This is what his father always called him whenever he'd done something bad: "Where were you when this happened, Boy? What did you think you were doing, Boy?"
He took that word inside himself and it became the name for all his bad desires. It was Boy who made him play pranks that weren't funny to anybody Boy who made him cheat on tests when he felt like it in school, even though he always knew the answers and didn't have to cheat. It was Boy who made him stand and watch from the closet when his parents thought he was in bed and he saw them do the dog thing, Father's belly so loose and jiggly, Mother so white and weak and dead while it happened, her breasts flopped out flat to either side like fish. It was the worst thing Boy had ever made him do, to watch that, and to his sur prise Boy didn't like it, no, Boy hated it even worse than he did, to see Father be so bad.
I will never do that, said Boy inside him. It's ugly to kill a woman like that and then make her still be alive afterward so you can do it all again.
From then on when he looked at big women with their breasts and their secrets and their faces that could turn dead looking at a man, Boy went away. Boy didn't want to be part of that game.
But that didn't mean that Boy was gone, no, nor silent neither. Boy was still there, and he got his way sometimes, yes; and he found new things to want. Only Boy wasn't careful. Boy only wanted what he wanted until he got it and then he went back into hiding and left him to take care of everything, to take all the blame for what Boy had done even though he hadn't wanted to do it in the first place.
Now none of his people would let him near their children because of the things Boy had decided he had to do. Damn you Boy! Die and damn you!
But they promised not to tell, says Boy. The children said they wouldn't tell but then they did.
What do you expect, you stupid ugly Boy? What do you expect, you evil Boy? Didn't you ever think maybe there's another Boy inside them that makes them lie to you and promise not to tell but then they break their word because their Boy made them? And now here you are, and that'll show you, Boy, because nobody will let you near their children anymore so you'll just have to chew on yourself whe n you get hungry and drink yourself when you get dry.
No I won't, says Boy. I'll make a place and I'll take them there and I won't ever believe them when they promise not to tell. I'll take them there and nobody will know where they are and they'll never come back and so they'll never tell.
You won't do anything like that, Boy, because I won't let you.
And Boy just laughed and laughed inside him, and he knew that he would do it all, he would prepare the hiding place and then he would go and find them for Boy and bring them back, and Boy would do what he wanted. Boy would not be afraid. Boy would do everything he thought of doing, because he knew that they would never leave and they would never tell.
That was why those little boys in Steuben started disappearing, and why not one of them was found till Christmas Eve in 1983.
Chapter 2
1: Junk Man
This is the car they drove from Vigor, Indiana, to Steuben, North Carolina: a silvery-grey Renault 18i deluxe wagon, an '81 model with about forty thousand miles on it, twenty- five thousand of which they had put on it themselves. The paint was just beginning to get tiny rust-colored pockmarks in it, but the wiring had blown about fifteen fuses and they'd had to put three new drive axles in it because it was designed so that when a ball bearing wore out you had to replace the whole assembly. It couldn't climb a hill at fifty- five, but it could seat two adults in the leather bucket seats and three kids across the back. Step Fletcher was driving, had been driving since they finally got away from the house well after noon. Empty house. He was still hearing echoes all the way to