The old man visited once a year, always in August, but this time was different. He would, he said, take the boy back with him. The boy's parents didn't believe it, nor did the boy; yet a tightness clamped them as though they sensed what they refused to affirm: no matter how hard they worked to make the visit normal, something--an old man's obstinacy or merely time itself--tore at the design. Upheaval raced through the mother's mind as she and her son pulled weeds from the base of the pear tree, leaving a circle of brown sand.

-That's what all of Texas looks like, she said. You wouldn't want to spend the rest of the summer there.

The boy couldn't understand why his parents made such a fuss. He was certain the meticulous care they gave to the cleaning of the house and yard was their way of venting frustration about the impending guest. They had even argued about the pears before deciding to, as his father said: Let him have the goddamn things.

On the morning of the old man's arrival, the boy was sent out bearing a white bowl trimmed with gold. As he walked, grass clippings sprang like grasshoppers to his bare legs.

The yard they had cleaned the previous afternoon looked like a battlefield, the neatly trimmed lawn now scarred with depressions that marked the fall of pears. Some had hit with such force that they exploded, forcing the grass down into the soft soil. A lively squadron of yellow jackets tumbled over the bashed earth, blitzed the defective pears, and lay siege to the grass clippings, pine needles, and bruised, rotting pears dumped beside the street. So telling was the transformation that the boy veered away from the pear tree, squatted on his haunches, and stared at the trash pile and at the yellow jackets crawling in and out of the crevices in the battered pears.

-Not that. No, Crawler. The good pears, his mother shouted from the porch. Can't you do anything right?

Startled, he put the bowl over his chest and watched her as she stood on the porch. In one hand she held a frying pan and in the other a dish towel, which revolved quickly and roughly inside the pan.

-Fast now, you hear. Go along. I need you to come in and give me a hand with the dishes.

The screen door banged shut, and she was gone. Sometimes he liked her best that way. He wondered if it was a sin.

Closing his eyes, he walked away from the trash pile. He grimaced when his bare foot came down on the side of a pear, but he knew, also, the more intense pain of the stabbing stem. Squeezing his eyelids tight, he didn't stop walking until his feet touched sand. Extending his right foot, he touched the trunk, then moved the foot back. Digging his toes into the soft, moist sand, he slowly arched his back and lifted his head. He opened his eyes and smiled at the web of thick, green leaves. Shafts of sunlight pierced through the openings--bright, insubstantial bracing for the bent and laden limbs.

He went around the tree until he found the limb he wanted. He grasped it with one hand and protected his head with the other. He pulled the limb and pushed it up, the way kids pump their hands in hopes a trucker will sound his horn. Dew splashed about his face, leaves rustled, and the pears swayed in a wild ride, jumping, twisting, yet held by the limb. Disappointed, he let go and stared as the limb once more sprang upwards. He watched a pear above the limb, a pear that didn't move. All the others jostled and nodded.

The boy was fascinated by the way a pear breaks from the tree, the way you don't even know it's free until you realize it's no longer jiggling like the others that dance above then below the limb. The loosened pear hangs in a brief state of suspension before it falls to earth, or as happened this time, into a boy's waiting hands.

Watching him, his mother longed for a camera that would really freeze time. Would hold a son like hers forever at eleven, before adolescence and its fumbling needs altered him forever. Once you see what it's like, she had told him, you'll wish you had taken your time about such sorry business as growing up. And you might also wish your grandfather would stay in Texas, if that's what he wants to call home.

-Crawler, quit shaking that tree! she yelled.

He didn't look, but he could tell the voice came from the kitchen window. He hid the caught pear near the trunk and went about the gathering. When he had ten large pears stacked in a pyramid on the grass, he walked back toward the street and the hovering, crawling yellow jackets. Reaching into the trash pile where they were thickest, he took out the pear that had been their favorite. They had nibbled it until it looked like a hungry man had taken two good bites.

He put that pear in the bottom of the bowl, piled the pyramid on top and walked into the house. The screen door slammed shut.

-What you think I've been doing all morning? Get out there and brush off your feet.

