Summer of Night (54 page)
"You were out by Gypsy Lane," whispered Mike. He was thinking It's weird that the kids then knew about Gypsy Lane.
"Oh, yeah. Well, the young lady friend I was with didn't care none for what I had in mind-goddamned if I know why she thought I'd got her out there, sure as hell wasn't to smell the gladiolas… but she left in a huff to find her friend… we was supposed to be havin' a picnic as I remember… and I was sorta pullin' up grass and throwin' sod at a tree, you know how it is when your John Henry's all worked up an' don't have nothin' to do with it… an' I pulled this hunk a grass outa the ground and there was a bone-goddamned white bone-rather'n a root. Bunch a goddamn bones. Human bones, too… including a little skull about Merri-weather's size. Damn thing'd been caved in an' sort a hollered out, like someone was scoopin' brains out of it for a dessert, sorta."
Mink took a final drink and flung the bottle across the dark space. He rubbed his cheeks as if he'd lost track of his story again. When he spoke it was in lower tones, in an almost confidential manner. "Sheriff told me it was cow bones… shee-it, as if I didn't know the difference between cow bones and human bones… he tried to pretend I hadn't seen me the skull and such my ownself… but I did, an' I know that that ol' part of Gypsy Lane ran through the back of Old Man Lewis's spread. Wouldna been hard for someone to take Merriweather out there, do whatever they done to him, and then bury his bones in a shallow grave there.
"More'n that… more'n Merriweather's goddamn bones… a few years after that, I was drinkin' with Billy Phillips before he went off to the war…"
"William Campbell Phillips?" said Mike.
Mink Harper blinked at him. "Sure, William Campbell Phillips… who'd'ya think Billy Phillips was? Cousin to the little Campbell girl who got herself killed. Billy was always a whinin' little toad… always moppin' his runny nose and figurin' out a way to get out of work or runnin' to his mommy when he got in trouble… I can tell you I almost dropped my teeth when he up and enlisted during the war… Where was I, boy?"
"You were drinking with Billy Phillips." "Oh, yeah, me and Billy was liftin' a few right before he went overseas durin' the Great War. Normally, Billy wouldn't drink with us workin' types… he was a teacher…just taught those snot-nosed little kids down to the school, but to hear Billy tell he was a Harvard professor… anyway, him and me was in the Black Tree one night, him in his uniform an' all, and after a few drinks, snotty Billy Phillips got almost human on me. Started talkin' about what a bitch his ma was and how she'd kept him from havin' any fun… how she sent him away to college an' all rather'n let him marry the woman he loved…"
Mike interrupted. "Did he say who that woman was?" Mink squinted and licked his lips. "Huh? No… I don't think… no, I'm sure he didn't name nobody… probably one of them schoolmarm types he hung around with. One little old lady 'mongst a bunch of 'em's the way we thought about Billy Phillips. Where was I?"
"Having a drink with Billy… he got human…" "OK, yeah. Me an' Billy was hoistin' a few on the night before he was to go over to France where he got killed… died of pneumonia or some damn thing… and after he got sort of loose, he says to me, "Mink…," they called me Mink way back then, "Mink, you know that little girl an' her petticoat an' the alleged crime an' all?" Billy was always usin' fifty-cent words like 'alleged," probably thinkin' that everybody in Elm Haven was too stupid to understand him…"
"And what did he say about the petticoat?" prompted Mike.
"Heh? Oh, he says, "Mink, it wasn't that nigger's petticoat at all. I never went nowhere near that nigger. It was Judge Ashley who paid me a silver dollar to hide that petticoat in the nigger's bedroll." You see, the way Billy'd figured it when he was just a little snot, was that the Judge knew who'd done it, and needed Billy's help to get him,"cause they just didn't have no evidence an' all. But I guess when Billy got older, after goin' off to college to get smart an' all, he musta figured what the dumbest Polack in town could figure out… which is, namely, where in hell did the Judge get that little girl's underclothes?"
