"I can't..." Nemo stared at me, and the pain of his gaze made my heart hurt. "I can't... ever make no friendth," he said. "'Cauthe... we've alwath gotta move."

"I'm sorry, Nemo," I said. "Really I am. I wish you didn't have to move." On an impulse, I took the baseball out of my glove and held it out to him. "Here you go. You keep this, so you can remember your buddies here in Zephyr. Okay?"

Nemo hesitated. Then he reached out and wrapped the skinny fingers of his miracle pitching hand around the ball, and he accepted it. Here Johnny showed his true cla.s.s; the baseball belonged to him, but he never said a word.

Nemo turned the baseball over and over between both hands, and I saw the red-st.i.tched seam reflected in his gla.s.ses. He stared at that baseball as if into the depths of a magic crystal. "I want to thtay here," he said softly. His nose was running, and he sniffled. "I want to thtay here, and go to thcool and have friendth." He looked at me. "I jutht want to be like everybody elth. I want to thtay here so bad."

"Maybe you can come back sometime," Johnny offered, but it was a measly crumb. "Maybe you can-"

"No," Nemo interrupted. "I'll never come back. Never. Never even for a thingle day." He turned his head, facing the house they would soon be leaving. A tear crawled down his face and hung quivering from his chin. "Mom thez Dadth gotta th.e.l.l thirts tho we can have money. At night thometimeth thee hollerth at him and callth him lathee, and thee thez thee never thouda married him. And he thez, 'It'll be the nextht town. The nextht town, that'll be the lucky break.'" Nemo's face swung back to mine. It had changed in that instant. He was still crying, but there was rage in his eyes so powerful that I had to step back a pace to escape its heat. "Ith never gonna be the nextht town," he said. "We're gonna move and move and move, and my mom'th gonna alwath holler and my dad'th gonna alwath thay it'll be the nextht town. But it'll be a lie."

Nemo was silent, but the rage spoke. His fingers squeezed around the baseball, his knuckles whitening, his eyes fixed on nothing.

"We're gonna miss you, Nemo," I said.

"Yeah," Johnny said. "You're okay."

"You'll get up to the mound someday, Nemo," Davy Ray told him. "When you get there, you strike 'em all out. Hear?"

"Yeth," he answered, but there wasn't much conviction in his voice. "I with I didn't have to..." He faded off; there was no point in it, because he was a little boy and he had to go.

Nemo began walking home across the field, the baseball gripped in his hand. "So long!" I called to him, but he didn't respond. I imagined what life must be like for him: forbidden to play the game he was so naturally gifted at, shuttered away in a series of houses in a parade of towns, staying in one place only long enough to get picked on and beaten up but never long enough for guys to get to know who and what he was behind the pale skin, the lisp, and the thick gla.s.ses. I could never have stood such suffering.

Nemo screamed.

It came out of him with such force that the sound made us jump. The scream changed, became a wail that rose up and up, painful in its longing. And then Nemo spun around, his head and shoulders first and then his hips, and I saw his eyes were wide and enraged and his teeth were clenched. His throwing arm whipped around in a blur, his backbone popped like a whip, and he hurled that baseball almost straight up into the sky.

I saw it go up. I saw it keep going. I saw it become a dark dot. Then the sun took it.

Nemo was on his knees, the scream and the throw having drained all the strength out of him. He blinked, his gla.s.ses crooked on his face.

"Catch it!" Davy Ray said, squinting up. "Here it comes down!"

"Where?" Johnny asked, lifting his glove.

"Where is it?" I asked, stepping away from the others to try to find it in the glare.

Ben was looking up, too. His glove hung at his side. "That b.u.g.g.e.r," he said softly, "is gone."

We waited, searching the sky.

We waited, our gloves ready.

We waited.

I glanced at Nemo. He had gotten up, and was walking home. His stride was neither fast nor slow, just resigned. He knew what was waiting for him in the next town, and in the town after that. "Nemo!" I shouted after him. He just kept walking, and he did not look back.

We waited for the ball to come down.

