A Game in the Sun

John Coyne is the author of 25 books of fiction and non-fiction, including a bestseller, The Legacy, which was also a successful film starring Sam Elliott. His short stories have been included in several "best of" anthologies, such as Modern Masters of Horror and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Betsy was no longer listening. She had closed her eyes and was leaning back in the lawn chair, resting. She knew she must not begin to cry in front of these people. She must not be vulnerable... Michael remembered clearly the first piece of fungus: a thin, irregular patch twelve inches wide, grayish, like the color of candle grease, growing on the new pine wall of the bathroom. He was leaning over the top section of the cow barn door, shooting his new pump-gun at tin cans in the barnyard, and watching the sun clear the rows of corn stubs on the horizon, when the first cry of the cow came down to him on the morning breeze. It began with Father Sweeney leaning into Matt's face, with both hands braced against the desk, speaking in his deliberately condescending way, telling Matt once, and then again-never raising his voice, letting his words work like a butcher's knife across the boy's sense of self-that he wanted what Matt Garrity was hiding between his legs and he wanted it now!