"She didn't want a fuss. How she got through her last year teachin' I'll never know."

It hit me who they were talking about. Mrs. Neville. My Mrs. Neville. The teacher who'd said I should enter the short-story contest this year. Good-bye, she'd said as I'd left her room on the first day of summer. Not see you next year or see you in September, but a firm and final good-bye. She must've known she was dying, as she sat behind that desk in summer's light, and she had known that for her there would be no new cla.s.s of grinning young monkeys in September.

"Thought you might like to know," Dr. Parrish said. He touched my shoulder with a hand that had two hours ago pulled a sheet over Mrs. Neville's face. "You take care now, Cory." He turned around and walked to his Pontiac, and my grandmother and I watched him drive away.

An hour later, the Jaybird came home. He wore the expression of a man whose last friend had kicked him in the rump and whose last Washington had snickered as it sailed off into another man's pocket. He tried to work up a show of anger at me, for "runnin' off and worryin' me half to death" but before he could get steamed up on that route Grandmomma Sarah derailed him by asking, very quietly, where the ice cream salt was. The Jaybird wound up sitting by himself on the porch in the fading light, moths whirling around him, his face long and haggard and his spirits as low as his flagging jimbob. I felt kind of sorry for him, actually, but the Jaybird was not the kind of man you felt sorry for. One word of regret from me would've made him sneer and swagger. The Jaybird never apologized; he was never wrong. That was why he had no true companions, and that was why he sat alone on that porch in the company of dumb gleaming wings that swirled around him like his ancient memories of pretty farmers' daughters.

One last incident marked my week with my grandparents. I had not slept well on Friday night. I dreamed of walking into my cla.s.sroom, which was empty of everyone but Mrs. Neville, sitting behind her desk straightening papers. Golden light slanted across the floor, bars of it striping the blackboard. The flesh of Mrs. Neville's face had shriveled. Her eyes looked bright and large, like the eyes of a baby. She held her back rigid, and she watched me as I stood on the threshold between the hallway and cla.s.sroom. "Cory?" she said. "Cory Mackenson?"

"Yes ma'am," I answered.

"Come closer," she said.

I did. I walked to her desk, and I saw that the red apple there on its edge had dried up.

"Summer's almost over," Mrs. Neville told me. I nodded. "You're older than you were before, aren't you?"

"I had a birthday," I said.

"That's nice." Her breath, though not unpleasant, smelled like flowers on the verge of decay. "I have seen many boys come and go," she said. "I've seen some grow up and set roots, and some grow up and move away. The years of a boy's life pa.s.s so fast, Cory." She smiled faintly. "Boys want to hurry up and be men, and then comes a day they wish they could be boys again. But I'll tell you a secret, Cory. Want to hear it?"

I nodded.

"No one," Mrs. Neville whispered, "ever grows up."

I frowned. What kind of secret was that? My dad and mom were grown-up, weren't they? So were Mr. Dollar, Chief Marchette, Dr. Parrish, Reverend Lovoy, the Lady, and everybody else over eighteen.

"They may look grown-up," she continued, "but it's a disguise. It's just the clay of time. Men and women are still children deep in their hearts. They still would like to jump and play, but that heavy clay won't let them. They'd like to shake off every chain the world's put on them, take off their watches and neckties and Sunday shoes and return naked to the swimming hole, if just for one day. They'd like to feel free, and know that there's a momma and daddy at home who'll take care of things and love them no matter what. Even behind the face of the meanest man in the world is a scared little boy trying to wedge himself into a corner where he can't be hurt." She put aside the papers and folded her hands on the desk. "I have seen plenty of boys grow into men, Cory, and I want to say one word to you. Remember."

"Remember? Remember what?"

"Everything," she said. "And anything. Don't you go through a day without remembering something of it, and tucking that memory away like a treasure. Because it is. And memories are sweet doors, Cory. They're teachers and friends and disciplinarians. When you look at something, don't just look. See it. Really, really see it. See it so when you write it down, somebody else can see it, too. It's easy to walk through life deaf, dumb, and blind, Cory. Most everybody you know or ever meet will. They'll walk through a parade of wonders, and they'll never hear a peep of it. But you can live a thousand lifetimes if you want to. You can talk to people you'll never set eyes on, in lands you'll never visit." She nodded, watching my face. "And if you're good and you're lucky and you have something worth saying, then you might have the chance to live on long after-" She paused, measuring her words. "Long after," she finished.

