The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford Read Free Book Online Page A

the wrong pegs into all the wrong holes. Finally my mother smacked him in the back of the head, and then he and she started laughing. Throughout sixth grade he incorporated something about Joe Manygoats, a Navajo boy written about in the fifth-grade social-studies book, into all his test answers, no matter the subject, and signed all yearbooks with that name. Still, he never failed a grade, and this gave me hope that I, too, would someday leave East Lake.
    My teacher for sixth grade was the fearsome Mr. Krapp. To borrow a phrase from Nan, “as God is my judge,” that was his name. He was a short guy with a sharp nose and a crew cut so flat you could land a helicopter on it. Jim had had him for sixth grade, too, and told me he screamed a lot. My mother had diagnosed Krapp with a Napoleonic complex. “You know,” she said, “he’s a little general.” He assured us on the first day that he “wouldn’t stand for any of it.” The third time he repeated the phrase, Tim Sullivan, who sat beside me, whispered, “He’d rather get down on his knees.”
    Krapp also had big ears, and he heard Tim, who he made get up in front of the classroom and repeat for everyone whathe’d said. That day we all learned an important lesson in how not to laugh no matter how funny something is.
    School brought a great heaviness to the hours of my days as if they, too, had put on new dungarees. By that year, though, it was business as usual, so I weathered it with a grim resignation. The only thing drastic that happened in that first week occurred on the way home one afternoon: Will Hinkley, a kid with a bulging Adam’s apple and curly hair, challenged me to a fight. I tried to walk away, but before I knew what was going on, a bunch of kids had surrounded us and Hinkley started pushing me. The whirl of voices and faces, the evident danger, made me light-headed, and what little strength I had quickly evaporated. Mary was with me, and she started crying. I was not popular and had no friends there to help me; instead everyone was cheering for me to get beat up.
    After a lot of shoving and name-calling and me trying to back out of the circle and getting thrown into the middle again, he hit me once in the side of the head, and I was dazed. Clenching my fists, I held my hands up in front of my face, assuming a position I had seen in fights on TV, and Hinkley circled me. I tried to follow his movements, but he darted in quickly, and his bony knuckle split my lip. There was little pain, just an overwhelming sense of embarrassment, because I felt tears welling in the corners of my eyes.
    As Hinkley came toward me again, I saw Jim pushing through the crowd. He came up behind Hinkley, reached around, and grabbed him by the throat with one hand. In a second, Jim wrestled him to the ground, where he punched him again and again in the face. When Jim got up, blood was running from Hinkley’s nose and he was quietly whimpering. All the other kids had taken off. Jim lifted my book bag and handed it to me.
    â€œYou’re such a pussy,” he said.
    â€œHow?” was all I could manage, I was shaking so badly.
    â€œMary ran home and told me,” he said.
    â€œDid you kill him?”
    He shrugged.
    Hinkley lived, and his mother called our house that night complaining that Jim was dangerous, but Mary and I had already told our mother what had happened. I remember her telling Mrs. Hinkley over the phone, “Well, you know, you play with fire, you’re liable to get burned.” When she hung up the phone, she flipped it the middle finger and then told us she didn’t want us fighting anymore. She made Jim promise he would apologize to Hinkley. “Sure,” he said, but later, when I asked him if he was really going to apologize, he said, “Yeah, I’m going to take him to Bermuda.”

His Air Was Cold
    In reality, the start of school was anticlimactic, because the prowler had