The door reopened slightly, and two bare feet scraped back and forth across the doorjamb.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, they gathered in the living room to await the grandfather's arrival. The boy waited with his face pressed against the front screen door, pressed tight enough that the wire made small, square imprints on his forehead, and a bit of loose, black paint stuck to the middle. The boy's mother leaned against an oversized chair positioned between the window and the thick, blue, floor-length drapes. Her pale fingers pinched the molding of the window, though she was unaware they were doing anything more than resting. Through the window she saw, as the boy did through the door, the straw-filled S-shaped walk.

Across the street was a house of identical shape but different color. As a diversion, they watched Sarah Boland beat her brother with a peach switch as he screamed for his mother's help. Unheeded, he appealed to a higher authority.

-Oh, Mother, God, Oh Mother, God, stop her!

Mrs. Boland, a white apron curved across her fat belly, banged an empty pie tin against the metal railing of the porch. A kitten scampered off to the hedge, with a dog in quick pursuit.

-You get in here this minute, Sarah, she shouted. Don't you ever let me catch you doing nothing like that again.

As she approached her mother, the girl put her elbows against her head as though expecting to be hit, then squeezed past her mother into the darkness of the house. The mother turned to follow her, leaving Johnny Boland to cry alone. Lying on his side, he wrenched a handful of grass from the lawn and wiped it across his eyes and cheeks.

-Maybe I shouldn't say it, Crawler's mother said, but there's not much to those folks. Then as quickly as she said it, she was again quietly staring through the window. The father sat asleep with his head tilted back on the sofa, each breath giving a slight, momentary curl to his upper lip.

The sleeping father, the waiting mother, and the boy, almost as motionless as a fresco. Around them hung the strong sweet odor of overripe pear. The boy knew that the aromatic pear he had chosen for the bottom of the bowl was nearer to rotten than he had intended. He resolved to choose one less brown and bruised next time. He wondered if his mother would say anything about what sat in the bottom of her golden bowl.

The boy was transfixed by staring through the little black boxes of the screen, by the fragmented world revealed. Above the shimmering black roof of the house across the street, heat waves wavered and disappeared in a hazy blue sky.

The boy emerged from his trance and saw, parked a little too high on the carefully cut lawn, a black car sitting motionless in front of him. The dust of the street rose skyward like the heat waves. Nothing could be heard but the car itself: the squeaky door, which the old man shoved open, and the water gurgling through the radiator and hissing and foaming at the cap.

-Franklin, Franklin, the woman called.

The man stirred, then stretched.

-Daddy's here.

-'Bout time, he said, rubbing a finger across his upper lip.

-He looks really feeble now, she sighed.

-What did you expect? He's old. He was old when you were born. He can't be bellowing about forever.

The boy knew what was coming next when his father turned toward him.

-You and your mother are both lucky to be alive, he said. Not many become fathers at the age he did.

The boy watched the slow movement of his grandfather, but it didn't seem any slower than it had the year before. Even then his grandfather had held on to the car as he made his way to the walk.

The black cane with the gold knob stuck out the window on the passenger side. As the old man reached for it, the boy was shoved into the oversized chair. He looked up into his mother's angry eyes.

-Crawler, didn't you hear your father ask you to move? she asked, measuring the words for effect.

-No, Ma'am.

-You better start looking and you better start listening. You better straighten up in general if you know what's good for you.

The boy's mother turned to follow his father outside. The boy leaned his head across the arm of the chair and looked at the window. Near the bottom he saw where he had missed a smear. He rubbed it with the drape. Through the polished, clear pane, he watched his father take the cane and put his forearm under the old man's armpit. In the rear, like a rudder, his mother steered them toward the door. No one said a word or offered a hug. Something was empty there, the boy knew. So big and empty you could throw a bowl of pears right through it.

Though the curved walkway wasn't very long, it seemed to the boy that several minutes passed before his grandfather started up the steps. As the old man, assisted by the boy's parents, reached the top step, the boy opened the screen door and faced him.

The old man scraped a scruffy wingtip across the concrete step. He pushed his son-in-law's forearm down and away, then leaned forward, freeing himself from the guiding hand of his daughter. With extreme concentration, he stepped onto the porch and stood before his grandson. The old man grinned.

The boy glanced at his parents. They were bending forward as if they expected the old man to topple any moment. Then the boy looked at the hairless arms moving toward him, the arms lined with gnarled veins and dotted with brown spots. The boy felt his own heart beating hard as he looked at the man reaching for him, felt the muscle beat so heavily in the cavern of his chest that his flat belly quivered.

