Summer of Night (53 page)

Dale ignored the question. He thought of Harlen out in the Chevy keeping a restless Congden from driving off, and knew that he didn't have much time. "You told Duane McBride that the bell was destroyed?"

Mr. Ashley-Montague frowned. "I have no recollection of such a discussion." But his voice was hollow-sounding to Dale, as if he knew that there might have been witnesses. "Very well, he may have asked me. The bell was destroyed, melted down for scrap iron during the Great War.”

"What about the Negro?" persisted Dale.

The thin man smiled slightly. Dale knew the word 'condescending' and thought it applied well to that smile. "What Negro is that, young man?"

"The Negro that got hung in Old Central," said Dale. "Hung from the bell."

Mr. Ashley-Montague shook his head slowly. "There was an unfortunate incident early in the century involving a man of color, but I assure you that no one was hung, as you put it, and certainly not hanged from the bell in Elm Haven's school."

"OK," said Dale, sitting in the high-backed chair across the desk from the man, and folding his legs as if he had all the time in the world. "Tell me what did happen."

Mr. Ashley-Montague sighed, looked as if he were considering sitting down himself, and contented himself with pacing back and forth in front of the window as he spoke. Far behind him, Dale could see a long barge working its way up the Illinois River.

"What I know is sketchy," said the man. "I was not born at the time. My father was in his late twenties but had not yet married… the Ashley-Montagues pride themselves in taking brides later in life. At any rate, what I know is just through family stories… my own father died in 1928, you know, shortly after I was born, so there is no way I can check on the accuracy of the details. Dr. Priestmann did not mention this incident in his county histories.

"At any rate, I understand there was some unpleasantness in your part of the county around the turn of the century. One or two children disappeared, I believe, although it is quite possible that they were runaways. Life on the farms was very harsh in those days, and it was not uncommon for children to run away from home rather than continue a life of hard labor with one's own family. At any rate, there was one child… the daughter of a local doctor, if I'm not mistaken… who was found. It seems she had been… ah… brutalized as well as murdered. Shortly thereafter, several of the more prominent townspeople-including my grandfather, who had the distinction of being a retired judge, you know-were presented with incontrovertible evidence that an itinerant Negro had carried out this crime…"

"What kind of evidence?" interrupted Dale.

Mr. Ashley-Montague paused in his pacing and frowned. "Incontrovertible. It is a big word, isn't it? It means…"

"I know what incontrovertible means," said Dale, biting his lip before adding the dipshit. He was beginning to think and talk like Harlen. "It means not capable of being denied. I mean what kind of evidence!"

The millionaire picked up a curved blade of a letter opener and tapped it irritably on the oak desk. Dale wondered if the man was going to call his butler and have him thrown out. He didn't. "Does it matter what kind of evidence?" he said and began pacing again, tapping the small knife on the desk after each circuit. "I seem to remember that it was some article of the child's clothing. And perhaps the murder weapon as well. Whatever it was, it was incontr-It was incontestable."

"And then they hanged him?" asked Dale, thinking of C. J. Congden getting antsy outside.

Mr. Ashley-Montague glared at Dale, although the effect was ruined somewhat by the millionaire's thick glasses. "I told you, no one was hanged. There was a makeshift trial,… perhaps that was at the school, although it would have been most unusual. The townspeople present… all respected citizens, I might add… served as a sort of de facto grand jury… Do you also know what a grand jury is?"

"Yeah," said Dale although he couldn't have defined it. He was guessing at de facto from context.

"Well, instead of the leader of this slavering lynch mob which you seem to want to portray, young man, my grandfather was the voice of law and moderation. Perhaps there were elements which wished to punish the Negro then and there… I don't know, my father never said… but my grandfather insisted that the man be taken to Oak Hill to be turned over to the law enforcement agency there… the sheriff's office, if you will."

"And was he?" asked Dale.

Mr. Ashley-Montague quit pacing. "No. That was the tragedy… and it weighed heavily upon my grandfather's and father's consciences. It seems the Negro was being taken to Oak Hill by carriage when he bolted… ran… and although he was in manacles and leg chains, he managed to get into a swampy area just off the Oak Hill road near where 5ie Whittaker farm is now. The men escorting him could not reach him in time because the treacherous soil would not hold their weight either. He drowned… asphyxiated, rather, for the swamp was essentially mud."

