I thanked her, and I turned around and walked toward the front door. Before I got out, I glanced back at Mrs. Prathmore. She was bending the envelope's clasp back to unseal it, and when she saw me looking she stopped. I took this as a good sign, that she was eager to read my entry. I went on out into the sunlight, unchained Rocket from a park bench, and pedaled home.

No doubt about it, summer was on the wane.

The mornings seemed a shade cooler. The nights were hungry, and ate more daylight. The cicadas sounded tired, their whirring wings slowing to a dull buzz. From our front porch you could look almost due east and see a single Judas tree up in the forested hills; its leaves had turned crimson almost overnight, a shock amid all that green. And the worst-the very worst for those of us who loved the freedom of summer's days-was that the television and radio trumpeted back-to-school sales with depressing fervor.

Time was running out. So one evening at supper I broached the subject. Bit the bullet. Took the bull by the horns. Jumped in headfirst.

"Can I go campin' overnight with the guys?" was the question that brought silence to the table.

Mom looked at Dad. Dad looked at Mom. Neither of them looked at me. "You said I could if I went to Granddaddy Jaybird's for a week," I reminded them.

Dad cleared his throat and swirled his fork in his mashed potatoes. "Well," he said, "I don't see why not. Sure. You guys can pitch a tent in the back and make a campfire."

"That's not what I mean. I mean campin' out. Like out in the woods."

"There are woods behind the house," he said. "That's woods enough."

"No sir," I said, and my heart was beating harder because for me this was really being daring. "I mean way out in the woods. Out where you can't see Zephyr or any lights. Like real campin'."

"Oh, my," Mom fretted.

Dad grunted and put his fork down. He folded his fingers together, and the thought lines deepened into grooves between his eyes. All this was, I knew from past experience, the first signs of the word "no" being born. "Way out in the woods," he repeated. "Like how far out?"

"I don't know. I thought we could hike somewhere, spend the night, and then come back in the mornin'. We'd take a compa.s.s, and sandwiches, and Kool-Aid, and we'd take knapsacks and stuff."

"And what would happen if one of you boys broke an ankle?" Mom asked. "Or got bitten by a rattlesnake? Or fell down in poison ivy, and Lord knows that's everywhere this summer." I hung on; she was working up to full speed. "What would happen if you got attacked by a bobcat? Lord, a hundred things could happen to you in the woods, and none of them good!"

"We'd be all right, Mom," I said. "We're not little kids anymore."

"You're not grown up enough to go wanderin' around out in the woods by yourselves, either! What if you got out there at night two miles from home and a storm blew up? What if it started lightnin' and thunderin'? What if you or one of the others got sick to your stomach? You know, you can't just find a phone and call home out there. Tell him it's a bad idea, Tom."

He made a face; the dirty jobs always fell to the father.

"Go on," Mom urged. "Tell him he can wait until he's thirteen."

"You said last year I could wait until I was twelve," I reminded her.

"Don't talk smart, now! Tom, tell him."

I awaited the firm, resolute "no." It came as a real surprise, then, when my dad asked, "Where would you get the compa.s.s?"

Mom looked at him in horror. I felt a spark of hope leap within me. "From Davy Ray's dad," I said. "He uses it when he goes huntin'."

"Compa.s.ses can break!" Mom insisted. "Can't they?" she asked Dad.

My father kept his attention on me, his expression solid and serious. "Goin' out on an overnight hike isn't any game for children. I know plenty of men who've gotten lost in the woods, and they'll tell you right off what it feels like to be without a bed or a bathroom, have to sleep on wet leaves and scratch skeeter bites all night. That sound like fun to you?"

"I'd like to go," I said.

"You talk to the other guys about this?"

"Yes sir. They all said they'd like to go, too, if their folks'll let 'em."

"Tom, he's too young!" Mom said. "Maybe next year!"

"No," my father answered, "he's not too young." My mother wore a stricken look; she started to speak again, but Dad put a finger to her lips. "I made a deal with him," he told her. "In this house, a man stands on his word." His gaze swung back to me again. "Call 'em. If their parents say all right, it's all right with us, too. But we'll talk about how far you can go, and when we expect you back, and if you're not back by the time we agree on, you'll have a tough time sittin' down for a week. Okay?"

