Shatterday Read Online Free Page A

he was seeking in those spaces? "You don't mean that," he said to her, softly, pathetically, urging her with body tension and trembling in his voice to recant before God took notice of the terrible thought. But she meant it; she meant it very much.
    I managed to get away quickly that evening. They didn't want witnesses to their shame. I was glad to go.
    •
    And for a week I stayed away. From them, from Jeffty, from their street, even from that end of town.
    I had my own life. The store, accounts, suppliers' conferences, poker with friends, pretty women I took to well-lit restaurants, my own parents, putting antifreeze in the car, complaining to the laundry about too much starch in the collars and cuffs, working out at the gym, taxes, catching Jan or David (whichever one it was) stealing from the cash register. I had my own life.
    But not even that evening could keep me from Jeffty. He called me at the store and asked me to take him to the rodeo. We chummed it up as best a twenty-two-year-old with other interests could … with a five-year-old. I never dwelled on what bound us together; I always thought it was simply the years. That, and affection for a kid who could have been the little brother I never had. (Except I remembered when we had played together, when we had both been the same age; I remembered that period, and Jeffty was still the same.)
    And then, one Saturday afternoon, I came to take him to a double feature, and things I should have noticed so many times before, I first began to notice only that afternoon.
    •
    I came walking up to the Kinzer house, expecting Jeffty to be sitting on the front porch steps, or in the porch glider, waiting for me. But he was nowhere in sight.
    Going inside, into that darkness and silence, in the midst of May sunshine, was unthinkable. I stood on the front walk for a few moments, then cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, "Jeffty? Hey, Jeffty, come on out, let's go. We'll be late."
    His voice came faintly, as if from under the ground.
    "Here I am, Donny."
    I could hear him, but I couldn't see him. It was Jeffty, no question about it: as Donald H. Horton, President and Sole Owner of The Horton TV & Sound Center, no one but Jeffty called me Donny. He had never called me anything else.
    (Actually, it isn't a lie. I am , as far as the public is concerned, Sole Owner of the Center. The partnership with my Aunt Patricia is only to repay the loan she made me, to supplement the money I came into when I was twenty-one, left to me when I was ten by my grandfather. It wasn't a very big loan, only eighteen thousand, but I asked her to be a silent partner, because of when she had taken care of me as a child.)
    "Where are you, Jeffty?"
    "Under the porch in my secret place."
    I walked around the side of the porch, and stooped down and pulled away the wicker grating. Back in there, on the pressed dirt, Jeffty had built himself a secret place. He had comics in orange crates, he had a little table and some pillows, it was lit by big fat candles, and we used to hide there when we were both … five.
    "What'cha up to?" I asked, crawling in and pulling the grate closed behind me. It was cool under the porch, and the dirt smelled comfortable, the candles smelled clubby and familiar. Any kid would feel at home in such a secret place: there's never been a kid who didn't spend the happiest, most productive, most deliciously mysterious times of his life in such a secret place.
    "Playin'," he said. He was holding something golden and round. It filled the palm of his little hand.
    "You forget we were going to the movies?"
    "Nope. I was just waitin' for you here."
    "Your mom and dad home?"
    "Momma."
    I understood why he was waiting under the porch. I didn't push it any further. "What've you got there?"
    "Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Badge," he said, showing it to me on his flattened palm.
    I realized I was looking at it without comprehending what it was for a long time. Then it dawned on me what a