lovable.
I never let on, of course, even during the evenings in their company that were awkward beyond belief.
We would sit there in the darkening living
“So how are things down at the plant?” I’d say to John Kinzer.
He would shrug. Neither conversation nor life suited him with any ease or grace. “Fine, just fine,” he would say, finally.
And we would sit in silence again.
“Would you like a nice piece of coffee cake?” Leona would say. “I made it fresh just this morning.” Or deep dish green apple pie. Or milk and tollhouse cookies. Or a brown betty pudding.
“No, no, thank you, Mrs. Kinzer; Jeffty and I grabbed a couple of cheeseburgers on the way home.” And again, silence.
Then, when the stillness and the awkwardness became too much even for them (and who knew how long that total silence reigned when they were alone, with that thing they never talked about any more Flanging between them), Leona Kinzer would say, “I think he’s asleep.”
John Kinzer would say, “I don’t hear the radio playing.
“Just so, it would go on like that, until I could politely find excuse to bolt away on some flimsy pretext. Yes, that was the way it would go on, every time, just the same… except once.
“I don’t know what to do any more,” Leona said. She began crying. “There’s no change, not one day of peace.”
Her husband managed to drag himself out of the old easy chair and went to her. He bent and tried to soothe her, but it was clear from the graceless way in which he touched her graying hair that the ability to be compassionate had been stunned in him. “Shhh, Leona, it’s all right. Shhh.” But she continued crying. Her hands scraped gently at the antimacassars on the arms of the chair.
Then she said, “Sometimes I wish he had been stillborn.”
John looked up into the corners of the room. For the nameless shadows that were always watching him? Was it God he was seeking in those spaces? “You don’t mean that,” he said to her, softly, pathetically, urging her with body tension and trembling in his voice to recant before God took notice of the terrible thought. But she meant it; she meant it very much.
I managed to get away quickly that evening. They didn’t want witnesses to their shame. I was glad to go.
And for a week I stayed away. From them, from Jeffty, from their street, even from that end of town.
I had my own life. The store, accounts, suppliers’ conferences, poker with friends, pretty women I took to well-lit restaurants, my own parents, putting antifreeze in the car, complaining to the laundry about too much starch in the collars and cuffs, working out at the gym, taxes, catching Ian or David (whichever one it was) stealing from the cash register. I had my own life.
But not even
And then, one Saturday afternoon, I came to take him to a double feature, and things I should have noticed so many times before, I first began to notice only that afternoon.
I came walking up to the Kinzer house, expecting Jeffty to be sitting on the front porch steps, or in the porch glider, waiting for me. But he was nowhere in sight.
Going inside, into that darkness and silence, in the midst of May sunshine, was unthinkable. I stood on the front walk for a few moments, then cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “Jeffty? Hey, Jeffty, come on out, let’s go. We’ll be late.”
His voice came faintly, as if from under the ground.
“Here I am, Donny.”
I could hear him, but I couldn’t see him. It was Jeffty, no question about it: as Donald H. Horton, President and Sole Owner of The Horton TV & Sound Center, no one but Jeffty called me Donny. He had never called me anything else.
(Actually, it isn’t a lie. I
“Where are you, Jeffty?”
“Under the porch in my secret place.”
I walked around the side of the porch, and stooped down and pulled away the wicker grating. Back in there, on the pressed dirt, Jeffty had built himself a secret place. He had comics in orange crates, he had a little table and some pillows, it was lit by big fat candles, and we used to hide there when we were both… five.
“What’cha up to?” I asked, crawling in and pulling the grate closed behind me. It was cool under the porch, and the dirt smelled comfortable, the candles smelled clubby and familiar. Any kid would feel at home in such a secret place: there’s never been a kid who didn’t spend the happiest, most productive, most deliciously mysterious times of his life in such a secret place.
“Playin’,” he said. He was holding something golden and round. It filled the palm of his little hand.
“You forget we were going to the movies?”
“Nope. I was just waitin’ for you here.”
“Your mom and dad home?”
“Momma.”
I understood why he was waiting under the porch. I didn’t push it any further. “What’ve you got there?”
“Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Badge,” he said, showing it to me on his flattened palm.
I realized I was looking at it without comprehending what it was for a long time. Then it dawned on me what a miracle Jeffty had in his hand. A miracle that simply could
“Jeffty,” I said softly, with wonder in my voice, “where’d you get that?”
“Came in the mail today. I sent away for it.”
“It must have cost a lot of money.”
“Not so much. Ten cents an’ two inner wax seals from two jars of Ovaltine.”
“May I see it?” My voice was trembling, and so was the hand I extended. He gave it to me and I held the miracle in the palm of my hand. It was
You remember.
The Captain Midnight Code-O-Graph I held in my hand, the one Jeffty said he had gotten in the mail for