put an end to the business ; and that call was always as expected and yet as surprising as the noon blob that had , by three or so , become a black boy-shape running in the street beside him-and that boy stapled to his heels had actually become a man by five or so , albeit an extraordinarily skinny one ; velvet evenings of television , the occasional rattle of pages as his father read one book after another ( he never tired of them ; words , words , words , and his dad never tired of them , and clive had meant once to ask him how that could be but lost his nerve ) , his mother getting up once in a while and going into the kitchen , followed only by his sister 's worried eyes and his own curious ones ; the soft clink as mom replenished the glass which was never empty after eleven in the morning or so ( and their father never looking up from his book , although banning had an idea he heard it all and knew it all , although patty had called him a stupid liar and had given him a peter-pinch that hurt all day long the one time he had dared to tell her that ) ; the sound of mosquitoes whining against the screens , always so much louder , it seemed , when the sun had gone down ; the surprise of the bedtime decree , argument lost before it was begun ; his father 's brusque kiss , smelling of tobacco , his mother 's softer , both sugary and sour with the smell of wine ; the sound of his sister telling mom she ought to go to bed after dad had gone down to the corner tavern to drink a couple of beers and watch the wrestling matches on the television over the bar ; his mom telling patty to mind her own damned business and leave her alone , a conversational pattern that was upsetting in its content but somehow soothing in its predictability ; fireflies gleaming in the dark ; a car horn , distant , as he drifted down into sleep , and then would come the next day that seemed like that day but was n't .