Douglas walked around the statue one way, walked around the statue the other way. The statue did not move. It did not speak. It looked at the horizon, its mouth half smiling.
It was like that time years ago in Chicago when they had visited a big place where the carved marble figures were, and his walking around them in the silence. So here was John Huff with grass stains on his knees and the seat of his pants, and cuts on his fingers and scabs on his elbows. Here was John Huff with the quiet tennis shoes, his feet sheathed in silence. There was the mouth that had chewed many an apricot pie come summer, and said many a quiet thing or two about life and the lay of the land. And there were the eyes, not blind like statues' eyes, but filled with molten green-gold. And there the dark hair blowing now north now south or any direction in the little breeze there was. And there the hands with all the town on them, dirt from roads and bark-slivers from trees, the fingers that smelled of hemp and vine and green apple, old coins or pickle-green frogs. There were the ears with the sunlight shining through them like bright warm peach wax and here, invisible, his spearmint-breath upon the air.
"John, now," said Douglas, "don't you move so much as an eyelash. I absolutely command you to stay here and not move at all for the next three hours!"
"Doug ..."
John's lips moved.
"Freeze!" said Douglas.
John went back to looking at the sky, but he was not smiling now.
"I got to go," he whispered.
"Not a muscle, it's the game!"
"I just got to get home now," said John.
Now the statue moved, took its hands down out of the air and turned its head to look at Douglas. They stood looking at each other. The other kids were putting their arms down, too.
"We'll play one more round," said John, "except this time, I'm 'it.' Run!"
The boys ran.
"Freeze!"
The boys froze, Douglas with them.
"Not a muscle!" shouted John. "Not a hair!"
He came and stood by Douglas.
"Boy, this is the only way to do it," he said.
Douglas looked off at the twilight sky.
"Frozen statues, every single one of you, the next three minutes!" said John.
Douglas felt John walking around him even as he had walked around John a moment ago. He felt John sock him on the arm once, not too hard. "So long," he said.
Then there was a rushing sound and he knew without looking that there was nobody behind him now.
Far away, a train whistle sounded.
Douglas stood that way for a full minute, waiting for the sound of the running to fade, but it did not stop. He's still running away, but he doesn't sound any further off, thought Douglas. Why doesn't he stop running?
And then he realized it was only the sound of his heart in his body.
Stop! He jerked his hand to his chest. Stop running! I don't like that sound!
And then he felt himself walking across the lawns among all the other statues now, and whether they, too, were coming to life he did not know. They did not seem to be moving at all. For that matter he himself was only moving from the knees down. The rest of him was cold stone, and very heavy.
Going up the front porch of his house, he turned suddenly to look at the lawns behind him.
The lawns were empty.
A series of rifle shots. Screen doors banged one after the other, a sunset volley, along the street.