There was a mirror on the shelf, and a razor and shaving cream. I
thought that was odd. Wouldn't he do that at home? But I guess I figured
that a man who had a perfectly good split-level and then built an
underground room only half a mile away had to be kind of loo-loo. My
father had a nice way of describing people like him: "The man's a
character, that's all."

So I guess I was thinking that Mr. Harvey was a character, and I liked
the room, and it was warm, and I wanted to know how he had built it,
what the mechanics of the thing were and where he'd learned to do
something like that.

But by the time the Gilberts' dog found my elbow three days later and
brought it home with a telling corn husk attached to it, Mr. Harvey had
closed it up. I was in transit during this. I didn't get to see him
sweat it out, remove the wood reinforcement, bag any evidence along with
my body parts, except that elbow. By the time I popped up with enough
wherewithal to look down at the goings-on on Earth, I was more concerned
with my family than anything else.

My mother sat on a hard chair by the front door with her mouth open.
Her pale face paler than I had ever seen it. Her blue eyes staring. My
father was driven into motion. He wanted to know details and to comb the
cornfield along with the cops. I still thank God for a small detective
named Len Fenerman. He assigned two uniforms to take my dad into town
and have him point out all the places I'd hung out with my friends. The
uniforms kept my dad busy in one mall for the whole first day. No one
had told Lindsey, who was thirteen and would have been old enough, or
Buckley, who was four and would, to be honest, never fully understand.
Mr. Harvey asked me if I would like a refreshment. That was how he put
it. I said I had to go home.

"Be polite and have a Coke," he said. I’m sure the other kids would."
"What other kids?"

"I built this for the kids in the neighborhood. I thought it could be
some sort of clubhouse."

I don't think I believed this even then. I thought he was lying but I
thought it was a pitiful lie. I imagined he was lonely. We had read
about men like him in health class. Men who never married and ate frozen
meals every night and were so afraid of rejection that they didn't even
own pets. I felt sorry for him.

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