Summer of Night (17 page)

Mike hadn't bothered with his bike so Dale left his lying in the side yard. Both boys jogged east down Depot Street.

"Where's Lawrence?" asked Mike as he ran. He wasn't breathing hard.

"Went on a walk with Mrs. Moon and Mom."

Mike nodded. Mrs. Moon was eighty-six, but still enjoyed her evening walks. Most people in the neighborhood took turns walking with her when her daughter-Miss Moon, the librarian-wasn't able to.

Mike's backyard was a mass of shadows from the big oaks and elms along the street and the apple trees behind the house. Fireflies were winking along the edge of Mr. O'Rourke's half-acre of garden. The chickenhouse glowed white in the gloom, its door a black rectangle. Dale stepped in ahead of Mike and let his eyes adapt to the dimness.

Duane was there, standing next to the empty console radio. Kevin lay on the couch, his t-shirt a startling white. Dale glanced around for Harlen before remembering that their friend was in the hospital.

Dale bent over to catch his breath while Mike stepped into the center of the room.-'It's good that Lawrence isn't here," said Mike. "What Duane has to say is sort of spooky."

"You OK?" Dale asked the overweight boy. "How'd you get to come into town?"

"The Old Man came in to go to Carl's," said Duane and adjusted his glasses. He seemed even more distracted than usual. "It really happened," he added. "The Rendering Truck really tried to kill me today." His voice was as soft and unexcited as ever, but Dale thought he heard the slightest undertone of tension.

"I'm sorry about Witt," said Dale. "So's Lawrence."

Duane nodded again.

"Tell them about the soldier," said Mike.

Duane told them about his father's return late Saturday night-early Sunday morning actually-and about the young man in the odd uniform who had hitched a ride.

Kevin put his hands behind his head. "So? What's weird about that?"

Mike told them about the same guy following him down Jubilee College Road the evening before. "It was sort of spooky," he finished. "I began running… I usually run pretty good… but somehow this guy almost kept up just by walking. Finally, I got fifty or sixty feet ahead of him, but when I turned by the water tower I couldn't see him anymore."

"Was it dark?" asked Dale.

"About like now. Not so dark I couldn't see him a minute before. I even walked back to where the road turns, but it was empty all the way back the way I'd come."

Kevin began humming the theme music from that new TV show called The Twilight Zone.

Dale sat in the sprung easy chair under the narrow window. "The guy could've hidden in the fields. Laid down in the corn."

"Yeah," said Mike,"but why? What was he doing?" He told about the hole he'd seen in the toolshed behind Calvary Cemetery.

Kevin sat up. "Jeez, O'Rourke, you actually broke inV

"Yeah. But that's not the point."

Kevin whistled. "It'll be the point if Congden or Barney finds out."

Mike stuck his hands in his pockets again. He seemed as distracted as Duane and far more out of sorts. "Barney's OK, but I think Congden's a real creepo. You saw him today with Duane's dad. I think the guy was lying about Van Syke."

Dale leaned forward. "Lying? Why?"

"Because he's with them," said Mike. "Or helping them."

"With who?" said Kevin.

Mike went to the door and looked out with his hands still jammed deep in his pockets. The darkness outside was just enough lighter than the darkness inside to silhouette him in the doorway. "With them," he said. "Dr. Roon Van Syke. Probably Old Double-Butt. Whoever's doing this stuff."

"And the soldier guy," said Dale.

Duane cleared his throat. "The uniform's consistent with what doughboys wore back during the First World War."

"What's a doughboy?" asked Mike.

Both Dale and Duane began to explain. Duane nodded and Dale finished the explanation.

"And when was that war?" asked Mike, although he knew from Memo's stories.

Duane told him.

Mike swiveled in the doorway and slapped the doorframe. "Great. What's a guy dressed like a World War One soldier doing wandering around here?"

"Maybe he's taking a stroll near where he resides," said Kevin in his mocking tone.

"And where's that?" asked Dale.