"Okay!" I said, and I started to go for the phone but Dad said, "Hold on. Finish your supper first."

After this, events gained momentum. Ben's parents gave their approval. Davy Ray's folks said okay. Johnny, however, could not go with us, though he pleaded for my dad to talk to his. Dad did what he could, but the judgment was already pa.s.sed. Because of Johnny's dizzy spells, his parents were afraid for him to be out in the woods overnight. Once again the Branlins had robbed him.

And so, on a sunny Friday afternoon, laden with knapsacks, sandwiches, canteens of water, mosquito repellent, snakebite kits, matches, flashlights, and county maps we'd gotten from the courthouse, Davy Ray, Ben, and I struck out from my house into the beckoning forest. All our good-byes had been said, our dogs locked up, our bicycles porched and chained. Davy carried his father's compa.s.s, and he wore a camouflage-print hunting cap. We all wore long pants, to guard our shins against thorns and snake fangs, and our winter boots. We were in it for the long haul, and we set our faces against the sun like pioneers entering the forest primeval. Before we reached the woods, though, my mother the constant worrier called from the back porch, "Cory! Have you got enough toilet paper?"

I said I did. Somehow, I couldn't imagine Daniel Boone's mother asking him that question.

We climbed the hill and crossed the clearing from where we had flown on the first day of summer. Beyond it the serious woods began, a green domain that might've given Tarzan pause. I looked back at Zephyr lying below us, and Ben stopped and then so did Davy Ray. Everything seemed so orderly: the streets, the roofs, the mowed lawns, the sidewalks, the flowerbeds. What we were about to enter was a wild entanglement, a dangerous realm that offered neither comfort nor safety; in other words, in that one moment I realized exactly what I'd gotten myself into.

"Well," Davy Ray said at last, "I guess we'd better get movin'."

"Yeah," Ben murmured. "Get movin'."

"Uh-huh," I said.

We stood there, the breeze on our faces and sweat on our necks. Behind us, the forest rustled. I thought of the hydra's heads, swaying and hissing, in Jason and the Argonauts.

"I'm goin'," Davy Ray said, and he started off. I turned away from Zephyr and followed him, because he was the guy with the compa.s.s. Ben hitched his knapsack's straps in a notch tighter, the tail of his shirt already beginning to wander out of his pants, and he said, "Hold up!" and came on as fast as he could.

The forest, which had been waiting a hundred years for three boys just like us, let us in and then closed its limbs and leaves at our backs. Now we had set foot in the wilderness, and we were on our own.

Pretty soon we were drenched with sweat. Going up and down wooded ridges in the heavy August heat was no easy task, and Ben started puffing and asking Davy Ray to slow down. "Snake hole!" Davy Ray shouted, pointing at an imaginary hole at Ben's feet, and that got Ben moving lickety-split again. We traveled through a green kingdom of sun and shadow, and we found honeysuckle boiling in sweet profusion and blackberries growing wild and of course we had to stop for a while and take a taste. Then we were on the march again, following the compa.s.s and the sun, masters of our destinies. Atop a hill we found a huge boulder to sit on, and we discovered what appeared to be Indian symbols carved into the stone. Alas, though, we weren't the first to make this find, because nearby was a Moon Pie wrapper and a broken 7-Up bottle. We went on, deeper into the forest, determined to find a place where no human foot had ever marked the dirt. We came to a dried-up streambed and followed it, the stones crunching under our boots. A dead possum, swarming with flies, snared our attention for a few minutes. Davy Ray threatened to pick up the possum's carca.s.s and throw it at Ben, but I talked him out of such a grisly display and Ben shuddered with relief. Farther ahead, at a place where the trees thinned and white rocks jutted from the earth like dinosaur ribs, Davy Ray stopped and bent down. He came up holding a black arrowhead, almost perfectly formed, which he put in his pocket for Johnny's collection.

The sun was falling. We were sweaty and dusty, and gnats spun around our heads and darted at our eyeb.a.l.l.s. I have never understood the attraction of gnats to eyeb.a.l.l.s, but I believe it's the equivalent of moths to flames; in any case, we spent a lot of time digging the little dead things out of our watering orbs. But as the sun settled and the air cooled, the gnats went away. We began to wonder where we might find a place to spend the night, and it was right about then that the truth of the matter came clear.

