Summer of Night (26 page)

Duane nodded. "I'd better get to my chores," he said, finishing his coffee and setting the cup on the counter. He was out in the barn, feed bucket in his hand, before he allowed himself to smile.

The surprise attack was a complete success.

Although the last thirty feet or so had been pretty hairy-crawling up the dirt slope on their bellies with absolutely no cover if McKown or Daysinger looked over their ramparts-Mike and Kev and Lawrence and Dale had made it, despite a muffled case of nervous giggles on Lawrence's part, and when they came over the top, they caught Gerry and Bob staring the other way with the ammo dump of dirt clods piled six feet behind them.

Mike threw first and caught Bob McKown in the back, just above the beltline. Then the six boys were in close combat, pelting each other with clods, trying to shield their faces while throwing, then grappling and wrestling around the lip of the cone-shaped hill. Kevin and Daysinger and Dale had tumbled over first, sliding down thirty feet of crumbling slope. Kevin got up first and ran for the ramparts and the ammo, but McKown pelted him with clods until Mike tackled the shorter boy from behind and it was their turn to roll down the slope in a cloud of dust.

For fifteen minutes or so it was King of the Hill, with the holders of the high ground being wrestled down the hill and then scrambling to reclaim it, usually in a hail of clods. After being deposed, Daysinger and McKown retreated to the edge of the quarry pond, throwing from long distance, but the King of the Hill fever caused internecine warfare to break out among Mike's troop, and pretty soon it was every man for himself.

Dale took a clod hit in the solar plexus that had him sitting and gasping for three minutes, the action whirling obliviously around him. Then Mike hit a half-buried rock during a tumble down the slope and cut his brow; the cut wasn't deep, but the amount of blood was impressive. Daysinger poked his head over the summit just long enough to catch a clod in the mouth at short range. He retreated, cursing loudly, to the bottom of the hill and walked around with both hands over his mouth for a minute or two until he was sure he hadn't lost any teeth. Then he brushed dirt off his cut lower lip and charged again, his chin mottled with mud and blood. Kevin was right behind his former leader when Mike wound up to throw a clod, and Kev got a fist right in the forehead. Action paused for a moment as the other boys on the summit watched curiously, but Grumbacher used the event to comic effect as he crossed his eyes, staggered in ever-smaller circles until his legs buckled, and slid backwards down the slope, legs as stiff as a corpse's. The other kids laughed and applauded by pelting him with clods.

It was Lawrence who refined the game to its essence.

For one blazing, ascendant minute, he was the only one on the summit as the wrestling clumps of older boys all found themselves deposed. Lawrence stood on the mounded rampart, held his arms high over his head, and shouted, "I'm King!"

There was a moment of respectful silence followed by three salvos of clods. At least six or seven hit home. Lawrence had turned his face away at the last second, but his grimy clothes actually puffed dust as he was hit, the impact stitching across his back and legs like machine-gun rounds, knocking the eight-year-old's baseball cap flying.

"Hey!" shouted Dale, waving the others to a cease-fire. Lawrence was frozen in the posture he'd been hit in, and Dale knew that if he started crying he was really hurt.

Lawrence pirouetted slowly, gracefully, dust still rising on him and around him from the impact of clods, and then he fell forward.

Actually he didn't fall forward; he threw himself into the air with the dying-swan grace of a cowboy stuntman, completed a full loop in the air before hitting the slope, and then jackknifed upward again in another dying tumble. His limbs were flung wide, boneless, limp with death. The other kids stepped back as the flying, tumbling body bounced by them, rolled out onto the flat by the edge of the pond, and came to a stop with one arm draped over the water.

"Wow," said Kevin. The others shouted their approval. Lawrence got up, brushed dust from his clothes and crew cut, and gave a low bow.

From that point on and for the next couple of hours, as afternoon softened into evening in the woods, the boys died. They took turns standing on the summit while the others threw clods. After being hit, the dying commenced.

