Read Online Flyers (9781481414449) by Daniel Hayes - Free Book Online

the woods, and we explored around in there for a while. We wondered about the people who’d lived there—what they’d been like, what happened to them, and if we knew their grandchildren or great-grandchildren, that kind of thing. What got me was, I knew that the people who’d lived in this old place had been every bit as real as we were, and I tried to imagine our house like that, disintegrated down to the foundation, overrun by trees and vines and totally forgotten. It kind of gave me the creeps to think about it. I don’t adjust that well to change—even if it hasn’t happened yet.
    As we were walking home that evening, I saw Ethan give a little wave—what Bo and I always called his aloha wave because it was the same whether he was coming or going. I looked way across the field we were in front of to see Mr. Lindstrom wave back at us. He had good eyes for an old guy, and didn’t miss much when it came to anything going on around his land. You wouldn’t even know he was looking at you, but if you waved at him—even Ethan’s shy little wave—he’d wave back. At least he would to us. If he didn’t know you, or knew you and didn’t like you, you could end up with a different kind of gesture entirely.
    I don’t remember if I waved to him that day or not. I may just have let Ethan’s wave do the job for both of us. Not that it made much difference at the time. I had no idea then that it would be the last time I’d ever see Mr. Lindstrom out and around like that.

Six
    On Monday morning Pop dropped Ethan off at the middle school and then pulled around to let me off at the high school. “Give ’em hell, Gabe,” he told me, and roared out a laugh. He’d said the same thing to Ethan, and it was pretty much the same thing he said to both of us every day. He didn’t mean anything by it; neither of us gave much hell to anybody as a rule. It was just Pop’s way of saying good-bye.
    â€œYou give ’em hell too, Pop,” I said as I got out of the car.
    â€œI fully intend to, Gabriel. I fully intend to.”
    In Pop’s case he probably would—or at least I hoped he would. He was on his way to the courthouse in Hudson Falls, where he was defending a guy accused of poisoning his ex-girlfriend’s cat—an unpopular side to be on since nobody likes cat poisoners. To make things worse, all the TV stations and newspapers were jockeying for the easy moral high ground, which Pop says is often a simple matter of supplying the public with somebody convenient to hate. They kept showing videos of the cat during its happier moments, then of the girlfriend crying and holding its little cat corpse. Pop figured he’d have to fight tooth and nail to keep the focus on the real issue of the trial: whether the guy was actually guilty, which in Pop’s mind was somewhat doubtful since at least one person who knew them insisted it was the guy who’d broken it off with the girl and she’d been pretty angry about thewhole thing. And this supposedly happened right before the poisoning took place. But that didn’t stop the animal lovers. Every night on the evening news you’d see them out in front of the courthouse, their faces twisted in anger, demanding justice. Watching that always made my stomach feel funny.
    I watched as Pop drove off—his smile slowly fading to reveal the look of wistful melancholy that lurked behind even his biggest and warmest smiles. That look had been there for as long as I could remember—long before my mother had headed for the hills, so it wasn’t just the result of that. Her leaving didn’t help matters, though, and since then I’ve often had the uneasy feeling I was watching him grow older right before my eyes. Pop wasn’t young. He’d been in his mid-forties when he got married, and he turned sixty the year I turned thirteen. As I stood there I could see the