There were no mothers and fathers around to make our suppers. There were no televisions, no radios, no bathtubs, no beds, and no lights, which we began to fully realize as the sky darkened to the east. How far we were from home we didn't know, but for the last two hours we'd seen no mark of civilization. "We'd better stop here," I told Davy Ray, and I indicated a clearing, but he said, "Ah, we can go on a little farther," and I knew his curiosity about what lay over the next ridge was pulling him onward. Ben and I kept up with him; as I've said before, he was the guy with the compa.s.s.

Our flashlights came out to spear through the gathering gloom. Something fluttered in front of my face and spun away: a bat on the prowl. Another something scuttled away through the underbrush at our approach, and Ben kept asking, "What was that? What was that?" but neither of us could answer. At last Davy Ray stopped walking, and he shone his flashlight around and announced, "We'll set up camp here." It was none too soon for Ben and me, because our legs were whipped. We shrugged the knapsacks off our aching shoulders and peed in the pine straw and then we set about finding wood for a fire. In this case we were lucky, because there were plenty of pine branches and pine cones lying about and those burned on half a match. So before long we had a sensible fire going, the firepit rimmed with stones as my dad had told me to do, and by its ruddy light we three frontiersmen ate the sandwiches our mothers had made.

The flames crackled. Ben discovered a pack of marshmallows his mom had put in his knapsack. We found sticks and began the joyful task of toasting. All around our circle was nothing but dark beyond the firelight's edge, and lightning bugs blinked in the trees. A breath of wind stirred the treetops, and way up there we could see the blaze of the Milky Way across the sky.

In this forest sanctuary our voices were quiet, respectful for where we were. We talked about our dismal Little League season, vowing that somehow we'd get Nemo Curliss on our team next year. We talked about the Branlins, and how somebody ought to clean their clocks for s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up Johnny's summer. We talked about how far we must be from home; five or six miles, Davy Ray believed, while Ben said it must be more like ten or twelve. We wondered aloud what our folks were doing at that very same instant, and we all agreed they were probably worried sick about us but this experience would be good for them. We were growing up now, and it was high time they understood our childhood days were numbered.

In the distance an owl began to hoot. Davy Ray talked with great antic.i.p.ation about Snowdown, who must even now be somewhere in the same woods sharing these sights and sounds, perhaps hearing the same owl. Ben talked about school getting ready to start soon, but we shushed him. We lay on our backs as the firelight dimmed, and stared up at the sky as we talked about Zephyr and the people who lived there. It was a magic town, we all agreed. And we were touched with magic, too, for having been born there.

Sometime after the flames had died and the embers glowed red, after the owl had gone to sleep and the soft warm breeze brought the fragrance of wild cherries into our campsite, we watched shooting stars streak incandescent blue and gold across the heavens. When the show had ended and we were all lying there thinking, Davy Ray said, "Hey, Cory. How about tellin' us a story?"

"Nah," I said. "I can't think of anythin'."

"Just make one up," Davy Ray urged. "Come on. Okay?"

"Yeah, but don't make it too scary," Ben said. "I don't wanna have bad dreams."

I thought for a while, and then I began. "Did you guys know they had a prison camp for n.a.z.is around here? Dad told me all about it. Yeah, he said they had all these n.a.z.is in this camp in the woods, and all of 'em were the worst killers you can think of. It was right near the Air Force base, only this is before it was an Air Force base."

"Is this for real?" Ben asked warily.

"Naw, dummy!" Davy Ray said. "He's makin' it up!"

"Maybe I am," I told him, "and maybe I'm not."

Davy Ray was silent.

"Anyway," I went on, "there was a fire in this prison camp, and some of the n.a.z.is got out. And some of 'em were all burned up, like their faces were all messed up and stuff, but they got out, right in these woods, and-"

"You saw this on 'Thriller,' didn't you?" Davy Ray asked.

"No," I said. "It's what my dad told me. This happened a long time ago, before any of us were even bora. So these n.a.z.is got out into the woods right near here, and their leader-his name was Bruno-was a big guy with a scarred-up, burned face and he found a cave for everybody to live in. But there wasn't enough food for everybody, and so when some of them died the others cut up the bodies with knives and-"

"Oh, gross!" Ben said.