Kevin's was undeniably comic, if stiffly so. He was like a geriatric actor who had to lie down after being shot. Usually he held his cap in place as he slid down. Day singer and McKown were the best screamers, tumbling to their doom with a maximum of groans, shouts, and grunts. Mike was oddly graceful as he fell, and held the pose the longest at the bottom. Even a second flurry of clods couldn't make him stir until he wanted to. Dale won approval by performing the first facefirst death dive, losing skin off his nose as he plowed a path with his head down the steep slope.

But it was Lawrence who retained the crown. His final coup de grace consisted of staggering backwards out of sight for half a minute-the other five began grumbling, wondering where the brat was-until suddenly he came over the summit not running, but leaping at full speed. Dale actually gasped, feeling his heart leap into his throat as his little brother jumped straight out into space thirty feet above him. His first thought was, Jesus, he's gonna die. His immediate second thought was, Mom's going to kill me.

Lawrence didn't die. Not quite. The leap was wild end strong and far enough to carry him into the quarry pond-he missed the hard-packed ledge by three inches-and the resulting splash threw water on McKown and Kevin.

This end of the pond was the shallowest-barely five feet at this point-and Dale had images of his kid brother drowning with his pointy little head stuck in the mud at the bottom. Dale tugged off his t-shirt with some thought of leaping in to save him, part of his mind already gagging at the thought of giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the little creep, when Lawrence bobbed to the surface, showing his overbite in a wide grin.

–This time the applause was real.

Everyone had to try what Kev called The Death Leap. When Dale executed it he did so after three false starts and only because there was no turning back with the others watching from below. The pond was so far away. Even with a sixth grader's long legs, it took a hell of a fast run up the back slope and across the summit and just the right push off the rampart to have a chance of clearing the hard bank below. Dale would never have tried it-none of the other older kids would have-if they hadn't seen it was possible. Dale found a grudging admiration for his kid brother growing in the back of his mind even as he surprised himself by actually leaping on the fourth try.

For a few seconds Dale Stewart was flying, seeming to hover twenty-five feet above his friends' heads, still even with the summit of their little mountain, the pond an impossible distance away across muddy flats baked brick-hard by the sun. Then gravity remembered him and he was falling, arms and legs flailing as if he were trying to pedal air… sure that he would make it… then absolutely positive that he would not make it… and then he had made it, by inches, and the green and tepid water of the quarry pond was around him and over him and filling his nose; he used bent legs to push himself off the weedy bottom, and then he was in air and light again, screaming from sheer exhilaration while the other kids shouted and applauded.

Kevin was the last to go-keeping the others waiting for ten minutes while he hemmed and hawed and tested the wind, tied his laces over and over, and built up the ramp a bit before finally shooting off the summit like a cannonball, his jump the farthest of them all, hitting the water four feet from the bank with his legs together and his fingers clamped over his nostrils. Kev had been the only one with sense enough to take off his jeans and t-shirt, wearing only his Jockey shorts and tennis shoes for the plunge.

He bobbed to the surface grinning. The others applauded and shouted and tossed his jeans and shirt and socks into the pond. Kevin emerged grumbling in German and barely watched as Lawrence made his sixth leap, doing a full somersault this time before hitting the water.

Already wet, the kids hiked around the quarry on squishy tennis shoes and went swimming in earnest, diving into the deeper side of the pond from the eight-foot cliffs there. This wasn't their usual swimming area-the presence of too many water moccasins and parental concerns about the 'bottomless quarry' usually made them wait for someone to drive them to Hartley's Pond up Oak Hill Road-so the early-evening dip was just that much more delicious.

Afterwards, they dried out on the bank for an hour or so-Dale actually dozing off and waking with a start-and then they shuffled teams to play hide-and-seek in the woods again. Mike smiled at the pack of kids with their clothes dried into strange wrinkles. "Who's with me?"

