Dan Simmons - Summer of Night

Barney nodded, said something else, and the group went into Old Central. Cordie looked back over her shoulder once at Dale and the others but there was no hostility in her face now . . . only sadness and something which might have been fear.

"It would be better if ... ah ... Mr. Cooke could join us," Dr. Roon was saying as they went inside.

"He's been feelin' poorly all this week," Cordie's mother said in a tired monotone.

"He's been drunk as a junkyard skunk all this week," said Jim Harlen in a passable imitation of Mrs. Cooke's Okie twang. Harlen squinted at the sun and the now-empty parking lot. "Shit, it's getting late and I promised Mom I'd get the yard mowed. I think the fun's over here."

Lawrence pushed his glasses higher on his nose. "Where do you think Tubby went?"

Harlen leaned over the third grader, twisted his face into a terrible grimace, and raised fingers like claws. "Something got him, punko. And tonight it's gonna get you!" He leaned closer, saliva dribbling onto his chin.

"Knock it off," said Dale, stepping between Harlen and his brother.

"Knock it off," Harlen parroted in falsetto. "Don't distoib my wittew brudder!" He minced and pirouetted, all wrists and fluttered fingers.

Dale said nothing.

"You'd better go if you're going to mow the yard," said Mike. There was an edge to his voice.

Harlen glanced at O'Rourke, hesitated, said, "Yeah. See ya, simps," and pedaled away down Depot Street.

"See. I toldya it was weird," said Sandy and rode away with Donna Lou. Donna shouted "Tomorrow!" back over her shoulder as they reached the line of sentinel elms on the southeast side of the schoolyard.

Dale waved.

Gerry Daysinger said, "Hell, nothing else's going to happen. I'm going home to get a soda pop." He ran off toward his frame-and-tarpaper house on cinderblocks across School Street.

"Ke-VIIINNN!" The shrill cry sounded like a Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan shout. Mrs. Grumbacher's head and shoulders were just visible at the front door.

Kevin wasted no time for farewells but spun his bike and was gone.

The shadow of Old Central spread almost to Second Avenue, pulling the color from the playing fields lying green where sunlight touched and shading the lower levels of three great elms.

J.P. Congden emerged a few minutes later, shouted something bullying at the kids, and then drove away in a shower of gravel.

"My dad says that he uses that Chevy to trick people into speeding," said Mike.

"How?" said Lawrence.

Mike sat down in the grass and plucked a blade of grass. "J.P. hides down in the dairy driveway on the hill where the' Hard Road dips down to cross Spoon River. When people come along, he roars out and tries to race them. If they race, he puts his light on top of his car and arrests them for speeding. Drags them to his house and fines them twenty-five dollars. If they don't race ..."

"Yeah?"

"He gets in front of them right before the bridge, slows down, and arrests them for passing within a hundred feet of the bridge when they finally go around."

Lawrence chewed on his grass and shook his head. "What a shitheel."

"Hey!" said Dale. "Watch your mouth. If Mom hears you talking like that ..."

"Look," said Lawrence, jumping up and running over to a furrowed ridge in the soil. "What's this?"

The two boys ambled over to look. "Gopher," said Dale.

Mike shook his head. "Too big."

"They probably dug a ditch to lay in some new sewer pipe or something and the hump's still here," said Dale. He pointed. "See. There's another ridge. They both run to the school."

Mike walked over to the other furrow, followed it until it disappeared under the sidewalk near the school, and chewed on his blade of grass. "Doesn't make much sense to put in new pipes."

"Why not?" said Lawrence.

Mike gestured toward the shaded side of the school. "They're tearing it down. A couple more days, once they get all the junk out, they'll be boarding up the windows. If they ..." Mike stopped, squinted up toward the eaves, and backed away.

Dale Walked over to join him. "What is it?"

Mike pointed. "Up there. See in the center window on the high-school floor?"

Dale shielded his eyes. "Uh-uh. What?"

"Somebody looking out," said Lawrence. "I saw a white face before it moved away."

"Not somebody," said Mike. "It was Van Syke."

Dale glanced over his shoulder, past his house, to the fields beyond. Tree shadow and distance kept him from seeing if the Rendering Truck was still out by the ballfield.

Eventually Mrs. Cooke, Cordie, Barney, and Old Double-Butt came out, said a few unheard words, and drove away in different directions. Only Dr. Roon's car remained and just before dark, just before Dale and Lawrence were called in for dinner, he too came out, locked the school door, and drove away in his hearselike Buick.

Dale kept watching from his front door until his mother ordered him to the table, but Van Syke did not emerge.

He checked after dinner. Evening light touched only the tops of the trees and the scabby green cupola. The rest was darkness.

Six

Saturday morning, the first Saturday of summer, and Mike O'Rourke was up at dawn. He went into the darkened parlor to check on Memo-she hardly slept at all anymore-and when he saw the pale glint of skin and the blink of an eye.in the tangle of comforters and shawls, was sure that she was still alive, he kissed her-smelling the faintest hint of the decay that had come from the Rendering Truck the day before, and then he went out to the kitchen. His father was already up and shaving over the cold-water tap there; he clocked in at seven a.m. at the Pabst brewery in Peoria and the city was more than an hour's drive away. Mike's dad was massive-six feet tall but well over three hundred pounds, most of it in a wide, round belly that kept him far from the sink even while he shaved. His red hair had receded until it was little more than an orange fuzz over his ears, but his forehead was sunburned from weekends working in the garden and broken capillaries in his cheeks and nose added to the general rosiness of his complexion. He shaved with the antique straight razor that had belonged to his grandfather, and he paused now-finger on one stretched cheek, blade poised -to nod at his son as Mike headed for the outhouse. Mike had only recently come to realize that his was the only family in Elm Haven that still had to use an outhouse. There were other outhouses-Mrs. Moon had one behind her old frame house, Gerry Day singer had one behind his toolshed-but those were just remnants, artifacts from an earlier age. The O'Rourkes used their outhouse. For years Mike's mother had been talking about putting in plumbing other than the pump over the sink, but Mike's dad always decided that it was too expensive since the city had no sewer system and septic tanks cost a fortune. Mike suspected that his father didn't want a bathroom inside: with Mike's four sisters and mother always talking, talking, talking in the tiny house, Mike's dad often said that the only place he found true peace and quiet was out back in the John.

Mike finished up, walked back along the flagstone walk that wound between his mother's flower garden and his father's vegetable garden, glanced up to see starlings whirling among high leaves catching the first light of dawn, went in through the small back porch, and washed his hands at the kitchen sink which his father had just vacated. Then he went to the junk cupboard, got out his writing tablet and school pencil, and sat at the table.

"Gonna be late for the papers," said his dad. He was standing at the counter, drinking coffee and looking out through the kitchen window at the garden. The wall clock said 5:08.

"No, I'm not," said Mike. The papers were dropped off at five-fifteen in front of the bank next to the A&P on Main Street where Mike's mother worked. He had never been late in picking them up.