Boys Life

funny. He started laughin’, right there in the Moon Man’s face. And you know what?”
    “What?” Mom asked.
    “A week later Burk’s hair started to fall out.”
    “Oh, I don’t believe it!”
    “It’s true!” The adamance of my father’s voice indicated that he, at least, believed it. “Within one month after Burk Hatcher spat tobacco juice on the Moon Man’s shoes, he was balder’n a cue ball! He started wearin’ a wig! Yes ma’am, he did! He almost went crazy because of it!” I could imagine my father leaning forward in his chair, his face so grim my mother was having to struggle to keep from laughing. “If you don’t think the Lady had somethin’ to do with that, you’re crazy!”
    “Tom, I swear I never knew you put so much faith in the occult.”
    “Faith, smaith! I saw Burk’s bald head! Heck, I can tell you a lot of things I’ve heard about that woman! Like frogs jumpin’ out of people’s throats and snakes in the soup bowl and… uh-uh, no! I’m not settin’ foot in that house!”
    “But what if she gets mad at us if we don’t go there?” Mom asked.
    The question hung.
    “Mightn’t she put a spell on us if I don’t take Cory to see her?”
    I could tell Mom was jiving my dad a little, from her tone of voice. Still, Dad didn’t answer and he was probably mulling over the potential disasters of snubbing the Lady.
    “I think I’d better go and take Cory, too,” Mom went on. “To show that we respect her. Anyway, aren’t you the least bit curious why she wants to see us?”
    “No!”
    “Not the tiniest least bit?”
    “Lord,” Dad said after another bout of thinking. “You could argue the warts off a toad. And the Lady’s probably got bottles full of those, too, to go along with her mummy dust and bat wings!”
    The result of all this was that on Friday evening, as the sun began to slide down across the darkening earth and a cool wind blew through the streets of Zephyr, my mother and I got in the pickup truck and left our house. Dad stayed behind, his radio tuned to the baseball game he’d been awaiting, but I believe he was with us in spirit. He just didn’t want to make a mistake and offend the Lady, in manner or speech. I have to say I was no solid rock myself; under my white shirt and the clip-on tie Mom had made me wear, my nerves were frazzling mighty fast.
    Work was still going on in Bruton, the dark people sawing and hammering their houses back together. We passed through Bruton’s business center, a little area with a barbershop, grocery store, shoe and clothing store, and other establishments run by the locals. Mom turned us onto Jessamyn Street, and at the end of that street she stopped in front of a house from which lights glowed through every window.
    The small frame house, as I’ve already mentioned, was painted in a blaze of orange, purple, red, and yellow. A garage was set off to the side, where I figured the rhinestone-covered Pontiac was stored. The yard was neatly trimmed, and a sidewalk led from the curb to the porch steps. The house appeared neither scary nor the residence of royalty; it was just a house and, except for its coat of many colors, very much like every other house on the street.
    Still, I balked when Mom came around and opened my door.
    “Come on,” she said. Her voice had tightened, though her nervousness didn’t show in her face. She was wearing one of her best Sunday dresses, and her nice Sunday shoes. “It’s almost seven.”
    Seven, I thought. Wasn’t that supposed to be a voodoo number? “Maybe Dad was right,” I told her. “Maybe we ought not to do this.”
    “It’s all right. Look at all the lights on.”
    If this was supposed to make me feel at ease, it didn’t work.
    “There’s nothin’ to be afraid of,” Mom said. This, from a woman who fretted that the gray insulation they’d recently sprayed above the ceiling of the elementary school might be bad for your breathing.
    Somehow I got up the porch steps to the door. The porch light was painted yellow, to keep bugs away. I’d imagined the door’s knocker might be a skull and crossbones. It was, instead, a little silver hand. Mom said, “Here goes,” and she rapped on the door.
    We heard muffled talking and footsteps. It occurred to me that our time to flee was running out. Mom put her arm around me, and I thought I could feel her pulse beating. Then the door’s knob turned, the door opened, and the Lady’s house offered entry. A tall,