lightning behind Mr. Sayre's eyes, and it was looking for a place to strike.
The snow had almost stopped. Nothing was even white, Billy saw, but instead a wet gray that meant there would be school tomorrow, and he would have to finish that arithmetic homework for Mrs. Cullens.
'Snow's about quit, bubber,' John said; his face had gone red with cold. 'Gettin' a bit chillier, though. You about ready to turn back?'
'Guess so,' he answered, though he really wasn't. That seemed to him to be a matter of great concern: no matter how far you walked the road still went on to
They walked on a few minutes longer, to the single blinking amber traffic light at the center of Hawthorne. The intersection was bordered by the barbershop, Coy Granger's Quick-Pik grocery store, a rundown Texaco gas station, and the Hawthorne post office. The rest of the town—clapboard-and-brick structures that looked like blocks a baby's hand had strewn into disarray—sat on either side of the highway, which swept on across an old gray trestle bridge and up into the brown hills where an occasional chimney spouted smoke. The sharp white steeple of the Hawthorne First Baptist Church stuck up through the leafless trees like an admonishing finger. Just on the other side of the disused railroad tracks was the jumble of stores and shanties known as Dusktown; the tracks might have been an electrified fence separating the black and white sections of Hawthorne. It disturbed John that Reverend Horton was leaving his rightful duties to go into Dusktown; the man had no cause to go over to the other side of the tracks, and all he was doing was trying to stir up things that were best kept buried.
'Better head on home now,' John said, and took his son's hand.
In another few moments they came up even with the small but neatly kept green house on their right. It was one of the newer houses built in Hawthorne; there was a white-painted front porch at the top of a few steps, and white smoke curled from the chimney. Billy looked at the house, looked again, and saw Mr. Booker sitting up there on the porch. The man was wearing his yellow John Deere cap and a short-sleeved blue shirt. He waved to his best friend's father, but Mr. Booker seemed to be looking right through him. He said uneasily, 'Daddy? . . .'
John said, 'What, bubber?' Then he looked up and saw Dave Booker sitting there like a rock. He frowned and called out, 'Afternoon, Dave! Pretty cold to be outside today, ain't it?'
Booker didn't move. John stopped walking, and realized that his old fishing partner was staring out at the hills with a blank, frozen expression, as if he were trying to see clear to Mississippi. John saw the summery short- sleeved shirt, and he said quietly, 'Dave? Everything all right?' He and Billy came up the brown lawn slowly and stood at the foot of the steps. Booker was wearing fishing lures stuck in his hat; his square, heavy-jowled face was white with the cold, but now the man blinked and at least John knew he wasn't frozen to death.
'Mind if we come up for a spell?' John asked.
'Come on up, then. Long as you're here.' Booker's voice was empty, and the sound of it scared Billy.
'Thanks kindly.' John and Billy climbed the steps to the porch. A window curtain moved and Julie Ann, Dave's wife, peered out at them for a few seconds before the curtain closed. 'How about that snow? Came down for a few minutes, didn't it?'
'Snow?' Booker's thick black brows knitted together The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, his lips liver-red and slack. 'Yeah. Sure did.' He nodded, making one of the chrome lures jingle.
'You okay, Dave?'
'Why shouldn't I be?' His gaze shifted away from John, and he was staring into Mississippi again.
'I don't know, I just ...' John let his voice trail off. On the floor beside Dave's chair was a scattering of hand- rolled Prince Albert cigarette butts and a baseball bat with what looked like dried blood on it. No, John thought, must be just mud. Sure, that's all it is. He gripped Billy's hand tightly.
'Man can sit on his own front porch, can't he?' Dave said quietly. 'Last I heard he could. Last I heard it was a free country. Or has that changed?' His face turned, and now John could clearly see the terrible, cold rage in his eyes. John felt his spine crawl. He could see the wicked prongs of a hook protruding from the man's cap, and he recalled that they would've gone fishing last Saturday on Semmes Lake had it not been for one of Dave's frequent migraine headaches. 'It's a fuckin' free country,' Dave said, and suddenly grinned viciously.