-You better hurry on into the house before you pitch backwards on your head, the mother warned, but before she had finished, the boy and his grandfather embraced. The boy was almost as tall as his grandfather, a man so scrawny that the boy felt he would crack if squeezed too hard.

-I swear you're a foot taller, the old man said proudly. You keep going and you'll have that sharp-tongued mother of yours looking up to you.

-He's got a long way to go for that, the woman said. She laughed as an afterthought.

The old man smelled of Dentyne. The boy walked him to the armchair upholstered in a pattern of red roses. The old man reached for the cane and placed it diagonally from the corner of the chair to the ottoman. He sat down beside the cane and settled back into the chair. The boy lifted his grandfather's legs and placed them across the cane. While the boy unlaced the old shoes, his grandfather pulled out a dirty handkerchief and swept it across his ancient face.

His teeth looked like chipped yellow pebbles stuck in mud. His face was dotted with small red spots.

The boy looked around at the waxed hardwood floor, the magazines stacked neatly in the rack. Sunlight came cleanly through the windows and cast images of misshapen panes on the green braided rug in front of the fireplace. The boy looked in the shaft of light for the dance of dust, but there was no motion. The air, clean, ripe with pear scent. It made him feel good.

-You do look chipper, the boy's father said. Must be some old Texas girl got you looking so perky.

-Yeah, you're looking good, the woman said as she stared at the gold knob of his cane and handed him a pear.

He took the chewing gum out of his mouth and rolled it into a tight ball, which he balanced on the arm of the chair. His daughter frowned.

As the old man ate the pear, the red spots on his face receded.

-Ain't no trouble, am I?

-No. You don't cause extra work, if that's what you mean, his daughter answered.

The boy's mouth fell open.

-Crawler, can't you look halfway intelligent?

-Yes, Mother, he said and closed his mouth.

-He's getting to be a big whippersnapper, his grandfather said.

-Yeah, the mother answered forlornly. Before you know it, he'll be gone.

-Maybe now's the time.

-You listen! she screamed. If you came this far to talk about that, you might as well get back in the car and drive your old self back to…

-Hold on, hold on, her husband said. Nobody's talking about nothing.

The old man, again splotched with red, tilted two fingers toward his mouth. The boy got up and walked into the kitchen. He waited to hear if something would be said. There was nothing. He got two ice cubes and ran a glass of water, listening again after turning off the tap. He waited to hear a comprehensible conversation from the dead living room. He took a deep breath and walked toward the silence. Cold beads trickled down the glass, and ice floated just beneath the surface.

Reaching out for the glass, his grandfather winked at him.

-Crawler, his mother said. You go out and play awhile. We've got some important talking to do.

-I don't see why the boy can't stay, too. After all, it's about him.

-Listen, Pops, I'm saying the way it is. Now you get, Crawler.

The boy looked to his father for a different opinion but saw he was staring out the window.

-We're waiting as usual, his mother said.

The boy left the room and went into the kitchen. He opened the drawer of ice picks, plunder from the summer his father, as a teenager, had worked at the ice and coal company during its last year of existence. When the boy was ten and the long-deserted plant was being torn down, his father took him to see the large vats where water from the underground river and distilled water were blended to create a clear, delicious ice. They stood on the old scales, father and son, then wandered through the roofless cubicle that was once the office.

-The day after the plant closed, the boy's father had said, pointing at the wall, Mr. Tal walked into this office before daylight, propped his chair against that wall, as though he was going to take a nap, then stuck both barrels of a sawed-off shotgun in his mouth, like the gun was a popsicle. Plunging his hand down into the clutter of black, wooden handles, the boy remembered the deep, irregular, blacker-than-dirt stain on the office wall, a stain left by a man's last, surrendering act.

The boy wondered if that's how life really is. One morning you wake up to a life not worth living, and the next morning and for all the remaining history of time, you don't wake at all. And while you lie in the earth, the wall and the blood you left on it collapse as well.

The boy lifted an ice pick out of the drawer. Standing in front of the sink, he balanced the point on the tip of his finger. He could feel pressure as he pushed down on the handle, first easy, then harder, until the skin was punctured and a bead of bright blood popped to the surface. He put the ice pick down and squeezed his finger until a small pool of blood covered the tip. As it spilled over the side, he turned on the tap. His finger throbbed, but the bleeding slowed under the running water.

