Something Wicked This Way Comes

God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other.

Like all boys, they never walked anywhere, but named a goal and lit for it, scissors and elbows.

Have a drink!?”

“I don’t need it,” said Halloway. “But someone inside me does.”

“Who?”

The boy I once was, thought Halloway, who runs like the leaves down the sidewalk autumn nights.

But he couldn’t say that.

No use making more people. People die.

the air so cold they ate ice cream with each breath

Jim and Will grinned at each other. It was all so good, these blowing quiet October nights and the library waiting inside now with its green-shaded lamps and papyrus dust.

And a mother who wanted him around so very much, he just had to get away,

Boys have never been known to go straight up to houses to ring bells to summon forth friends. They prefer to chunk dirt at clapboards, hurl acorns down roof shingles, or leave mysterious notes flapping from kites stranded on attic window sills.

Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder go when it dies? Boys, you got to be ready in every dialect with every shape and form to hex the St. Elmo’s fires, the balls of blue light that prowl the earth like sizzling cats.

Dad winked at Will. Will winked back. They stood now, a boy with corn-colored hair and a man with moon-white hair, a boy with a summer-apple, a man with a winter-apple face. Dad, Dad, thought Will, why, why, he looks… like me in a smashed mirror!