Boy's Life by Robert McCammon Page B

nests. As I got squared away, Ben sat down on his Superman bedspread and said, “Did you tell your folks about the movie?”
     
         “No. Did you?”
     
         “Uh-uh.” He picked at a loose thread on Superman’s face. “How come you didn’t?”
     
         “I don’t know. How come you didn’t?”
     
         Ben shrugged, but thoughts were working in his head. “I guess,” he said, “it was too awful to tell.”
     
         “Yeah.”
     
         “I went out back,” Ben said. “No sand. Just rock.”
     
         We both agreed the Martians would have a tough time drilling through all the red rock in the hills around Zephyr, if they were to come calling. Then Ben opened a cardboard box and showed me his Civil War bubble gum cards that had gory paintings of guys getting shot, bayoneted, and clobbered by cannon balls, and we sat making up a story for each card until his mother rang a bell to say it was time for fried chicken.
     
         After dinner—and Mrs. Sears’s wonderful black bottom pie washed down with a glass of cold Green Meadows milk—we all played a game of Scrabble. Ben’s parents were partners, and Mr. Sears kept trying to pass made-up words that even I knew weren’t in the dictionary, like “kafloom” and “goganus.” Mrs. Sears said he was as crazy as a monkey in itching powder, but she grinned at his antics just like I did. “Cory?” he said. “Didja hear the one about the three preachers tryin’ to get into heaven?” and before I could say “No” he was off on a joke-telling jaunt. He seemed to favor the preacher jokes, and I had to wonder what Reverend Lovoy at the Methodist church would think of them.
     
         It was past eight o’clock and we’d started our second game when Tumper barked on the front porch and a few seconds later there was a knock on the door. “I’ll get it,” Mr. Sears said. He opened the door to a wiry, craggy-faced man wearing jeans and a red-checked shirt. “Hey, Donny!” Mr. Sears greeted him. “Come on in, you buzzard!”
     
         Mrs. Sears was watching her husband and the man named Donny. I saw her jaw tense.
     
         Donny said something in a low voice to Mr. Sears, and Mr. Sears called to us, “Me and Donny are gonna sit on the porch for a while. Y’all go on and play.”
     
         “Hon?” Mrs. Sears drew up a smile, but I could tell it was in danger of slipping. “I need a partner.”
     
         The screen door closed at his back.
     
         Mrs. Sears sat very still for a long moment, staring at the door. Her smile had gone.
     
         “Mom?” Ben said. “It’s your turn.”
     
         “All right.” She tried to pull her attention to the Scrabble tiles. I could tell she was trying as hard as she could, but her gaze kept slipping back to the screen door. Out on the porch, Mr. Sears and the wiry man named Donny were sitting in folding chairs, their conversation quiet and serious. “All right,” Ben’s mother said again. “Let me think now, just give me a minute.”
     
         More than a minute passed. Off in the distance, a dog began barking. Then two more. Tumper took up the call. Mrs. Sears was still choosing her tiles when the door flew open again.
     
         “Hey, Lizbeth! Ben! Come out here, and hurry!”
     
         “What is it, Sim? What’s—”
     
         “Just come out here!” he hollered, and of course we all got up from the table to see.
     
         Donny was standing in the yard, looking toward the west. The neighborhood dogs were really whooping it up. Lights burned in windows, and other people were emerging to find out what the uproar was about. Mr. Sears pointed in the direction Donny was looking. “You ever seen anythin’ like that before?”
     
         I looked up. So did Ben, and I heard him gasp as if he’d been stomach-punched.
     
         It was coming down from the night sky, descending from the canopy of stars.