Before his mother could get in the kitchen to see what he had done, he grabbed the ice pick and rushed out to the pear tree. From there, he saw Johnny Boland sitting on the steps across the street. The boy called for Johnny to come to the tree.

-Bring Sarah, too, he shouted.

Johnny finished his popsicle before shouting back: We can't play with anybody the rest of the day. Mommy says she'll kill us if we cause her any more trouble.

-Hush up your lies, Johnny, the mother yelled. I ain't said no such thing.

Propped against the pear tree, the boy waited. He thought about walking down the hill to the small creek where he caught crayfish, built mud dams, and launched flotillas of sticks. Maybe he'd keep going until he reached the livestock barn. He'd gone there once. What had struck him most was the way the eyes of the auctioneer jumped around and the speed of his mouth. The driven steer was frantic in the ring while the buyers gave secret motions. One tugged an ear, another raised eyeglasses. Each motion too brief to be seen by the other bidders, yet scooped up instantly by the roving eye of the auctioneer. I've got thirty, thirty, now five, thirty-five, give me four say four, got forty, need… Sometimes the chant continued after the animal was prodded through the exit gate, the auctioneer staring at the bidders, and the bidders looking at the empty ring littered with sawdust.

Leaning against the pear tree, the boy looked up and saw his father at the kitchen window. His father nodded his head as if to say he, too, wondered how long the two would haggle over the situation. The boy didn't mind not being involved in the deliberations; he had no answer. He wanted only to be left alone. Let time take care of things. Isn't that what time is for?

He played listlessly through one game of mumblety-peg, getting all the way to Spank the Baby, but had no desire to carry the game any further. With the ice pick in his back pocket, he was walking toward the creek when his grandfather called to him from the back bedroom, called him back into the house.

-What did you decide? the boy asked.

-It's not for me to decide for you. We're just talking about the last two weeks of summer. You sound like we're plotting the rest of your life.

-This is the rest of my life.

-What is?

-Whatever's left of it.

-My God. Sometimes you talk like you're old enough to be my grandfather. Fact is, you're not even fully sprouted.

-Reckon I'm still growing?

-Sure you are. Do the right things, you'll get big and strong. Eat the globular strength of pears, I always say. It worked for me.

-It did? the boy asked, looking at the tiny man.

-You should have seen me when I was young. He flexed his arm. Are you going to play football this year?

-Mother says I might get hurt.

-Mother said, Mother says, Mother said. It's people like that drove me to Texas. He leaned toward the boy and held out his hands. Come to Texas with me.

-I'll have to think about it.

-Think? That's what she wants you to do. That's what you've done most of your life. Give up thinking for a while. Act. Remember when you were in kindergarten how scared you were of those marble gargoyles near the top of the bank? Remember how I took you up on the roof and we looked down on them? What did we see?

-Their heads piled high with pigeon poop.

-'Poor things,' you said as you looked down. See what I'm getting at. Taking those steps to the roof led you to pity what you once feared.

-You know when I was a boy, the old man said as he rubbed a green pear back and forth between his palms, my parents didn't send me out with bowls to collect pears. When we had too many kittens running in the barn, they sent me out to kill them. The only way I could do it--and my parents went along with me on this--was to give them a chance. I'd put each one in a sack, twist it shut, and tie it off with tobacco twine. Then I'd set them out in a line behind the barn. Those that thought about what they needed to do, thought and thought until the air ran out. I buried them, still in the sacks. Those that used their claws, their teeth, their fury shredded their coffins and ran, angry as hell, back into the barn. Later they lapped milk and purred while I shoveled dirt on the thinkers.

The old man reached into his pocket and pulled out a rotten strand of string.

-Your momma's gonna so muddle you that you'll think nothing but her thoughts. Break free. Don't let her diminish you. Claw yourself out a name that gives you respect, not one she uses to ridicule you. Don't let her call you Crawler. Don't let me.

-I've always been called that. I don't like it, though.

-Then get another name, like that Langhorne bull who tossed aside Samuel Clemens and made his own Mark. It's your life, put your brand on it. Call yourself Strider or Walker or Stomper. Ain't that better?

