But he was gone. So were the children.
“Where’d they all go?”
“Back to where they come from, I reckon.” The boy tucked his slingshot into the front flap of his overalls. “I’m Davy. Davy Wilcox.”
“I’m Zack. Zack Jennings.”
“Pleased to meet ya. Where d’ya live?”
“Right here.”
“The new house?”
“Yep.”
“Swell!”
“You live around here?”
“Sure do. Moved up from Kentucky a few years back.”
That explained why he talked so funny.
“We’re right across the highway. See? On the farm over yonder.”
Zack looked across the highway and saw patches of a brown field filled with dead cornstalks.
“That’s our field. We keep the cows out back.”
“In the barn?” Zack asked.
“That’s right. You ever work on a farm, Zack?”
“No. But I had this Old McDonald farm set once.”
“With plastic animals and such like that?”
“Yeah,” Zack said, immediately wondering why he felt compelled to tell this boy about his baby toys.
Tell him about your G.I. Joes, too, why don’t you? Then he can make fun of you for playing with dolls just like all your other new neighbors.
“I had me one of them toy farm sets, too,” Davy said. “I thought it was all kinds of swell. Did you have the tractor?”
“Yeah. I chased the cows with it.”
“Hey, that sounds neat. Chasing cows with a tractor? Sounds real neat. So you and your folks just moved in?”
“Yep. Last Monday.”
“Swell. Not many cool kids live around here. Just a couple jerks. Didja meet Kyle Snertz yet?”
“Yeah. Kind of.”
“What a dipstick. He can’t play baseball, neither. Swings that bat like a galdern girl.”
“Really?”
“Does he ever!”
Davy flung his arms around in crazy circles like a blindfolded baboon swatting at a piñata.
“He’s all show and no blow!”
“He doesn’t scare you?”
“Snotty Snertz? Heck no.”
Zack spun around in circles, imitating Davy Wilcox imitating Snertz. Zipper sprang up on his hind legs and spun around in circles, too.
When they saw that, the two boys started laughing.
“Dang! Even your dog swings better than Snertz!”
Zack laughed even harder and realized he might’ve just found his first real friend.
That night, Clint Eberhart sought out the plumber.
The one to do all the things I can’t do myself.
Eberhart was slowly adjusting to his new “condition.” By day, he was vapor invisible to all except children with very vivid imaginations. By night, he could freely roam the earth in his former body and car. But in both instances his physical abilities were severely limited.
In fact, he couldn’t do anything.
He couldn’t eat.
He couldn’t fight.
All he could do was materialize, prowl in the shadows, and make noises.
Of course, at night he could scare the pants off just about anybody. Why, he could give an old man with a chain saw a heart attack if he timed his fade-in just so.
But if he wanted to take care of any unfinished business, Clint Eberhart would need a good pair of human hands.
So he picked the plumber.
The pickup truck was parked on the soft shoulder of the highway near the crossroads.
Billy O’Claire sat up front, staring at the blinking red light. Listening to the crickets. Swatting the mosquitoes nibbling at his neck. After a solid smack and a squish, he checked his watch.
It was almost exactly the same time as it had been that night when he’d seen the motorcycle cop standing in the crossroads. Billy took a sip from a two-liter bottle of soda. He wanted to be wide awake when the mystery man reappeared.
He knotted his eyes and stared straight ahead. “I double-dog dare you to show your face again!”
Well, not his face. He hadn’t really shown it that first time, since the cop didn’t have a face. Billy wondered how he kept his sunglasses in place without a nose for them to sit on. He also wondered why he wore sunglasses in the middle of the night.
Somebody pulled in behind Billy.
He turned around, looked out his rear window. He didn’t see any headlights, but he could make out the shadowy silhouette of a wide-bodied convertible. None of his friends drove classic convertibles with tail fins.
Goose bumps exploded on his arms. It felt like somebody was outside his truck looking in.
Slowly, barely moving, Billy turned to his left.
A man with slicked-back black hair was staring at him. Grinning.
“Hey there,” the man said, his voice raw and raspy.
“Who are you?” Billy asked.
“Someone just passing through.”
Billy looked into the guy’s eyes. Man—they were so blue. Like the plates at the diner.
“So, plumber—what’s your name?”
“Billy.”
“Billy what?”
“O’Claire.”
That seemed to startle the man.
“You from around here?” he asked.
“Lived here my whole life.”
“And you say you’re an O’Claire?”
“Been one of those my whole life, too.”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Tommy O’Claire.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He died a long time ago. Maybe you know my Mee Maw.”
“Your what?”
“My grandmother. Mary O’Claire.”
Now the strange dude looked angry.
“Mary O’Claire? Is her family from up near Spencer?”
“I don’t know. I could ask her, I guess.”
“She’s alive? She didn’t die in 1958?”
Billy laughed. “Well, uh, no—I don’t think so. I just saw her the other day and she didn’t look dead.”
The man with the plastered-back hair leaned closer to the door.
“You’re a wisenheimer, hunh?”
“A what?”
“Where can I find her? Where’s young Mary O’Claire hiding?”
“Young?” This guy was cracking Billy up. “I told you, dude—she’s my grandmother. She lives in the old folks home. Guess what? That means she’s old.”
The guy made the pupils floating inside his eyes go wider, turned them into hypnotic sinkholes. Billy felt drowsy, like he needed to take a nap.
He felt like a burger-craving zombie again.
A zombie who would do anything this guy asked him to.
Anything at all.
“So what do you want to do today, sweetie?”
On Monday morning, Judy and Zack ate cereal in the breakfast nook. His father had left for the train station and the commute to his law firm in New York City long before either one of them was awake. It was their first morning alone together in the big house. They were sticking to cold breakfast foods. Judy had almost started another fire using aluminum foil in the microwave.
“Nothing,” Zack said, slurping his cereal. “Probably just, you know, hang out with Davy.”
“Who’s Davy?”
“This guy I met.”
“Really? Does he live around here?”
“Yep. Right across the highway. On the farm.”
“Have fun, but be careful, okay?”
“We will.”
Judy tried to remember all the things her mother used to say when she went outside to play.
“Look both ways if you cross the street. Don’t run around with scissors. And…”
“I won’t take any candy from strangers.”
“Good. I knew I forgot one.”
“So Judy’s your stepmother, hunh?” Davy asked while Zack hammered a two-by-four into the tree.
They had decided to go ahead and build a tree house. Zack had found a few boards piled up in the garage—wood left over from when the house was built.