"And ate 'em, and Bruno always got the brains. He cracked open their skulls like walnuts, scooped out the brains with both hands, and threw 'em down his gullet."

"I'm gonna puke!" Davy Ray cried out, and made retching noises. Then he laughed and Ben laughed, too.

"After a long time-like two years-Bruno was the only one left, and he was bigger'n ever," I continued. "But his face never healed up from the fire. He had one eye on his forehead and the other eye hung down on his chin." This brought more gusts of laughter. "So after all that time in the cave, and eatin' the other n.a.z.is up, Bruno was crazy. He was hungry, but he only wanted one thing to eat: brains."

"Yech!" Ben said.

"Brains was all he wanted," I told my audience of two. "He was seven feet tall and he weighed three hundred pounds, and he had a long knife that could slice the top of your head right off. Well, the police and the army were lookin' for him all this time but they never could find him. They found a forest ranger with the top of his head cut off and his brains gone. They found an old moonshiner dead and his brains gone, too, and they figured Bruno was gettin' closer and closer to Zephyr."

"Then they called in James Bond and Batman!" Davy Ray said.

"No!" I shook my head gravely. "There wasn't anybody to call in. There was just the policemen and the army soldiers, and every night Bruno walked through the forest carryin' his knife and a lantern, and his face was so ugly it could freeze people solid like Medusa and then slash! he cut somebody's head open and splatter! there were the brains down his throat."

"Oh, sure!" Ben grinned. "I'll bet ol' Bruno's still in these woods right now, eatin' people's brains for supper, huh?"

"Nope," I said, formulating the conclusion of my tale. "The police and the soldiers found him, and they shot him so many times he looked like Swiss cheese. But every so often, if you happen to be out in the woods on a real dark night, you can see Bruno's lantern movin' through the trees." I spoke this in an icy whisper, and neither Davy Ray nor Ben did any more laughing. "Yeah, you can see his lantern movin' as he wanders in search of somebody's brains to eat. He casts that light all around, and if you get close to it, you can see the shine of his knife, but don't look at his face!" I held up a warning finger. "No, don't you look at his face, 'cause it'll drive you crazy and it might just make you want to eat some brains!" I yelled the last word and jumped as I yelled it, and Ben hollered with fright but Davy Ray just laughed again.

"Hey, that's not funny!" Ben protested.

"You don't have to worry about ol' Bruno," Davy Ray told him. "You don't have any brains, so that lets you off the-"

Davy Ray stopped speaking, and he just sat there staring into the dark.

"What is it?" I asked him.

"Ahhhh, he's tryin' to scare us!" Ben scoffed. "Well, it ain't workin'!"

Davy Ray's face had gone white. I swear I saw his scalp ripple, and the hair stand up. He said, "Guh... guh... guh..." and he lifted his arm and pointed.

I turned around to look in the direction he indicated. I heard Ben make a choked gasp. My own hair jittered on my head, and my heart kaboomed.

A light was coming toward us, through the trees.

"Guh... guh... G.o.d a'mighty!" Davy Ray croaked.

We all three were struck with the kind of horror that makes you want to dig a hole, jump in, and pull the hole in after you. The light was moving slowly, but coming closer. And as it came closer it broke into two, and all of us got down on our quaking bellies in the pine straw. In another moment I could tell what it was: a car's headlights. The car looked like it was going to roll right over our hiding-place, and then it veered away and we watched its red taillights flare as the driver applied the brakes. The car kept going, following a winding trail that was only fifty yards or so from our campsite, and in a couple of minutes it had disappeared amid the trees.

"Did you guys see that?" Davy Ray whispered.

"'Course we saw it!" Ben whispered back. "We're right here, aren't we?"

"Wonder who was in that car, and why they're way out here?" Davy Ray looked at me. "You want to find out, Cory?"

"Probably moonshiners," I answered. My voice trembled. "I think we'd better leave 'em alone."

Davy Ray picked up his flashlight. His face was still pallid, but his eyes shone with excitement. "I'm gonna find out what's goin' on! You guys can stay here if you want to!" He stood up, flicked on the flashlight, and began to stealthily follow the car. He stopped when he realized we weren't with him. "It's okay," he said. "I won't think you guys are scared or anythin'."

