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summer between second grade and third, and the other kids are already kind of picking on him, calling him “Princess” and stuff like that. He just seemed to not fit in. He was in sheer terror of getting his clothes dirty, and when it came to sports, his arms and legs seemed like they were screwed on backwards. And I’m taking up for him, most of the time, although any kid that age will run with the pack, go with the cruelty of the crowd occasionally .
    That summer, Jerry’s mother had bought him a coonskin cap, like the one Davy Crockett wore on TV. Jerry didn’t much care for it, and I did, so one day after he had worn it down to my house to play and was going home, he asked me did I want it. I said I sure did, and he gave it to me .
    The next morning, Arlene came wheeling up in our driveway — she drove everywhere — got out of her big old Buick and came marching up and banging on the front door .
    Mom answered, and Arlene told her that I had taken the coonskin cap away from Jerry, and that he wanted it back, and how much she hated a bully .
    Well, I’d told Mom and Dad the night before that Jerry had given it to me, and for a little while, it looked as if I was going to get a whipping for lying to them. They gave her the coonskin cap back, and she left without another word .
    â€œ I didn’t take it, “I was crying, pulling on my mother’s dress. “He gave it to me. I swear he did. ”
    In the end, they believed me. I wasn’t a bad kid, really. The lies I told were for the most part pretty small stuff. I don’t believe either of them thought I would take Jerry Prince’s coonskin cap and then lie about it to them .
    What happened, I’m sure, is this: He came home without that cap, and his mother jumped him, and he panicked. She didn’t much believe in giving things away, and he probably figured the only way out was to tell her that Jack Stone had taken his cap away from him .
    We didn’t see each other all the rest of that summer, and that fall at school, we weren’t in the same class. You could say it’s funny how kids can fall out over such a little thing, but I’ve seen adults do worse .
    I just think Jerry was embarrassed. He knew what he had done, and he knew that I knew .
    I made up my first story when I was in third grade. It had a bunch of cowboys, heroes and villains, a shootout, and an unforgettably tense scene where the bad guy says to his would-be victim, “Gimme the dough,” and she throws biscuit flour in his face and escapes .
    I wrote this out of boredom. We were in a mixed third-and fourth-grade class, and we spent about half the day doing assignments while the one teacher, Mrs. Mattson, worked with the other grade. Mrs. Mattson saw me writing away and made me let her read it. She seemed truly excited that someone in one of her classes had actually done something semi-creative. She tried in vain all the rest of the year to get me to write another story .
    But there was always an itch there. When I thought I was going to college instead of screwing up my sorry-ass life, I figured I’d major in English, maybe teach it in high school in addition to coaching the football team, on the outside chance I didn’t make it in the pros .
    I’d always liked stories, reading them and hearing them and even writing one now and then. It wasn’t something I wanted spread around, though. When you’re one of the jocks, you don’t want to go there .
    Even the short story I wrote in seventh grade that won the junior high literature contest was done in haste and repented at leisure. It was about a boy who causes his rival to have an accident that leaves the other boy blind. The first boy commits himself to being the other boy’s eyes from then on, leading him to classes, helping him with his homework and becoming his best friend. My seventh-grade teacher said it was powerful. Jerry Prince came in second