John was jarred; it wasn't right that Dave should use such a word in front of the boy, but he decided to let it pass. Dave's gaze had clouded over.
The front door opened and Julie Ann peeked out. She was a tall, fragile-looking woman with curly brown hair and soft pale blue eyes. She smiled—grimaced, John thought—and said with tense good cheer, 'John Creekmore! What brings you uptown? Billy, you takin' care of your daddy today? Step on in and let me offer you a cup of hot coffee, John.'
'No, thank you. Billy and I've got to get on back. ...'
'KEEP YOUR DAMNED VOICE DOWN, WOMAN!' Dave thundered, twisting around in his chair; he plastered one hand against his forehead. 'I'LL STROP YOU! I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL!'
John, Billy, and Julie Ann formed a frozen triangle around the man. From within the house Billy could hear little Katy sobbing in a back room, and tentatively Will called out, 'Mom?' Julie Ann's grin hung by one lip, and she stood as if motion might cause Dave to explode. Dave abruptly looked away, dug into a back pocket, and brought out a bottle of Bayer aspirin; he unscrewed the cap and tilted the bottle to his lips, then crunched noisily.
'Strop you,' he whispered, to no one in particular His eyes bulged above dark blue circles. 'Strop the livin' shit out of you. . . .'
John pushed Billy toward the door, and they entered the house. As Julie Ann closed the door, Dave said mockingly, 'Gonna talk about the old man again, aren't you? You dirty bitch. ...' And then Julie Ann shut the door, and her husband's curses were muffled, indistinct ravings.
2
The house was dark and oppressively hot, one of the few in Hawthorne that had the luxury of a coal-fed furnace. John saw splinters of glass twinkling in the grayish green carpet; a broken chair sagged in a corner, and there were two empty bottles of Bayer on a lamptable. A framed print of Jesus at the Last Supper hung crookedly on one wall, and opposite it was a stuffed and mounted large-mouth bass, painted in garish blue and silver. In addition to the furnace heat, raw pinewood crackled and hissed in the fireplace, sending plumes of smoke up the chimney and scenting the room with pine sap.
'Excuse the mess.' Julie Ann was trembling but trying to keep a desperate smile on her face. 'We've . . . had some trouble here today. Billy, Will's in his room if you want to go on back.'
'Can I?' he asked his father, and when John nodded he rocketed down a corridor to the small room Will shared with his little sister. He knew the house by heart because he'd spent the night several times; the last time, he and Will had explored the forest together in search of lions, and when Katy had tagged along they'd let her carry their stick-guns for them, but she had to do as they told her and call them 'Bwana,' a word Will had learned from a Jungle Jim comic book. This time, though, the house seemed different; it was darker and quieter, and might have been scary, Billy thought, if he hadn't known his father was up in the front room.
As Billy entered, Will looked up from the plastic Civil War soldiers he'd arranged on the floor. Will was the same age as Billy, a small thin boy with unruly brown hair plagued with cowlicks, and he wore brown-framed glasses held together in the center with Scotch tape. On the other bed, his sister lay curled up in a ball, her face against the pillow. 'I'm Robert E. Lee!' Will announced, his sallow, rather sad-eyed face brightening at the approach of his friend. 'You can be General Grant!'
'I'm not a Yankee!' Billy objected, but within another minute he was commanding the bluecoats in a daring attack up Dead-man's Hill.
In the front room, John sat down on a rumpled sofa and watched as Julie Ann paced before him, stopped to peer out the window, then paced again. She said in a tense whisper, 'He killed Boo, John. He beat Boo to death with that baseball bat and then he hung him in a tree with fishin' line. I tried to fight him, but he was too strong and . . .' Tears brimmed from her swollen eyes; John quickly averted his gaze to a little clock sitting on the mantel. It was ten minutes before five, and he wished he'd never offered to take Billy for a walk. 'He was just too strong,' she said,
