Boys Life by Robert R. McCammon Page B

Donny observed. His head was cocked to one side, his face gaunt and his dark hair slick with brilliantine. “Comin’ down like a sonofabitch.”
    Between Zephyr and Union Town lay eight miles of hills, woods, and swamp cut by the Tecumseh River. It was Martian territory if there ever was, I thought, and I felt all the circuits in my brain jangle like fire alarms going off. I looked at Ben. His eyes seemed to be bulging outward by the cranial pressure of pure fear. The only thing I could think of when I stared at the fireball again was the tentacled head in the glass bowl, its face serenely evil and slightly Oriental. I could hardly stand up, my legs were so weak.
    “Hey, Sim?” Donny’s voice was low and slow, and he was chewing on the toothpick. “How about we go chase that bugger down?” His face turned toward Mr. Sears. His nose was flat, as if it had been busted by a big fist. “What do you say, Sim?”
    “Yeah!” he answered. “Yeah, we’ll go chase it down! Find out where it falls!”
    “No, Sim!” Mrs. Sears said. In her voice was a note of pleading. “Stay with me and the boys tonight!”
    “It’s a comet, Lizbeth!” he explained, grinning. “How many times in your life do you get to chase a comet?”
    “Please, Sim.” She grasped his forearm. “Stay with us. All right?” I saw her fingers tighten.
    “About to hit.” Donny’s jaw muscles clenched as he chewed. “Time’s wastin’.”
    “Yeah! Time’s wastin’, Lizbeth!” Mr. Sears pulled away. “I’ll get my jacket!” He rushed up the porch steps and into the house. Before the screen door could slam, Ben was running after his father.
    Mr. Sears went back to the bedroom he shared with his wife. He opened the closet, got his brown poplin jacket, and shrugged into it. Then he reached up onto the closet’s top shelf, his hand winnowing under a red blanket. As Mr. Sears’s hand emerged, Ben walked into the room behind him and caught a glint of metal between his father’s fingers.
    Ben knew what it was. He knew what it was for.
    “Daddy?” he said. “Please stay home.”
    “Hey, boy!” His father turned toward him, grin in place, and he slid the metal object down into his jacket and zipped the jacket up. “I’m gonna go see where the comet comes down with Mr. Blaylock. I won’t be but a little while.”
    Ben stood in the doorway, between his father and the outside world. His eyes were wet and scared. “Can I go with you, Daddy?”
    “No, Ben. Not this time. I gotta go now.”
    “Let me go with you. Okay? I won’t make any noise. Okay?”
    “No, son.” Mr. Sears’s hand clamped down on Ben’s shoulder. “You have to stay here with your mother and Cory.” Though Ben stiffly resisted, his father’s hand moved him aside. “You be a good boy, now,” Mr. Sears said as his big shoes carried him toward the door.
    Ben made one more attempt by grasping his father’s fingers and trying to hold him. “Don’t go, Daddy!” he said. “Don’t go! Please don’t go!”
    “Ben, don’t act like a baby. Let me go, son.”
    “No, sir,” Ben answered. The wetness of his eyes had overflowed onto his pudgy cheeks. “I won’t.”
    “I’m just goin’ out to see where the comet falls. I won’t be gone but a little while.”
    “If you go… if you go…” Ben’s throat was clogging up with emotion, and he could hardly squeeze the words out. “You’ll come back changed.”
    “Let’s hit the road, Sim!” Donny Blaylock urged from the front porch.
    “Ben?” Mr. Sears said sternly. “I’m goin’ with Mr. Blaylock. Act like a man, now.” He worked his fingers free, and Ben stood there looking up at him with an expression of agony. His father scraped a hand through Ben’s cropped hair. “I’ll bring you back a piece of it, all right, Tiger?”
    “Don’t go,” the weeping tiger croaked.
    His father turned his back on him, and strode out the screen door to where Donny Blaylock waited. I was still standing with Mrs.