“You’re not gay?”
“I have no idea, I’m prepubescent. And incidentally, without hurting her, you have got to tell Mom to stop bragging about me to the other mothers.”
Now, that was a stunner. Katelyn was hardly your braggart mama. “That doesn’t sound like her, somehow.”
“She refers to me as a ‘genius.’ ‘My son is a genius,’ she says. And do you know that Mrs. Warner resents this? And Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Fisk and probably every other faculty wife with a kid at B.A. Because they all
Dan could certainly see, from Conner’s standpoint, why he might view his intelligence as a deformity. It was ugly, though, to see him driven to feel that way about a gift so rare.
The thing about Katelyn was, if you were going to love her and you were going to be her husband, you were going to have to accept that Conner was the center of the universe for her. He was, indeed, a professor’s dream child and she was, indeed, a professor. “She’s always bragged, Conner.”
“She’s really messing me up.”
At that moment, flashlights began appearing in their yard, swarming over from the Warners’. There were also voices making low howling sounds. “Great,” Conner muttered as he turned out his bedside light.
For a few more seconds, Dan hoped that this was something nice, but when he heard them calling Conner’s name, he knew that it was more cruelty, and he, perhaps unfortunately, got mad. He headed for the glass door that opened out onto the underdeck and the yard.
“Dan, please just go upstairs.”
“Conner, those kids don’t have any business in this yard.”
“Dan, please!”
Dan opened the door. Behind him, Conner pulled his bedspread over his head. Then Dan heard cracking sounds. He realized that somebody was hitting the aboveground pool with what sounded like a board or even a hammer.
“All right, that’s enough,” he shouted as he strode up to the shape that was hacking away at the pool. It was a kid he didn’t recognize, but when the boy saw him, he tried to run. Dan got him by the collar of his jacket.
The kid swung and managed to land a crooked blow on Dan’s thigh. And the rest of them didn’t run. He heard Paulie Warner say in an almost bored voice, “Let ’im go, Dan.”
Dan carried him across to the fence and dumped him over. “Get out of here, all of you.” He grabbed Paulie as he was leaving. “You oughta be ashamed of yourself.”
Paulie snorted—laughter. Only a miracle from above prevented Dan from smacking him. Instead, he brushed past him and strode across the Warners’ driveway. “Get off my property,” Paulie shouted from behind him.
He hammered on the front door. A couple of seconds later, Maggie opened it. He was so furious that for a moment he was at a loss for words, and the two of them just stared at each other. Finally, he spoke. “Keep those vandals out of my yard, Maggie, or I’m calling the cops.”
“Dan?”
“Paulie had his gang out there busting up our pool, damnit! It’s not on, Maggie. If I have to, I’ll see you guys in family court. Paulie might not like Conner anymore. That’s his privilege. But when he starts vandalizing our stuff —that I am not going to allow.”
She turned around, called into the house, “Paulie?” Then,
He came, not looking afraid in the least, Dan noted. He was growing up, Paulie Warner was. The peach fuzz was getting dark, the eyes getting hard.
“Did you bust up their pool?”
“No.”
“Yeah, you did—or your friend did. I think they have a little gang, Maggie. What’s your little gang called, Paulie?”
“I don’t have a gang.”
Maggie shoved his shoulder. “Where’s Conner, Paulie?”
“He couldn’t come.”
“They cut him out and the gang is called the Connerbusters, and they invaded our yard with the intention of vandalizing us, and I’m not gonna stand for it, Maggie.”
“Okay! Hey!” Maggie called into the house. Boys began to appear, just young enough to be a bit wide-eyed with worry. “Party’s over, fellas. Call your parents and tell ’em to pick you up. You can wait on the front porch, I don’t want you in here anymore. I’ve already had a shelf busted in my fridge—”
“That was an accident, Mom!”
“—and now the neighbors are complaining and I’ve had it. You go up to your room, young man.”
Paulie started to speak, but she cuffed him in the back of the head. “Learn how to choose your friends, dummy,” she said.
He went upstairs, his face red, fighting tears.
As Dan left, the other boys filtered out behind him. They crowded together on the front porch, blowing on their hands and waiting for their rides. He walked across the yards, feeling the cold now through his cotton chinos and his light sweater. The kids sure were growing up, and it was sad. Last July, he supposed, had been the high summer of Conner’s childhood. He remembered those days of his own life. He’d been like some kind of water creature, like all the kids who lived along the lakes of Madison.
He went over to the pool. The moon was rising, and in its light he could see that the little creep had done a fair job on the fiberglass.
As he was walking back to the house, something caught his eye—a flash, he thought, coming from somewhere to the west, in the direction of the town. An explosion? There was no following rumble, so he supposed not. Nothing ever happened around here, anyway… except for kid trouble. Kids were a problem in any college town. Bored, affluent, smart, faculty brats were a notorious irritant on every campus he’d ever worked.
He went in and gently explained to Conner what had happened. “Son, there will be no fallout from this. You’ll see, Monday morning in school it’ll be as if none of it ever happened.”
“I’m so glad.”
“Count on it. They went a step too far, that’s all. They’re testing, trying to figure out who they want to be— and they’re not like you, they’re much simpler, to be honest. So even though they’re older, in many ways they’re less mature.”
“Dan, do you think you could find out about the Wilton public schools for me, since I really can’t return to B.A? I think the, uh, middle school—what’s it called, Colonel Saunders Memorial or something—has a rather good reputation in shop. And, of course, the football team is the stuff of local legend. Who knows, maybe I can try out for back end.”
Dan saw that there was nothing to be gained by arguing with him. He’d go up and report to Katelyn.
As he left, Conner said, “Promise me, Dan. Call Wilton.”
“I’ll call them first thing Monday.”
“And that boot camp in Lockridge. I could commute, actually, on the Louisville bus. I wouldn’t have to live in the barracks or anything.”
“Yeah, that’s a possibility, too.” Dan turned to leave and, to his surprise, saw a boy standing just beyond the deck. His shape was clearly visible in the moonlight. He was not one of the gangling creeps from Paulie’s party. This kid looked even smaller than Conner. Which was very strange, because Conner himself was the youngest child on Oak Road, not counting six-month-old Jillie Jeffers.
It was dark in the underdeck, but the child was in the light of the moon.
Something struck Dan, then, hit him like an axe blow between the eyes. He was in a loud, echoing space looking down through a round hole, and there was a surface far below glistening silver just like this, in moonlight just like this. He felt in that moment a longing so powerful that it seemed to stop his blood, to cripple him with a sense of loss that might actually be larger than he could contain. For a moment, he was disoriented, as if detached from the ground, and he fell forward.