"Good," Ben answered, "'cause I'm stickin' right here."

I stood up. If Davy Ray had enough courage to go, then so did I. Besides, I wanted to know who was driving a car way out here in the woods myself. "Come on!" he said. "But watch where you step!"

"I'm not stayin' here alone!" Ben hoisted himself to his feet. "You two are d.a.m.n crazy, you know that?"

"Yeah." Davy Ray sounded proud about it. "Everybody stay low and no talkin'!"

We crept from tree to tree, following the trail that we hadn't even seen when we'd set up camp at nightfall. Davy Ray kept the flashlight's beam aimed at the ground, so it couldn't be spotted by anyone up ahead. The trail wound back and forth between the trees. The owl was hooting again, and lightning bugs blinked around us. We'd gone a couple of hundred yards more along the trail when Davy Ray suddenly stopped and whispered, "There it is!"

We could see the car ahead of us. It was sitting still, but its lights were on and the engine was rumbling. We crouched down in the pine straw, and I don't know about the others, but my heart was going a mile a minute. The car didn't move. Whoever was sitting behind the wheel didn't get out. "I've gotta pee!" Ben whispered urgently. Davy Ray told him to squeeze it.

After five or six minutes, we saw more lights coming through the woods from the opposite direction. It was another car, this one a black Cadillac, and it stopped, facing the first car. Davy Ray looked at me, his expression saying we'd really stumbled into something this time. I didn't particularly care what was going on; I just wanted to get away from what I figured was a meeting of moonshiners. Then the doors of the first car opened, and two people got out.

"Oh, man!" Davy Ray breathed.

Standing in the crossing of headlights were two men wearing ordinary clothes except until you got to their heads, which were covered by white masks. One of the men was medium-sized, the other was big and fat, with a belly that flopped over the waist of his jeans. The medium-sized man was smoking either a cigarette or cigar, it was hard to tell which, and he angled his masked head and blew smoke from the corner of his mouth. Then the Cadillac's doors opened, and I almost swallowed my heart when Bodean Blaylock slid out from behind the wheel. It was him, all right; I remembered his face from when he'd looked across the poker table at me, same to say he had my granddaddy and wasn't about to let him go. A slim man with slicked-back dark hair and a jutting slab of a chin got out of the pa.s.senger side; he was wearing tight black pants and a red shirt with cowboy spangles on the shoulders, and at first I thought it was Donny Blaylock but Donny didn't have a chin like that. This man opened the Cadillac's right rear door, and the whole car trembled as whoever was still inside started to climb out.

It was a mountain on two legs.

His gut was tremendous, straining the front of the red-checked shirt and overalls he wore. When he rose up to his full height, he was maybe six and a half feet tall. He was baldheaded except for a wisp of gray hair circling his acorn-shaped skull, and he had a trimmed gray beard that angled to a point below his chin. He breathed like a bellows, his face a ruddy ma.s.s of wrinkled flesh. "You boys goin' to a masquerade party?" he growled in a voice like a cement mixer, and he laughed hut-hut-hut like a big old engine starting to fire its plugs. Bodean laughed, and the other man laughed, too. The men wearing the masks shifted uneasily. "You fellas look like sacks of s.h.i.t," the mountainous bulk said as he shambled forward. I swear his hands were the size of country hams, and his feet in their scuffed-up boots looked like they could stomp down small trees.

The masked man with the bulbous belly said, "We're incog... incog... We don't wanna be recognized."

"s.h.i.t, d.i.c.k!" the bearded monster said, and he guffawed again. "Have to be a blind f.u.c.kin' fool not to recognize your fat gut and a.s.s!" Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, I thought.

"Awwww, you're not supposed to recognize us, Mr. Blaylock!" the man who'd been called d.i.c.k answered with a whine of petulance, and I realized with a double start that this man was Mr. d.i.c.k Moultry and the other was Biggun Blaylock, the fearsome head of the Blaylock clan himself.

Ben realized it, too. "Let's get outta here!" he whispered, but Davy Ray hissed, "Shut up!"

"Well," Biggun said, his hands on his ma.s.sive hips, "I don't give a s.h.i.t if you wear sackcloth and ashes. You bring the money?"