"The cemetery."

Kevin had meant it as a joke, but it was too dark and the death of Duane's dog had been too recent. No one spoke for a while.

Mike broke the silence. "Anybody hear anything about Harlen?"

"Yeah," said Kevin. "Ma was up in Oak Hill this afternoon and saw his ma there. She was eating dinner in the drugstore just across the square from the hospital, and she told Ma that Harlen's still unconscious. His arm's all busted up. Multiple compound fractures."

"Is that bad?" asked Dale, realizing as he spoke how stupid the question sounded.

Mike nodded. He had more Scout badges in First Aid than anybody else Dale knew. "Compound fractures mean it's broken more than once. Bone probably came through the skin, too."

"Oh, yech," said Kevin. Dale felt a little sick at the thought.

"The concussion's probably the most serious thing," continued Mike. "If Harlen's still out, it's probably pretty bad."

There was another silence. A mouse or shrew made scurrying sounds beneath the floorboards. The room was dark enough now that Dale could see only the other boys' outlines-Kevin's shirt glowing the brightest, Duane's dark flannel only a shadow amidst shadows-and now there were more fireflies visible beyond the door and windows, glowing like embers in the dark. Like eyes.

"I'm going up to Oak Hill tomorrow," Duane said at last. "I'll check in on Jim and let you guys know how he is."

Kevin's t-shirt moved in the gloom. "Maybe we could all go."

"Uh-uh," came Duane's voice. "You guys have stuff to do around here, remember? Have you followed Roon yet?" The question was directed at Kev in the darkness.

Grumbacher grunted. "I've been busy."

"Yes," said Duane. "We all have. But I think we'd better do the things we agreed to do at the cave on Saturday. Something weird's going on."

"Maybe Harlen saw something," said Dale. "They found him in the garbage bin behind Old Central. Maybe he was following Old Double-Butt or something."

"Maybe," agreed Duane. "I'll try to find out tomorrow. In the meantime, it would help if someone else checked out Mrs. Doubbet until Jim's back."

"I will," said Dale, surprised to hear himself volunteer. Mike's shadow at the doorway said, "I didn't find Van Syke at the cemetery, but I'll get him tomorrow."

"Be careful," said Duane. "I didn't see him for sure in that truck, but I somehow was sure that it was him driving." The boys clamored for more details of the near disaster. Duane summarized it as briefly as he could. "I've got to get going," he said finally. "I don't want the Old Man drinking too much at Carl's."

The other three shifted in embarrassment, glad for the darkness. "Can I tell Lawrence this stuff?" Dale asked. "Yeah," said Mike. "But don't scare him to death." Dale nodded. The meeting was over, everybody was expected somewhere else, but nobody seemed to want to leave. One of the O'Rourke cats came in, leaped onto Dale's lap, and curled up, purring.

Kevin signed. "None of this shit makes sense." Kevin almost never swore.

The others said nothing, just staying there another moment, together in the darkness. Silence was their agreement.

That night, Mike O'Rourke lay awake counting fireflies out his window. Sleep was like a tunnel, and he had no intention of going in.

Something moved on the front lawn, under the linden tree. Mike leaned forward, set his nose against the screen, and tried to see between the leaves and the eaves of the small front porch.

Someone had moved out of the deep shadows under the tree near Memo's window and stepped out onto the road. Mike listened for footsteps on asphalt or the crunch of the gravel on the roadside, but there was no sound except for the silken rub of corn tassels.

He had only caught a glimpse, but Mike had seen the round shadow of the top of a hat. Too perfectly round to be a cowboy hat. More like a Boy Scout hat.

Or the campaign hat Duane had described on the soldier he'd called a doughboy.

Mike lay by the window, heart still pounding, holding sleep off like an enemy that had to be kept at bay.

ELEVEN

Duane McBride left for the library as soon as morning chores were done on Tuesday. The Old Man was awake and sober and in the foul mood which that combination usually brought. Duane went into the Old Man's workshop to tell him he was leaving.

