Summer of Night (3 page)
Lawrence laughed and twisted away. "Naw, really?" Jim Harlen bent over, offering his backside to the old school. "I think it was Old Double-Butt ripping a fart," he said and provided the sound effects.
"Hey," cried Dale, taking a kick at Jim Harlen's backside and nodding toward his little brother. "Watch it, Harlen." Lawrence was already laughing and rolling on the grass. The school buses roared away, heading down different streets. The schoolyard was emptying quickly, kids hurrying off under the tall elms as if in a rush to beat the storm.
Dale paused at the edge of the baseball field, just across the street from his house, and looked back at the black clouds piled up behind Old Central. It was humid and the air felt still and quiet the way it did before tornado warnings, but he could tell by looking that the storm front was almost past. A band of blue sky was visible above the trees to the south. As the group watched a breeze came up, the leaves stirred on the trees ringing the block, and the summer scent of new-mown grass and blossoms and foliage filled the air. "Look," said Dale.
"Isn't that Cordie Cooke?" asked Mike. "Yeah." The short figure stood alone outside the north entrance to the school, her arms folded, foot tapping. She looked dumpier and sillier than ever in the oversized house-dress that almost dragged the gravel. Two of the smallest Cooke boys, the twins, who were in first grade, stood behind her, their bib overalls sagging. The Cookes lived far enough out of town to have the school bus take them home, but no bus went out toward the grain elevator and dump, so she and her three brothers walked out the railroad tracks. Now she was screaming something at the building.
Dr. Roon appeared at the door and shooed her away with a flick of his pink hand. White blurs in the tall windows above may have been the faces of teachers looking out. Mr. Van Syke's face floated behind the principal's in the dark doorway.
Roon called something else, turned his back, and closed the tall door. Cordie Cooke bent down, grabbed a rock from the gravel drive, and heaved it at the school. The rock bounced off the window of the main door.
"Jeez," breathed Kevin.
The door slammed open and Van Syke emerged just as Cordie grabbed her two little brothers by the hand and took off down the drive and then down Depot Street toward the train tracks. She moved very fast for a fat girl. One of her kid brothers tripped as they crossed Third Avenue but Cordie just dragged him through the air until his feet found pavement again. Van Syke ran to the edge of the schoolground and stopped, his long fingers groping at air.
"Jeez," Kevin said again.
"Come on," said Dale. "Let's get out of here. My mom said she'd have lemonade for all of us after school."
With a whoop and a holler the band of boys left the school-grounds, loped under the elms, bounded across the crowned asphalt of Depot Street, and ran toward freedom and summer.
Few events in a human being's life-at least a male human being's life-are as free, as exuberant, as infinitely expansive and filled with potential as the first day of summer when one is an eleven-year-old boy. The summer lies ahead like a great banquet and the days are filled with rich, slow time in which to enjoy each course.
Awakening on that first delicious morning of summer, Dale Stewart had lain for a moment in that brief twilight of consciousness, already savoring the difference even before realizing what it was: no alarm clock or mother's shout to rouse him and his brother, Lawrence, no gray, cold fog pressing at the windows and no grayer, colder school awaiting them at eight-thirty, no loud chorus of adult voices telling them what to do, what workbook pages to turn to, what thoughts to think. No, this morning there were the sound of birds, the rich, warm air of summer coming through screens, the sound of a lawnmower down the street as some early-rising retired person began the daily yard chores, and-already visible through the curtains-the rich, warm benediction of sunlight falling across Dale's and Lawrence's beds as if the barrier of the gray school year had been raised and color had been allowed to return to the world.
Dale had rolled to one side and seen his brother's eyes open and staring above the glass-black eyes of his teddy bear. Then Lawrence had grinned that overbite-joyous grin of his, and the two boys were up, throwing their pajamas off in a rush, tugging on jeans and t-shirts waiting on nearby chairs, pulling on clean white socks and less-than-clean sneakers, and then were out, clattering down the stairs for a perfunctory breakfast, laughing with their mom over silly things, and then out again… onto their bikes, down the street, away, off into summer.
Three hours later the brothers were in Mike O'Rourke's chickenhouse, sprawled with their friends on the legless, sprung couch, torn chairs, and littered floor of their unofficial clubhouse. The others were there-Mike, Kevin, Jim Harlen, even Duane McBride in from his farm while his dad shopped at the co-op store-and all seemed stunned into incapacity by the bewildering array of choices facing them.
"We could ride out to Stone Creek or Hartley's Pond," said Kevin. "Go swimming."
"Uh-uh," said Mike. He was lying on the sofa with his legs over the back, his back in the sprung cushions, and his head on a catcher's mitt lying on the floor. He was shooting at a daddy longlegs on the ceiling with a rubber band that he would retrieve after each ricochet. So far he had been careful not to hit the insect, but it was shuttling back and forth in some agitation. Each time it got close to a concealing crack or two-by-four rafter, Mike would fire the rubber band and send it scuttling in the opposite direction. "I don't want to go swimming," said Mike. "Water moccasins will be all worked up because of the storm last night."
