Summer of Night (28 page)

"I'm going into town," said the Old Man. "Wait here until I get back."

Duane started walking toward the pickup. "I'm going too."

His father stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. "No, Duanie. I'm going into Taylor's before that damn vulture can start cosmeticizing Art. And I have questions to ask."

Duane started to protest and then noticed his father's eyes and realized that the man wanted to be alone, needed to be alone, even if for the few minutes it took to drive into town. Duane nodded and went back to sit on the stoop.

He thought about finishing walking the rows, but decided against it. He realized with a pang of guilt that he felt hungry. Even though there was a burning in his throat, much worse than with Witt, and his chest seemed ready to explode from a great pressure building there, Duane was hungry. He shook his head and ambled into the house.

Munching on a liverwurst, cheese, bacon, and lettuce sandwich, he wandered through the Old Man's workroom, wondering where he'd left The New York Times even as a major part of his mind ran replays of the tortured Cadillac, the scattered chrome and glass, and the streak of red paint on the driver's door.

The green light was blinking on the Old Man's phone-answering device. Absently, still munching and thinking, Duane rewound the small reel-to-reel tape and pushed play.

"Darren? Duane? Damn it, why don't you disconnect that damn machine and answer your phone?" said Uncle Art.

Duane froze in midbite and punched the playback to Stop. His heart seemed to pause, then pound once-loudly-then lurch with a great ache. Duane swallowed with difficulty, took a breath, and pushed the Rewind and Play buttons.

"… and answer your phone? Duane, this call's for you. I found what you're looking for. The bell thing. It was in my library the whole time. Duane, it's astounding. It really is. Incredible, but unsettling. I've asked about ten of my older friends in Elm Haven, but none of them can remember a bell. It doesn't matter… what this book says is… well, I'll show you myself. It's… uh… about nine-twenty now. I'll be there before ten-thirty. See you, kiddo."

Duane played the tape twice more, then turned off the machine, felt behind him, found a chair, and sat down heavily. The pressure in his chest was too strong to resist now, and he let it out, the tears running down his cheeks, an occasional silent sob shaking him. Once in a while he would remove his glasses, rub his eyes with the back of his hand, and take another bite of sandwich. It was a long time before he got up and went back into the kitchen.

There was no answer at the listed number for the sheriff's office, but Duane finally got in touch with the man at his home. Duane had forgotten it was Sunday.

"Book?" said the sheriff. "Uh-uh, I didn't see any book. Is it important, son?"

"Yes," said Duane. And added, "To me." "Well, I didn't see it at the accident site. Of course the whole area hasn't been cleaned up yet. And it could have been in that mess… it could've been in the car." "Where's the car now? Ernie's?" "Yeah. Ernie's or J. P. Congden's place." "Congden?" Duane tossed the crust of his bread into the garbage. "Why would it be at Mr. Congden's place?"

Duane heard the sheriff let out a breath that might have been a soft sound of disgust. "Well, J.P. hears about road accidents on his police band radio, then he does a deal with Ernie sometimes. J.P. pays Ernie for the wreck and sells it to the auto salvage yard over at Oak Hill. At least that's what we think he does with them."

Like most of the kids in town, Duane had heard adults talking about the rumors that the justice of the peace dealt in stolen cars. Duane wondered if parts from these wrecks would be useful in such a racket. He said, "Do you know where it went today?"

"Nope," said the sheriff. "Probably down to Ernie's lot, though, since he had to get the wrecker back. He's the only one on duty on Sunday and his wife hates pumpin' gas. But don't worry, son, any personal possessions we find'll be given to you and your dad. You are next of kin, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Duane, thinking about what an ancient and honorable word 'kin' was. He remembered reading Chaucer-Uncle Art's copy-where the word was cyn. Uncle Art was kin. "Yes," he said again, softly.

"Well, don't you worry, son. Any book or anything else that was in the car will come to you folks. I'll go to Ernie's in the morning and check on it myself. Meanwhile, I may need to check some things for the report I'm writing. You and your dad be home tonight?"

"Yes."