It turned out Lawrence and McKown were with him. Dale and Gerry and Kev gave them a five-minute head start-timed by counting to three-hundred Boy Scout-before heading into the woods to find them. Dale knew by silent assent that Mike or Lawrence wouldn't use one of their secret camps.

They chased each other through the trees and pastures for another hour and a half or so, changing teams as the mood suited them, pausing to drink from the water bottle McKown had brought along and refilled from the pond-although the greenish color didn't appeal to Kevin-and ending by just hiking together, wandering back on the south side of the quarry on the first half mile of Gypsy Lane.

Their bikes were where they'd left them by the back fence. The sun was a bulbous red orb hanging just above Old Man Johnson's cornfields to the west. The air was thick with evening haze, pollen, dust, and humidity, but somehow the sky looked endless and translucent as the blue prepared to deepen toward twilight.

"Last one past the Black Tree's a homo," said Gerry Daysinger and got a head start, pedaling on the hard-packed rut of the gravel road as it dipped into the shaded dimness at the bottom of the hill.

The others shouted and tried to catch up, roaring down the hill and through the darkness there at high speed, feeling the cooler air above the creek as it whipped through their crew cuts, then standing and pedaling hard to get up the slope. If a car had come over the rise by the Black Tree Tavern, the boys would have had to steer into the deeper gravel outside the ruts, making skinned knees and torn clothing a near certainty. They didn't care. They drove hard, their shouts dying as they saved their breath for the final twenty yards, all of them panting and gasping as they reached the flat near the tavern driveway.

Mike won. He glanced back and grinned before he put his head down and continued the race toward Jubilee College Road several hundred yards ahead.

They relaxed as they turned west toward Elm Haven, the six riding abreast in two groups of three, Lawrence being the first to take his hands off the handlebars and lean back with arms folded, still pedaling. Then all six of them rode with arms folded, gliding along between the rising walls of corn.

Dale didn't even glance sideways as he passed the place where the fence had been repaired after Duane McBride's near-accident. Wheel tracks still tore up the ditch there and the corn was smashed for yards beyond the fence, but Dale didn't look-he was looking west toward where the sun now crowned the low line of trees that was Elm Haven.

Dale was tired, achey from about a dozen bruises and strained muscles, scratched on his arms and legs, itchy from his now-stiff jeans, dehydrated to the point of cracked lips and a headache, and starved because he hadn't eaten any real food since breakfast thirteen hours earlier. He felt wonderful.

The whole sense of bad dreams, and encroaching darkness he'd felt since school had let out had seemed to lift today. The terror of C.J. and the rifle had faded. Dale was glad that he and Mike and the others had silently decided to drop all this Tubby and Old Central business.

Summer felt the way it should.

The six kids grabbed the handlebars as they came off the gravel onto the cooling but still-soft asphalt at the head of First Avenue. Dale could see the trees in front of Mike's house at the intersection way down the road, could glimpse the back of his own house across the wide fields and ballfield of City Park.

McKown and Daysinger waved and pedaled ahead, eager to get to wherever they were going. Dale and Kev and Mike and Lawrence coasted the last fifty yards to the relative darkness under the first of Elm Haven's tall old trees.

Dale felt happy as they waved good-bye to Mike and pedaled easily down Depot Street for home. This was the way summer should be. This was the way it was going to be.

Dale had never been so wrong.

FOURTEEN

Duane's Old Man was sober for the rest of the week. It wasn't exactly a record, but it made Duane's first full week of summer vacation a lot happier.

On Thursday, the ninth of June and the day after the trip to Bradley U's library, Uncle Art had called and left the message that he was hunting for Duane's bell, don't worry, he'd find out something about it. Later that evening he called back and spoke to Duane in person, telling him that he'd called Elm Haven's mayor-Ross Catton-but neither the mayor nor anyone else Art had contacted remembered anything about a bell. He'd even asked Miss Moon, the librarian, who'd asked her mother and then called back. Miss Moon said that her mother would only shake her head no, but had grown very agitated at the question. Of course, she added, a lot of things made her mother agitated these days.