After a while, we sat down in the red dirt. Our eyes scanned the sky as the fleecy clouds moved and the sun began to sink toward the west.

No one spoke. No one knew what to say.

In later days, Ben would speculate that the wind blew the ball into the river. Johnny would believe a flock of birds had hit it, and knocked it off course. Davy Ray would say something must've been wrong with the ball, that it had come to pieces way up there and we hadn't seen the skin and the innards plummet back to earth.

And me?

I just believed.

Twilight came upon us. At last I climbed on Rocket, the other guys got on their bikes, and we left the ball field and our summer dreams. Our faces now were turned toward autumn. I was going to have to tell somebody soon about the four black girls I saw in my sleep, the ones all dressed up and calling my name under a tree with no leaves. I was going to have to read my story about the man at the bottom of Saxon's Lake in front of a roomful of people. I was going to have to figure out what was in that wooden box Biggun Blaylock had sold in the dead of night for four hundred dollars.

I was going to have to help my father find peace.

We pedaled on, four buddies with the wind at our backs and all roads leading to the future.

PART THREE

Burning Autumn Green-Feathered Hat The Magic Box Dinner with Vernon The Wrath of Five Thunders Case #3432 Dead Man Driving High Noon in Zephyr From the Lost World

XVII Green-Feathered

"CORY?"

I pretended I didn't hear the ominous whisper.

"Cory?"

No. I wasn't going to look. At the front of the schoolroom, Mrs. Judith Harper-otherwise known as "Hairpie," "Harpy," and "Old Leatherlungs"-was demonstrating on the blackboard the division of fractions. Arithmetic was for me a walk into the Twilight Zone; this dividing fractions stuff was a mystifying fall into the Outer Limits.

"Cory?" she whispered again, behind me. "I've got a big ole green booger on my finger."

Oh my Lord, I thought. Not again!

"If you don't turn around and smile at me, I'm gone wipe it on the back of your neck."

It was the fourth day of cla.s.s. I knew on the first day that it was going to be a long year, because some idiot had decreed the Demon a "gifted child" and had double-promoted her, and like the fickle finger of fate, Mrs. Harper had devised a seating chart-boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl-that put the Demon in the desk at my back.

And the worst part, the very worst, was that-as Davy Ray told me and laughed wickedly-she had a crush on me as big as the cheesy green moon.

"Cory?" Her voice demanded my attention.

I had to turn around. Last time I'd resisted, she'd smeared saliva on the back of my neck in the shape of a heart.

Brenda Sutley was grinning, her red hair oily and ratty and her wandering eyes shining with mischief. She held up her index finger, which had a dirt-grimed nail but no booger on it.

"Got'cha," she whispered.

"Cory Jay Mackenson!" Leatherlungs roared. " Turn around this instant!"

I did, almost giving myself whiplash. I heard the traitors around me giggling, knowing that the Harpy would not be satisfied with this display of respect. "Oh, I guess you know all about the division of fractions by now, don't you?" she inquired, her hands on hips as wide as a Patton tank. "Well, why don't you come up here and do some division for us, to show us how it's done?" She held the accursed yellow chalk out to me.

If I am ever on death row, the walk to the electric chair will be no more terrifying than that walk from my desk to the chalk in Mrs. Harper's hand and then, ultimately, to the blackboard. "All right," she said as I stood there shoulder-slumped and hang-doggy. "Write down these fractions." She rattled some off, and when I copied them my chalk broke and Nelson Bittner laughed and in two seconds I had a fellow sufferer up there with me.

Everybody knew by now: we weren't going to be able to defeat Mrs. Harper with a frontal attack. We weren't going to be able to storm her ramparts and yell victory over her scattered math books. It would have to be a slow, insidious war of snipers and b.o.o.by traps, a painstaking probe to learn her weakness. All us kids had found out by now that all teachers had a sore spot; some went crazy over gum chewing, others insane over behind-the-back giggles, still others nuts over the repeated squeaking and scuffing of shoes on the linoleum. Machine-gun coughs, donkeylike snorts, a fusillade of throat clearing, spitb.a.l.l.s stuck to the blackboard: all these were a.r.s.enals in the battle against Hitlerian teachers. Who knows? Maybe we could get the Demon to bring to cla.s.s a dead, stinking animal in a s...o...b..x, or get her to sneeze and blow ribbons of snot out of those talented nostrils of hers to make Mrs. Harper's hair uncurl.

"Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!" Leatherlungs bellowed at me as I finished my queasy attempt at fraction division. "Go sit down and pay attention, you blockhead!"

Between Leatherlungs and the Demon, I was really in for it.

After the three o'clock bell had rung and Davy Ray, Johnny, Ben, and I had jawed about the events of the day, I pedaled home on Rocket under a dark, glowering sky. I found Mom at home, cleaning the oven. "Cory!" she said when I walked into the kitchen intent on raiding the cookie jar. "Lady from the mayor's office called for you about ten minutes ago. Mayor Swope wants to see you."

"Mayor Swope?" I paused with my hand reaching for a Lorna Doone. "What for?"

"Didn't say what for, but she said it was important." Mom glanced out the window. "A storm's blowin' up. Your father'll drive you over to the courthouse, if you can wait an hour."

My curiosity was piqued. What would Mayor Swope want with me? I looked out the window as Mom continued her oven cleaning, and judged the gathering clouds. "I think I can get there before it starts rainin'," I said.

Mom pulled her head out of the oven, looked at the sky again, and frowned. "I don't know. It might start pourin' on you."

I shrugged. "I'll be all right."

She hesitated, her fretful nature gnawing at her. Ever since my camping trip, though, I could tell she'd been making a mighty effort to stop worrying so much about me. Even though I'd gotten lost, I'd proven I could survive in the face of hardship. Finally, she said, "Go on, then."

I took two Lorna Doones and headed for the porch.

"If it starts comin' down hard, you stay at the courthouse!" she called. "Hear?"

"I hear!" I told her, and I got on Rocket and pedaled as I crunched the Lorna Doones between my teeth. Not too far from the house, Rocket suddenly shuddered and I felt the handlebars jerk to the left. Ahead of me, the Branlins were pedaling side by side on their black bikes, but they were going in the same direction as me and didn't see me. Rocket wanted to turn to the left at the next intersection, and I followed Rocket's sage advice to take a detour.

Thunder was rumbling and it was starting to sprinkle a little as I reached the dark-stoned, gothic-styled courthouse at the end of Merchants Street. The drops were chilly; summer's warm rain was a thing of the past. I left Rocket chained to a fire hydrant and went into the courthouse, which smelled like a moldy bas.e.m.e.nt. A sign on the wall said Mayor Swope's office was on the second floor, and I climbed the wide staircase, the high windows around me letting in murky, storm-blue light. At the top of the staircase, three carved gargoyles sat atop the black walnut banister, their scaly legs curled up and their claws folded across their chests. One wall was decorated with an old tattered Confederate flag and there were dusty display cases holding b.u.t.ternut uniforms riddled with moth holes. Above my head was a darkened gla.s.s cupola, reachable only by ladder, and through the cupola I heard thunder resonate as through a bell jar.

I walked along the long corridor, which had a floor of black and white linoleum squares. On either side were offices: License Bureau, County Tax Department, Probate Judge, Traffic Court, and the like. None of their lights were on. I saw a man with dark hair and a blue-paisley bow tie coming out of a pebbled-gla.s.s door marked Sanitation and Maintenance. He locked the door from a ring of jingling keys and looked at me. "Can I help you, young fella?" he asked.

"I'm supposed to see Mayor Swope," I said.

"His office is at the end of the corridor." He checked his pocket watch. "Might be gone home by now, though. Most everybody leaves around three-thirty."

"Thank you," I told him, and I went on. I heard his keys jingling as he walked toward the stairs, and he whistled a tune I didn't know.