"Chores done?" grunted his father. He was tinkering with the newest model of his 'learning machine." The Old Man's workroom had once been the family dining room, but since Duane and his father ate only in the kitchen-when they ate together at all, which was rarely-the Old Man had turned the dining room into his workshop. Half a dozen doors on sawhorses served as massive tables, and most of these were littered with variations on the learning machine or other prototypes.

The Old Man was a real inventor; he had five patents approved, although only one of these-the automatic mailbox alarm-had ever made any money for him. Most of his devices were as impractical as the learning machine over which he now fussed: a massive metal box with cranks, viewing panel, buttons, punch-card slots, and assorted lights. The thing was supposed to revolutionize education. When properly programmed with scrolls of the appropriate reading/questioning material and the required student-response punch cards, the machine could provide hours of instructional choices and private tutoring. The problem-as Duane had pointed out repeatedly-was that each learning machine would cost almost a thousand dollars with the necessary printed stuff, and it was mechanical.

Duane had long argued that computers would someday do this stuff, but his father disliked electronics as much as Duane loved it. You know how big a computer would have to be to carry out the simplest autonomous teaching task? his father would demand. As Big as Texas, Duane would respond. With the hourly total flow of Niagara Falls required to cool it. But then he would add, But that's with vacuum tubes, Pop. They're doing exciting things with transistors and resistors now.

The Old Man would grunt and go back to work on a new learning-machine prototype. Duane had to admit they were fun-he'd run through an entire high-school political science course on one when he was eight-but they were clunky and forbidding. Only one had been sold-almost four years earlier, to the Brimfield School District, and Uncle Art knew a purchasing guy there. Meanwhile, prototypes continued to clutter the workshop tables and end up taking space in the hallways and empty bedrooms upstairs.

Duane figured that as a hobby, the perpetual-motion learning-machine project wasn't as harmful as the full-serve twen-ty-four-hour-a-day rural shopping center the Old Man had tried to run back in the mid-fifties. There had been two stores in the 'shopping center," a hardware store and the Old Man's multipurpose OmniMart, which sold mainly bread and milk, but the Old Man had been the entire delivery force, taking calls at home in the middle of the night and driving down gravel and dirt backroads at all hours, delivering a loaf of bread at four a.m. to some old lady over in Knox County only to discover that she wanted it put on the OmniMart Instant Credit Plan. Uncle Art-who'd run the hardware store-was as glad as Duane to see that vision die. To this day, the Old Man insisted that he'd been right about 'shopping centers'-just look at Sherwood Center now growing up in Peoria, nine stores!-but that he'd been ahead of his time. The Old Man predicted that someday shopping centers would be huge, indoor affairs-dozens of specialty stores under a single glassed roof like the gallerias he'd seen in Ital) after the war. Most people would listen and ask Whyl with a puzzled expression, but Duane and Uncle Art had learned to nod and keep quiet.

"Chores done?" repeated the Old Man.

Duane shook himself out of his contemplation of the learning machines. "Yeah. Thought I'd go into the library."

The Old Man looked up and let his close-work glasses slip down on his nose. "Library? Why today? Didn't you go Saturday?"

"Yeah, but I forgot to see if they had a small-motor repair manual."

The Old Man frowned. The pump on the old windmill needed repair. "I thought you already knew all about that stuff."

Duane shrugged. "That motor's old. It was put in before the rural electrification around here. I'd better have a manual if I'm going to do anything but change the belts and brushes.”

The Old Man's gaze lost focus and Duane could imagine what he was thinking: he'd been spooked by the truck trying to kill his boy the day before-when they'd buried Witt in the afternoon, Duane had thought he'd seen tears in the Old Man's eyes… but the wind was blowing and it might've just been blowing sand irritating them-but on the other hand, the Old Man couldn't keep Duane penned up at home all summer or drive him around all the time.

"Can you get there without taking the road in?"

"Yeah, easy," said Duane. "I'll just cut back through the south pasture and walk the edge of Johnson's fields."

