The Voice of the Night

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“You ever killed anything?” Roy asked.

Colin frowned. “Like what?”

The two boys were on a high hill at the north end of town. The ocean lay beyond.

“Anything,” Roy said. “You ever killed anything at all?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Colin said.

Far out on the sun-dappled water, a large ship moved northward, toward distant San Francisco. Nearer shore stood an oil-drilling platform. On the deserted beach a flock of birds relentlessly worked the damp sand for their lunch.

“You must’ve killed something,” Roy said impatiently. “What about bugs?”

Colin shrugged. “Sure. Mosquitoes. Ants. Flies. So what?”

“How’d you like it?”

“Like what?”

“Killing ‘em.”

Colin stared at him, finally shook his head. “Roy, sometimes you’re pretty weird.”

Roy grinned.

“You like killing bugs?” Colin asked uneasily.

“Sometimes.”

“Why?”

“It’s a real popper.”

Anything that Roy thought was fun, anything that thrilled him, he called a “popper.”

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