Mike leaned closer. "Did you ask him that?"
"Hmmm? No, don't think I did. Or if I did, I don't remember no answer. What I do remember is Billy sayin' somethin' about gettin' out of town before the Judge an' the others knew he wasn't with 'em no more."
"With who?" whispered Mike.
"How the hell do I know, boy?" growled Mink Harper. He leaned closer, squinted, and breathed wine fumes on Mike. "This was more'n forty years ago, y' know. What'ya think I am, a damn memory machine?"
Mike looked over his shoulder at the entrance to the crawl-space under the bandstand, a small rectangle of escape that seemed very far away. The sound of smaller kids playing in the park had long since faded; there was no traffic.
"Can you remember anything else about Old Central or the bell?" asked Mike, not flinching away from Mink's inspection.
Face inches from Mike's, Mink showed his three teeth again. "Never seen or heard the bell again… not till last month when it woke me up from a deep sleep here in my dry little home… but I know one thing…"
"What's that?" Mike found it very hard not to lean back out of the range of Mink's breath and stare.
"I know that when Old Man Ashley stuck his two-barreled Boss shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger 'bout a year after the war was over… the First War, I mean… that he done us all a favor. Burned down his goddamn house, too. His boy came home from Peoria where the old man's new grandbaby was just born, and he found his pappy… the Judge that was… lyin' dead with his brains bio wed out. Everybody thinks it was either a accident or the ol' Judge who burned the place… wasn't… I happened to be out in the gardenin' shed with one of the servants when I seen the young Mr. Ashley's carriage comin'-he called himself Ashley-Montague after he married that fancy woman from Venice-yeah, I was in the gardenin' shed when we heard the shot and saw Mr. Ashley-Montague go in, then come out bawlin' and shoutin' at the sky and spreadin' kerosene oil everywhere on the big house. One of the servants tried to stop him… there'd been more of 'em at the house but they'd been laid off during that recession after the war… but there was no stoppin' him. He threw that oil everywhere an' lit it up and stood back to watch it burn. They never come home after that, him and his bride and the baby. Jes' to show the goddamn Free Show, that's all."
Mike nodded, thanked Mink, and scrambled for the opening, suddenly eager to get back out into the sunlight. At the exit, his body out into the fresh air, Mike asked one more question. "Mink, what did he shout?"
"Whaddya mean, boy?" the old man seemed to have forgotten what they had been talking about.
"The Judge's son. When he burned the place down. What was he shouting?"
Mink's three teeth gleamed yellowly in the dimness. "Oh, he was shoutin' that they wasn't gonna get him… no, by God, they wasn't gonna get him."
Mike let out a breath. "I don't suppose he said who 'they' were?"
Mink frowned, pursed his lips in a parody of deep thought, and then grinned again. "Yeah, he did, now that I 'member it. Called the guy by name." "Guy?"
"Yeah… Cyrus, only pronounced like that flat cloud… cirrus. He kept saying "No, O'Cyrus, you ain't gonna get me." The way he said it, I thought maybe it was some Irishman's name. O'Cirrus."
"Thanks, Mink." Mike stood up, feeling his shirt plastered to his body, wiping a bead of perspiration from his nose. His hair was wet and his legs felt shaky for some reason. He found his bike, crossed the Hard Road, noticed how long the shadows were getting, and pedaled slowly up Broad under the canopy of arching branches. He was remembering Duane's notebooks and the slow translation he and Dale had done from the Gregg shorthand. The part where Duane had copied bits from his uncle's diary was especially tough. One word had sent them checking the squiggles and codes over and over again; Dale had recognized it from some book he'd read about Egypt: Osiris.
Dale, Lawrence, Kevin, and Harlen left on their camping trip after lunch the next day, Wednesday the thirteenth of July. Only Harlen's mother had been slow to give permission for the trip, but she relented, as Harlen put it,"when she realized she could go out on a date while I was gone."
