Boys Life

on his face, and his white shirt was damp. On the breast pocket, next to a tobacco stain, was a monogram: BB. “ Stupid!” he repeated. “You want the law to come in and bust us up? Why don’t you just give a map to that goddamned sheriff?”
    “Cory won’t say anythin’. He’s a good boy.”
    “That so?” The small pig eyes returned to me. “You as stupid as your grandpap, boy?”
    “No sir,” I said.
    He laughed. The sound of it reminded me of when Phillip Kenner threw up his oatmeal in school last April. The man’s eyes were not happy, but his mouth was tickled. “Well, you’re a smart little fella, ain’t you?”
    “He takes after me, Mr. Blaylock,” the Jaybird said, and I realized the man who thought I was so smart was Bodean Blaylock himself, brother of Donny and Wade and son of the notorious Biggun. I recalled my grandfather’s brash pronouncement at the door that Bodean could stick his head up his ass; right now, though, it was my grandpop who looked butt-faced.
    “Like hell he does,” Bodean told him, and when he laughed again he looked around at the other gamblers and they laughed, too, like good little Indians following the chief. Then Bodean stopped laughing. “Hit the road, Jaybird,” he said. “We’ve got some high rollers comin’ in here directly. Bunch of flyboys think they can make some money off me.”
    My grandfather cleared his throat nervously. His eyes were on the poker chips. “Uh… I was wonderin’… since I’m here and all, mind if I sit in for a few hands?”
    “Take that kid and make dust,” Bodean told him. “I’m runnin’ a poker game, not a baby-sittin’ service.”
    “Oh, Cory can wait outside,” the Jaybird said. “He won’t mind. Will you, boy?”
    “Grandmomma’s waitin’ for the ice cream salt,” I said.
    Bodean Blaylock laughed again, and I saw the crimson flare in my grandfather’s cheeks. “I don’t care about no damned ice cream!” the Jaybird snapped, a fury and a torment in his eyes. “I don’t care if she waits till midnight for it, I can do whatever I damn well please!”
    “Better run on home, Jaybird,” one of the other men taunted. “Go eat yourself some ice cream and stay out of trouble.”
    “You shut up!” he hollered. “ Here!” He dug into his pocket, brought out a twenty-dollar bill, and slammed it on the table. “Am I in this game, or not?”
    I almost choked. Twenty dollars to risk playing poker. That was an awful lot of money. Bodean Blaylock smoked his cigar in silence, and looked back and forth from the money to my granddaddy’s face. “Twenty dollars,” he said. “That’ll hardly get you started.”
    “I’ve got more, don’t you worry about it.”
    I realized the Jaybird must’ve raided the cash jar, or else he had a secret poker-playing fund hidden away from my grandmother. Surely she wouldn’t approve of this, and surely the Jaybird had agreed to get the ice cream salt as a ruse to come here. Maybe he’d just planned on dropping by to see who was playing, but I could tell the fever had him and he was going to play come hell or high water. “Am I in, or not?”
    “The kid can’t stay.”
    “Cory, go sit in the car,” he said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
    “But Grandmomma’s waitin’ for-”
    “Go do like I said and do it right now!” the Jaybird yelled at me. Bodean stared at me through a haze of smoke. His expression said: See what I can do to your granddaddy, little boy?
    I left the house. Before I got to the door, I could hear the sound of a new chair scraping up to the table. Then I walked out into the hot light and I put my hands in my pockets and kicked a pine cone across the road. I waited. Ten minutes went past. Then ten more. A car pulled up, and three young men got out, knocked on the front door, and were admitted by Mr. Claypool. The door closed again. Still my grandfather didn’t emerge. I sat in the car for a while, but the heat was so bad my sweat drenched my shirt and I had to peel myself off the seat and get out again. I paced up and down in front of the house, and I paused to watch ants stripping a dead pigeon to the bones. Maybe an hour went past. At some point, though, I realized my grandfather was treating me like a little piece of nothing, and that was how he was treating Grandmomma Sarah, too. Anger started building in me, beginning in the belly like a dull, throbbing heat. I stared at the door, trying to will him to come out. The door remained