-Make her say it. Tell her you're changing, and you'd like her to be a helpful part of it. Then if she won't listen to desire and reason, take action. Spit on her. Spit on anybody who calls you Crawler. Me included.

A smile broke across the boy's face. Then he giggled.

-Funny, isn't it? Funny to imagine yourself having the upper hand for once. Tell you what. You better grab and claw and keep that hand up there reaching, he said, handing the boy the frayed twine. This came off the last kitten bag I ever tied.

The old hand went back to the pocket. The old man wished he had more to give the boy, but his wealth was example and artifact. He pulled out a coin.

-What's this? he asked.

-Easy, the boy said as he tilted the gold coin in the sunlight. It's a coin. The metal smooth on both sides, not the slightest indication of scratch or impression. The boy couldn't tell what was up and down, what was head, what tails.

-Been handled and pressed so much, his grandfather said, that it's worn plumb smooth.

-Where'd you get it?

-It was my great-grand, he paused. Doesn't matter if mother or father. Your great-great-great, but that doesn't matter either. The important thing here is the coin has been clutched enough to erase the engraving. You can't tell its worth. It's spent so much of life between someone's thumb and forefinger that there's no tail to sit on nor face to spit with. You know what I'm saying by giving you the twine and the coin?

-I do, the boy said.

-You're smart. Remember a body needs a head and a tail to wiggle through this crooked world. And what you lose of the body, what you need beyond, you have to make up in spirit.

-Is it really gold? the boy asked, looking in his palm.

-If you think so. Ain't much true in this world if you don't believe it so.

He leaned across and kissed his grandson.

Staring at the indecipherable coin, the boy didn't see the stark red of the sunset.

-Flyer, the boy said proudly, remembering the way the pear had been jerked about, then steadied itself before springing off into the air and down to his waiting hands.

-Let's try this, then, the old man said. You go get some water and tell my witch of a daughter that your name is Flyer.

-I'll ask her to call me that.

-Nothing wrong with asking and explaining, but lay out the consequences for her if she doesn't go along with the new ways.

-I don't know that I could do that.

-You gotta do something different. You hear me, the old man said in a louder voice. Do something different, or you'll be sitting in this room old as me and having a 100 and umpteen plus year old woman in the next room telling you what to do. And if you keep doing everything she says, there will come the day she won't even have to be alive to run your life. You'll be jumping to the commands of a dead woman.

The boy walked slowly down the hall. In his right front pocket a piece of twine and a smooth gold coin; in his back pocket, a black-handled ice pick.

The boy's mother stood beside the stove, snapping ears of corn in two and dropping them into a pot of boiling water. The boy lifted the lid of another pot. The dark foam of peas retreated, revealing a hard brown crust on the upper rim. The odor of cornbread drifted up from the oven, and deep red barbecue sauce bubbled around pork chops.

-What have you two been talking about?

The boy got two glasses from the cabinet. As he held them under the tap, he tried to think of something to say to her, of a way to announce his proud, new name.

-When water runs down the sides, the glass is full. Don't you know that, Crawler?

His fingers tightened around the glass.

-Has he finished talking that foolishness about going to Texas?

-He doesn't make it sound foolish.

-It is, Crawler. Don't listen to him. He talks nonsense most of the time, and if you've got any sense you know it. Going off cross-country with that old man. It's not safe. You see how slow he is. He'd plow through three red lights before his dull brain could get his foot to the brake. I wouldn't let you go around the block with him. And I say that even if he is my father. And soon as your father gets in from work you'll see that your parents are in total agreement on this.

-We haven't decided about the trip yet.

His mother's face turned red as the sauce.

-Is it for you to decide? she said.

He didn't look at her as he started for the bedroom.

-You haven't answered my question.

He could sense that she was moving toward him, moving with that dark red face and an ear of waving corn. He walked faster, but he didn't look back.

-No, he said. It's not for me to decide. Behind him, the steps diminished.

-Heard some crawling but didn't hear any asking or spitting or flying, the old man said as the boy walked into the room. He motioned for the boy to put the glasses on the dresser.

-I thought you were thirsty, the boy said, startled by his grandfather's appearance.