The house seemed empty after the conversation ended. Duane heard the ticking of the big clock over the stove and the cattle lowing far out in the west pasture. The clouds had moved in again. Despite the heat, there was no real sunlight whatsoever.

Dale Stewart heard about Duane's uncle's death late that afternoon from his mom, who'd been talking to Mrs. Grum-bacher who had heard it from Mrs. Sperling who was good friends with Mrs. Taylor. He and Lawrence were making a model Spad when their mother told them, her voice soft. Lawrence's eyes had filled and he'd said, "Gosh, poor Duane. First his dog and now his uncle."

Dale had punched his brother hard on the shoulder then; he wasn't sure why.

It had taken him awhile to work up the courage, but then he went to the phone in the hall and called Duane's number, letting the party-line phone ring twice the way he was supposed to. There was a click and that weird recording machine came on and said in Duane's emotionless voice, "Hi. We can't answer the phone right now, but whatever you say will be taped and we'll get back to you. Please count to three and speak."

Dale counted to three and hung up, face burning. He'd have enough trouble talking to poor Duane right now; expressing his condolences to a tape recorder was beyond him. Dale left Lawrence working on the model, his brother's tongue sticking out and eyes almost crossed with concentration, and rode down the street to Mike's.

"Eeawkee!" Dale let out the shout, hopped off the bike, and let it glide a few yards on its own before crashing onto the grass.

"Keeawee." Mike's answering shout came from the giant maple that overhung the street.

Dale jogged back, climbed the few remaining rungs to the lower treehouse fifteen feet up, and then continued climbing through branches toward the higher, secret platform thirty feet higher. Mike sat with his back to a bole of one of the diverging trunks, his legs dangling over the three-board platform. Dale pulled himself up and sat back against the other trunk. He looked down, but the ground was lost behind leaves and he knew that they were invisible from the ground. "Hey," he said, "I just heard…"

"Yeah," said Mike. He was chewing on a long piece of grass. "I heard a little while ago, too. I was going to come over to talk to you after a while. You know Duane better."

Dale nodded. He and Duane had become friends through discovering a common interest in books and rocketry in fourth grade. But Dale had dreamed of rockets; Duane had built them. Dale's reading was precocious-he'd read Treasure Island and the real Robinson Crusoe by fourth grade-but Duane's reading list was beyond belief. Still, the two had stayed friends, spending recesses together, seeing each other a few times over the summer. Dale thought that he might be the only person whom Duane had told about his ambition to become a writer. "There's no answer," said Dale. He made an awkward gesture. "I called."

Mike studied the piece of grass he was chewing and dropped it into the layer of leaves fifteen feet below. "Yeah. My mom called this afternoon too. Got that machine. She's going out there later with a bunch of ladies bringing food. Your mom'll probably go."

Dale nodded again. A death in Elm Haven or the outlying farms meant a battalion of women descending like Valkyries bringing food. Duane told me about Valkyries. Dale couldn't quite remember what Valkyries did, but he remembered that they came down when someone died. He said, "I've only met his uncle a couple of times. He seemed real nice. Smart, but nice. Not touchy like Duane's dad."

"Duane's dad is an alcoholic," said Mike. His voice said that it wasn't a judgment or criticism, merely a statement of fact.

Dale shrugged. "His uncle has… had white hair and used to wear a white beard. I talked to him once when I was out at the farm playing and he was… funny."

Mike plucked a leaf and began stripping it. "I heard Mrs. Somerset tell my mom that Mrs. Taylor said that he was torn apart when a steering wheel thingie went through him. She said Mr. Taylor said that no way could they have an open coffin. She said that Duane's dad came in and threatened to rip Mr. Taylor a new asshole if he touched his brother's body. Mr. McBride's brother's body, I mean."

Dale found a leaf for himself. He nodded. He'd never heard the phrase 'rip him a new asshole' before and he had to fight to keep from smiling. It was a good phrase. Then he remembered what they were talking about and any threat of a smile fled.

"Father Cavanaugh went over to the funeral home," Mike was saying. "Nobody knew what religion Mr. McBride- the uncle Mr. McBride-was, so Father C. gave him Extreme Unction just in case."

