Boys Life

Blessett’s shiny face was suddenly up in my dad’s, and his ash-colored eyes were wild under eyebrows so red they looked painted on. “Just a song, did you say, Tom Mackenson? What if I was to tell you this ‘just a song’ was makin’ our young people itch with immorality? What if I was to tell you it preaches illicit sexual desires, hotrod racin’ in the streets, and big-city evil? What would you say then, Mr. Tom Mackenson?”
    Dad shrugged. “I’d say that if you heard all that in one listen, you must have ears like a hound dog. I couldn’t understand a single word of it.”
    “Ah-ha! Yes! See, that’s Satan’s trick!” Reverend Blessett stabbed my father’s chest with an index finger that had barbecue sauce under the nail. “It gets into our children’s heads without them even knowin’ what they’re hearin’!”
    “Huh?” Dad asked. By this time Mom had come up beside us and was holding on to Dad’s arm. Dad had never cared much for the reverend, and maybe she was afraid he might blow his top and take a swing.
    Reverend Blessett retreated from my father and surveyed the crowd again. If there’s anything that pulls people in, it’s a loudmouth and the smell of Satan in the air like charred meat on a griddle. “You good folks come to the Freedom Baptist Church at seven o’clock on Wednesday night and you’ll hear for yourselves exactly what I’m talkin’ about!” His gaze skittered from face to face. “If you love the Lord, this town, and your children, you’ll break any radio that plays that Satan-squallin’ garbage!” To my dismay, several people with dazed eyes hollered that they would. “Praise God, brothers and sisters! Praise God!” Reverend Blessett waded through the crowd, slapping backs and shoulders and finding hands to shake.
    “He got sauce on my shirt,” Dad said, looking down at the stain.
    “Come on, fellas.” Mom pulled at him. “Let’s get under some shade.”
    I followed them, but I looked back to watch Reverend Blessett striding away. A knot of people had closed around him, all of them jabbering. Their faces seemed swollen, and a dark sweat stain the shape of a watermelon wedge had grown on the back of the reverend’s coat. I couldn’t figure this out; the same song I’d first heard that day in the Spinnin’ Wheel’s parking lot was unholy? I didn’t know very much about big-city evil, but I didn’t itch with immorality. It was just a cool song, and it made me feel… well, cool. Even after all the listenings, I still couldn’t decipher what the chorus was after the I get around part, and neither could Ben, Davy Ray, or Johnny, who still had a wrapping of bandages across his beak and couldn’t yet leave his house. I was curious; what had Reverend Blessett heard in the song that I had not?
    I decided I wanted to find out.
    That night fireworks blossomed red, white, and blue over Zephyr.
    And sometime after midnight, a cross was set afire in front of the Lady’s house.

XII – Welcome, Lucifer
    I AWAKENED WITH THE SMELL OF BURNING IN MY NOSTRILS.
    Birds were singing and the sun was up, but I was reminded of a terrible thing. Three years ago, a house two blocks south of us had caught fire. It had been a hot, dry summer, and the house had gone up quick as pineknot kindling in the middle of an August night. The Bellwood family had lived there: Mr. and Mrs. Bellwood, their ten-year-old daughter Emmie, and their eight-year-old son Carl. The fire, which had started from a bad electrical connection, had consumed Carl in his bed before the Bellwoods could get to him. Carl died a few days later, and was buried on Poulter Hill. His tombstone had Our Loving Son carved on it. The Bellwoods had moved away soon after, leaving their son in Zephyr earth. I remember Carl clearly, because his mother was allergic to animals and wouldn’t allow him to have a dog, so he sometimes came up to my house to play with Rebel. He was a slight boy with curly, sandy-colored hair and he liked the banana Popsicles the Good Humor man sold from his truck. He told me once that he wished he could have a dog more than anything in the world. Then the fire took him away, and Dad sat down with me and said God has a plan but sometimes it’s awfully hard to decipher.
    On this particular morning, the fifth of July, Dad had gone to work and Mom was left to tell me what that burning smell was. She’d been on the phone most of the morning, wired into Zephyr’s amazingly accurate