Boys Life

me down. I had nearly ripped a hole clear through the hedge. My arms and cheeks were scratched up some, but nothing seemed to be skinned up and bleeding. I got out of the hedge, shaking off leaves, and I saw Rocket lying on its side in the grass. Terror gripped me; if this new bike was busted up, Dad’s spanking hand would be finding work. I knelt beside Rocket, checking the bike for damage. The front tire was scuffed and the fender crimped, but the chain was still on and the handlebars straight. The headlight was unbroken, the frame unbent. Rocket had been bruised but was amazingly healthy for such a nasty spill. I righted the bike, thanking whatever angel had been riding on my shoulder, and as I ran my fingers over the dented fender I saw the eye in the headlamp.
    It was a golden orb with a dark pupil, and it stared at me with what might have been a brooding tolerance.
    I blinked, startled.
    The golden eye was gone. Now the headlight was just a plain bulb behind a circle of glass again.
    I kept staring at the headlight. There was no eye in it. I rolled Rocket around, from sun to shadow and back again, but the image did not return.
    I felt my head, searching for a lump. I found none.
    It’s crazy, the things a boy can imagine.
    I got back on the seat and started pedaling along the sidewalk again. This time I took it slow and easy, and I hadn’t gone twenty feet before I saw all the glass from a broken Yoo-Hoo bottle scattered across the sidewalk in front of me. I swerved Rocket over the curb and onto the street, missing the glass fragments and saving Rocket’s tires. I hated to think what might have happened if I’d gone over that glass at high speed; a few scratches from a leafy hedge were mild compared to what could have been.
    We had been very lucky, Rocket and me.
    Davy Ray Callan lived nearby. I stopped at his house, but his mother said Davy Ray had gone to the ball field with Johnny Wilson to practice. Our Little League team-the Indians, for whom I played second base-had lost our first four games and we needed all the practice we could get. I thanked Mrs. Callan and I aimed Rocket toward the field.
    It wasn’t far. Davy Ray and Johnny were standing out in the sunshine and the red dust, pitching a ball back and forth. I rode Rocket onto the field and circled them, and their mouths dropped open at the sight of my new bike. Of course they had to touch it, too, had to sit on it and pedal it around a little. Next to Rocket, their bikes looked like dusty antiques. Still, this was Davy Ray’s opinion of Rocket: “It don’t handle so good, though, does it?” And Johnny’s: “It sure is pretty, but the pedals are stiff.” I realized they were not saying this simply to rain on my parade; they were good friends, and they rejoiced in my happiness. The fact of the matter is that they preferred their own bikes. Rocket had been made for me and me alone.
    I rested Rocket on its kickstand and watched while Davy Ray threw high fly balls to Johnny. Yellow butterflies flew from the grass, and overhead the sky was blue and cloudless. I looked toward the brown-painted bleachers, under the signs advertising different Merchants Street stores, and I saw a figure sitting at the top.
    “Hey, Davy!” I said. “Who’s that?”
    Davy glanced over and then lifted his glove to snare Johnny’s return pitch. “I don’t know. Just some kid, been sittin’ there since we got here.”
    I watched the guy. He was hunkered forward, watching us, with one elbow on a knee and his chin propped on his palm. I turned away from Davy and walked toward the bleachers, and the kid at the top suddenly stood up as if he meant to run.
    “What’re you doin’ up there?” I called to him.
    He didn’t answer. He just stood there, and I could tell he was trying to decide whether to take to his heels or not.
    I got closer. I didn’t recognize him; he had short-cropped dark brown hair with a wiry cowlick sticking up from the left side of his head, and he wore glasses that seemed too big for his face. He was maybe nine or ten years old, I figured, and he was a real beanpole, with gawky arms and legs. He wore blue jeans with patched knees and a white T-shirt, and the buttermilk pallor of his skin told me he didn’t get outside very much. “What’s your name?” I asked him as I reached the fence between the field and the bleachers.
    He didn’t reply.
    “Can you talk?”
    I saw him tremble. He looked as scared as a deer caught in a hunter’s