Boy's Life

by Robert R. McCammon

  “So,” Vernon said in a quiet voice, “the boy packed his bags while his daddy told him he was a stupid fool that he’d come back to this house crawling and then we’d see who was right, wouldn’t we? And the boy was a very naughty boy that day, he told his daddy he’d see him in the bad place first. He went from Zephyr to Birmingham on a bus and Birmingham to New York City on a train, and he walked into an office in a tall building to find out what was going to happen to his child.”

  Vernon lapsed into silence again. He picked up his batter bowl, trying to find something else to lick. “What happened?” I prodded.

  “They told him.” He smiled; it was a gaunt smile. “They said this is a business, like any other. We have charts and graphs, and we have numbers on the wall. We know that this year people want murder mysteries, and your town would make a wonderful setting for one. Murder mysteries, they said. Thrill people. We’re having to compete with television now, they said. It’s not like it used to be, when people had time to read. People want murder mysteries, and we have charts and graphs to prove it. They said if the boy would fit a murder mystery into the book—and it wouldn’t be too difficult, they said, it wouldn’t be too hard at all to do—then they would publish it with the boy’s name right there on the cover. But they said they didn’t like the title Moon Town. No, that wouldn’t do. Can you write hard-boiled? they asked. They said they needed a hard-boiled writer this year.”

  “Did he do it?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Vernon nodded. “Oh, he did it. Whatever they wanted. Because it was so close, so close he could taste it. And he knew his daddy was watching over his shoulder. He did it.” Vernon’s smile was like a fresh wound in scar tissue. “But they were wrong. It was very, very hard to do. The boy got a room in a hotel, and he worked on it. That hotel…it was all he could afford. And as he worked on that rented typewriter in that mean little rented room, some of that hotel and some of that city got into him and made its way through his fingers into that book. Then one day he didn’t know where he was anymore. He was lost, and there were no signs telling him which way to go. He heard people crying and saw people hurt, and something inside him closed up like a fist and all he wanted to do was get to that last page and get out of it. He heard his daddy laughing, late at night. Heard him say you fool, you little fool you should’ve stood your ground. Because his daddy was in him, and his daddy had come with him all that way from Zephyr to New York City.”

  Vernon’s eyes squeezed shut for a few agonized seconds. Then they opened again, and I saw they were rimmed with red. “That boy. That stupid little foolish boy took their money, and he ran. Back to Zephyr, back to the clean hills, back where he could think. And then that book came out, with the boy’s name on it, and he saw that cover and knew he had taken his child and he had dressed that beautiful child up like a prostitute and now only people who craved ugliness wanted her. They wanted to wallow in her, and use her up and throw her away because she was only one of a hundred thousand and she was crippled. And that boy…that boy had done it to her. That evil, greedy boy.”

  His voice cracked with a noise that startled me.

  Vernon pressed his hand to his mouth. When he lowered his hand, a silver thread of saliva hung from his lower lip. “That boy,” he whispered. “Found out very soon…that the book was a failure. Very soon. He called them. Anything, he said. I’ll do anything to save it. And they said we have the charts and tables, and numbers on the wall. They said people were tired of murder mysteries. They said people wanted something different. Said they’d like to see his next book, though. He had promise, they said. Just come up with something different. You’re a young man, they said. You have lots of books in you.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand: a slow, labored movement. “His daddy was waiting. His daddy grinned and grinned and kept on grinning. His daddy’s face got as big as the sun and the boy was burned every time he looked at it. His daddy said you’re not fit to wear my shoes. And I paid for those shoes. Yes I did. I paid for that shirt and those pants. You’re not fit to wear what good money buys you. All you know is failure and failure and that’s all you’ll ever know for the rest of your life, and he said if I died in my sleep tonight it would be because you killed me with your failures. And that boy stood at the foot of the stairs, and he was crying and he said go on and die, then. I wish to God you would die, you…miserable…sonofabitch.”

  On that last terrible, hiss-breathed word I saw the tears jump in his eyes as if he’d been speared. He made a soft moaning sound, his face in torment like a Spanish painting I’d once seen of a naked saint in National Geographic. A tear streaked down to his jaw, followed by a second that got caught in a smear of chocolate batter in the corner of his mouth.

