Summer of Night (19 page)

"Where's your mother now, Jim?"

"She went across the square to get lunch and call her boss." Harlen spoke slowly, as if each word hurt.

"You OK, then?" Duane asked again.

"Yeah, I think so. This morning there were a bunch of doctors in here, shining lights in my eyes and making me count to fifty and everything. They even asked me if I could tell 'em who I was."

"Could you?"

“ Sure. I said I was Dwight Goddamn Eisenhower.” Harlen smiled through the pain.

Duane nodded. He didn't have much time. "Jim, do you remember how you got hurt? What happened?"

Harlen stared up at him for a very long moment, and Duane noticed how wide the pupils of the boy's eyes were. Harlen's lips were trembling now as if he were trying to keep the smile in place. "No," he said at last.

"You can't remember being at Old Central?"

Harlen closed his eyes and his voice was almost a whine. "I don't remember friggin' anything," he said. "At least anything after our stupid half-assed meeting out at the Cave."

"The cave," repeated Duane. "You mean Saturday at the culvert."

"Yeah."

"Do you remember Saturday afternoon? After the Cave?"

Harlen's eyes flickered open and there was anger there. "I just said I didn't, fatso."

Duane nodded. "You were in the dumpster at Old Central when they found you on Sunday morning…"

"Yeah, Mom told me. She started cryin' when she told me, like it was her fault."

"But you don't know how you got there?" Duane heard the intercom paging some doctor in the hall outside.

"Uh-uh. I don't remember anything about Saturday night. For all I know, you and O'Rourke and a bunch of other shits dragged me out of bed, hit me with a board, and dumped me there."

Duane looked at the massive cast on Harlen's arm. "Kevin's mom says that your mom says that your bike was up on Broad Avenue, near Old Double-Butt's house."

"Yeah? She didn't tell me that." Harlen's voice sounded flat, listless, and devoid of curiosity.

Duane ran his fingers along the soft border of the blanket. "Do you think you might've left it there because you were following Mrs. Doubbet somewhere? To the school?"

Harlen raised his left hand to cover his eyes again. His fingernails had been chewed to the quick. "Look, McBride, I said I didn't goddamn know. So leave me alone, OK? You're not even supposed to be in here, are you?"

Duane patted Harlen's shoulder through the crinkly hospital gown. "We all wanted to know how you were," he said. "Mike and Dale and the other guys want to come see you when you feel better."

"Yeah, yeah." Harlen's voice was muffled with the palm of his hand over his lower face. His fingers tapped at the bandages.

"They'll be glad to hear you're OK." Duane glanced toward the hall, where there were more footsteps: hospital people coming back on duty after lunch maybe. "Anything we can bring you?"

"Michelle Staffney naked," said Harlen, his hand still over his face.

"Right," said Duane and moved to the door. The hall was empty for the moment. "We'll catch you later, Fried P'tater." That phrase had been a big deal among the boys when they were all in fourth grade.

Harlen sighed. "McBride?"

"Yeah."

"You can do one thing." The intercom squawked on in the hall. Outside the window, someone fired up a lawnmower. Duane waited. "Turn on the light," said Harlen. "Would you?"

Duane squinted in the bright sunlight already filling the room, but he switched on the light. The additional brightness wasn't noticeable in the glare.

"Thanks," said Harlen.

"Can you see all right, Jim?" Duane's voice was soft.

"Yeah. I can see." Harlen lowered his hand and stared at Duane with an unreadable expression. "It's just that… well… if I go back to sleep, I don't want to wake up in the dark.

You know?"

Duane nodded, waited a moment, thought of nothing else to say, waved toward Harlen, and slipped out, heading for the side exit.

Dale Stewart stared down the rifle barrel at C. J. Congden's pimply face and thought, Jesus, I'm going to die. It was a new idea and it seemed to freeze the scene around him into a single block of impressions: Congden, Archie Kreck, the sunshine warm on Dale's face, the shadowed leaves and blue sky above and behind C. J., the heat reflected from the cinders and rails, the blue steel of the rifle barrel and the slight but somehow giddy ing scent of oil that rose from the weapon-all this combined to seal the moment in time as surely as Mike's block of amber had captured a spider from a million years ago.

