayor Swope, can I come up to the podium?”
    “God save us,” my father whispered, and Mom shivered with a silent laugh beating at her ribs.
    “Uh… I… suppose so, Vernon. Sure. Come on up.” Mayor Swope stepped back, pipe smoke swirling around his head.
    Vernon Thaxter stepped up to the podium and faced the assembly. He was very pale under the lights. All of him was pale.
    He was stark naked. Not a stitch on him.
    His doodad and balls hung out in full view. He was a skinny thing, probably because he walked so much. The soles of his feet must’ve been as hard as dried leather. Rain glistened on his white flesh and his hair was slick with it. He looked like a picture of a dark Hindu mystic I’d seen in one of my National Geographics, though, of course, he was neither dark nor Hindu. I’d have to say he was no mystic, either. Vernon Thaxter was downright, around-the-bend-and-through-the-woods crazy.
    Of course, walking