That same evening, the Old Man came home from a run into the AP-Duane had been holding his breath to see if the AP was the real destination-but the Old Man came in sober, and while they were storing the flour and canned goods, he said, "Oh, I heard from Mrs. O'Rourke that one of your classmates got arrested yesterday."

Duane stopped in mid-motion, a heavy can of lima beans in his right hand. With his free hand he pushed his glasses up. "Oh?"

The Old Man nodded, licking his lips and scratching at his cheek the way he tended to do when he was sober and hurting a bit. "Yes, someone named Cordie. Mrs. O'Rourke said that she was a year ahead of her son Mike.” He looked up at Duane. "That puts her in your class, right?"

Duane nodded.

"Anyway," continued the Old Man,"she wasn't exactly arrested. Barney caught her walking around town with a loaded shotgun. He took it away from her and brought her home. She wouldn't say what she was doing except it had something to do with her brother Tubby." He scratched his cheek and seemed surprised to find that he'd shaved that day. "Isn't Tubby the kid who ran away a couple of weeks ago?"

"Yeah." Duane resumed unloading the box of canned goods.

"Have any idea why his sister's stalking around town with a shotgun?"

Duane paused again. "Who was she stalking?"

The Old Man shrugged. "Nellie O'Rourke said that the principal… whatshisname… Mr. Roon called Barney with a complaint. Said that the little girl was hanging around the school and outside his rented room with a gun. Now why would a kid do that?"

Duane nodded. Realizing that the Old Man was curious and obviously determined to stand there staring until he heard some comment from his son, Duane finished setting the cans on the cupboard shelves, turned from where he was standing on a chair near the counter, and said, "Cordie's all right, but she's a little crazy."

The Old Man stood there a minute, nodded as if accepting the answer, and went into his workroom.

On Friday, Duane hiked back to Oak Hill, leaving right at sunrise so that he could get home by midmorning. He wanted to check the books and newspapers there against the notes he'd taken at Bradley, but there was nothing new. The New York Times article about the 1876 party for the bell was interesting… external proof that the thing really existed outside of Elm Haven… but he couldn't find any other references to it. He tried getting the Ashley-Montagues' phone number from the librarian there-, saying that he couldn't finish his school paper without seeing the Historical Society books that had been willed to the family, but Mrs. Frazier said that she had no idea of what their number was-rich families were always unlisted, which Duane had found out was the truth at least with this rich family-and then she took a playful swat at Duane's head and said, "It's not healthy to be doing school things in the summer anyway. Now go on with you, get out in the sunlight, get into something cooler and go play. Honestly, your mother should still be dressing you… imagine, with the temperature in the nineties today." "Yes, ma'am," Duane had said, and adjusted his glasses and left. He was home in time to help the Old Man load four of the pigs and take them over to the Oak Hill market. Duane sighed as he watched the landscape of his four-hour hike repeated in ten minutes of driving. Next time, he'd check out the Old Man's schedule before heading off on foot.

On Saturday, the second Free Show of the summer featured Hercules, an older movie that Mr. Ashley-Montague obviously had held over from one of the three-feature Peoria drive-in bills. Duane rarely went to the Free Show for the same reason he and the Old Man owned a television set but never turned it on-primarily because they found books and radio shows more pleasing to the imagination than movies and TV shows.

But Duane liked Italian muscleman movies. There was something about the dubbing that he loved: the actors' mouths moving like mad for two minutes and then a few syllables coming from the soundtrack. Also, Duane had read some where that one old guy in a Rome studio did all of the sound effects for these films-footsteps, sword fights, horses' hooves, volcanoes erupting, everything-and that idea delighted him.