"How's all this stuff supposed to happen?" I asked.

"First things first. Enter the short-story contest, like I told you."

"I'm not good enough."

"I'm not saying you are. Yet. Just do the best you can, and enter the contest. Will you do that?"

I shrugged. "I don't know what to write about."

"You will," Mrs. Neville said. "When you make yourself sit and look at a blank piece of paper long enough, you will. And don't think of it as writing. Just think of it as telling your friends a story. Will you at least try?"

"I'll think about it," I said.

"Don't think too hard," she cautioned me. "Sometimes thinking gets in the way of doing."

"Yes ma'am."

"Ah, well." Mrs. Neville pulled in a breath and let it slowly out. She looked around the cla.s.sroom at the empty desks carved with initials. "I have done my best," she said quietly, "and that is all I can do. Oh, you little children, what years you have ahead." Her gaze returned to me. "Cla.s.s dismissed," she said.

I woke up. It was not quite light yet. A rooster was crowing to herald the sun. The Jaybird's radio was on in their bedroom, tuned to a country station. The sound of a steel guitar, alone and searching over the dark miles of woods and meadows and roads, has always had the power to break my heart in two.

Mom and Dad came to pick me up that afternoon. I kissed Grandmomma Sarah good-bye, and I shook the Jaybird's hand. He put a little extra pressure into his grip. I squeezed back. We knew each other. Then I went out to the pickup truck with my folks, and I found they'd brought Rebel along, so I climbed into the truckbed and let my legs hang over the edge and Rebel nudged up close to me and blew dog breath in my face but it was fine with me.

Grandmomma Sarah and the Jaybird stood on their front porch and waved good-bye. I went home, where I belonged.

XIV My Camping Trip

THERE IS NOTHING MORE FRIGHTENING OR EXCITING THAN A blank piece of paper. Frightening because you're on your own, leaving dark tracks across that snowy plain, and exciting because no one knows your destination but yourself, and even you can't say exactly where you'll end up. When I sat down at my typewriter to chop out that story for the Zephyr Arts Council Writing Contest, I was so scared it was all I could do to spell my name. Concocting a story for yourself and a story that you know strangers are going to read are two different animals; the first is a comfortable pony, the second a crazy bronco. You just have to hold tight, and go along for the ride.

The sheet of paper stared me in the face for quite a while. At last I decided to write about a boy who runs away from his small town to see the world. I got two pages done before it became clear my heart wasn't in it. I started on a tale about a boy who finds a magic lantern in a junkyard. That, too, went into the wastebasket. A story about a ghost car was going pretty well until it hit the wall of my imagination and burst into flames.

I sat there, staring at another fresh sheet of paper.

The cicadas were whirring in the trees outside. Rebel barked at something in the night. From far away I heard a car's engine growl. I thought of my dream about Mrs. Neville, and what she'd said: Don't think of it as writing. Think of it as telling your friends a story.

What if? I asked myself. What if I was to write about something that had really happened?

Like... Mr. Sculley and the tooth of Old Moses. No, no. Mr. Sculley wouldn't want people coming around to his place to see it. All right then, what about... the Lady and the Moon Man? No, I didn't know enough about them. What about...

...the dead man in the car at the bottom of Saxon's Lake?

What if I was to write a story about what had happened that morning? Write about the car going into the water, and Dad jumping in after it? Write about everything I'd felt and seen on that March morning before the sun? And what if... what if... I wrote about seeing the man in the green-feathered hat, standing there at the edge of the woods?

Now, this I could get fired-up about. I began with my father saying, "Cory? Wake up, son. It's time." Soon I was back in the milk truck with him, on our way through the silent early morning streets of Zephyr. We were talking about what I wanted to grow up to be, and then suddenly the car came out of the woods right in front of us, my dad twisted the milk truck's wheel, and the car went over the edge of the red rock cliff into Saxon's Lake. I remembered my father running toward the lake, and how my heart had clutched up as he'd leaped into the water and started swimming. I remembered watching the car starting to go down, bubbles bursting around its trunk. I remembered looking around at the woods across the road and seeing the figure standing there wearing a long overcoat that flapped in the wind and a hat with a green- Wait.