Dale and Lawrence exchanged glances. Mike was afraid of snakes; it was the only fear they knew their friend had.
"Play ball," said Kevin.
"Nan," said Harlen from where he lay on a sprung armchair reading a Superman comic. "I didn't bring my glove and I'd have to ride all the way home to get it." While the rest of the boys-with the exception of Duane-lived within a short block of each other, Jim Harlen lived on the far end of Depot Street, near the tracks that led out to the dump and the squalid shacks where Cordie Cooke lived. Harlen's house was all right, an old, white farmhouse which had been swallowed up by the town decades before, but a lot of his neighbors were weird. J.P. Congden, the crazy justice of the peace, lived only two houses away from Harlen, and J.P."s son, C.J., was the meanest bully in town. The boys didn't like playing at Harlen's house, or even going up that way if they could help it, and they understood Jim Harlen's reluctance to go back that way to get his stuff.
"Head out to the woods," suggested Dale. "Maybe check out Gypsy Lane."
The other boys stirred restlessly. There was no obvious reason to veto the suggestion but lethargy had them firmly in its grip. Mike fired the rubber band and the daddy longlegs scurried away from the impact site.
"That'd take too long," said Kevin. "I've got to be home for dinner.”
The other boys smiled but said nothing. They were all familiar with the voice of Kevin's mother when she opened he door and shouted "KeVIIIN!" in a rising falsetto. And they were familiar with the alacrity with which Kevin dropped whatever he was doing and ran for the white ranch house on the low hill next to Dale and Lawrence's older home.
"What do you want to do, Duane?" asked Mike. O'Rourke was the born leader, always polling everyone before deciding.
The big farm boy with his goofy haircut, baggy corduroy pants, and placid gaze was chewing on something-not gum-and his expression was almost retarded. Dale knew how misleading that dumb hick appearance was-all the boys sensed it-because Duane McBride was so smart that the others could only guess at his thought patterns. He was so smart that he didn't even have to show how smart he was in school, preferring to let the teachers writhe in frustration at the oversized boy's perfectly correct but terse answers, or scratch their heads at verbal responses tinged with an irony which bordered on impertinence. Duane didn't care about school. He cared about things the other boys didn't understand.
Duane stopped chewing and nodded toward the old RCA Victor floor-model radio that was in the corner. "I think I'd like to listen to the radio." He took three thumping steps toward the thing, squatted gracelessly in front of it, and began twiddling the dial.
Dale stared. The cabinet was huge, almost four feet tall, and impressive with its different dial bands-the top one saying national and listing Mexico City at 49 Megahertz, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Rio, and a list of others at 40 Mh, the sinister cities of Berlin, Tokyo, and Pittsburgh at 31 Mh, and Paris alone and mysterious far down the dial at 19 Mh-but the cabinet was empty. There were no works left at all.
Duane squatted and twiddled the dials carefully, head cocked, alert for the slightest sound.
Jim Harlen caught on first. He scooted behind the cabinet, pulling it back in the corner so no part of him showed.
Duane said, "I'll try the domestic band." He twiddled the middle dial between international and special service." "This is labeled Chicago down here," he muttered to himself.
From inside the cabinet came a hum, as if of tubes wanning up, then a rasp of static as Duane moved the dial. Short bursts of baritone were silenced as announcers were cut off in midsentence, snatches of rock and roll music exploded and were silenced, static, rasp, a ballgame-the Chicago White Sox!
"He's going back! Back! Back against the right field wall of Comiskey Park! He's jumping for it! He's going up on the wall! He's…"
"Aw, nothin' here," muttered Duane. "I'll try the International Band. Dum-da-dee… here we are… Berlin."
"Ach du lieber der fershlugginer ball ist op und outta hier!" came Harlen's voice, changed instantly from the excited Chicago Dizzy-Deanish drawl to a throaty, Teutonic lashing of syllables. "Der Fuhrer ist nicht gehappy. Nein! Nein! Er ist gerflugt und vertunken und der veilige pisstof-fen!"
"Nothin' here," muttered Duane. "I'll try Paris."
But the falsetto and phony French from behind the cabinet was lost in the giggles and laughter in the chickenhouse. Mike O'Rourke's last shot with the rubber band went wild and the daddy longlegs escaped into a crack in the roof. Dale crawled toward the radio, ready to try some stations, while Lawrence rolled on the floor. Kevin crossed his arms and pursed his lips while Mike prodded him in the ribs with his sneaker.
The spell was broken. The boys could do anything they wanted to.
Hours later, after dinner, in the long, painfully sweet twilight of a summer's evening, Dale, Lawrence, Kevin, and Harlen slid their bikes to a stop at the corner near Mike's house. "Ee-aw-kee!" shouted Lawrence.