But that wasn't the reason he found himself walking into town on Saturday evening. Duane wanted to talk to Mr. Ashley-Montague, and this was the only place he knew he could catch him.

Duane would have asked his father for a ride, but the Old Man had started tinkering with one of his learning machines after dinner, and Duane didn't want to tempt the Fates by suggesting a ride into town past Carl's Tavern.

The Old Man didn't glance up from his soldering when Duane told him where he was going. "Fine," he said, his face obscured by the wraiths of smoke rising from the circuit board,"but don't be walking home after dark."

"OK," said Duane, wondering how the Old Man thought he was going to get home.

It turned out he didn't have to walk the entire way. He'd just passed Dale Stewart's Uncle Henry's house when a pickup pulled out of the drive carrying both Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena.

"Where you goin', boy?" Uncle Henry knew Duane's name but called every male under forty 'boy."

"Into town, sir."

"Goin' to the Free Show?"

"Yessir."

"Hop in, boy."

Aunt Lena held open the door of the old International truck while Duane clambered in. It was a tight fit.

"I'll be happy to ride in back," offered Duane, aware that he was taking up half of the upholstered bench.

"Nonsense," said Uncle Henry. "Makes it cozier. Hang on!" The truck began the roller-coaster dip of the first hill, rattling through the darkness at the bottom and climbing toward the summit of the Calvary Cemetery hill.

"Stay to the right, Henry," said Aunt Lena. Duane imagined that the old lady said that every time they had come this way-which is every time that they went to town or almost anywhere else-and how many times would that be over sixty years? A million?

Uncle Henry nodded attentively and stayed right where he was, in the middle of the road. He wasn't going to relinquish the ruts to anybody. It was lighter up here, although the sun had set twenty minutes earlier. The truck rattled more loudly on the washboard ruts near the top and then roared into the darkness below the trees above Corpse Creek. Fireflies blinked against the blackness of the woods on either side. The weeds along the roadside were covered with a day's worth of dust and looked like some sort of albino mutations. Duane was glad that somebody had offered him a ride.

Heading toward the water tower, Duane glanced sideways at Henry and Lena Nyquist. They were in their mid-seventies-Duane knew that they were really Dale's great-uncle and aunt, related on Dale's mother's side-but everyone in Creve Coeur County called them Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena. They were an attractive couple, carrying as they did that Scandinavian dispensation from the worst of the ravaging effects of old age. Aunt Lena's hair was white, but full and long, and her face held a certain rosy-cheeked firmness amidst the wrinkles. Her eyes were very bright. Uncle Henry had lost some of his hair, but a shock still hung down over his forehead and added to an expression that could only be described as that of a mischievous boy who suspects that he might soon be caught by the authorities. Duane knew from his father that Uncle Henry was an old-style gentleman who, nonetheless, liked to swap bawdy stories over a beer.

"Isn't that there where you almost got run over?" said Uncle Henry, gesturing toward a patch of field where the scars were still visible.

"Yessir," said Duane.

"Keep both hands on the wheel, Henry," said Aunt Lena.

"They caught the fellow who done it?"

Duane took a breath. "No, sir."

Uncle Henry snorted. "I'd lay five to one odds that it was that no-good Karl Van Syke. Son of a…" The old man caught his wife's admonitory glance. "Son of a gun never was worth hiring for anything, much less as school custodian and caretaker out to the cemetery. Why, we can see over there through the winter and much of the spring, and that… that fellow Van Syke isn'i never there. The place would go to weed and ruin if it wasn't for the helpers who come out from St. Malachy's every month."

Duane nodded, not wanting to say anything.

"Hush, Henry," Aunt Lena said softly. "Young Duane doesn't want to hear your blather about Mr. Van Syke." She turned toward Duane and touched his cheek with her rough, wrinkled hand. "We were sorry to hear about your dog, Duane. I remember helping your daddy choose him from "Vira Whittaker's dog's litter before you were born. The puppy was a gift for your mother."

