He had a BB gun—the kind of gun parents reluctantly give eleven-year-old boys on their birthdays. Of course, the kid was not eleven. The kid wasn’t even a kid. He was of an indeterminate age, hovering; he could have been eighteen or thirty, with skin the pale color of sliced bread. If he hadn’t been so big, we might not have noticed him at all. It appeared that none of the other neighbors did. The boy wedged his gun against his thick shoulder, and with the orange felt of his hunting cap hanging low over his ears, he was only slightly more threatening than Elmer Fudd. He aimed at the squirrels attacking the dying hostas between our houses. That summer was unusually harsh for Wisconsin. It was ninety degrees, and our boxes were still on the porch. The BB boy’s mother came over with a pitcher of iced tea. “Well, hello there,” she said, pulling open the screen door. “Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you!” The pitcher sweated as much as I did, and dropped little streams of water onto the warped wooden planks of the porch.