"Kee-aw-ee!" came the shouted response from the shadows under the elms and Mike rode out to meet them, sliding his rear tire in the loose gravel, spinning to face the same direction the others were facing.
This was the Bike Patrol, formed two years earlier by these five boys when the oldest were in fourth grade and the youngest still believed in Santa Claus. They didn't call it the Bike Patrol now because they were self-conscious about the name, too grown up to pretend they patrolled Elm Haven in order to help people in distress and to protect the innocent from evildoers, but they still believed in the Bike Patrol. Believed with the simple acquiescence to the reality of now which once left them lying awake on Christmas Eve with pulses racing and mouths dry.
They paused there a moment on the quiet street. First Avenue continued past Mike's house out into countryside, north to the water tower a quarter of a mile, and then turning east until it disappeared in the evening haze above the fields near the horizon where the woods and Gypsy Lane and the Black Tree Tavern waited out of sight.
The sky was a softly burnished shield of gray, fading now in the hour between sunset and dark, and the corn in the fields was low, not yet up to an eleven-year-old's knees. Dale looked out over the fields that stretched east past distance-softened horizons of trees and imagined Peoria there-thirty-eight miles away beyond the hills and valleys and stretches of timber, lying in its own river valley and glowing with a thousand lights-but there was no glow there, only a quickly darkening horizon, and he could not really imagine the city. Instead he heard the soft rustle and whisper of the corn. There was no breeze. Perhaps it was the sound of the corn growing, thrusting its way up to become the wall that would soon surround Elm Haven and seal it off from the world.
"Come on," Mike said softly and stood on the pedals, leaning far forward over his handlebars and taking off in a shower of gravel.
Dale and Lawrence and Kevin and Harlen followed.
They rode south down First Avenue in the soft gray light, moving under elm shadow and emerging quickly into open twilight. The low fields lay open to their left, the dark houses to their right. Past School Street and the hint of Donna Lou Perry's house glowing a block to the west. Past Church Street and its long corridor of elms and oaks. And then they were at the Hard Road, Highway 151 A, and slowing out of habit before swinging right onto the empty but still-warm pavement of the two-lane main street.
They pedaled furiously, swinging up onto the sidewalk after the first block to let an old Buick roar past. They were riding west now, toward the glow in the sky, and the building fronts on the two blocks of Main Street gleamed in the fading light. A pickup truck pulled out of the diagonal parking in front of Carl's Tavern on the south side of the street and weaved toward them down the Hard Road. Dale recognized the driver of the old GM truck as Duane McBride's dad. The driver was drunk.
"Lights!" shouted all five boys as they pedaled past. The pickup continued on without headlights or taillights, making a wide turn up First Avenue behind them.
They jumped from the raised sidewalk to the empty Hard Road and continued west past Second Avenue and Third, past the bank and the A&P on their right, past the Parkside Cafe and Bandstand Park all dark and quiet under the elms to their left. It felt like Saturday night but it was only Thursday. No Free Show illuminated the night with its light and noise in the park. Not yet. But soon enough.
Mike hollered and swung left down Broad Avenue along the north end of the small park, past the tractor dealership and the small houses clustered there. It was getting dark in earnest now. Behind them, the tall streetlight flicked on along Main Street, illuminating the two blocks of downtown. Broad Avenue was a quickly darkening tunnel under the elms at their backs, an even darker tunnel in front of them.
"Touch the stairway!" shouted Mike.
"No!" yelled Kevin.
Mike always proposed it; Kevin always opposed it. They always did it.
Another block south, in a part of town the boys visited only during these twilight patrols. Past the long, dead-end street of new houses where Digger Taylor and Chuck Sperling lived. Past the official end of Broad Avenue. Up the private lane to the Ashley Mansion.
Weeds choked the rutted drive. Untended limbs hung low and thrust from the thickets on either side to slash at the unwary biker. It was full dark in this tunnel of a driveway.
As always, Dale put his head down and pedaled furiously to stay close to Mike. Lawrence was gasping to keep pace on his smaller bike but he kept up… just as he always did. Harlen and Kevin were nothing but the sound of wheels on gravel behind them.
They emerged into the open area near the ruins of the old house. A pillar caught gray light above the brambles and thickets. The stones of the charred foundation were black. Mike wheeled around the circular drive, swung right as if he were going to climb the weed-littered stone stairs to leap into the collapsed foundation, and then slapped the flat slab of porch stone as he continued on.
Dale did likewise. Lawrence swung and missed but did not go back. Kevin and Harlen pedaled past in a flurry of gravel.
Around the wide circle of overgrown drive, wheels crunching and slipping on ruts and gravel. Dale noticed how much darker it was with the summer growth shutting out the light. Behind him the Ashley Mansion became a dark jumble, a secret place of burned timbers and collapsed floors. He liked it best that way-mysterious and slightly ominous as it was now rather than merely sad and abandoned as it was in the light of day.