They had a ton of stuff to carry and it was difficult piling it on their bikes and tying it down, properly. Once secured, the heaps of sleeping bags, food, gear, and backpacks weighed down their already heavy bicycles so they had to pedal standing up the entire way out to Uncle Henry's, leaning over the handlebars and grunting with exertion on the hard-packed ruts between the loose gravel on Jubilee College Road and County Six.
There were patches of timber-of a sort-along the railroad tracks northwest of town, but those woods were small and too near the dump for real camping. The real woods were a mile and a half away, east of Uncle Henry's farm and north of the Billy Goat Mountains quarry behind the cemetery. Near where Mink Harper had found the bones of Merriweather Whittaker along Gypsy Lane almost fifty years earlier.
The boys had met in Mike's treehouse for almost three hours on Tuesday night, comparing notes from their trips and making plans until the sound of Kev's mother's bellowing-'Ke-VINNN!"-had echoed down Depot Street and effectively adjourned the meeting.
The leatherbound book that Dale had stolen from Mr. Ashley-Montague-an act that not even he fully believed after he had returned to Elm Haven-was a mass of foreign phrases, arcane rituals, complicated explanations of unpronounceable deities or anti-deities, and a mess of cabalistic, numerological double-talk. "Hardly worth getting your ass thrown in jail for' had been Jim Harlen's verdict.
But somewhere in the tight print, Dale was sure, there would be mention of Osiris or the Stele of Revealing that Duane's notebooks had spoken of. Dale brought the book with him on the camping trip; just another bit of weight to lug over the hills.
All four of the boys had been tense on the ride out, looking over their shoulders as every truck approached and every car passed. But the Rendering Truck did not appear, and the most aggressive act aimed at them during the slow ride out to Uncle Henry's was a little kid-possibly a boy, but it was hard to tell through the matted hair and dirty face-sticking his tongue out at them from the backseat of an overloaded '53 DeSoto.
They rested on the shady back patio at Uncle Henry's while Aunt Lena made lemonade for them and sat in the Adirondack chair awhile, discussing the best places to camp. She thought the empty pasture would be good-there was a nice view of the creek and surrounding hills from it, but the boys were insistent about camping in the woods.
"Where is Michael O'Rourke?" she asked.
"Oh, he had work to do in town. Stuff at the church or something," lied Jim Harlen. "He'll come later."
The four boys hiked east out through the barnyard at about three o'clock, leaving their bikes in the safekeeping of Aunt Lena. Their backpacks were makeshift affairs: Lawrence's inexpensive Cub Scout pack made of nylon; Kev's canvas army pack that he borrowed from his dad, the whole thing smelling of mildew; Dale's long, clumsy duffel bag, more suited to a canoe trip than this long hike; and Harlen's bulky bedroll, little more than some blankets wrapped around his junk and secured with what looked to be about a hundred yards of rope and twine. There were many halts for small adjustments and reshiftings of load.
By three-thirty they had crossed the creek near the Bootleggers' Cave and had climbed the barbed-wire fence on the south end of Uncle Henry's property. The heavy woods started almost immediately. It was cooler there out of the direct sunlight, although the canopy of leaves was not so thick as to prevent dappled areas and even broad swatches of sun on the low grass.
They slid and tumbled down the steeper part of the slope to the ravine north of the cemetery, Harlen's bedroll giving away completely during that maneuver so that they spent another ten minutes picking up his stuff, and then they crossed the Robin Hood Log a few hundred yards from Camp Three and headed east again, following cattle trails up the hillsides and staying within the edge of trees when there was a small glade.
Occasionally they would stop, dump their stuff, and spread out the way Mike had taught them, moving into prearranged positions and waiting in the best silence they could manage for several long minutes. Except for one lone cow that 'wandered into their area of observation on the third try-and who seemed much more startled than they were when they jumped out to scare it away-there was no sign or sound of anyone except themselves. They shouldered packs, hitched up bags and bedrolls, and plodded off deeper into the woods.