  “Oh…” he whispered. “Oh…oh…no.”

  “Young master Vernon?” The voice was as soft as his, but spoken with firmness. Mr. Pritchard had come into the room. Vernon didn’t even look at him. I started to stand up, but Mr. Pritchard said, “Master Cory? Please stay where you are for right now.” I stayed. Mr. Pritchard crossed the room and stood behind Vernon, and he reached out and put a gentle hand on Vernon’s thin shoulder. “Dinner’s over, young master Vernon,” he said.

  The naked man didn’t move or respond. His eyes were dull and dead, nothing alive about him but the slow crawl of tears.

  “It’s time for bed, sir,” Mr. Pritchard said.

  Vernon spoke in a hollow, faraway voice: “Will I wake up?”

  “I believe you will, sir.” The hand patted his shoulder; it was a fatherly touch. “You should say good night to your dinner guest.”

  Vernon looked at me. It was as if he’d never seen me before, as if I were a stranger in his house. But then his eyes came to life again and he sniffled and smiled in his boyish way. “Dust on the tracks,” he said. “If it builds up, a train can crash.” A frown passed over his features, but it was just a small storm and quickly gone. “Cory.” The smile returned. “Thank you for having dinner with me tonight.”

  “Yes si—”

  He held up a finger. “Vernon.”

  “Vernon,” I repeated.

  He stood up, and I did, too. Mr. Pritchard said to me, “Your father’s waiting for you at the front door. You turn right and walk along the hallway, you’ll come to it. I’ll be outside to drive you home in a few minutes, if you’ll just wait by the car.” Mr. Pritchard grasped one of Vernon’s elbows, and he guided Vernon to the door. Vernon walked like a very old man.

  “I enjoyed my dinner!” I told him.

  Vernon stopped and stared at me. His smile flickered off and on, like the sputtering of a broken neon sign. “I hope you keep writing, Cory. I hope everything good happens to you.”

  “Thank you, Vernon.”

  He nodded, satisfied that we had made a connection. He paused once more at the entrance to the dining room. “You know, Cory, sometimes I have the strangest dream. In it, I’m walking the streets in broad daylight and I don’t have on any clothes.” He laughed. “Not a stitch! Imagine that!”

  I can’t remember smiling.

  Vernon let Mr. Pritchard lead him out. I looked around at the carnage of plates, and I felt sick.

  The front door was easy to find. Dad was there; from the way he smiled, I could tell he had no inkling of what I’d witnessed. “You have a good talk?” I guess I mumbled something that satisfied him. “He treat you okay?” I just nodded. Dad was jovial and happy now that his belly was full of beef stew and Vernon hadn’t hurt me. “Nice house, isn’t it?” he asked as we walked to the long black car. “A house like this…there’s no tellin’ how much it cost.”

  I didn’t know either. But I did know that it was more than any one human being ought to pay.

  We waited to go home, and in a little while Mr. Pritchard walked out of the house to deliver us at our own front door.

  4

  The Wrath of Five Thunders

  ON MONDAY MORNING I found the Demon had spurned me. She had eyes now only for Ladd De
vine, and her fickle fingers left the back of my neck alone. It was the birthday card that had done it, and Ladd’s unknowing declaration that he had sent it. Ladd was going to be a really good football player when he got to high school; between then and now, he would be getting plenty of practice running and dodging.

  There was one last incident in the tale of the Demon’s birthday. I asked her at recess, as she watched Ladd passing a football to Barney Gallaway, how her party had been. She looked at me as if I were one shade short of invisible. “Oh, we had fun,” she said, her stare going back to the young football star. “My relatives came and ate ice cream and cake.”

  “Did you get any presents?”

  “Uh-huh.” She began to chew on a dirty fingernail, her hair stringy and oily and hanging in her face. “My momma and daddy gave me a nurse kit, my aunt Gretna gave me a pair of gloves she knitted, and my cousin Chile gave me a dried flower wreath to hang over my door for good luck.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “That’s real—”

  I had been about to move away. Now I stopped in my tracks.

