“But which house, which!” asked Will.
The salesman reared off, blew his nose in a great kerchief, then walked slowly across the lawn as if approaching a huge time-bomb that ticked silently there.
He touched Will’s front porch newels, ran his hand over a post, a floorboard, then shut his eyes and leaned against the house to let its bones speak to him.
Then, hesitant, he made his cautious way to Jim’s house next door.
Jim stood up to watch.
The salesman put his hand out to touch, to stroke, to quiver his fingertips on the old paint.
“This,” he said at last, “is the one.”
Jim looked proud.
Without looking back, the salesman said, “Jim Nightshade, this your place?”
“Mine,” said Jim.
“I should’ve known,” said the man.
“Hey, what about me?” said Will.
The salesman snuffed again at Will’s house. “No, no. Oh, a few sparks’ll jump on your rainspouts. But the real show’s next door here, at the Nightshades’! Well!”
The salesman hurried back across the lawn to seize his huge leather bag.
“I’m on my way. Storm’s coming. Don’t wait, Jim boy. Otherwise – bamm! You’ll be found, your nickels, dimes and Indian-heads fused by electroplating. Abe Lincolns melted into Miss Columbias, eagles plucked raw on the backs of quarters, all run to quicksilver in your jeans. More! Any boy hit by lightning, lift his lid and there on his eyeball, pretty as the Lord’s prayer on a pin, find the last scene the boy ever saw! A box-Brownie photo, by God, of that fire climbing down the sky to blow You like a penny whistle, suck your soul back up along the bright stair! Git, boy! Hammer it high or you’re dead come dawn!”
And jangling his case full of iron rods, the salesman wheeled about and charged down the walk blinking wildly at the sky, the roof, the trees, at last closing his eyes, moving, sniffing, muttering. “Yes, bad, here it comes, feel it, way off now, but running fast…”
And the man in the storm-dark clothes was gone, his cloud-coloured hat pulled down over his eyes, and the trees rustled and the sky seemed very old suddenly and Jim and Will stood testing the wind to see if they could smell electricity, the lightning-rod fallen between them.
“Jim,” said Will. “Don’t stand there. Your house, he said. You going to nail up the rod or ain’t you?”
“No,” smiled Jim. “Why spoil the fun?”
“Fun! You crazy? I’ll get the ladder! You the hammer, some nails and wire!”
But Jim did not move. Will broke and ran. He came back with the ladder.
“Jim. Think of your mom. You want her burnt?”
Will climbed the side of the house, alone, and looked down.
Slowly, Jim moved to the ladder below and started up.
Thunder sounded far off in the cloud-shadowed hills.
The air smelled fresh and raw on top of Jim Nightshade’s roof.
Even Jim admitted that.
2
There’s nothing in the living world like books on water-cures, deaths-of-a-thousand-slices, or pouring white-hot lava off castle walls on drolls and mountebanks.
So said Jim Nightshade, that’s all he read. If it wasn’t how to burgle the First National, it was, how to build catapults, or shape black bumbershoots into lurking bat costumes for Cabbage Night.
Jim breathed it out all fine.
And Will, he breathed it in.
With the lightning-rod nailed to Jim’s roof, Will proud, and Jim ashamed of what he considered mutual cowardice, it was late in the day. Supper over, it was time for their weekly jog to the library.
Like all boys, they never walked anywhere, but named a goal and lit for it, scissors and elbows. Nobody won. Nobody wanted to win. It was in their friendship they just wanted to run forever, shadow and shadow. Their hands slapped library-door handles together, their chests broke track tapes together, their tennis shoes beat parallel pony tracks over lawns, trimmed bushes, squirrelled trees, no one losing, both winning, thus saving their friendship for other times of loss.
So it was on this night that blew warm, then cool, as they let the wind take them downtown at eight o”clock. They felt the wings on their fingers and elbows flying, then, suddenly plunged in new sweeps of air, the clear autumn river flung them headlong where they must go.