Boys Life

fair. Sometimes I thought I caught a glimpse of the golden eye in the headlamp, but it was never there when I looked directly at it. Rocket accepted my careful touch, though I sensed in the smoothness of the pedals and chain and the snap of the turns that Rocket, like any high-strung Thoroughbred, wanted to run. I had the feeling that I had a lot to learn yet about Rocket.
    My lip healed. So did my head. My pride stayed bruised, though, and my confidence was fractured. Those injuries, the ones that didn’t show, I would have to live with.
    One Saturday my folks and I went to the public swimming pool, which was crowded with high-school kids. I have to tell you that it was for whites only. Mom jumped eagerly into the choppy blue water, but Dad took a seat and refused to leave it even when we both begged him to come in. I didn’t think until later that the last time Dad had been swimming, he’d seen a dead man sink into Saxon’s Lake. So I sat with him for a while as Mom swam around, and I had the opportunity to tell him for the third or fourth time about Nemo Curliss’s throwing ability. This time, though, I had his undivided attention, because there was no television or radio nearby and he wanted to focus on something beside the water, which he seemed not to want to look at. He told me I ought to tell Coach Murdock about Nemo, that maybe Coach Murdock could talk Nemo’s mother into letting him play Little League. I filed that suggestion away for later.
    Davy Ray Callan, his six-year-old brother, Andy, and their mom and dad showed up at the pool in the afternoon. Most of the bruises had vanished from Davy’s face. The Callans sat with my folks, and their talk turned to what ought to be done about the Branlin boys, that we weren’t the only ones who’d been beaten up by that brood. Davy and I didn’t especially want to relive our defeat, so we asked our folks for money to go get a milk shake at the Spinnin’ Wheel and, armed with dollar bills, we headed off in our flipflops and sunburns while Andy squalled and had to be restrained from tagging after us by Mrs. Callan.
    The Spinnin’ Wheel was just across the street from the pool. It was a white-painted stucco building with white stucco icicles hanging from the roof’s edge. A statue of a polar bear stood in front of it, adorned with such spray-painted messages as “Nobody Else Will Beat Our Score, We’re The Seniors ’64” and “Louie, Louie!” and “Debbie Loves Goober” among other declarations of independence. Davy and I guessed Mr. Sumpter Womack, who owned and managed the Spinnin’ Wheel, thought that “Goober” was some guy’s name. Nobody told him differently. The Spinnin’ Wheel was what might be called a teen hangout. The lure of hamburgers, hot dogs, fries, and thirty different flavors of milk shakes-from root beer to peach-kept the parking lot full of high school guys and girls in their daddy’s cars or pickups. This particular Saturday was no exception. The cars and trucks were packed in tight, their windows open and the radio music drifting out over the lot like sultry smoke. I recalled that I had once seen Little Stevie Cauley, in Midnight Mona, parked here with a blond girl who leaned her head against his shoulder, and Little Stevie had glanced at me, his hair coal black and his eyes as blue as swimming-pool water, as I’d walked past. I had not seen the girl’s face. I wondered if that girl, whoever she had been, knew that Little Stevie and Midnight Mona now haunted the road between Zephyr and Union Town.
    Davy, ever the daring one, bought a jumbo peppermint milk shake and got fifty cents back. He talked me out of getting plain vanilla. “You can get plain vanilla anytime!” he said. “Try…” He scanned the chalkboard that listed all the flavors. “Try peanut butter!”
    I did. I have never been sorry, because it was the best milk shake I ever tasted, like a melted and frozen Reese’s cup. And then it happened.
    We were walking across the parking lot, under the burning sun, with our shakes freezing our hands in the big white paper cups that had Spinnin’ Wheel in red across the sides. A sound began: music, first from a few car radios and then others as teenaged fingers turned the dial to that station. The volume dials were cranked up, and the music flooded out from the tinny speakers into the bright summer air. In a few seconds the same song was being played from every radio on the lot, and as it played, some of the