"Dust or something. Can't hardly breathe."

"Come on and get a drink." Jimmy pumped ahead and waited in the driveway until Ernie arrived. They went into the house together and made Kool-Aid lemonade, then drank it with ice and ate the bologna sandwiches and Cheez Curls that Ernie had brought. They discussed the Spider-Man comic book that Ernie had given Jimmy and agreed that the Green Goblin was not a worthy adversary. He acted like a queer.

When the food was gone, they went outside and took turns shooting at the sparrows. They had troublehitting within a foot of their targets.

"Too much wind," Jimmy said.

"You should do it at night, anyway," Ernie said. "You put a flashlight on them. They get hypnotized and can't move. We can try it tonight, if you want."

"Maybe. My Dad'll be home."

"So?"

"So I don't know if he'll want us to."

Ernie took a shot and hit a tree branch a few inches from a sparrow. The bird took off. So did every other bird in the tree. The boys waited for them to come back.

"Your mom and sister at the store?" Ernie asked.

"Maybe. I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

Jimmy stared up into the tree. "I mean I don't know. They took off yesterday while I was at your place.

They aren't back yet."

"Oh." Ernie handed Jimmy the BB gun, then picked up his lemonade and took a drink. "Family troubles, huh?"

"I guess."

"Don't worry about it."

"I think they just went to see my grandma in Oklahoma."

"Where in Oklahoma?"

"Tulsa."

The birds were starting to come back, so Jimmy and Ernie lowered their voices.

"That's where Oral Roberts University is," Ernie said. "That's where my mom wants me to go to college.

They have a great basketball team."

"I wouldn't go to a college named after a G.o.dd.a.m.n preacher," Jimmy said.

Ernie made a face, as if the lemonade were sour. "I didn't say I was going to go. I said my mom wants me to. She's big on that prayer tower they have with the eternal flame. You can call in with prayers, and guys'll go up in the tower and pray them for you."

"For how long?" "I dunno. Until the prayers get answered or the guys have to p.o.o.p."

They both laughed, and the returning birds spooked.

"h.e.l.l," Jimmy said, "there they go again."

"Wait until night and put a light on them," Ernie said. He took another drink of lemonade. "You believe in G.o.d?"

Jimmy shrugged. "I guess. But I don't think preachers know any more about G.o.d than anyone else.

Churches are a racket."

"Yeah," Ernie said. "You should see the money they rake in at the United Methodist. I wouldn't go, except my folks make me. But I think prayers work, sometimes."

"Grow up."

Ernie spit a lemonade-goober at the ground. "Not the prayer tower and church and stuff. Just telling G.o.d what you think."

"I've tried it. It don't work."

"Maybe you tried to do it the way the preachers say you should. Maybe you never tried it your own way. Just saying what you want. Or what you think about things."

Jimmy grunted. He didn't like it when Ernie got weird like this.

One of the sparrows came back to the tree and perched on a high, bare twig. Jimmy raised the BB gun and sighted.

"Oh G.o.d," he said, "please let me kill this f.u.c.king bird. In Your name I pray, Amen." He squeezed the trigger. The BB gun popped. Jimmy didn't see the BB fly.

The sparrow twitched, then flopped over. One of its feet held on to the twig for a few seconds before it fell. It bounced once when it hit the ground.

Jimmy and Ernie ran over to it. There was blood on a weed it had brushed against on the way down. It wasn't moving.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," Jimmy said. "G.o.d came through."

Ernie cupped his hands around his mouth and spoke in a booming voice.

"Thou art welcome," he said.

Ernie left at five o'clock. Jimmy rode alongside for the first mile, then said good-bye and turned back.

He was within a quarter mile of home when Dad's truck pulled up beside him.

"You were told to stay home!" Dad yelled. His face was greasy with sweat. "I did," Jimmy said. "Ernie came out and I just rode partway back with him."

"You were told to stay home!" Dad yelled again. The pickup burned rubber and went past.

Dad was waiting beside the truck when Jimmy entered the driveway. He yanked Jimmy off the bike and dragged him into the garage.

"When I give an order," Dad said, "I expect to be obeyed." He took down the piece of fibergla.s.s fishing rod from its nails. "Drop your pants."

Jimmy forced down his fear. Not this time, he thought. He wouldn't do it this time. But then Dad would beat him up even worse.

"Mom called," Jimmy said. His voice quavered like Ernie's mother's. But at least he wasn't crying.

The switch wasn't cutting through the air the way it always did. It remained still in Dad's hand.

"What did she say?"

Jimmy didn't care what he told Dad then. He would say anything. He would say anything and keep on saying it as long as it kept the fibergla.s.s rod still. He was thirteen. He was too old to be switched. He was too old to be treated like some G.o.dd.a.m.n baby.

"She said she was at Grandma's. She said she wouldn't be home tonight, but not to worry. She said to tell you she was sorry she got mad and she'll be back tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" The switch lowered.

Jimmy licked his lips. "She said she hopes tomorrow, but maybe the next day. She said Grandma was really glad to see her and she couldn't just show up and then leave right away, so it might not be tomorrow but the next day. But not to worry because the car's okay and she's sorry she got mad. And she said to tell you there's pot pies in the freezer."

Dad closed his eyes for a second and rubbed his mouth with his free hand. "Anything else?"

Jimmy tried to think of something more. He couldn't. Much more would sound like the lie it was, anyway. Mom wouldn't have talked a long time on Grandma's phone bill.

"No, sir. Except she said we shouldn't call Grandma's house because Grandma's in a bad mood." Dad would believe that.

Dad snorted. "Like I would," he said. "Turn around and bend over. You still got a whipping coming.

