He’d done a phone interview with Shell Oil in Houston and gotten a temporary position in its geology office. He’d report by the first of September. To ease our transition, Mom would stay in Midland with Janey and me. We’d join Dad and switch to new schools after the first of the year. “If the house sells quickly,” Dad told Mom, “just move into a motel. I think we can afford a cheap one till Christmas.”
Pat didn’t say much. “What’s Houston like?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Big. Dirty. Black water.”
“Yeah.”
We had until December. We used his crutches to poke beneath the rose bushes. Bacon was gone. I hadn’t seen him since the day the cops had come. That night he hadn’t shown up for his food; he couldn’t have gotten near the patio, anyway, through the debris of our fort.
“Well, our battles may be over,” Pat said. “But we still have one important mission to complete.”
I’d hoped he’d forgotten. The rhino was pointless now. Josh, we’d decided, wasn’t worth the fuss. That left Kiss-Kill.
December loomed larger for Janey than for me. She clung to her friend; I never saw Michelle alone — a vexation and a relief. I could tell Pat I had no chance for attack. I didn’t have to worry about a second kiss. On the other hand, a second kiss … I squelched the thought. “Houston!” Janey whined. “Do you know what a hell it is?”
The rest of the summer I spent reading football forecasts — and analyses of the presidential race, which I paid more attention to after Chicago (and because Eugene McCarthy’s face had remained kind throughout the troubled convention). The memory of Bucky had been swallowed by new events — by General Westmoreland and Buddy Reece, the Rebs’ new quarterback coach. Bronco Chevrolet ran ads praising the “New-Look Rebels.” The front pages contained war news, campaign updates, conjectures about Sheila.
One day, with Pat’s taunts in my head — “I think you like her, and that’s why you won’t carry out your mission”—I filled a pink balloon from my mother’s garden hose. As I squatted by the roses I felt lonesome for Bacon. The balloon was soft and cool in my palm, as firm as I imagined the Bunnies’ breasts to be. Tears burned my eyes. A clanking above me. I looked up to see two workmen straddling the alley’s power poles. They wore helmets and belts with big metal tools. I wiped my eyes. “Hey! What are you doing?” I called. “Tightening up these connections,” one man said. His shirt hung limp with sweat. “Supposed to be a stormy autumn. We don’t want these wires falling on your house, now do we?” The rest of the afternoon I sat in my room, picturing that disaster. The room felt big, exposed. There was no place to hide. On my wall I’d tacked half of the moon map — all I could salvage from the fort. By the time men bounced through the Sea of Tranquillity, I’d be in Houston, hundreds of miles from Pat. From Michelle. Tears came again. The water balloon sat on my desk, eking drops onto the glossy smooth mahogany. I tied the knot tighter.
I must have napped. Slamming car doors startled me. I walked to the window and saw the cops who’d wrecked Fort Trat escorting Mr. Wallace to a black-and-white cruiser. He was handcuffed. Sun bounced off his head as though it were a mirror. I ran to the front yard, where Mom and Dad stood on the lawn. Josh and his folks watched from their porch. Pat came bounding through the park, planting his crutches like stilts, step by steady step.
The following day we learned from the Reporter-Telegram that Sheila’s body had been found in a crawl space in Mr. Wallace’s attic. The neighbors on his south side had noticed a funny smell. An investigation had revealed Mr. Wallace’s dark history, all the more shocking because of his years of exemplary service on the Midland police force and his church activities. It wasn’t clear how — or even if — he knew the girl beforehand. An early lead, kept from the press, had been the girl’s socks, buried beneath a holly bush in Mogford Park.
“I’m going to miss Michelle, but I’m glad we’re moving now,” Janey said at breakfast, over the paper. I’d never seen her so pale. “It creeps me out, living here after this.”
“Mom, what’s a ‘sexual predator’?” I asked, peering over Janey’s shoulder.
“You ought to know,” Janey snapped. “Your grody old pinups …”
I slapped her arm. “That’s enough,” Mom said. She’d not said a word to me about the magazines.
We weren’t allowed to play outside. “No fair!” I shouted. “They got the guy!”
“I don’t care,” Mom said. “When I think that, all this time, he was right next door … I don’t want you out of my sight.”
First Pat, now Janey. Her remark had sealed it. If whatever I felt for Michelle — mixed up with Miss December — tied me even remotely to Mr. Wallace, I had to end it. Now.
I lay on my bed, chewing my lip. When the girls passed through the hall I picked the balloon off my desk and hurled it as hard as I could. Janey screamed. Water splattered the carpet, the light fixture, the framed print next to the closet where Mom hid the presents Santa brought when we were little.
Michelle trembled, her hands at her sides. Her training bra showed through her thin wet blouse. She looked at me, gasping. A current zizzled my skin. It came to a head behind my eyes, a swift, painful flash, as though I’d eaten a scoop of ice cream too fast.
Janey’s screams brought Mom running. “Troy! What on earth’s gotten into you? Answer me!”
I sat by the desk, avoiding Michelle’s eyes.
“Get some towels and clean this mess right now. You’re confined to your room the rest of the day. Now apologize to Michelle and your sister. You hear me? Troy?”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
If Michelle had yelled or sneered it would have been okay. But she only stared at me, wide-eyed, hurt, shivering in her little slip of a bra. I knew, right then, I’d dream of her in Houston, and that made Houston a lousier prospect than ever.
The towels were the same ones we’d lined the fort with. I ran them over the walls. From now on, I’d link their stiff, rough texture to our patio. Their dusty-detergent smell was the smell of Bucky, Pat, summer slipping into fall.
In my room I moved my finger over my desktop, tracing invisible Snoopys. I looked out the window toward Mr. Wallace’s house. I imagined that Bacon had made his way to the attic and was hiding there, safe, though I knew this was impossible. I thought of Sheila as a doll, tucked away in our closet, a keepsake to give as a gift someday.
The radio said fifteen American soldiers had died near Cu Chi. The Rebs’ coach claimed his boys were ready to give 110 percent this year. I turned to the torn moon, the lines of latitude and longitude. In the next room, above the clattering of the air conditioner, Janey’s voice sounded in laughter with Michelle’s — soaring, brief, and though rendered at my expense, more reassuring than anything I would encounter for many seasons to come.
The Standoff
On a swirling cold, late December morning in 1968, my grandfather Harry and I split light fog in a big, blue Oldsmobile Cutlass, twisting along Route 66 and various side roads, among small farms, bare-twigged meadows, and Civil War battlefields in the woods of eastern Oklahoma. Since the day before, we hadn’t spoken to each other except to get our plans straight.
The governor had sent him to a little town called Jay, well out of his congressional district, to settle some nasty business. Before our disagreement I’d asked if I could come along. It was too late to back out now.
The sky looked snowy but nothing fell. The gray light dulled the hills’ red soil. I stared, glumly, at the peeling Burma Shave signs by the side of the road. Harry switched on the radio. Static, quick as gunfire. Paul Harvey said John Steinbeck had died. We were quiet for several miles. Finally Harry, trying to be friendly again, asked, “Did you ever read The Grapes of Wrath?”