Summer of Night (43 page)

Harlen checked one last time that he hadn't left any telltale signs of his search-it was hard to tell in the messy room-and then went downstairs.

Where the hell can I buy some bullets? Do they sell them to kids? Could I just go into Meyers' Hardware or Jensen's AP and ask for some 38-caliber bullets? Harlen didn't think the AP carried them and Mr. Meyers didn't like him; he'd almost refused to sell him nails when he was working on his treehouse last summer… no way was he going to sell him bullets.

Harlen had one last idea. His ma kept a lot of booze in the liquor cabinet, but she always had a bottle hidden away on the last shelf of the kitchen, way up on top. Like someone was going to steal the other stuff and she needed some hidden away. There were other bottles and crap up there.

Harlen stood on the counter, the snub-nosed revolver in his bandaged left hand while he searched. There were two bottles of vodka hidden away there. Some sort of jar filled with rice, another with what looked like peas. The third jar had a metallic glint to it. Harlen lifted it out into the light.

The bullets were all tumbled loose into the bottom of the canning jar. The lid was sealed. Harlen counted at least thirty or more. He found a knife, cut the seal, levered the lid open, and dumped the cartridges onto the counter. He was more excited than when he'd brought home C. J."s dirty magazines for the first time. It took Harlen only a few seconds to figure out how to load the empty chambers, then spin the cylinder to make sure it was fully loaded. He filled the pockets of his jeans with the other bullets, put the jar back where it'd been, and went out back, climbing the fence and heading into the orchard, hunting for someplace to practice. And for something to practice on.

Memo was awake. Sometimes her eyes were open but she was not really aware. This was not one of those times. Mike crouched by her bedside. His mother was home-it was Sunday on the tenth of July, the first Sunday Mass Mike had missed serving at in almost three years-and the vacuum was running, upstairs in his room now. Mike leaned close to the bed, seeing Memo's brown eyes following him. One of her hands was curved on the coverlet like a claw, the fingers gnarled, the back of her hand routed with veins.

"Can you hear me, Memo?" He was whispering, his mouth not too far from her ear. He leaned back and watched her eyes.

Blink. Yes. The code had been once for yes, twice for no, three times for "I don't know' or "I don't understand." It's how they communicated the most simple things to her: when it was time to change her linen or clothing, time to use the bedpan-things like that.

"Memo," whispered Mike, his lips still parched from the four days of fever,"did you see the soldier at the window?"

Blink. Yes.

"Have you seen him before?"

Yes.

"Are you afraid of him?"

Yes.

"Do you think he's here to hurt us?"

Yes.

"Do you still think he's Death?"

Blink. Blink. Blink. I don't know.

Mike took a breath. The weight of his fever dreams hung on him like chains. "Do you… did you recognize him?"

Yes.

"Is he someone you know?"

Yes.

"Is he someone Mom and Dad would know?"

No.

"Would I know him?"

No.

"But you do?"

Memo closed her eyes for a long time, as if in pain or exasperation. Mike felt like an idiot, but he didn't know what else to ask. She blinked once. Yes. She definitely knew him.

"Someone who is… who is alive now?"

No.

Mike was not surprised. "Someone you know is dead then?"

Yes.

"But a real person? I mean someone who used to be alive?"

Yes.

"Do you… do you think it's a ghost, Memo?"

Three blinks. A pause. Then one.

"Is this somebody you and Grampa knew?"

Pause. Yes.

"A friend?"

She did not blink at all. Her dark eyes burned at Mike, demanding that he ask the right questions.

"A friend of Grampa's?"

No.

"An enemy of Grampa's?"

She hesitated. Blinked once. Her mouth and chin were moist with saliva. Mike used the linen handkerchief on the night table to dry it. "So he was an enemy of Grampa's and yours?"

No.

Mike was sure that she had blinked twice, but he didn't understand why. She'd just said…

"An enemy of Grampa's," he whispered. The vacuum had quit running upstairs, but he could hear his mother humming as she dusted in the girls' rooms. "An enemy of Grampa's but not of yours?"

Yes.

"This soldier was your friend?"

Yes.

Mike rocked on his heels. Fine, now what? How could he find out who this person had been, why he was haunting Memo?

"Do you know why he's come back, Memo?"

No.

"But you're scared of him?" It was a stupid question, Mike knew.

Yes. Pause. Yes. Pause. Yes.

"Were you scared of him when… when he was alive?"

Yes.

"Is there a way I can find out who he was?"

Yes. Yes.

Mike stood and paced in the small space. A car went by on First Avenue beyond the screen. The scent of flowers and new-mown grass came in the window. Mike realized with a guilty start that his father must have mowed the yard while he was sick. He crouched next to Memo again. "Memo, can I go through your stuff? Do you mind if I look at your stuff?” Mike realized that he'd phrased it so she couldn't answer. She looked at him, waiting.

"Do I have your permission?" he whispered.

Yes.

Memo's trunk was in the corner. All of the kids were under strict orders not to get into it: the things there were their grandmother's most prized and private possessions and Mike's mom kept them as if the old lady would have use for them someday.

Mike dug down through clothes until he came to the package of letters, most of them from his grandfather during his sales trips through the state.

"In here, Memo?"

No.

There was a box of photos, most of them sepia tinted. Mike held them up.

Yes.

He thumbed through them quickly, aware that his mom was finishing with the girls' rooms and had only his room to go. He was supposed to be resting in the living room while she aired the room out and changed linen.