"I thought it was winter when this happened," said Dale. "January."

Mr. Ashley-Montague shrugged. "A warm spell," he said. "Possibly… quite probably… the accused man broke through the surface of ice. Midwinter thaws are quite common around here."

Dale had nothing to say about that. "Could we borrow the county history that Dr. Priestmann wrote?"

Mr. Ashley-Montague showed what he thought of such a presumptuous request, but he folded his arms and said, "And then will you allow me to get back to work?"

"Sure," said Dale. He wondered what Mike would say when he reported on such a fruitless conversation. And now Congden's gonna kill me… for what?

"Wait here," said the millionaire and went up the steep ladder to the library balcony. He peered through his thick glasses at the titles, moving slowly down the row.

Dale wandered under the balcony overhang, looking at the row of books at eye level closest to the millionaire's desk. Dale liked to keep his favorite books in places where he could get to them easily; maybe millionaires thought the same way.

"Where are you?" called the voice from above.

"Just lookin' out the window," replied Dale while he was scanning the rows of ancient, leatherbound volumes. Many of the titles were in Latin. Few of the English titles made any sense to him. The old book dust in the air here made him want to sneeze.

"I'm not sure I have… ah… here it is," said Mr. Ashley-Montague on the balcony above. Dale heard the sound of a heavy volume being slid out.

Dale's finger was tapping across the book spines; otherwise he wouldn't have noticed that one small book was pulled out farther than the rest. He could not read the embossed symbols on the spine, but when he pulled it out, there was an English subtitle under the same symbols on the cover: The Book of the Law. Under the title, in gold script, were the words-Scire, Audere, Velle, Tacere. Dale knew that Duane McBride had been able to read Latin easily-and some Greek-and he wished that his friend were there.

"Yes, this is it," came the voice from directly above Dale. Footsteps moved along the balcony toward the ladder.

Dale pulled the book all the way out, saw several small, white bookmarks among the pages, and-in an instant of pure bravado-stuck the small volume in the waistband of his jeans in back, tugging his t-shirt loose to hide it.

"Young man?" said Mr. Ashley-Montague, his polished black shoes and gray trousers becoming visible on the ladder three feet from Dale's head.

Dale quickly loosened the other volumes so that the gap where the book had been did not seem so visible, took three quick steps toward the window, and half-turned toward the descending man, keeping his back to the wall and staring out the wide window as if enraptured by the scenery.

Mr. Ashley-Montague was puffing slightly as he crossed the carpet and offered the historical volume. "Here. This book of notes and almost random photographs is the only thing Dr. Priestmann had sent to me. I have no idea what you think you will find in it… there is nothing there about the bell or the sad incident of the accused Negro… but you are welcome to take it home and peruse it if you promise to return it through the post… in as good a condition as you find it here."

"Sure," said Dale, accepting the heavy book and feeling the smaller volume settle lower into the seat of his jeans. The outline of it must be visible now below the line of his t-shirt. "I'm sorry if I bothered you."

Mr. Ashley-Montague nodded curtly and returned to his desk as Dale circled slowly, trying to keep his front to the man while not making that too obvious. "You can find your way out, of course," said Mr. Ashley-Montague, already going through the notes on his desk.

"Well…" said Dale, thinking of how he'd have to turn to leave the room and Mr. A.-M. would look up and… was it grand larceny to steal an expensive book? He guessed it depended on the book." "Actually, no sir," said Dale. There was a bell on the corner of the man's desk, and Dale was sure that he would ring it and the skinny butler would come in to show him out, and then both men would see the suddenly square seat to his jeans. Maybe he could use the butler's entrance as a distraction to hitch up his pants without being seen, pull his shirt looser…

"Come this way," said Mr. Ashley-Montague in an exasperated voice. He led the way out of the study at a fast pace. Dale hurried to keep up, glancing at the huge rooms as they passed through them, hugging the Priestmann volume to his chest and feeling the smaller book sink lower into the seat of his jeans. The top of it must be poking up at his shirt now, quite visible.

