Table of Contents

fogbank for a moment or two with the flat of her hand held
up to shade her eyes, and then shook her head. “Weird,”
she said, and walked away.
For Billy, the mist had lost its novelty. He had fished the
flag and a tangle of lanyard out of the water. We spread it
on the lawn to dry.
“I heard it was wrong to ever let the flag touch the ground,
Daddy,” he said in a businesslike, let’s-get-this-out-of-theway
tone.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Victor McAllister says they lectercute people for
it.”
“Well, you tell Vic he’s full of what makes the grass grow
green.”
“Horseshit, right?” Billy is a bright boy, but oddly humorless.
To the champ, everything is serious business. I’m
hoping that he’ll live long enough to learn that in this world
that is a very dangerous attitude.
“Yeah, right, but don’t tell your mother I said so. When the
flag’s dry, we’ll put it away. We’ll even fold it into a cocked
hat, so we’ll be on safe ground there.”
“Daddy, will we fix the boathouse roof and get a new
flagpole?” For the first time he looked anxious. He’d maybe
had enough destruction for a while.
I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re damn tooting.”
“Can I go over to the Bibbers’ and see what happened
there?”
“Just for a couple of minutes. They’ll be cleaning up, too,
and sometimes that makes people feel a little ugly.” The