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veered from his course and headed directly toward them.
    Cecil felt his book drop. His hands shook in his lap like the stranger’s eyes, shaking in their sockets with each step, above a grinning face full of teeth. Cecil scanned the man’s body, searched for the long bony fingers. There, at the end of long black sleeves, dangling limp, the stranger’s hands swung to his gait.
    Flesh. Strong, bronzed, fleshy hands, curving gently with a gold ring flashing in the sun. Cecil jerked his eyes back to the stranger’s face and felt an ice-cold bucket of relief cascade over his head.
    The face staring at him smiled gently with a full set of lips, parted slightly to reveal white teeth. A tanned nose, small and sharp but no doubt stiff with cartilage like any other nose. A thick set of eyebrows curved above the man’s glinting eyes—jet-black like the color of his shoulder-length hair.
    The stranger was twenty feet from them now. Cecil clamped his mouth shut and swallowed the pooled saliva. Did I see what I just thought I saw? He glanced down at young Johnny. The boy still gaped. Yep, he’d seen it too.
    Cecil remembered the book. He bent over and scanned the dusty boards at his feet and spotted it under the bench. He reached way down so his rump raised off the bench, steadied his tipping torso with his left hand on the boardwalk, and swung his right arm under the seat. His fingers touched the book. He clasped it with bony fingers, jerked it to safety, and shoved himself up.
    When his head cleared the bench, the stranger stopped in front of them. Cecil mostly saw the black pants. A zipper and two pockets. A crotch. A polyester crotch. He hesitated a brief moment and lifted his head.
    For a moment the man just stood there, arms hanging loosely, long hair lifting from his shoulders in the breeze, black eyes staring directly into Cecil’s, lips drawn tight as if to say, Get a grip, old fool. Don’t you know who I am?
    He towered, over six foot, dressed in the spotless getup with silver flashing on his boots and around his belt like one of those country-western singers on cable. Cecil tried to imagine the square chin and high cheekbones bared of flesh, stripped dry like a skull in the desert.
    He couldn’t.
    The stranger’s eyes shifted to the boy.“Hello,my friend. Mighty fine town you have here. Can you tell me where I would find the man in charge?”
    Johnny’s Adam’s apple bobbed. But he didn’t answer. The man waited, eyebrows raised like he expected a quick answer . But Johnny wasn’t answering.
    The man turned back to Cecil. “How about you, old man? Can you tell me who’s in charge here? The mayor?
Chief of police?”
    â€œHe . . . he can’t speak,” Johnny said.
    â€œThat right? Well, you obviously can. You may not be much to look at, but your mouth works. So speak up.”
    Johnny hesitated. “A . . . about what?”
    The man casually slipped his right hand into the pocket of his slacks and moved his fingers as if he were playing with coins. “About fixin’ things around here.”
    Move on, stranger . You’re no good. Just move on and find some other town.
    He should tell the stranger that . He should stand right up and point to the edge of town and tell the man where he should take his bones.
    But Cecil didn’t stand up and say anything. Couldn’t. Besides, his throat was still in knots, which made it difficult to breathe much less stand up and play marshal.
    â€œYordon?” Johnny said.
    The man in black pulled his hand from his pocket and stared at it. A translucent gel of some kind smothered his fingers, a fact that seemed to distract him for a moment. His eyes shifted to Johnny.
    â€œYordon?” The man began to lick the gel from his hand. “And who’s Yordon?” He sucked at his fingers, cleaning them. “Now you’re mute, boy? Speak up.”
    â€œThe father?”
    The man ran