  “Chile?” I said. “What’s her last name?”

  “Purcell. Used to be, I mean. She got married to a fella and the stork brought ’em a little bitty baby.” The Demon sighed. “Oh, ain’t Ladd just the handsomest thing?”

  God has a sense of humor that gets my goat sometimes.

  September dwindled away, and one morning it was October. The hills were streaked with red and gold, as if some magician had painted the trees almost overnight. It was still hot in the afternoons, but the mornings began to whisper about sweaters. This was Indian summer, when you saw those purple-and-red-grained ears of corn in baskets in the grocery store and an occasional dead leaf chuckled along the sidewalk.

  We had Show-and-Tell Day at our grade in school, which meant that everybody got to bring something important and tell why it was. I brought an issue of Famous Monsters to class, the sight of which would probably set Leatherlungs off like a Roman candle but would make me a hero of the oppressed. Davy Ray brought his “I Get Around” record, and the picture of an electric guitar he hoped to learn to play when his parents could afford lessons. Ben brought a Confederate dollar. Johnny brought his collection of arrowheads, all kept in separate drawers in a metal fishing-tackle box and protected by individual cotton balls.

  They were a wonder to behold. Small and large, rough and smooth, light and dark: they beckoned the imagination on a journey into the time when the forest was unbroken, the only light was cast from tribal fires, and Zephyr existed only in a medicine man’s fever. Johnny had been gathering the arrowheads ever since I’d known him, in the second grade. While the rest of us were running and playing without a moment’s interest in that dusty crevice known as history, Johnny was searching the wooded trails and creekbeds for a sharp little sign of his heritage. He had collected over a hundred, lovingly cleaned them—but no shellac, that would be an insult to the hand that carved the flint—and tucked them away in the tackle box. I imagined he took them out at night, in his room, and over them he dreamed of what life was like in Adams Valley two hundred years ago. I wondered if he imagined there were four Indian buddies who had four dogs and four swift ponies, and that they lived in tepees in the same village and talked about life and school and stuff. I never asked him, but I think he probably did.

  Before school began that morning of show-and-tell—which I had been dreading for several days because of what the Demon would offer up for appraisal—the guys and I met where we usually did, near the monkey bars on the dusty playground, our bikes chained to the fence along with dozens of others. We sat in the sun because the morning was cool and the sky was clear. “Open it,” Ben said to Johnny. “Come on, let’s see.”

  It didn’t take much urging for Johnny to flip up the latch. He may have kept them protected like rare jewels, but he wasn’t stingy about sharing their magic. “Found this one last Saturday,” he said as he opened a wad of cotton and brought a pale gray arrowhead to the light. “You can tell whoever did this was in a hurry. See how the cuts are so rough and uneven? He wasn’t takin’ his time about it. He just wanted to make an arrowhead so he could go shoot somethin’ to eat.”

  “Yeah, and from the size of it I’ll bet all he got was a gopher,” Davy Ray commented.

  “Maybe he was a sorry shot,” Ben said. “Maybe he knew he’d probably lose it.”

  “Could be,” Johnny agreed. “Maybe he was a boy, and this was his first one.”

  “If I’d had to depend on makin’ arrowheads to eat,” I said, “I would’ve dried up and blown away mighty fast.”

  “You sure have got a lot of them.” Ben’s fingers might have been itching to explore in the tackle box, but he was respectful of Johnny’s property. “Have you got a favorite one?”

  “Yeah, I do. This is it.” Johnny picked up a wad of cotton, opened it, and showed us which one.

  It was black, smooth, and almost perfectly formed.

  I recognized it.

  It was the arrowhead Davy Ray had found in the deep woods on our camping trip.

  “That’s a beauty,” Ben agreed. “Looks like it’s been oiled, doesn’t it?”

  “I just cleaned it, that’s all. It does shine, though.” He rubbed the arrowhead between his brown fingers, and he placed it in Ben’s pudgy hand. “Feel it,” Johnny said. “You can hardly feel any cuts on it.”

