Boys Life

again?”
    I decided it was time. I cleared my throat, and I began to tell my friends about the figure I’d seen, the green feather, and the man in the green-feathered hat. “I didn’t see his face,” I said. “But I saw that hat and the feather, and I saw him pull a knife out of his coat. I thought he was gonna sneak up behind my dad and stab him. Maybe he tried to, but he figured he couldn’t get away with it. Maybe he’s steamed ’cause my dad saw the car go down and told Sheriff Amory about it. Maybe he saw me lookin’ at him, too. But I didn’t see his face. Not a bit of it.”
    When I’d finished, they didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then Ben spoke up: “How come you didn’t tell us this before? Didn’t you want us to know?”
    “I was gonna tell you, but after what happened with Old Moses-”
    “Don’t start that bull again!” Davy Ray warned.
    “I don’t know who the man in the green-feathered hat is,” I said. “He could be anybody. Even… somebody we all know real well, somebody you wouldn’t think could do such a thing. Dad says you never know people through and through, and that everybody’s got a part they don’t show. So it could be anybody at all.”
    My friends, excited by this new information, flung themselves eagerly into the roles of detectives. They would agree to be on the lookout for a man in a green-feathered hat, but we also agreed to keep this knowledge to ourselves and not spread it to our parents, in case one of them happened to tell the killer without knowing it. I felt better for having relieved myself of this burden, yet I was still troubled. Who was the man Mr. Dollar said Donny Blaylock had killed? And what was the meaning of the piano music in the dream the Lady had told my mom about? Dad still refused to visit the Lady, and I still sometimes heard him cry out in his sleep. So I knew that even though that ugly dawn was long behind us, the memory of the event-and of what he’d seen handcuffed to the wheel-haunted him. If Dad went out walking at Saxon’s Lake, he didn’t tell me, but I suspected this might be true because of the crusty red dirt he left scraped on the porch steps on more than one afternoon.
    August came upon us, riding a wave of sultry heat. One morning I awakened to the realization that in a few days I would be spending a week with Granddaddy Jaybird, and I immediately pulled the sheet over my head.
    But there was no turning back the clock. The monsters on my walls could not help me. Every summer, I spent a week with Granddaddy Jaybird and Grandmomma Sarah whether I wanted to or not. Granddaddy Jaybird demanded it, and whereas I spent several weekends throughout the year with Grand Austin and Nana Alice, the visit with Grand-daddy Jaybird was one lump sum of frenetic bizarrity.
    This year, though, I was determined to strike a bargain with my folks. If I had to go to that farmhouse where Granddaddy Jaybird jerked the covers off me at five in the morning and had me mowing grass at six, could I at least go on an overnight camping trip with Davy Ray, Ben, and Johnny? Dad said he’d think about it, and that was about the best I could hope for. So it happened that I said good-bye to Rebel for a week, Dad and Mom drove me out from Zephyr into the country, my suitcase in the back of the truck, and Dad turned off onto the bumpy dirt road that led across a corn field to my grandparents’ house.
    Grandmomma Sarah was a sweet woman, of that there was no doubt. I imagine the Jaybird had been a rounder in his youth, full of vim and vigor and earthy charm. Every year, however, his bolts had gotten a little looser. Dad would say it right out: Jaybird was out of his mind. Mom said he was “eccentric.” I say he was a dumb, mean man who thought the world revolved around him, but I have to say this as well: if it wasn’t for the Jaybird, I would never have written my first story.
    I never saw Granddaddy Jaybird perform an act of kindness. I never heard him praise his wife or his son. I never felt, when I was around him, that I was anything but a-thankfully temporary-possession. His moods were as fleeting as the faces of the moon. But he was a born storyteller, and when he focused his mind on tales of haunted houses, demon-possessed scarecrows, Indian burial grounds, and phantom dogs, you had no choice but to willingly follow wherever he led.
    The macabre, it may be said, was his territory. He was grave smart and life stupid, as he’d never