The Old Man looked back at the web of gears and pulleys he was adjusting. "All right. Just be home for supper, understand?"

Duane nodded, went to the kitchen, made himself a couple of baloney sandwiches and stuck them in a greasy sack, filled a Thermos with coffee and hung it on his belt by the cup handle, checked to make sure he had his notebook and pen in his pocket, and ambled out. He'd made four steps toward the barn to say good-bye to Witt before he remembered. Duane adjusted his glasses and went through the gate, heading for the south pasture just as he'd told the Old Man.

And he would use the Johnson fields to get as far west as tfie railroad tracks. He hadn't lied to his father. But he hadn't exactly told the truth, either: the library he was heading for wasn't the tiny one in Elm Haven, a little more than two miles away… it was the library in Oak Hill, more than eight miles along the backroads and easily more than ten the way Duane was planning to go.

Duane settled down into his distance-gobbling waddle, the Thermos batting against his left leg with every other step, his black sneakers scaring grasshoppers into flight in the high weeds. The sun was out today and the morning was the hottest of the summer so far. Duane opened the top two buttons of his flannel shirt and considered whistling a tune as he walked.

He decided not to.

The best way to get to Oak Hill from Duane's house would have been to go north on County Six until it ran into the unnumbered gravel road north of the Barminton farm, head west until that road intercepted State Highway 626, better known as Oak Hill Road, and then take that the final four and half miles into town. But that meant roads.

Duane crossed his first road north of Elm Haven-moving quickly across the gravel road that ran south to become First Avenue-and then cut through the forest of metal grain-storage silos arrayed north of the town's playing fields. A row of pines that ran west from the water tower obscured the view for Duane, so he couldn't check to see if his friends were playing ball that day.

West of there, he ambled north again to avoid the town and the upper reaches of Broad Avenue.

He did have to follow a narrow lane through the bushes to the railroad tracks after Catton Road ended, but he couldn't imagine the Rendering Truck forcing its way through the branches and shrubs here. He realized then that he was only a few hundred yards from the tallow plant-the place from which Congden had said the truck had been 'stolen'-but the woods were so thick here that Duane couldn't even see the tin roof of the place.

The railroad embankment was a relief after all the underbrush, and Duane slowed his pace enough to unhitch his Thermos and pour himself a cup of coffee. He did not stop, but sipped as he walked, putting up with coffee spilled on his shirt and pants. Well, the pants were about the same color as the stains.

He smelled the dump before he saw it, and just at that second he saw the squalid huddle of shacks just outside the south entrance to the dump. Cordie Cooke lived in one of those homes-if you could call that collection of tarpaper and tin on cinderblocks home-but Duane wasn't sure which one. Something moved in the shrubbery on the west side of the tracks, but although Duane looked over his shoulder, he caught no glimpse of the animal.

He ambled on, passing the heaps of the county dump-the mountains of garbage clearly visible through and above the trees-and then crossing the low trestle over what, three miles east of here, would become Corpse Creek. He was in luck: the wind was blowing from the north, so once he left the dump behind, he left it behind.

From the dump, it was a simple seven-mile walk through the fields and forests of Creve Coeur County and Duane made it in a little over two hours.

Oak Hill was more than three times as large as Elm Haven, boasting almost 5,500 people. It had a small hospital as well as a library bigger than a chicken coop, a small factory on its outskirts, a county courthouse, a block of suburbs-everything.

Duane came down off the tracks as the railroad embankment curved east to miss the town. He didn't mind walking the tree-lined streets of Oak Hill, although every time a car or truck turned a corner behind him, he glanced over his shoulder quickly and was peripherally aware of porches within running distance.

He paused on the courthouse lawn in the shade of an oak and a bronze cannon to eat his baloney sandwiches and finish his coffee. He was hot-it was at least in the nineties today-but his flannel shirt wasn't sticking to him. Finished, he tucked the Thermos on his belt and crossed to the hospital on the south side of the square.