"I asked you a fucking question, you stupid fuckface," rasped C. J.

Dale seemed to hear Congden's voice from very, very far away. His pulse was still pounding loudly in his ears. Although it took most of his concentration just to avoid surrendering to the dizziness that was assailing him, Dale managed an answer. "Huh?"

Congden sneered. "I said, what the fuck are you smiling at?" He raised the stock of the rifle to his shoulder, never allowing the barrel to lose contact with the base of Dale's throat.

"I'm not smiling." Dale heard the quaver in his own voice and realized that he should be ashamed of it, but it was a distant thing. His heart seemed to be trying to tear itself out of his chest. The earth felt like it was tilting slightly, so Dale had to concentrate on keeping his balance.

"The fuck you ain't!" shouted Archie Kreck. The second-string bully's face was turned slightly in profile and Dale could see that his glass eye was slightly larger than his real one.

"Shut up," C. J. said absently. He raised the barrel so that the pressure left Dale's throat-he could feel the pain now from where the muzzle had pressed and knew there was a red ring there-and aimed it directly at the younger boy's face. "You're still grinnin', fuckface. How'd you like it if I blew a hole in that stupid grin?"

Dale shook his head, but he couldn't stop grinning. He could feel the smile, a rictus he could not control. His right leg was shaking visibly now and his bladder felt very full. He concentrated on keeping his balance and not wetting his pants.

The muzzle of the rifle was ten inches in front of his face. Dale could not believe how large it was. The black opening seemed to fill the sky and dim the sunlight; Dale recognized it as a.22 caliber rifle, the kind one broke at the breech to load a single cartridge at a time-good for shooting rats at the dump, which is where these two rats probably had been headed-and his imagination allowed him to see the.22 shell at the base of that barrel, awaiting only the drop of the hammer to send the lead slug through Dale's teeth and tongue, the roof of his mouth, his brains. He tried to remember what damage a.22 slug would do to an animal's brains, but all he could remember from his dad's teaching during preparation for their hunting together was that a.22-long could travel a mile.

Dale fought back the urge to ask C. J. if the rifle was loaded with a.22-long cartridge.

"Wouldja like that, fuckhead?" C. J. asked again, sighting down the barrel as if to pick exactly which tooth he would fire through.

Dale shook his head again. His arms were at his side and he thought it might be a good idea to raise them, but they didn't seem to want to move.

"Shoot him! Shoot him, C. J.!" Archie's voice was cracking with either excitement or puberty or both. "Kill the little fucker."

"Shut up," said Congden. He squinted at Dale. "You're that Stewart fuck, aren't you?"

Dale nodded. His fear of C. J. over the years and his anger and frustration after the beatings had put him in such an intimate relationship with the bully that the thought of Congden not knowing his name seemed incredible.

C. J. squinted at him again. "You gonna tell me what the fuck you were doin' spying on us an' grinning at us, or you want me to pull this trigger?"

The question was too complicated for Dale at this moment and he shook his head again. It seemed that the most important part to respond to was the question about whether he wanted the trigger pulled. He did not.

"OK, then, fuckface, you called it," said C. J., evidently taking Dale's gesture as a refusal to talk. He pulled the hammer back on the single-shot rifle with an audible click and lowered his cheek to the stock.

Dale's breathing simply stopped. His chest was frozen. He wanted to raise his hands in front of his face, but he saw the image of the bullet passing through his palms before smashing into his mouth. Dale realized for the first time what death was: it was not walking any farther on the railroad tracks, not eating dinner tonight or seeing his mom or watching Sea Hunt on TV. It wasn't even being allowed to mow the lawn next Saturday or help his dad rake the leaves come fall.