No, that's not how it had been. I had stepped on the green feather, and found it on the bottom of my muddy shoe. But where else could a green feather come from but the band of a hat? Still and all, I was writing this as it had really been. I hadn't actually seen the green-feathered hat until the night of the flood. So I stuck to the facts, and wrote about the green feather as I'd found it. I left out the part about Miss Grace, Lainie, and the house of bad girls, figuring Mom wouldn't care to read about it. I read the story over and decided it wasn't as good as I could do, so I rewrote it. It was hard making talking sound like talking. Finally, though, after three times through my Royal, the story was ready. It was two pages long, double-s.p.a.ced. My masterpiece.

When Dad, clad in his red-striped pajamas and his hair still damp from his shower, came in to say good night, I showed him the two sheets of paper.

"What's this?" He held the t.i.tle up under my desk lamp. "'Before the Sun,'" he read, and he looked at me with a question in his eyes.

"It's a story for the writin' contest," I said. "I just wrote it."

"Oh. Can I read it?"

"Yes sir."

He began. I watched him. When he got to the part about the car coming out of the woods, a little muscle tensed in his jaw. He put out a hand to brace himself against the wall, and I knew he was reading about swimming out to the car. I saw his fingers slowly grip and relax, grip and relax. "Cory?" Mom called. "Go lock Rebel in for the night!" I started to go, but Dad said, "Wait just a minute," and then he returned to the last few paragraphs.

"Cory?" Mom called again, the TV on in the front room.

"We're talkin', Rebecca!" Dad told her, and he lowered the pages to his side. He stared at me, his face half in shadow.

"Is it okay?" I asked.

"This isn't what you usually write," he said quietly. "You usually write about ghosts, or cowboys, or s.p.a.cemen. How come you to write somethin' like this?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I just thought... I'd write somethin' true."

"So this is true? This part about you seein' somebody standin' in the woods?"

"Yes sir."

"Then how come you didn't tell me about it? How come you didn't tell Sheriff Amory?"

"I don't know. Maybe... I wasn't sure if I really saw somebody or not."

"But you're sure now? Almost six months after it happened, you're sure now? And you could've told the sheriff this, and you didn't?"

"I... guess that's right. I mean... I thought I saw somebody standin' there. He was wearin' a long overcoat, and he-"

"You're sure it was a man?" Dad asked. "You saw his face?"

"No sir, I didn't see his face."

Dad shook his head. His jaw muscle twitched again, and a pulse throbbed at his temple. "I wish to G.o.d," he said, "that we'd never driven along that road. I wish to G.o.d I'd never jumped in after that car. I wish to G.o.d that dead man at the bottom of the lake would leave me alone." He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again they were bleary and tortured. "Cory, I don't want you showin' this to anybody else. Hear me?"

"But... I was gonna enter it in the con-"

"No! G.o.d, no!" He clamped a hand to my shoulder. "Listen to me. All this happened six months ago. It's history now, and there's no need dredgin' it all up again."

"But it happened," I said. "It's real."

"It was a bad dream," my father answered. "A very bad dream. The sheriff never found anybody missin' from town. n.o.body missin' from anywhere around here who had a tattoo like that. No wife or family ever turned up huntin' a lost husband and father. Don't you understand, Cory?"

"No sir," I said.

"That man at the bottom of Saxon's Lake never was," Dad said, his voice hurt and husky. "n.o.body cared enough about him to even miss him. And when he died, beat up so bad he hardly looked like a man anymore, he didn't even get a proper burial. I was the last person on this earth to see him before he sank down forever. Do you know what that's done to me, Cory?"

I shook my head.

My father looked at the story again. He put the two pages back on my desk, next to the Royal typewriter. "I knew there was brutality in this world," he said, but he kept his eyes averted from mine. "Brutality is part of life, but... it's always somewhere else. Always in the next town. Remember when I was a fireman, and I went out when that car crashed and burned between here and Union Town?"

"Little Stevie Cauley's car," I said. "Midnight Mona."

"That's right. The tire tracks on the pavement said that another car forced Stevie Cauley off the road. Somebody deliberately wrecked him. The car's gas tank ruptured, and it blew sky high. That was brutality, too, and when I saw what was left of a livin', breathin' young man, I-" He flinched, perhaps recalling the sight of charred bones. "I couldn't understand how one human bein' could do that to another. I couldn't understand that kind of hate. I mean... what road do you take to get there? What is it that has to get inside you and twist your soul so much you can take a human life as easily as flickin' a fly?" His gaze found mine. "You know what your granddaddy used to call me when I was your age?"

"No sir."