They made quite a deal about arguing over where to camp, but in truth the site had been decided on the evening before. They set up the two small pup tents-one belonging to Kevin's dad, the other a relic from Dale's father's past-on the edge of a small copse of trees in a glade about five hundred yards north of the quarry and a quarter of a mile northeast of Calvary Cemetery. Gypsy Lane ran north to south about five hundred feet west of them.
The glade was on a gradual hillside, the grass in it a little lower than knee-high and already tanned to the color of wheat by the hot summer. Grasshoppers leaped aside as they moved purposely to set up the tents, hollow out the campfire site, and set stones in a fire ring. The heavier woods started about sixty feet to the west, a little less than twenty feet to the south and east. There was a tributary to the main creek just down the hill to the north.
Normally they would have played Robin Hood or hide-and-seek to fill up the hours until dinner, but this day they just lolled around the camp or lay talking along the edge of trees behind the camp. They tried lying in the tents and talking, but the sun-heated canvas was too much for them, and the lumpy old sleeping bags were not as soft as the grass outside.
Dale tried to read his stolen book. There was mention of Osiris, but although the text was in English-mostly-it might as well have been a foreign language for all Dale could understand. There was talk of the god commanding legions of the undead, of predictions and punishment, but none of it made real sense.
The sky between the leaves stayed blue; no sudden storm came up to drive them back to Uncle Henry's. It was the one thing they had not had an answer to when they were planning the trip-only retreat had seemed a sane thing to do. Visibility would be too poor in a storm, their hearing too compromised.
They ate early, first devouring all the snacks that they'd packed, then getting the fire started and cooking the hot dogs they'd brought along. Finding the right sticks to hold the weenies took awhile, whittling their points to sharpened perfection took a while longer. Every time Lawrence said something about looking forward to weenies, Harlen giggled.
"What is it?" asked Dale finally. "Share the joke."
Harlen started to explain, said something about Cordie Cooke, then shook his head. "Forget it."
It was still hot by seven p.m. and Lawrence wanted to head over to the quarry and jump in. The others vetoed it, reminding him patiently of the plan. Harlen wanted to cook marshmallows over the fire by seven-thirty, but the others insisted that they wait until dark. It was proper protocol. Kevin was antsy, ready to get into their sleeping bags by eight p.m., but the evening shadows had just covered the glade by then and there was still ample light to see by, even in the woods.
Twenty minutes after that, however, the low areas north of them grew cool and dark. Shortly after that, fireflies appeared in the dark areas between the trees, winking like distant flashes of silent gunfire. The chorus of bullfrogs from the quarry and tree frogs from the marshy area down the hill started up about then, filling the encroaching twilight with sound. The crickets and cicadas in the woods behind the boys were very loud.
By eight forty-five, the sky had paled, then darkened to the level that stars were visible and at some point it was difficult to tell the masses of dark leaves from the darkening sky. The woods grew black. The last sounds of traffic from County Six half a mile to the west ceased as the last workingmen had passed north toward home and the drinking men went past south on their way to the Black Tree or town. For a while, if they strained, the boys could hear the metallic flap of the lids on the automatic pig feeders at Uncle Henry's, but it was a small and distant sound which died away with the last of the light.
Finally it was dark. For all its summer gradualness, night seemed to have suddenly descended on and around them.
Dale fed small limbs to the fire. Embers rose into the night, drifting up and out of the glade toward the stars. The boys grew closer together, their faces lighted from below. They tried to sing but found they had no will to do so. Harlen suggested that they tell ghost stories and the others scowled him into silence.
The stream down the hill made soft swallowing sounds. There was a sense of things awakening in the dark woods to hunt, the thought of many eyes opening out there, vertical irises widening to let in what little starlight there was in order to find prey.