Duane nodded and looked away toward the city ballpark passing on their right, studying it earnestly, as if he had never seen it before.

Main Street was crowded. Cars were already slanting in on the diagonal parking, families moving toward Bandstand Park with their hampers and blankets. A group of men sat on the high curb outside of Carl's, holding bottles of Pabst in their reddened hands and talking loudly. Uncle Henry had to park all the way down by the AP because of the crowd. The old man grumbled that he hated sitting on the folding chairs they'd brought along; he preferred staying in the truck and pretending it was a drive-in.

Duane thanked them and hurried toward the park. It was already too late to get much time alone with Mr. Ashley-Montague before the movie started, but he wanted to catch him for at least a minute.

Dale and Lawrence hadn't planned on going to the Free Show, but their father was home-he'd taken the Saturday off, which was a rarity-Gunsmoke and all the evening shows were reruns, and both parents wanted to go to the movies. They brought a blanket and a big bag of popcorn and walked downtown through the soft twilight. Dale noticed a few bats flitting above the trees, but they were only bats; the previous week's fright seemed a bad and distant dream.

There was a larger than usual crowd at the show. The grassy areas east of the bandstand and right in front of the screen were almost filled with blankets, so Lawrence ran ahead to claim a place near an old oak. Dale looked for Mike but remembered that he was watching his grandmother tonight, as he did most Saturdays. Kevin and his folks never came to the Free Show: they had a color television, one of only two in town. Chuck Sperling's family had the other one.

It was in that hush after real darkness had fallen and before the first cartoon began that Dale saw Duane McBride climbing the steps to the bandstand. Dale muttered something to his folks and ran across the park, jumping over extended legs and at least one teenage couple sprawled full length on their blanket. Leaping to the top step of the bandstand, which was usually reserved just for Mr. Ashley-Montague and whoever he brought along to act as projectionist, Dale started to say hello to Duane but saw that the bigger boy was talking to the millionaire by the projector. Dale leaned against the railing, said nothing, and listened.

"… and what use would you have for such a book… if it existed," Mr. Ashley-Montague was saying. Next to him, a young man in a bow tie had finished plugging in the extension speakers and was threading the short reel of the cartoon. Duane was a broad silhouette next to the town's benefactor.

"As I said, I'm doing a paper on the history of Old Central School."

Mr. Ashley-Montague said, "School is out for the summer, son," and turned toward his assistant. He nodded and the screen on the side of Parkside Cafe leaped alight. The crowd on the lawn and in their trucks and cars shouted the countdown as the leader flicked down from ten to one. A Tom and Jerry cartoon began. The assistant focused the picture and adjusted the sound level.

"Please, sir," said Duane McBride, taking a step closer to the millionaire. "I promise I'll return the books safely. I just need them to complete my research.”

Mr. Ashley-Montague sat on the lawn chair his assistant had set out for him. Dale had never been this close to the man before; he'd always thought of Mr. A.-M. as a young man, but in the light from the side of the projector and reflected from the screen, he could see that the millionaire was at least forty years old. Maybe older. His bow tie and sort of prissy way of dressing made him look older. Tonight he was wearing some kind of white linen suit that almost glowed in the dusk.

"Research," chuckled Mr. Ashley-Montague. "How old are you, son? Fourteen?"

"Twelve in three weeks," said Duane. Dale hadn't known that his friend's birthday was in July.

"Twelve," said Mr. Ashley-Montague. "Twelve-year-olds do not do research, my friend. Look up whatever you need for your school report in the library."

"I've used the library, sir," said Duane. Despite the use of 'sir," Dale could hear no real deference in Duane's voice. It was as if one adult were talking to another. "It didn't have the necessary data. The Oak Hill librarian said that the rest of the county Historical Society materials had been willed to you. It would seem to me that the Historical Society documents are still for public use… and all I ask is a few hours to look over the material that relates to Old Central."