Summer set in. The days long and beautiful, provided everyone with a font of good will, and as long as you could steer clear of neighborhood gossip and avoid the evening news, you could keep that sense all summer long. Kids rode bikes up and down the driveways with endless energy. Boredom never seemed to occur to them until they turned sixteen.

It was just another day filled with a haze of heat that built up early in the morning and hung around until well after the sun went down. Buford “Tough” Willits, so named because he was BUilt FORD Tough, watched the kids with an easy eye. He’d lived on Cammy Ct all his thirty-nine years and while he wasn’t a member of the neighborhood watch or anything, he was one of the adults that kept an eye on things, just in case. He was a helper. When Jimmy Miller needed tools to remove a rotting stump or the Jonson’s dog had run away, he had lent the tools and helped post ‘Lost Dog’ signs.

It was precisely because of his reputation, that on Tuesday, Buford’s world fell apart.