I pa.s.sed the council's chambers and the recorder's office-both dark-and at the corridor's end I faced a big oak door with bra.s.s letters on it that said OFFICE OF THE MAYOR. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to knock or not, and there was no buzzer. I grappled with the question of etiquette here for a few seconds, as the thunder growled outside. Then I balled up my fist and knocked.

In a few seconds the door opened. A woman with hornrimmed gla.s.ses and an iron-gray mountain of hair peered out. Her face was like a chunk of granite, all hard ridges and cliffs. Her eyebrows lifted in a question.

"I'm... here to see Mayor Swope," I said.

"Oh. You're Cory Mackenson."

"Yes ma'am."

"Come in." She opened the door wider, and I slipped in past her. As I did, I got a jolt of either violet-scented perfume or hair spray up my nostrils. I had entered a red-carpeted room which held a desk, a row of chairs, and a magazine rack. A map of Zephyr, brown at the edges, adorned one wall. On the desk there was an in tray and an out tray, a neat stack of papers, framed photographs of a baby being held between a smiling young woman and man, and a nameplate that said MRS. INEZ AXFORD and, underneath that in smaller letters, MAYOR'S SECRETARY.

"Just have a seat for a minute, please." Mrs. Axford walked across the room to another door. She rapped softly on it, and I heard Mayor Swope say in his mushmouth accent, "Yes?" from the other side. Mrs. Axford opened it. "The boy's here," she said.

"Thank you, Inez." I heard a chair creak. "I believe that finishes us up for the day. You can go on home if you like."

"Want me to send him in?"

"Two minutes and I'll be with him."

"Yes sir. Oh... did you sign that application for the new traffic lights?"

"Need to study that a little more, Inez. Get to it first thing in the mornin'."

"Yes sir. I'll be goin' on, then." She retreated from the mayor's domain and closed the door and said to me, "He'll be with you in two minutes." As I waited, Mrs. Axford locked her desk, got her st.u.r.dy brown purse, and straightened the photographs on her desk. She wedged her purse up under her arm, took a long look around the office to make sure everything was in its proper place, and then she walked out the door into the hallway without saying boot, shoot, or scoot to me.

I waited. Thunder boomed overhead and rolled through the courthouse. I heard the rain start-slowly at first, then building up to a hammering.

The door to the mayor's office opened, and Mayor Swope emerged. The sleeves of his blue shirt were rolled up, his initials in white on the breast pocket, his suspenders striped with red. "Cory!" he said, smiling. "Come in and let's have us a talk!"

I didn't know what to make of this. I knew who Mayor Swope was and all, but I'd never spoken to him. And here he was, smiling and motioning me into his office! The guys would believe this about as much as they believed I'd stuck a broomstick down Old Moses's throat!

"Come in, come in!" the mayor urged.

I walked into his office. Everything was fashioned of dark, glistening wood. The air smelled of sweet pipe tobacco. There was a desk in the office that seemed as big as the deck of an aircraft carrier. Shelves were full of thick, leatherbound books. They looked to me as if they had never been touched, because none had bookmarks in them. Two burly black leather chairs faced the desk over an expanse of Persian carpet. Windows afforded a view of Merchants Street, but right now the rain was streaming down them.

Mayor Swope, his gray hair combed back from a widow's peak and his eyes dark blue and friendly, closed the door. He said, "Have a seat, Cory." I hesitated. "Doesn't matter which one." I took the one on his left. The leather pooted when I sat down in it. Mayor Swope settled himself in his own chair, which had scrolled armrests. On his flattop of a desk was a telephone, a leather-covered jar full of pens, a can of Field and Stream tobacco, and a pipe rack cradling four pipes. One of the pipes was white, and had a man's bearded face carved into it.

"Gettin' some rain out there, aren't we?" he asked, his fingers lacing together. He smiled again, and this close I saw his teeth were discolored.

"Yes sir."

"Well, the farmers need it. Just so we don't have another flood, huh?"

"Yes sir."

Mayor Swope cleared his throat. His fingers tapped. "Are your folks waitin' for you?" he asked.

"No sir. I came on my bike."