It was having no choice at all except lying dead here on the cinders beside the railroad track, letting the birds pluck your eyes like berries and the ants stroll across your tongue. It was no choices, no decisions, no future at all. It was like being grounded for all eternity.

"Bye-bye," said Congden.

"You pull it, I'll blow your fuckin' melon to bits," came a voice from behind Dale.

Congden and Archie jumped as if someone had startled them in a dark room. C. J. glanced to his left but didn't lower the rifle.

Still not breathing, Dale found that he could move his head a little bit to the right to see who was there.

Cordie Cooke had come out of the woods and was standing with one foot still in weeds and the other on the cinders of the railbed. The double-barreled shotgun was raised, stock firmly against her small shoulder, and both barrels were aimed at C. J. Congden.

"Cooke, you little cunt…" began Archie Kreck in his high, broken voice.

"Shut up," said C. J. The bigger boy's voice was calm enough. "What do you think you're doing, Cordie?"

"I'm aimin' my daddy's twelve-gauge at your zitty face, moron." Cordie's voice was as thin and scratchy as ever-skinny chalk on old slate-but it was absolutely steady.

"Put the gun down, stupid," said C.J. "This doesn't have nothing to do with you."

"You put yours down," said Cordie. "Lay it on down and walk away your ownself.”

C. J. glanced at her again as if judging how long it would take to swing the barrel in her direction. At that second, grateful to Cordie as he was for the intervention, Dale fervently hoped C. J. would aim it at her. Anything was better than having that muzzle aimed at your own face.

"What's it to you if I shoot this little fuck?" C. J. asked in a conversational tone. The muzzle was still ten inches in front of Dale.

"Put it on down, Congden." Cordie's voice sounded much as it did in class to Dale, on those rare occasions when she spoke: soft, out of it, vaguely bored. "Lay it on down and back away. You can come get it again when I'm gone. I ain't gonna touch it."

"I'm gonna shoot him and then shoot you, you little cunt," snapped C. J. He was angry now. The pustules and rivulets of acne on his skinny face grew livid, then red again.

"It's a single-shot Remington, Congden," said Cordie.

Dale glanced at her again. Her finger was curled around both triggers of the ancient shotgun. The thing looked huge and heavy, the barrels tinged with what might have been rust, the wood stock splintered with age. But Dale had no doubt but that it was loaded. He wondered idly if the spread pattern of the buckshot would hit him when it took C. J."s head off.

"Then I'll shoot you first," snarled C. J. But he didn't swing the barrel in her direction.

Dale saw the muscles tensing in the punk's bare upper arms, and he realized that Congden was as frozen with fear as he was.

"Get her, Archie," commanded C. J.

Kreck hesitated, his head swiveling as he used his good eye to take in the situation, and then he nodded, reached into his droopy jeans to pull out a knife, clicked the five-inch blade open, and began to shuffle across the rails toward Cordie.

"He comes across the second rail, you're dog food," she said to Congden.

"StopV shouted C. J. It was a general command, almost a scream, but Archie was the one who stopped. He looked to his leader for further directions.

"Back off, goddamn you to hell you stupid fuck," C. J. said to his best friend.

Archie backed off to the far side of the first rail. Dale realized that he was breathing again. Time was moving again-slower than usual, but definitely moving-and he wondered what he should do. He'd watched about a million cowboy shows where Sugarfoot or Bronco Lane or somebody had a gun on them, sort of like this, and they wrestled it away from the bad guy. It'd be easy enough to do: the barrel was still ten inches from Dale's face and all Congden's attention was on Cordie now. All he had to do was grab it and twist. Dale realized that he could more easily walk on air than make a move at this moment.

"Come on," said Cordie in her tired monotone. "Make up your stupid mind, Congden. My finger's getting tired." The muscles on C. J."s cheek spasmed. Dale could see sweat dripping from the bully's nose and chin.

" "You know I'll get your ass, don't you, Cordie? You know I'll lay for you and do somethin' real bad, don't you? Ain't no getting away with this, you know."