The old man had taken off his shirt. From his arms, remnants of muscle, like mummified fruit, hung wrinkled and brown. Sitting in the rocking chair by the opened window, he spread a towel across his bare upper torso. Another towel lay across his lap, the ends of the towel draping to the floor.

It was early evening. In the growing darkness outside the window, the pear leaves were barely visible.

-You remind me of that tree. The way the white blooms come, then the new leaves, half green, half red, like they don't know whether to stop or rush out into life.

The boy held half a glass of water in his hands. The other half was in his mouth, pushing his cheeks out like he had mumps. The old man looked at the full cheeks and smiled.

-What are you waiting for?

The boy shook his head.

-You don't want to spit on me anymore, is that it? I can take it, Crawler. And I believe you're man enough to try. Crawler, Crawler, Crawler, Crawler, Crawler. Come on, I'm getting tired and hungry. Crawler, Crawler, Crawler--

The boy took a deep breath and forced the water to the front of his mouth. The water broke through his lips and splattered against the side of the old man's face.

-That's ten in a row, the old man laughed. I believe you've got the hang of it, Flyer.

The boy laughed, too. He selected the driest handkerchief and started wiping the wet face.

-Teaching sure is messy business, the old man said.

-But you wanted me to do it.

The old man stood up and balanced against the wall. You've got to know you can do it, Flyer. Whatever it takes to free yourself, you gotta know you can do.

He walked to the boy and kissed him on the forehead.

-Going with me?

-I'm not sure. I think so.

-I'm talking about supper.

-Oh, the boy blushed.

The old man tossed the wet towels on the floor.

-Now, he said, this is the real test. You've got to walk down the hallway and find that woman who's been cutting away at you for years. This won't stop her shears forever, but it may slow them down.

She stood in the kitchen.

-My name is Flyer, he said. I'd like you and Daddy to call me Flyer.

-What?

-I don't want to be called Crawler anymore. I'm eleven years old. I don't need a name with training wheels on it.

-You shut up that foolishness, she said, then paused.

In that moment, a strange elation shook his body. He had said what he had wanted to say, and more important he had said what he had felt. Not lines fed him by his grandfather, not words to assuage his mother's anger--he had expressed what he felt. And that simple act, it seemed to the boy, added pounds to his frame.

-You shut your mouth, Crawler, his mother warned.

-Flyer, he said.

-Crawler! she shouted.

Shouts last a long time. That's one thing the boy had learned. If you don't flinch, if you don't run, you can steady yourself. He had options. He could return quietly to his grandfather's classroom; he could stand before his mother forever, mute, frozen.

He moved his hand slowly and brushed against his pocket, feeling the impressions of coin and twine. He moved that same hand behind his back and clasped the handle of the ice pick, his hand throbbing open and shut, open and shut. His neck muscles tightened; his heart went wild. He pursed his lips and blew outward. A dribble of spit ran down his chin as a few drops splattered against the wall and a few landed on her apron.

Hurrying through the kitchen, the boy sensed her pursuit. Soon, he knew, she would pounce; yet he felt stronger, as though his chest had swelled to the dimension of shirt, his hips to the contour of jeans. In that expansion, he could feel against his hip the metal of the ice pick, the wood of its handle.

His mother said nothing more, but followed him across the kitchen. Her eyes wide, a wry smile plastered to her red face. He stood by the back door; she stood by the stove, by the simmering pots holding an already delayed meal. She had met the boy's surprise attack with a surprise tactic of her own, an eerie silence, a repressed calm.

With his hand on the limb of the pear tree, the boy watched the old man and the woman as they stood under the kitchen's ceiling light. His grandfather's lips moved; his mother's remained closed. If she should attack the old man, the boy resolved to fly to the rescue. The old man's lips continued to move as he stood by the white bowl trimmed with gold, as he talked above the mounded pears. The boy could read his grandfather's lips: Flyer and I will eat out tonight, the old man said as he took one pear, then another.

Once more, his mother did nothing. Her counter, the boy knew, would come later, and that would be as soon as her ally, the boy's father, returned.

The old man walked unmolested out into the night, walked with neither supplication nor wobble, walked across the dark yard. He continued walking until he stood in the circle of sand surrounding the tree.

-Flyer? he called.

From the darkness came a soft reply.

-Up here.

The old man arched his neck and looked skyward.

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