The lady's name on the green badge was Miss Alnutt, her desk was planted firmly in the middle of the only corridor leading to the wards, and she was implacable. "You can't come in," she said in her maiden-aunt rasp. The talcum powder and old-skin scent of her wafted to Duane on the slight breeze from the overhead fan. "You're too young." Duane nodded. "Yes, ma'am. But Jimmy's my only cousin and his mama said I could come see him."

Miss Alnutt jerked her head in what might have been dismissal. "You're too young. No one under sixteen is allowed in the patients' wing. No exceptions." She peered at him through the half-lenses perched on her nose. "Besides, no extraneous food or drink is allowed in the patients' rooms." Duane glanced down at his Thermos and quickly unhooked it from his belt. "Yes, ma'am. I could leave this here. I only want to see him for a minute or two-I promise I'll just look in on him and come right back."

Miss Alnutt made a flicking motion with her veined wrist and turned her attention back to the cards in her small file box. Duane had noticed the room number when he'd first asked about Harlen. Now he said, "Thank you, ma'am," and turned to trudge back through the lobby.

The only pay phone was down the corridor to the public restrooms. The only phone he had seen in the lobby was at the admissions desk, twenty paces beyond his corridor and around the corner. He'd brought fifty cents in change, just in case. He only needed a nickel. The number was in the tattered phone book.

They didn't page her. One of the nurses from the lobby came around, whispered to Miss Alnutt, and walked with her as the older lady rushed to the front desk. It was, after all, an important call.

Duane strolled by the empty desk, turned into the patients' ward, and for the second time that day, resisted the impulse to whistle.

After breakfast, Dale Stewart borrowed his dad's binoculars and headed down Depot Street to the depot and then out the railroad tracks to Cordie's. He didn't really want to go-that whole side of town gave him the willies because of Congden's house, and the woods out by the dump were worse-but after the talk in the chickenhouse the night before, Dale sort of felt it was his duty. But what Cordie and Tubby Cooke had to do with some jerk scaring Duane with the Rendering Truck, Dale had no idea.

J. P. Congden's shabby house was on the same block as Harlen's home, but the black Chevy wasn't where it was usually parked in the yard and nothing stirred in the weedy backyard. Dale wasn't so much afraid of the justice of the peace-although the old fart had scared him well enough yesterday-but he was afraid of J.P's juvenile-delinquent son, C.J. Every kid in town was afraid of C.J.

C. J. Congden had finally dropped out of school the previous year-sixteen years old and still in eighth grade, who could blame him?-and most of the boys in Elm Haven felt like giving a victory party that day. Congden was like some cartoon stereotype of what a small-town bully should be: duck's-ass haircut, zits that looked like some sort of tropical disease was eating his sallow face, greasy t-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled up in the sleeve, tall, lean, but well-muscled with big, mean hands, grimy jeans slung so low that guys watching him walk half-expected his dick to pop out above the beltline, heavy engineer boots with metal taps that kicked up sparks on the cement as he scuffed along, a can of snuff in his back pocket and a folded knife in his front pocket… Dale once remarked to Kevin that C. J. Congden must have some Manual for Bullies that he referred to.

But Dale didn't make jokes about C. J. where they might be overheard or repeated. When the Stewarts had first moved to Elm Haven from Peoria four years earlier-Dale just entering third grade and Lawrence going into first-Dale had made the mistake of catching C.J."s attention. Congden was twelve years old and still a fifth grader then, but he roamed the small kids' playground like a shark among schools of rainbow fish.

After the second schoolyard beating, Dale had gone to his dad for help. His dad told him that all bullies were cowards, that if you stood up to them, they backed down. The next day, Dale stood up to C.J.

Dale had lost two of his baby teeth that day and had several of the permanent ones loosened. His nose bled on and off for three days, and he still carried the scar on his hip where C.J. had kicked him after he'd fallen down and curled up. Dale hadn't felt quite the same about his father's advice since that week.