Prologue

The two boys, sniffing their armpits appreciatively in the sizzling August day, their voices cracking as they yelled increasingly outrageous descriptions of just how bad they really do smell, headed home after a late summer's day spent precisely as all boys their age should be fortunate enough to spend them before school rears its head again. Each was truly filthy, did indeed smell as rank as all twelve-year-old males are prone to smell within five minutes of leaving the house on a hot Iowa day, and were positively giddy after hours of unsupervised explorations of places sternly forbidden by both sets of parents, always a certain way to ensure such dark and potentially dangerous areas are visited on every possible occasion by those so instructed.

The abandoned rock quarry with its black and reputedly bottomless lake was the first in a line of banned pursuits. The youngest of the two boys -- he being younger by a mere four days -- would go to his grave before he admitted it, but just for a moment when his skinny, gyrating, naked form plunged beneath the unbelievably cold water he would have screamed for his mother had he been able to unclamp his jaws from the shock of the water on his overheated body. For just a second, he knew with a crystal certainty that his mother was telling only the plain, unvarnished truth when she told him that very morning that his body would never surface and, therefore, nobody would ever put flowers on his grave. Just before his head shot from the water -- a true miracle! -- he was mentally preparing his apology to Jesus for not believing his own mother, fully expecting to meet Him imminently.

Still, he did come up for air, spluttering and choking, and listening to the yells and cackles of his friend who only pretended to jump in with him and now stood, naked as a jaybird, hooting with superiority. That smugness lasted only until the dreaded double-dast-dare-you from the now seasoned explorer below, treading the icy water and indulging in a lot of catcalls of his own.

The older and taller of the two boys at last realized his bluff had been called and, faced with the ignominy of it being known by one and all of their mutual friends in this small farming community that he was wanting in the courage department, grabbed his nose with one hand, his more precious appendages with the other, and cannonballed into the ice water. He thought not of mother but of father, the belt of whom would tan him good if he even lived to admit to this stupid stunt.

After boisterously vowing at the top of their shaking voices that they really enjoyed swimming in water this temperature, swearing they'd do it again next week if they had a chance, their shared bald-faced lie having again restored them in their own eyes to the heady standing of near-men, the two goose-bumped wretches quit the liquid torture and spread their bodies on a sun-warmed ledge, face to face, the blood gradually returning to parts of their bodies which wished desperately to return to the womb only a short time before.

The rest of the day was spent in activities less apt to stunt their growth. Things were collected: One boy found a sun-dried coil of garter snake, a miraculous half of a clam shell embedded in hard clay and pried with a stick from the sloughing bank of a dry creek bed, an absolutely perfect chert arrowhead less than an inch in length, and a live .45 caliber shell; the other boy's acquisitions were a wafer-thin horned toad some car ironed flat on a well-worn rock in the road, mummifying it forever in an instant, a scruffy felt hat with trout flies still in the hatband, probably blown from some hapless head and now gracing that of its new owner, a cobalt-blue bottle complete with tiny cork jammed all the way inside and merrily if quietly rattling around when he shook the bottle -- which was often -- and a shaft of wood which looked like the beak of a stork on one end and the blunt nose of a big snake looking the other direction, the pair sharing the same knot-hole eye.

All in all, it was a glorious, riotous day, full of dirt, scandalous behavior and talk that would embarrass each of them horribly if anybody else heard them posturing to one another, an adventure they could elaborate upon when relating to those unfortunate enough not to have shared this day.

All of it, however, would soon be forgotten, leaving only the day's real adventure to be told again and again to their parents, the authorities, and eventually their friends. And it needed no elaboration; the simple truth was more than enough to establish them for the rest of their days as persons who had seen and survived much on this late summer day.

And this day, drawing close to late afternoon and the time when parents always decree boys must be home to clean up before supper, only lacked one thing to be perfect, they thought: watermelon!

No matter how many times every parent in the community instructed his children, boys and girls alike, they were not to raid Farmer Garten's fields, only the most timid youngster ever complied with such an unreasonable demand.

If they had only known Farmer Garten sat inside his unlit kitchen with binoculars trained on any number of them, chortling to himself as they crept on their bellies towards the biggest and best ones he always left just for them, all the fun would have been gone from it. But since he made sure to shout and rail at them from time to time once they were near to making their escape, his reputation as curmudgeon was safe and he could continue to entertain himself with their antics, thinking themselves unseen.

So on this day the boys were sneaking up on an epic green globe, one which they marveled over earlier from a distance when first setting off on their excursion that morning. Since at that time they also had the day's lunch to tote, they reasoned wisely this monster was too huge to carry about all day -- it would just have to wait for their return. And indeed, here it was, positively begging to be taken with them and devoured by two hot and thirsty boys in the cool shade of the storm drain which ran under the road nearby, the diameter of which was big enough for young bodies to sit upright in while devouring stolen watermelon.

It took the combined strength of both sweaty boys to lug the melon out of the field, grunting and swearing with their efforts. You see, they did a lot of swearing when outside the hearing of adults. All boys instinctively understand proficiency in such verbal nastiness is expected of them.

Back in the farmyard Garten watched through the back screen door, doubled over in glee each time one of the boys staggered. They were certainly going to earn their treat, he thought, watching their lunging, staggering progress until they were no longer in sight. He knew where they were going, having years ago discovered the disemboweled remnants of countless watermelon in the cool cave beneath the roadway.

This day, however, no one enjoyed anything else, least of all a watermelon. There was something else gutted and strewn about in the drain this day. The buzz of blue-bottle flies was heard even before they saw.

The matted long brown hair hanging from the scrap of scalp still affixed to the yellowish exposed skull testified it had probably once been a woman, but since it had been methodically opened up, as it were, even before the local coyotes had been at it, it was hard to tell. The eyeless, nearly skinless, grinning face which hung upside down over the near edge of the drain tile seemed to watch and howl with mirth as two young boys dropped their prize, heedless as it shattered all over their muddy boots, before running away, screaming hoarsely for somebody, anybody.