Young Wayne contemplates death and love on an all-night drinking binge in the cemetery with Mosey and Jinxie.

(from Eyesores)

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I told him.
“You will,” he said. “You’ll believe in love and ghosts before the night is through.
We ran through the graveyard, jumping over headstones.

This is one of those small town grew up way too fast sexual awakening drugs beer loss of innocence coming of age realization of mortality stories and it’s pretty good. The character types are familiar — the narrator is your basic moral idiot, Mosey is the jerk pal and Jinxie is wayward slut — but the neat aside about the local man who commits suicide-by-cop shines an interesting light on the boys, their interest in death and their collection of knowledge through macabre anecdotes.
I should point out that I find these characters to be familiar from life as much as from works of fiction. They’re real enough. This story was not mired in cliché or stereotype beyond those which actual people regularly adhere. I wonder, though, why the Moseys of the world — the irrepressibly immature and assholic friends — are never the narrators. Is it impossible to justify their actions, to put thought behind their ignorant and cruel behavior? Is Mosey inexplicable?
Eric Shade, whom I’ve never read before, is from Altoona, Pennsylvania. Yuengling gets a shout-out.