Boys Life

showing his silver tooth. Then his heavyset wife, Veronica, who was also Dutch and whose long-jawed face reminded me of a horse, came up with a paper plate piled high with ribs and pulled Dr. Lezander away. Mrs. Lezander was a cool sort; she didn’t have a lot to do with any of the other women, and Mom told me that she understood Mrs. Lezander’s older brother and his family had been killed fighting the Nazis in Holland. I figured something like that could hurt your trust in people. The Lezanders had escaped from Holland before the country had fallen, and Dr. Lezander himself had shot a Nazi soldier with a pistol as the man burst through the door of his house. This was a subject that fascinated me, since Davy Ray, Ben, Johnny, and I played army out in the woods, and I wanted to ask Dr. Lezander what war was really like but Dad said I was not to bring it up, that such things were best left alone.
    Vernon Thaxter made an appearance at the picnic, which caused the faces of women to bloom red and men to pretend to be examining their barbecue with fierce concentration. Most people, though, acted as if Moorwood Thaxter’s son was invisible. Vernon got a plate of barbecue and sat under a tree at the edge of the baseball field; he wasn’t totally naked on this occasion, however. He was wearing a floppy straw hat that made him look like a happily deranged Huckleberry Finn. I believe Vernon was the only man Mr. Curliss didn’t approach with his shirt sample book.
    During the afternoon I heard the Beach Boys’ song several times from transistor radios, and every time it seemed better than the last. Dad heard it and wrinkled his nose as if he’d smelled sour milk and Mom said it made her ears hurt, but I thought it was great. The teenagers sure went wild over it. Then, as it was playing for about the fifth time, we heard a big commotion over where some high school guys were throwing a football not far from us. Somebody was bellowing like a mad bull, and Dad and I pushed through the gawkers to see what it was all about.
    And there he was. All six-foot-six of him, his curly red hair flying around his head and his long, narrow face pinched even tighter with righteous rage. He wore a pale blue suit with an American flag pin on his lapel and a small cross above it, and his polished black size-fourteen wingtips were stomping the devil out of a little scarlet radio. “This. Has. Got. To. Cease!” he bellowed in time with his stomps. The guys who’d been playing football just stared at the Reverend Angus Blessett in open-mouthed amazement, and the sixteen-year-old girl whose radio had just been busted to splinters was starting to cry. The Beach Boys had been silenced under the boot, or, in this case, the wingtip. “This Satan’s squallin’ has got to cease!” Reverend Blessett of the Freedom Baptist Church hollered to the assembled throng. “Day and night I hear this trash, and the Lord has moved me to strike it down!” He gave the offending radio a last stomp, and wires and batteries flew from the wreckage. Then Reverend Blessett looked at the sobbing girl, his cheeks flushed and sweat glistening on his face, and he held out his arms and approached her. “I love you!” he yelled. “The Lord loves you!”
    She turned and fled. I didn’t blame her. If I’d had a nifty radio smashed right in front of me, I wouldn’t feel like hugging anybody either.
    Reverend Blessett, who’d been embroiled last year in a campaign to ban the Lady’s Good Friday ritual at the gargoyle bridge, now turned his attention to the onlookers. “Did you see that? The poor child’s so confused she can’t recognize saint from sinner! You know why? ’Cause she was listenin’ to that wailin’, unholy trash!” He aimed a finger at the dead radio. “Have any of you bothered to listen to what’s fillin’ our children’s ears this summer? Have you?”
    “Sounds like bees swarmin’ on a donkey to me!” somebody said, and people laughed. I looked over and saw Mr. Dick Moultry’s sweat-wet bloat, the front of his shirt splotched with barbecue sauce.
    “Laugh if you want to, but before God it’s no laughin’ matter!” Reverend Blessett raged. I don’t think I ever heard him speak in a normal voice. “You give that song one listen, and the very hairs will rise up on the back of your necks just like it did on mine!”
    “Aw, come on, Reverend!” My father was smiling. “It’s just a song!”
    “Just a song?” Reverend