"What's extreme… whatever?" asked Dale. He finished with the leaf and started on another. Some girls skipped by far below, never guessing that people were talking softly forty feet above them.

"The Last Rites," said Mike.

Dale nodded, although he understood no better than before. Catholics had lots of weird things that they assumed everybody knew about. Dale had watched in fourth grade when Gerry Day singer had made fun of Mike's rosary-Gerry had stuck it around his own neck and danced around with it, accusing Mike of carrying a necklace around. Mike hadn't said anything, he'd merely pounded Daysinger's face in, sat on his chest, and carefully removed the rosary. No one had teased Mike about it since.

"Father C. was there when Duane's dad came in," contin ued Mike,"but he didn't want to talk or anything. He just told Mr. Taylor to keep his ghoul's hands off his brother and told him where to send the body for cremation."

"Cremation," whispered Dale.

"That's when they burn you instead of bury you."

"I know that, stupid," snapped Dale. "I was just… surprised." And relieved, he realized. In the past fifteen minutes part of his mind had been imagining going down to Taylor's to the funeral, having to see the body during the visitation, sitting with Duane. But cremation… that meant no funeral, didn't it? "When's it going to be?" he asked. "The cremation?" It was such an adult and final word.

Mike shrugged. "You want to go out and see him?"

"See who?" asked Dale. He knew that Digger Taylor sometimes snuck his friends into the coffin room before the viewing, showing them corpses. Chuck Sperling once bragged that he and Digger had seen Mrs. Duggan when she was laid out naked in the embalming room.

"Who? Duane, of course," said Mike. "Who else do you think we ought to go see, dipstick?"

Dale grunted, crumbled the last of the leaf, and tried to brush sap from his hand. He squinted up at the sky through the thinning canopy above them. "It'll be dark pretty soon." "No, it's not. We've got another couple of hours. The days are longer this week than any time in the whole year, dopehead. It's just cloudy this evening."

Dale thought about the long pedal out to Duane's house. He remembered Duane talking about the time the Rendering Truck had tried to run him down. They'd be on the same road. He thought of having to talk to Mr. McBride and whatever other grown-ups were out there. What could be harder to do than visit someone after a death? "OK," he said. "Let's go."

They climbed down, grabbed their bikes, and headed out of town. The sky in the east was almost black, as if a storm were coming. The air was dead calm. Halfway to County Six, a truck became visible ahead of them as a cloud of dust. Dale and Mike pulled far to the right, almost into the ditch, to let it pass.

It was Duane and his dad going the other way in their pickup. The truck did not stop.

Duane saw his two friends on their bikes and guessed that they were probably headed out to the farm to see him, and he glanced over his shoulder in time to see them stopped and standing, staring after the truck for the few seconds before the cloud of dust enveloped them. The Old Man hadn't even noticed Mike and Dale. Duane said nothing.

It hadn't been easy convincing the Old Man that the book was important enough to go hunting for tonight. Duane had played the tape.

"What the hell is all this about?" the Old Man had asked. He'd been in a murderous depression since he'd returned from Taylor's.

Duane hesitated only a second. He could tell the Old Man everything, just as he'd explained it to Uncle Art. But the time seemed all wrong. The stuff about a Borgia Bell seemed idle nonsense in the face of the reality of loss the Old Man and he were feeling. Duane explained that he and Uncle Art had been researching this bell… an artifact one of the Ashley-Montagues had brought back from Europe and which seemed to have been forgotten by everyone. Duane made it sound like a lark, one of the uncountable projects he had shared with Uncle Art, like the times they had gone buggo on astronomy and built their own telescopes, or the autumn they had tried to build every device Leonardo da Vinci had designed. That kind of thing.

The Old Man understood but he didn't see the urgency in driving into town to stare at the wreck of the Cadillac again that night. Duane knew that the Old Man's temporary sobriety was tearing at him like steel pins. He also knew that if he let the Old Man get out of his sight into Carl's or the Black Tree, it would be days before he saw him again. The taverns were officially closed on Sunday but certain patrons found their way in the back door easily enough.