You got to start doing what you're told."

Jimmy turned around and bent over. Dad gave him five, but they weren't hard. And he hadn't had to drop his pants. He had won, so long as Dad didn't find out that he'd lied. And it hadn't been a total lie, anyway. Where else would Mom be but at Grandma's?

He and Dad had turkey pot pies for supper. The crust was black on the edges, but it still tasted okay.

Jimmy burned his tongue on the filling. He always did that. Afterward, he and Dad watched a John Wayne cowboy movie on TV. There was a dab of ice milk left in the freezer, and they ate it.

When Jimmy went to bed, the burned patch on his tongue tingled, keeping him awake. He thought about the sparrow he had shot that afternoon. Mom had said more than once that G.o.d counted every sparrow that fell. Mom didn't approve of him shooting them. He wondered what she would think if she knew that he had prayed to kill this one.

The next day was a Friday. Mom and Jasmine didn't come home. They didn't come home Sat.u.r.day either. Dad went out Sat.u.r.day evening and didn't come home himself until Sunday afternoon. He smelled of beer and was angry. Jimmy knew that Dad was looking for an excuse for another whipping, so he said that Mom had called again. She had decided to stay with Grandma a few more days to help with some housecleaning and sewing. She and Jasmine would be home by Wednesday.

That had to be safe, Jimmy thought. Wednesday would be a whole week. Mom wouldn't stay away longer than that.

On Monday, Dad left in the morning. Jimmy was again to tell Mom, if she returned, that Dad would be home for supper. Dad didn't tell Jimmy to stay home, but Jimmy figured that he should anyway.

Sometimes Dad meant orders given one day to be followed weeks or months later as well.

Ernie rode his bike out and brought lunch again. Jimmy was glad of that. He and Dad had eaten the last of the macaroni and cheese the night before, and there was nothing left in the house that either one of them knew how to fix. They were even out of bread for toast. Dad hadn't said anything about buying groceries, so Jimmy doubted that he would. Ernie had brought bologna sandwiches and Cheez Curls again, but also two packages of chocolate cupcakes and two bottles of c.o.ke. He was wheezing when Jimmy met him in the driveway.

"Maybe you should see a doctor," Jimmy said. "You don't sound so good."

Ernie dropped his bike and staggered to the porch. He was wearing cutoffs, like Jimmy, and his matchstick legs were wobbly. He took off his backpack and sat down. "I just got hay fever," he said. He pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his cutoffs and blew his nose into it. He held it up. "See?"

"Jeez, why don't you show me your s.h.i.t too?"

"Queer."

"Let's eat."

Jimmy was out of BBs, so after lunch they decided to go swimming. They mixed up the last package of Kool-Aid lemonade and poured it into two Mason jars. They put the jars into Ernie's backpack along with the leftover Cheez Curls and set off. The jars clanked and sloshed. Some of the chickens tried to follow the boys, so they yelled and threw clods until the birds took off squawking.

They climbed through the barbed-wire fence behind the windbreak of evergreens and tramped through prairie hay that came up to their waists. The ten-acre meadow belonged to Dad, but the man from whom he had borrowed a mower and baler last year had died. So this year the hay would stay tall. It tickledand scratched. The boys' legs became crisscrossed with red lines. They went up over the hill and down to the second fence, where they crossed into the pasture. This was seventy acres and was owned by a man named Claussen, who kept thirty head of beef on it. Jimmy pointed at the cattle when they topped a rise. The black and brown steers were two hundred yards away, cl.u.s.tered around salt blocks that Claussen had dumped on a gra.s.sless patch of earth. The steers switched their tails at flies.

"We'll have about two hours to swim before they come down and muck it up," Jimmy said.

"How do you know?"

"I watched them. They go down when it gets really hot, about two-thirty or three. Then they stay there until it gets cool in the evening. Sometimes they spend the night there, I think. They graze in the early morning and hang out at the salt after that. Until it gets hot again."

"I didn't know cows had schedules," Ernie said.

"Not cows. Steers. Bulls without b.a.l.l.s."

"No wonder you know all about them."

Jimmy punched him in the shoulder. They went down to the pond.

The pond was surrounded by brown mud banks. The earthen dam rose at the east end. At the west end, the pond narrowed into a swampy stand of weeds.

"There're snakes in the weeds," Jimmy said, pointing. "We need to stay away from that end."

They stripped off their shirts and went in. They left their shoes on. The water stayed blood-warm until it was waist-deep. Then there was a layer of coolness down low. The bottom was mud that sucked at their sneakers, but there were also sticks and things that felt like broken gla.s.s and tin cans. The water didn't come up to their necks until they reached the center. Jimmy found one hole where the water was over his head. He dropped into it and opened his eyes, but all he could see was a brown haze. When he looked straight up, it turned reddish. The water in the hole was cold, and something slimy slithered past his legs.

He surfaced and moved back to shallower water.

He and Ernie swam and splashed each other until they tired, and then they moved to where the water was shallow enough that they could sit with the waves lapping at their chins. The sun was hot on Jimmy's head, and when his hair started drying, he dunked himself to wet it again.

"Hey, look," Ernie said when Jimmy surfaced. He was pointing toward the dam.

Jimmy blinked the water out of his eyes. A small brown dog with a narrow head was sitting on top of the dam, watching them. It was panting.

"I think he wants a drink," Ernie said.

"So why doesn't he get one?"

"Maybe he's scared of us."

Jimmy stood. The breeze on his chest was cool for a few seconds, then turned hot. "Come on, pup," hecalled, bending over and patting his thighs. "Come on down. We won't hurt you. Come on."

The dog c.o.c.ked its head.