In Broad Daylight by Harry N. MacLean Read Free Book Online

during recess, no one could ever bring him down, and he could toss a basketball across a court as if it were a baseball.
    His teacher found him mean and hard to control. He seemed to think he could do anything he wanted to, that he need not obey her or anyone else, and she couldn't do a thing about it. She held him back in the fifth grade twice because of his truancy and poor grades. By the time he made it to sixth grade, he was the biggest kid in the class, looming three or four inches over the others. The kids in school learned early to stay away from Ken. One former classmate explained it this way:
    "When I came to the Graham school in fourth grade from the Elkhorn Country School, one of the first things the other kids told me was about Ken McElroy, the type of kid he was. I was told to stay away from him, not to have anything to do with him, that he pushed other kids around."
    Another classmate recalled:
    "I don't care who you were, you didn't mess with him. If he came up to where you were sittin' and said, "Hey, I wanna sit there," then you moved. He wasn't the biggest kid in class-there was one really big kid, he must have been six feet and two hundred pounds, and even he never crossed Ken's path."
    Strangely, no one-students, teachers or friends-remembers an incident of Ken actually beating somebody up. Perhaps he didn't have to.
    On Ken's first day on a school bus, he and an older brother got into a scuffle with two other boys. The McElroy boys pulled knives and threatened to cut the other two, who immediately backed off. After that, Ken always had plenty of room-if he sat in the back of the bus, the other kids sat in the front.
    Ken was also known to steal. One winter day, the owner of the gas station and grocery store in Graham caught him and another boy stealing some items. The man called Tony and told him about it. Later in the day, Tony burst into the store with a long, curved hunting knife in his hand, slammed the owner up against the wall, and held the knife up to his throat.
    "If you ever touch my boy again," Tony snarled, "I'll cut your heart out."
    The school yearbooks have one or two pictures of Ken. One year the school put on a play called The Snow Queen. In the cast picture three rows of boys stood behind the girls, who were kneeling. In the far left corner, at the back, is a tall, thin boy with wavy hair, at least a head taller than everyone else. Ken was the stagehand for the production.
    Tim, who was quiet and studious and liked by his teachers, caught up with Ken in school by the sixth grade. Ken was finally passed on to junior high, although he could neither read nor write.
    Most farm boys got up at 5:30 in the morning, did their chores, and went to school. After school and sports, they went home and did chores again before dinner. Not Ken. After school he would roam the countryside on his strawberry roan horse, hunting and running his dogs, going wherever and doing whatever he pleased. If you wanted to ride across someone's land, the custom was to ask permission, unless you knew the owner and had done it before. Ken never bothered; he rode through the timber and across the fields as if it were all his land, as if nobody had the right to restrict where he went and what he did. If a fence blocked his passage, he cut it with wire snips and rode on through. A farmer called him on it once-challenged him for hunting on his land without permission-and Ken, not more than fourteen at the time, pulled up short and told him nobody was going to tell him what he could do. The landowner backed off.
    By the seventh grade Ken had a best friend, a boy named John L. The two boys first met when they attended first grade together in a small country school. John would stand lookout while Ken took a girl from their class into the bushes, removed her clothes, and did something to her-John was never quite sure what-during recess. In the second grade John moved away and didn't see Ken again until he moved back a few years