There must have been a hundred pictures in the box: oval portraits of known relatives and unknown faces, Brownie snapshots of their grampa when he was young, tall, and strong- Grampa in front of his Pierce Arrow, Grampa posing proudly with two other men in front of the cigar store they had owned briefly-and disastrously-in Oak Hill, Grampa and Memo in Chicago at the World's Fair, pictures of the family, pictures of picnics and holidays and idle moments on the porch, a photo of an infant, dressed in a white gown and apparently sleeping on a silken pillow-Mike realized with a shock that it was his dad's twin brother who had died as a baby-the photo was taken after the baby died. What a terrible custom.

Mike thumbed through the pictures faster. Photos of Memo as an older lady now-Grampa pitching horseshoes, a family picture when Mike was a baby, the older girls smiling into the camera, more old pictures…

Mike actually gasped. He dropped the rest of the photos into the box and held the one cardboard-framed picture at arm's length, as if it were diseased. The soldier stared out proudly. The same khaki uniform, the same leggings-whatever the hell Duane had called them, the same campaign hat and Sam Browne belt and… it was the same soldier. Only here the face wasn't sketched in on wax, it was a human face: small eyes narrowed at the camera, a thin-lipped smile, a hint of greased-back hair over large ears, a small chin, predominant nose. Mike turned the photo over. In his grandmother's perfect Palmer script, the legend said-William Campbell Phillips: Nov. 9, 1917.

Mike held the picture up.

Yes.

"This is it then? It's really him?"

Yes.

"Is there anything else in the trunk, Memo? Anything else to tell me about him?" Mike couldn't believe there was. He wanted to get things closed up before his mom came down.

Yes.

He blinked his surprise. He held up the box of photos.

No.

What else? Nothing but a small, leather notebook. He lifted it, opened it to a page halfway through. The entry was in his grandmother's hand. The date read January 1918.

"A diary," he breathed.

Yes. Yes. The old lady closed her eyes and did not open them.

Mike slammed the trunk shut, kept the photo and the diary, and moved quickly to her bedside, lowering his face until his cheek was almost touching her mouth. A soft dry breath moved through her lips.

He touched her hair once, gently, and then hid the diary and photo in his shirt and went out to the couch to 'rest."

Jim Harlen found out that his father's phrase 'belly gun' probably meant that you had to stick the damn thing in someone's belly to hit anything. The little gun couldn't hit shit.

He'd gone about two hundred feet into the small orchard behind his house and the Congdens', found a tree that looked like a good target, stepped off about twenty paces, raised his good arm straight and steady, and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened. Or rather, the hammer rose a bit and fell back. Harlen wondered if there was some sort of safety on the damn thing… no, there weren't any switches or doodads except for the one that had given him access to the cylinder. It was just harder to pull the trigger than he'd thought. Plus the damn cast was sort of throwing him off balance.

He crouched a bit and used the crook of his thumb to pull the hammer back until it clicked and cocked. Readjusting his hand on the grip, Harlen aimed the thing at the tree-wishing all the time it had a better sight than the little nub of metal at the end of the tiny barrel-and squeezed again.

The blast almost made him drop the gun. It was a fairly small pistol; he'd expected the sound and recoil to be small… sort of like the.22 rifle Congden let him fire every once in a while. It wasn't.

The loud crack had made Harlen's ears ring. Dogs started barking in the yards along Fifth Avenue. Harlen smelled what he thought was gunpowder-although it didn't smell a lot like the gunpowder stink of the firecrackers he'd fired off a week earlier-and his wrist carried the memory of energy expended. He walked over to see where the bullet had struck.

Nothing. He hadn't touched the tree. Eighteen inches across and he'd missed the whole damn thing. Harlen stepped off fifteen paces this time, took care cocking the damn thing, took greater care aiming, held his breath, and squeezed off another shot.

The pistol roared and leapt in his hand. The dogs went nuts again. Harlen ran up to the tree, expecting to see a hole dead center. Nothing. He looked around on the ground as if there might be a visible bullet hole there.

"Fuck this," he whispered. He walked back ten short steps, took careful aim, and fired again. This time, he found, he'd just nicked the bark on the right side, about four feet higher than he'd aimed. From ten fucking feet away! The dogs were going crazy and somewhere beyond the trees a screen door slammed open.

Harlen cut west to the tracks and headed north, away from town, out past the empty grain elevators almost to the tallow factory. There was a swampy tangle of trees and shrubs west of the tracks there and he figured he could use the embankment as a backstop. He hadn't thought of that before and felt a cold flush as he wondered if one of the bullets had traveled all the way across Catton's road into the pasture-and maybe one of the dairy cows-there. Surprise, Bossie!

Safely hidden in the thickets half a mile south of the dump, Harlen reloaded, found some bottles and cans along the dirt road heading out to the dump, set them as targets against the weedy embankment, braced the grip against his thigh as he reloaded, and began practicing.

The gun didn't shoot worth shit. Oh, it fired all right… Harlen's wrist ached and his ears were echoing… but the bullets didn't go where he aimed them. It looked so easy when Hugh O'Brian as Wyatt Earp shot somebody from fifty or sixty feet away-and that was to wing them. Harlen's favorite hero had been the Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman in Trackdown, starring Robert Culp. Hoby had a real neat pistol and Harlen had enjoyed the shows right up to the time Track-down had gone off the air the year before.

Maybe it was the short barrel on his dad's stupid gun. Whatever it was, Harlen found that he had to be ten feet away from something to hit it, and then it took three or four shots just to get the damn beer can or whatever. He did get better at cocking it, although he had the feeling that you were supposed to pull the trigger and let the hammer rise and fall on its own. He managed to do that, but it took enough strength that it screwed up his aim even more.

Well, if I use this cocksucker on someone, I'll have to wait until I can set it against their chest or head or whatever so I don't miss.

Harlen had fired twelve of the bullets and was loading six more when he heard a slight sound behind him. He whirled with the pistol half-raised, but the cylinder loading-gate thing was still open and only two cartridges stayed in it. The others dropped to the grass.