They had driven in silence since leaving the house. John Creekmore watched the road unwinding before him in the yellow glare of the headlights; he was purposely keeping their speed ten miles per hour below the limit. 'You sure you want to do this?' he asked, finally, without looking at his son. 'I can turn the car around on the next dirt road.'
'I want to go,' Billy said. He was wearing a spotless but tightly fitting dark suit, a starched white shirt, and a bright paisley tie.
'Your choice. I've said all I can, I guess.' His face was set and grim; he looked much the same as he had when he'd stepped out of the house one morning last week and had seen the scarecrow dummy hanging by its neck from an oak-tree limb. It was wrapped with used toilet paper Ever since that evening Billy had gone up to the sawmill with Lamar Chatham the air had been ugly; Chatham had gone around telling everybody with ears what had happened, and the story soon became embellished and distorted to the point that it was said Billy was in command of the demons that infested the mill. John knew all of that was ridiculous, but he wasn't given the chance to explain; when he'd last gone over to Curtis Peel's to play checkers, the other men had frozen him out, talking and looking right through him as if he were invisible. Less than ten minutes after he'd gotten there, they'd all decided they'd had enough and left, but John had seen them later, sitting on the benches in front of Lee Sayre's hardware store; Sayre was with them, the center of attention, and Ralph Leighton was grinning like a hyena. 'Did your mother put you up to this?' John asked suddenly.
'No sir.'
'Don't you know who's gonna
Billy shook his head. He'd gathered the courage to call out Melissa's name in the hallway one day; when she'd turned toward him, Billy had seen her pretty face blanch. She'd hurried away as if he were offering her poison.
'Then I don't see why you want to go.'
'It's May Night. It's the school dance. That's why.'
John grunted. 'No, that's not all of it, is it? I think you want to go because you want to prove something.' He flicked a glance at the boy.
'I want to go to May Night, that's all.'
He's stubborn as a deaf mule, John thought, and he's got a hell of a lot of guts, I'll say that for him. Billy was different, stronger-willed, somehow, and much more intense. Looking into his eyes was like seeing a thunderstorm on the horizon, and you didn't know which way the storm would turn or how fast it was moving.
'You may think you're not different,' John said quietly, 'but you're wrong. Lord knows I've prayed over you, Billy, and over your mother too. I've prayed until my head aches. But the Lord isn't gonna change you, son, not until you turn away from this . . . this black belief.'
Billy was silent for a moment. The lights of Fayette brightened the sky before them. 'I don't understand it,' he said. 'Maybe I never will, and maybe I'm not supposed to. But I think that part of Mr. Patterson
'You don't know what you're talkin' about!' John snapped.
'Yes I do, Dad.' The strength of his voice frightened John. 'I helped Mr Patterson. I
John felt the quick, hot urge to strike his son across the face. Seventeen or not, the boy had no right to dispute his father's word. In John's way of thinking the boy was like a corrupting tarbaby, and John was afraid some of that evil tar might fix itself to him, too.
The county high school stood just outside the Fayette city limits. It was a large, two-storied red brick building that had gone up in the early forties and had survived, like a defiant dinosaur, the ravages of weather, vandalism, and county-education budget cuts. A gymnasium had been built off to the side in the mid-fifties, a square brick structure with a band of louvered windows beneath the slate roof. Outside the gym was a fenced-in football field, home to the Fayette County High Bulldogs. The parking lot held a varied assortment of vehicles, from rusted-out pickups to spit-shined sports cars. The school building itself was dark, but a few bright streamers of light shot out through the gym's open windows, and in the air there was the growl of a bass guitar and the high notes of laughter.
John slowed the car to a halt. 'I guess this is the place. You sure you want to go through with it?'
'Yes sir.'
'You don't have to, you know.'
'I do have to.'
'Ask me, you're lettin' yourself in for misery.' But then Billy was opening the door, and John knew his mind was set. 'What time do you want me to come for you?'
'Ten o'clock?'
'Nine-thirty,' John said. He fixed his son with a hard gaze. 'When you go through them doors, you're on your own. Anything happens to you in there, I can't help. You got your money?'
Billy felt in his pocket for the couple of dollars he'd brought along. 'Yes sir. Don't worry, there are chaperones inside.'
'Well,' John said, 'I guess I'll go on, then. Anybody says something to you that don't set well, you just remember . . . you're a Creekmore, and you can be proud of that.' Billy shut the door and started to walk away, but John leaned toward the open window and said, 'You look real good, son.' And then, before the boy could respond, he was driving away across the lot.
Billy walked to the gym. His nerves were jangling, his muscles knotted up; he was ready for the unexpected. The gates to the football field were open, and Billy could see the huge mound of bits and pieces of wood—probably waste from the sawmill, he realized—that would be ignited later in the evening for the traditional May Night bonfire; then the ashes would be spread over the field before summer tilling and the replanting of grass for next season. From the gym's open doors came the tinny sounds of electric guitars playing 'Alley Cat'; a large blue-and-gold poster hung across the front of the gym, and read may night! junior-senior sockhop! 2.50 admission! with the drawing of a stocky bulldog dressed in football gear.
He paid his admission to a pretty dark-haired girl who sat at a desk just inside the gym. Golden and blue streamers crisscrossed the exposed metal rafters, and at the ceiling's center hung a large mirrored globe that cast reflected shards of light over the dancing mob. Papier-mache planets painted in Day-Glo colors dangled on wires, high enough not to be yanked down but low enough to be stirred by the crowd's motion. On the brick wall behind the bandstand, where a group with the legend purple tree stenciled across the bass drumhead began to hammer out 'Pipeline,' was a large banner proclaiming seniors '69 welcome the age of aquarius!
A chaperone, a thin geometry teacher named Edwards, materialized out of the crowd and pointed at Billy's feet. 'Shoes off if you're going to stay on the floor. Otherwise, you go up into the bleachers.' He motioned toward a sea of shoes scattered in a corner, and Billy took off his dusty loafers. How all those shoes would ever get back to their owners was a mystery, he thought as he placed his shoes with the others. He stood against the wall, underneath a stretched-tight American flag, and watched as the dancers Boog-a-looed and Ponied and Monkeyed to strident electric chords. Almost everyone had a date, he saw; the few boys who'd come stag—fat, or with terminal acne—sat up in the green-painted bleachers. Chaperones paced the dance floor. A glued-together couple passed Billy in search of their shoes, and he could smell the distinct aroma of moonshine.
'Well, well,' someone said. 'Is that Billy Creekmore standing over there by his lonesome?'
Billy looked to one side and saw Mr Leighton leaning against the wall several feet away, wearing a checked coat and a shirt open at the collar; his crew cut looked as sharp as a bed of nails. 'Where's your date, Billy?'
'I came stag.'
