Boys Life

eaten into my father’s soul. Dad was smart about a lot of things; he was commonsense smart, and he knew right from wrong and he was a man of his word, but he was naive about the world in many ways. I don’t think he’d ever believed that evil could exist in Zephyr. The idea that a fellow human being could be beaten and strangled, handcuffed to a wheel and denied a Christian burial in God’s earth-and that this terrible thing had happened right in his own hometown where he’d been born and raised-had hurt something deep inside him. Broken something, maybe, that he couldn’t fix by himself. Maybe it was also because the murdered man seemed to have no past, and that no one had responded to Sheriff Amory’s inquiries.
    “He had to be somebody,” I’d heard Dad telling Mom one night, through the wall. “Didn’t he have a wife, or children, or brothers or sisters? Didn’t he have folks of his own? My God, Rebecca, he had to have a name! Who was he? And where did he come from?”
    “That’s for the sheriff to find out.”
    “J.T. can’t find out anythin’! He’s given it up!”
    “I think you ought to go see the Lady, Tom.”
    “No.”
    “Why not? You saw the drawin’. You know it’s the same tattoo. Why won’t you at least go talk to her?”
    “Because-” He paused, and I could tell he was searching inside himself for an answer. “Because I don’t believe in her kind of magic, that’s why. It’s false trickery. She must’ve read about that tattoo in the Journal.”
    “It wasn’t described in such detail in the paper. You know that. And she said she heard voices and piano music, and she saw a pair of hands. Go talk to her, Tom. Please go.”
    “She doesn’t have anythin’ to tell me,” Dad said firmly. “At least not anythin’ I want to hear.”
    And that was where it stood, as my father’s sleep was haunted by a drowned phantom with no name.
    On this first day of summer, though, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I wasn’t thinking about Old Moses, or Midnight Mona, or the man with the green-feathered hat. I was thinking of joining my friends in what had become our ritual of celebration.
    I ran home from school. Rebel was waiting for me on the front porch. I told Mom I’d be back after a while, and then I ran into the woods behind our house with Rebel at my heels. The forest was green and glorious, a warm breeze stirring through the foliage and trees and the bright sun slanting down. I reached the forest trail and followed it deeper into the woods, and Rebel veered off to chase a squirrel up a tree before he came on. It took me about ten minutes to break through the forest and reach the wide green clearing that stood on a rolling hillside with Zephyr stretched out below. My friends, who’d come on their bikes, were already there with their dogs: Johnny Wilson with his big red Chief, Ben Sears with Tumper, and Davy Ray Callan with his brown-and-white-spotted Buddy.
    The wind was stronger up here. It whirled around and around in the clearing, a happy circle of summer air. “We made it!” Davy Ray shouted. “School’s out!”
    “School’s out!” Ben yelled, and jumped around like a pure idiot with Tumper barking at his side.
    Johnny just grinned, and he stood staring down at our hometown with the sun hot on his face.
    “You ready?” Ben asked me.
    “Ready.” I told him, my heart starting to beat hard.
    “Everybody ready?” Ben shouted.
    We were.
    “Let’s go, then! Summer’s started!” Ben began to run around the edges of the clearing in a wide circle, with Tumper loping along behind. I followed him, Rebel weaving in and out of my track. Johnny and Davy Ray started running behind me, their dogs racing back and forth across the clearing and tusseling with each other.
    We ran faster and faster. The wind was first in our faces and then at our backs. We ran around the clearing on our sturdy young legs, the wind speaking through the pines and oaks that rimmed our playground. “Faster!” Johnny shouted, limping just a little on his clubfoot. “Gotta go faster!”
    We kept going, fighting the wind and then flying before it. The dogs ran beside us, barking with the sheer happiness of movement. The sun sparkled on the Tecumseh River, the sky was clear azure, and summer’s heat bloomed in our lungs.
    It was time. Everyone knew it was time.
    “Ben’s goin’ up first!” I shouted. “He’s gettin’ ready! He’s gettin’-”
    Ben gave a holler. Wings tore