"Yellowstreak. Because I didn't like to hunt. Because I didn't like to fight. Because I didn't like to do any of the things that you're supposed to like, if you're a boy. He forced me to play football. I wasn't any good at it, but I did it for him. He said, 'Boy, you'll never be any good in this life if you don't have the killer instinct.' That's what he said. 'Hit 'em hard, knock 'em down, show 'em who's tough.' The only thing is... I'm not tough. I never was. All I ever wanted was peace. That's all. Just peace." He walked to my window, and he stood there for a moment listening to the cicadas. "I guess," he said, "I've been pretendin' for a long time that I'm stronger than I am. That I could put that dead man in the car behind me and let him go. But I can't, Cory. He calls to me."

"He... calls to you?" I asked.

"Yes, he does." My father stood with his back to me. At his sides, his hands had curled into fists. "He says he wants me to know who he was. He wants me to know where his family is, and if there's anybody on this earth who mourns for him. He wants me to know who killed him, and why. He wants me to remember him, and he says that as long as whoever beat him and strangled him to death walks free, I will have no more peace for the rest of my life." Dad turned toward me. I thought he looked ten years older than when he'd taken the two pages of my story in his hand. "When I was your age, I wanted to believe I lived in a magic town," he said softly, "where nothin' bad could ever happen. I wanted to believe everyone was kind, and good, and just. I wanted to believe hard work was rewarded, and a man stood on his word. I wanted to believe a man was a Christian every day of the week, not just Sunday, and that the law was fair and the politicians wise and if you walked the straight path you found that peace you were searchin' for." He smiled; it was a difficult thing to look at. For an instant I thought I could see the boy in him, trapped in what Mrs. Neville's dream-shape had called the clay of time. "There never was such a place," my father said. "There never will be. But knowin' can't stop you from wishin' it was so, and every time I close my eyes to sleep, that dead man at the bottom of Saxon's Lake tells me I've been a d.a.m.ned fool."

I don't know why I said it, but I did: "Maybe the Lady can help you."

"How? Throw a few bones for me? Burn a candle and incense?"

"No sir. Just talk," I said.

He looked at the floor. He drew a deep breath and slowly freed it. Then he said, "I've gotta get some rest," and he walked to the door.

"Dad?"

He paused.

"Do you want me to tear the story up?"

He didn't answer, and I thought he wasn't going to. His gaze flickered back and forth from me to the two sheets of paper. "No," he said at last. "No, it's a good story. It's true, isn't it?"

"Yes sir."

"It's the best you can do?"

"Yes sir."

He looked around at the pictures of monsters taped on the walls, and his eyes came to me. "You're sure you wouldn't rather write about ghosts, or men from Mars?" he inquired with a hint of a smile.

"Not this time," I told him.

He nodded, chewing on his lower lip. "Go ahead, then. Enter it in the contest," he said, and he left me alone.

On the following morning, I put my story in a manila envelope and rode Rocket to the public library on Merchants Street, near the courthouse. In the library's cool, stately confines, where fans whispered at the ceiling and sunlight streamed through blinds at tall arched windows, I handed my contest entry-marked "Short Story" on the envelope in Crayola burnt umber-to Mrs. Evelyn Prathmore at the front desk. "And what little tale might we have here?" Mrs. Prathmore asked, smiling sweetly.

"It's about a murder," I said. Her smile fractured. "Who's judgin' the contest this year?"

"Myself, Mr. Grover Dean, Mr. Lyle Redmond from the English department at Adams Valley High School, Mayor Swope, our well-known published poet Mrs. Teresa Abercrombie, and Mr. James Connahaute, the copy editor at the Journal." She picked up my entry with two fingers, as if it were a smelly fish. "It's about a murder, you say?" She peered at me over the pearly rims of her eyegla.s.ses.

"Yes ma'am."

"What's a nice, polite young man like you writin' about murder for? Couldn't you write about a happier subject? Like... your dog, or your best friend, or-" She frowned, at her wit's end. "Somethin' that would enlighten and entertain?"

"No ma'am," I said. "I had to write about the man at the bottom of Saxon's Lake."

"Oh." Mrs. Prathmore looked at the manila envelope again. "I see. Do your parents know you're enterin' this in the contest, Cory?"

"Yes ma'am. My dad read it last night."

Mrs. Prathmore picked up a ball-point pen and wrote my name on the envelope. "What's your telephone number?" she asked, and when I told her she wrote that underneath my name. "All right, Cory," she said, and she summoned up a cool smile, "I'll see that this gets where it needs to go."