keep your feet / From falling asleep / Wear loud socks / They can't be
beat.
On our way back from the candy store, Brian and I liked to spy on the
Green Lantern—a big dark green house with a sagging porch right near
the highway. Mom said it was a cathouse, but I never saw any cats there,
only women wearing bathing suits or short dresses who sat or lay out on
the porch, waving at the cars that drove by. There were Christmas lights
over the door all year round, and Mom said that was how you could tell
it was a cathouse. Cars would stop in front, and men would get out and
duck inside. I couldn't figure out what went on at the Green Lantern, and
Mom refused to discuss it. She would say only that bad things happened
there, which made the Green Lantern a place of irresistible mystery to
us.
Brian and I would hide behind the sagebrush across the highway, trying
to peer inside the front door when someone went in or out, but we could
never see what was going on. A couple of times we sneaked up close and
tried to look in the windows, but they were painted black. Once a woman
on the porch saw us in the brush and waved to us, and we ran away
shrieking.
One day when Brian and I were hiding in the sagebrush, spying, I
double-dared him to go talk to the woman lying out on the porch. Brian
was almost six by then, a year younger than me, and wasn't afraid of
anything. He hitched up his pants, handed me his half-eaten SweeTart for
safekeeping, walked across the street, and went right up to the woman.
She had long black hair, her eyes were outlined with black mascara thick
as tar, and she wore a short blue dress printed with black flowers. She
had been lying on her side on the porch floor, her head propped up on
one arm, but when Brian walked up to her, she rolled over on her
stomach and rested her chin on her hand.
From my hiding place, I could see that Brian was talking with her, but I