  Ben passed it to Davy Ray, who passed it to me. The arrowhead had one small chip in it, but it seemed to melt into your hand. Rubbing it in your palm, it was hard to tell where arrowhead stopped and flesh began. “I wonder who made this one,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’d like to know, too. Whoever did it wasn’t in any hurry. Whoever did it wanted to have a good arrowhead, one that would fly true, even if he lost it. Arrowheads were more than just the tips of arrows to Indians; they were like money, and they showed how much care you put into things. They showed how good of a hunter you were, whether you needed a lot of cheap old arrowheads to do the job, or if you had the time to make a few you could count on. I sure would like to know who made it.”

  This seemed important to Johnny. “I’ll bet it was a chief,” I offered.

  “A chief? Really?” Ben’s eyes got wide.

  “He’s fixin’ to make up a story,” Davy Ray told him. “Can’t believe a thing he says from here on out.”

  “Sure it was a chief!” I said adamantly. “Yes, he was a chief and he was the youngest chief the tribe ever had! He was twenty years old and his father was a chief before him!”

  “Oh, brother!” Davy Ray pulled his knees up to his chest, a knowing smile on his face. “Cory, if there’s ever a biggest-liar-in-town contest, you’ll win first prize for sure!”

  Johnny smiled, too, but his eyes were keen with interest. “Go on, Cory. Let’s hear about him. What was his name?”

  “I don’t know. It was… Runnin’ Deer, I—”

  “That’s no good!” Ben said. “That’s a girl Indian’s name! Make his name…oh…a warrior’s name. Like Heap Big Thundercloud!”

  “Big Heap Do-Do!” Davy Ray cackled. “That’s you, Ben!”

  “His name was Chief Thunder,” Johnny said, looking directly at me and ignoring the squabbling duo. “No. Chief Five Thunders. Because he was tall and dark and—”

  “Cross-eyed,” Davy Ray said.

  “Had a clubfoot,” Johnny finished, and Davy Ray shut up his giggling.

  I paused, the arrowhead gleaming on my palm.

  “Go ahead, Cory,” Johnny urged in a quiet voice. “Tell us a story about him.”

  “Chief Five Thunders.” I was thinking, weaving the story together, as my fingers squeezed and relaxed around the warm flint. “He was a Cherokee.”

  “Creek,” Johnny corrected me.

  “Creek, like I said. He was a Creek Indian, and his father was a chief but his father got killed when he was out huntin’. He went out huntin’ for deer, and they found him where he’d fallen off a rock. He w
as dyin’, but he told his son he’d seen Snowdown. Yes, he had. He’d seen Snowdown up close, close enough to see that white skin and those antlers that were as big as trees. He said as long as Snowdown lived in the woods, the world would keep goin’. But if anybody ever killed Snowdown, the world would end. Then he died, and Five Thunders was the new chief.”

  “I thought a chief had to fight to get to be chief,” Davy Ray said.

  “Well, sure he did!” I answered. “Everybody knows that. He had to fight a whole bunch of braves who thought they ought to be chief. But he liked peace better than he liked fightin’. It wasn’t that he couldn’t fight when he had to, it was just that he knew when to fight and when not to fight. But he had a temper, too. That’s why they didn’t call him just ‘One Thunder’ or ‘Two Thunders.’ He didn’t get mad very much, but when he did—look out! It was like five thunders boomin’ out all at the same time.”

  “The bell’s about to ring,” Johnny said. “What happened to him?”

  “He…uh…he was the chief for a long, long time. Until he got to be sixty years old. Then he passed bein’ chief to his son, Wise Fox.” I glanced toward the entrance; kids were starting to go into the school. “But Five Thunders was the chief they remembered best, because he kept peace between his tribe and the other tribes, and when he died they took his best arrowheads and scattered them around the woods for people to find a hundred years later. Then they carved his name in a rock and they buried his body in the secret Indian burial ground.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Davy Ray grinned. “Where’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a secret.”

  They groaned. The bell rang, summoning the kids in. I returned the arrowhead of Five Thunders to Johnny, who wrapped it in cotton and returned it to the tackle box. We stood up and started walking across the playground, puffs of dust rising behind our heels. “Maybe there really was somebody like Chief Five Thunders,” Johnny said as we neared the door.