LIGHT RAIN in the night, then morning cold.

The gas tank was empty. He stepped out, kicked at loose rock in the driveway, stood and looked at the car, tossed the key ring over the cracked window to the driver’s seat. For a moment he thought of punching the glass or the door panel, and it took all of him to steady his hands already curled to fists and trembling. He rapped knuckles against the back end, at the flap covering the fuel spout, put hands then to his hips and paced. School was five miles.

He walked in the tall broom grass at one highway shoulder, wet at his shins, gone dead some at the tips. Yellow headlamps broke the hill a quarter mile in front, then dropped, sped the incline and turned road wet gone past him, damped his forehead with rain and brake dust. Other cars hissed at his left shoulder, early blue light smoked on the hoods. He was tired, eyes strung sleep. He drifted a foot in the road. Fast air kicked hard at his shoulders, brimming like an industrial fan, and fell him backward. A red and white box pickup keeled to the other lane and the old man driving blew the horn.

The high grass bobbed above him. He stayed on his back and kept his legs long in the damp, crossed them at the calves, and after what felt a long while but was not things righted in his head, and he thought to stay some more, but he stood instead and brushed his shoulders and arms, wet spots at the elbows like patches on a dress coat one of the teachers wore.

Three miles before the front gate the school traffic was quiet and the road bare and dry. He saw a dented spot in the shoulder grass and stopped and leaned over.

He worked one hand beneath the bird, and then he raised it up and cupped it with both. Splinter grass clung to its back and chest, and it was small, warm, brown and white mottled, a finch, a sparrow, he couldn’t tell. It didn’t look dead; eyes open and wet black, but its head doll limp, small yellow feet gripped an old branch. Maybe, he thought, it was just sleeping; it could wake later and need water, seed before flying. He unzipped his knapsack, moved a notebook over some, put the bird careful on the bottom, and then he sealed the bag and draped it to his right shoulder.

At lunch a teacher paced rows in the cafeteria, checked to see they ate paper carton milk, meat, block green jelly, and left soon as they finished. Most of the hour they spent in the yard. The school was built in a hollow circle, around a courtyard. At the west end there was an amphitheater, maroon painted steps in cracked jagged lines, grass and daffodil and rank clover pushed through. Three basketball goals lipped the east end, near the gymnasium, chain net rusted beneath the high red rims.

Terry hunched with the rest of them on the fence near the amphitheater and kept the bag closed and propped at his shins. John Michael Johnson stood beside him. He was fourteen until November, neared six feet, wore eyeglasses handed down from his older brother that made him look a scientist, the lenses square, thick as bottle glass, arm on the left temple fastened by white suture tape. He tore up his first razor before he turned twelve. He grew block sideburns to his jaw. Terry leaned over the knapsack again and checked the zipper. Then he stood up. John Michael kept the newspaper wide and looked over at him and then down at the bag.

You got something in there? he said.

Nope.

Come on.

Alice Washington and some others on trash detail paced the far end of the steps and carried plastic bags. They bent for soda cans, scrap paper. The principal walked a line above them. Terry shook his head slow.

I don’t have anything, he said.

Fine, John Michael said. You just walk up here, like you’ve got a damn pimp cane and a top hat.

What?

Nothing. You just go on then. There’s current events I need to know about. I think some old coot saw that lizard thing.

What?

The monster that lives in the swamp. Half man, half lizard. Or most lizard and a little man. I can’t remember.

Like the swamp thing?

No, not like that. It’s much worse.

Iguana?

That’s stupid.

John Michael went back to the paper and held it up. He was at the front page. He stayed on a picture of Basil Frick, and then he read funeral plans and the names of relatives aloud to a few of them, and then he went on and told the whole thing. Terry thought of a painting, a man clamped wrists and neck at a wooden stock, over him the town crier wearing a curly wig with powder in it, tall red socks, a long red coat and a pirate hat. He’d seen it the year before in the history book. It was from when the British were coming and before they shot the fireworks.

The afternoon prior Basil sat back straight at a tree in his front yard, held the butt of a single-shot twenty-two with his knees and opened his mouth. The bullet bounced around some inside his head, and it didn’t come out. His father watched television in the back bedroom. He bled for two hours, from nose and eyes and ears, and then he died.

John Michael held the picture up where they could see; Basil Frick in a suit, hair slicked, mouth turned on a grin.

One of them said, He looks like the damn devil.

Another went, Hello, mister lucifer.

Terry got a cigarette and watched the trash squad some more. Alice Washington worked nearby He saw her help Basil jump the fence, but he wanted to ask her what misstep put her there on detention, anyway He thought to use the word vagrancy in his question. He snapped the filter close to her ankles when he finished. Alice Washington kept at the plastic bag and the ground. He kicked a soda can. It scraped at the asphalt, bounced, and she watched it spin and then rest. She turned up, eyes wet gray. Terry waved. She put a hand up quick and dropped it back. She stooped at the can, foot dented, put it to the bag, bent down to another.

John Michael folded the paper and held it pressed between arm and ribs. He spoke loud and waved his hands.

That jackass told me I couldn’t sing in music class. I was in the choir. I sang in church. Old ladies got faint. What’s he singing? Nothing. That’s what I thought.

It’s a dumb story is what it is, one kid said.

He was named Richard Jenkins. They caught him jerking it at the town pool the summer before. He had a buzz cut, a large mole on his earlobe shaped like the state of Georgia.

John Michael turned at him quick, tilted his face and closed one eye when he spoke.

What? he said.

I said it’s dumb and you heard me say it, Richard Jenkins said.

John Michael raised his voice and stuck his finger out.

You just go on before I fix you up.

He swung his free arm to one side, pointed across the yard at some kids huddled far off.

I said go on.

Richard Jenkins stayed, crossed his arms at his chest, and flared his nostrils wide. John Michael shook his head slow.

That’s twice I told you go on, he said.

Richard Jenkins kept his eyes straight and did not turn, even then.

You won’t be helped will you? John Michael said.

He held the newspaper to Terry

Take this, he said.

Terry folded the bundle under his arm the same as John Michael, like a headlock. John Michael spit to one side and took off his glasses, folded the arms and set them at his chest pocket; without them, his face looked a barbell; he stepped close to Richard Jenkins, chin level to his forehead. The yard was quiet, air heavy, like before thunder.