Beneath the insect chorus and distant rumble-croak of a hundred species of frogs, there came the imagined sound of predators moving on padded feet through the night, beginning their stalk for fresh meat.
The boys tugged on sweatshirts and old sweaters, threw more wood on the fire, and sat closer until their shoulders almost touched. The fire crackled and spat, transforming their faces into demonic masks, until soon the orange glow was the only light in their world.
Mike's main problem was staying awake. He'd been up much of the night before, sitting in the old chair in Memo's room with his bottle of holy water in one hand and the consecrated Host wrapped in a handkerchief in his other hand. His mother came in to check on Memo around three a.m. and shooed him upstairs, clucking at him for his silliness. Mike had left the Host on the windowsill. He'd checked on Father Cavanaugh after finishing his paper route; the priest was gone and Mrs. McCafferty was beside herself with worry. The doctors had decided to move Father C. to St. Francis Hospital in Peoria, but when the ambulance arrived on Tuesday evening, the priest was gone. Mrs. McCafferty swore to them that she had been working in the kitchen downstairs the entire time and would have heard him if he had come down the stairs… besides which, she swore, he was too ill to come down the stairs… but the doctors had shaken their heads and said that obviously the sick man did not fly away. While Mike and the other boys had been comparing notes in his treehouse and trying to decipher some of the cryptic book Dale had stolen from Mr. Ashley-Montague, there had been a search of the town by Mrs. McC. and several of the parishioners. No sign of Father Cavanaugh.
"I would swear on my rosary that the poor father was too ill to lift his head, much less wander off," Mrs. McCafferty had said to Mike while dabbing at her eyes with her apron.
"Maybe he went home," Mike had said, not believing it for a second.
"Home? To Chicago?" The housekeeper chewed on her lower lip as she considered the idea. "But how? The diocese car is still in the garage and the Galesburg-Chicago bus won't come through until tomorrow."
Mike had shrugged, promised to inform her and Dr. Staffney immediately if he heard of Father C."s whereabouts, and then had gone into the sacristry to get ready to say Mass with the fill-in priest from Oak Hill. All through the service-said in a bored, droning voice by the visiting priest and responded to absently by the distracted altar boy-Mike had thought of the brown slugs sliding in, writhing under Father C."s flesh. What if he's one of them now?
The thought made Mike feel sick.
He had made his mother swear she would check in on Memo that night, and then had hedged his bets by sprinkling the floor and window with holy water and placing bits of the broken Eucharist in the corners of the screen and at the foot of Memo's bed. Leaving Memo alone this night was the one part of the plan he hated.
Then Mike had packed his drugstore backpack and left before the other boys had started out. The tension of the ride out to County Six had cleared his head somewhat, but the nights without sleep still weighed on him and filled his ears with a soft buzz.
Mike hadn't gone all the way to Uncle Henry's farm, but had opened the stock gate just beyond Calvary Cemetery and ridden in along the fence on the overgrown ruts there, hiding his bike in a patch of fir trees just above the ravine and then doubling back, waiting for Dale and the others to come by. They had, almost ninety minutes later, and Mike had let out a soft grunt of relief: the chance of the Rendering Truck intercepting them had been something they couldn't plan for except to arrange a noon rendezvous back by the water tower.
Mike stayed in the woods during the boys' visit to Uncle Henry's farm, watching through the binoculars he'd borrowed from his father. The left lens of the glasses that his dad used to take out to the Chicago horse track didn't work too well-it was slightly clouded-but it worked well enough that Mike could see his friends sitting and slurping lemonade with Aunt Lena while he sat sweltering and itchy in the bushes.
Later, he followed them deeper into the woods, staying at least fifty feet away, moving parallel to their path-it helped that he knew exactly where they were headed-and trying not to be seen or heard. He'd worn a green polo shirt and old cotton slacks so as to provide some camouflage, with a change of dark clothing for the night, but he wished he had some real camouflage combat clothes.