They were almost to the foyer when the sound of a television set in a small room off the main hall made both Mr. A.-M. and Dale turn. A crowd was roaring on the screen of the TV, someone was giving a speech and the echoes filled a huge hall. Mr. Ashley-Montague paused to look for an instant and Dale slipped by him, swiveling to keep his front toward the man, hanging on to the history volume with one hand while the other fumbled for the doorknob. The butler's footsteps echoed on a tile corridor.

Dale could have slipped out then, but what he saw on television made him pause and stare with Mr. Ashley-Montague. David Brinkley was saying, in his strange, clipped voice, "And so, the Democrats have chosen to give us… this year… what must certainly be… the strongest Civil Rights plank in the history… of the Democratic Party… wouldn't you say… Chet?"

Chet Huntley's woeful visage filled the small black-and-white screen. "I'd say without a doubt, David. But the interesting thing in this floor fight is…"

But what had compelled Dale's attention was not the newscasters speaking, nor the crowds the camera kept cutting to, but the man's picture on many of the hundreds of posters that were rising and bobbing above that red-white-and-blue crowd like flotsam on a political sea. The words on the signs said ALL THE WAY WITH JFK and, simply, KENNEDY IN '60. The poster picture was of a handsome man with very white teeth and a full head of chestnut hair.

Mr. Ashley-Montague shook his head and made a snorting noise as if witnessing something or someone beneath contempt. The butler had come up to stand beside his master as the millionaire returned his attention to the boy. "I hope you have no more questions," he said as Dale backed out the door and stood on the broad stoop. Jim Harlen shouted something from the backseat of the car thirty feet away on the wide driveway.

"Just one," said Dale, almost falling down the stairs, squinting in the sunlight and using the conversation as a reason to keep backing away from the two men at the door. "What's on the Free Show this Saturday?"

Mr. Ashley-Montague rolled his eyes but glanced at his butler.

"A Vincent Price film, I believe, sir," said the man. "A motion picture called The House of Usher."

"Great," shouted Dale. He had backed almost to the black Chevy now. "Thanks again!" he called as Harlen opened the door behind him and he jumped in. "Go," he said to Congden.

The teenager sneered, nicked a cigarette into the manicured grass, and floored the accelerator, half-skidding around the long turn of drive. He was doing fifty miles an hour as they approached the heavy gates.

The black iron opened in front of them.

Mike did not want to stay down there any longer. The half-gloom under the bandstand, the smell of raw earth and the heavier scent of Mink himself, even the progression of diamond-shaped nodes of light across the dark soil-all conspired to give Mike a terrible sense of claustrophobia and gloom, as if he and the old drunk were lying together in a roomy coffin, waiting for the men with spades to arrive. But Mink had not finished either an extra bottle he had found under his newspapers or his story.

"That woulda been the end of it," Mink was saying,"the hanging of the nigger an' all, but it turned out that nothin' was quite the way it seemed.” He drank deeply from his wine bottle, coughed, wiped his chin, and stared at Mike with great intensity. His eyes were very red. "That next summer, some more kids up and disappeared…"

Mike sat up very straight. He could hear a truck passing on the Hard Road, little kids playing in the shade near the War Monument at the front of the park, and farmers chatting across the street at the John Deere dealership, but all of his attention was on Mink Harper at that moment.

Mink took a drink and smiled as if he were very aware of Mike's riveted attention. The smile was quick and furtive; Mink had about three teeth left and none of them were worth exhibiting for any length of time. "Yep," he said,"that next summer… summer of nineteen hundred… couple more li'l kids got disappeared. One of them was Merriweather Whittaker, my ol' pal. The grown-ups, they said that no one never found him, but a couple years later I was out by Gypsy Lane-must've been more'n a couple years 'cause I was out there with a girl, tryin' to get into her pants, if y' know what I mean. In those days, girls didn't wear no pants except their underwear so the meanin' was clear, if you get my drift." Mink took another drink, wiped his dirty brow with a dirty hand, and frowned. "Where was I?"