Dan Simmons - Summer of Night

There was enough local gossip.

There were a million theories to explain the theft of Ken Grumbacher's truck, almost certainly stolen by Dr. Roon, the former principal, the fire, the grave-robbing of several bodies from Mr. Taylor's funeral home, and the disappearance of Elm Haven's patron millionaire. Rumor had it that forensic experts had found not just the bones of Dr. Roon and the missing corpses in the collapsed ruins of Old Central, but had found the shards of enough bones to make one think the school had been in session when the building burned. Some days later, word in the barbershops and beauty salons was that tests had shown that many of the bones were old, quite old, and more theories centered around the strange behavior of Calvary Cemetery's former groundskeeper and the school's custodian, Karl Van Skye. Mrs. Whittaker had it on good authority from her cousin in the Oak Hill police department that Mr. Van Syke's gold tooth had been found in a charred skull amidst the ruins.

Ten days after the fire, on the same day that wrecking cranes came to knock in the last of the charred brick walls, and bulldozers arrived to load the bricks into dump trucks and fill in the surprisingly deep basement of Old Central, word in the Parkside Cafe and on the party lines was that the FBI had made a breakthrough in the case. It seems that the 1957 black Chevrolet belonging to Justice of the Peace Cong-den had been seen on Grand View Drive, near Mr. Ashley-Montague's mansion, on the day J.P. was reportedly killed, four days before the fire in the grain elevator and five days before the Old Central fire and the disappearance of the millionaire. Mr. Caspar Jonathan ("C.J.") Congden was wanted for questioning by the FBI.

Jim Harlen may have been the last person to see C.J. in Elm Haven-Harlen saw the sixteen-year-old peeling rubber toward the Hard Road in his Chevy just after ten a.m. on the morning that the rumor of his being wanted for questioning came up. He did not return.

Kevin told the police, the Sheriff's Office, the FBI, and his father the story about he and Harlen awakening to the sound of the generator running and coming out just in time to see the truck being driven away. Neither boy knew for sure what made the driver swerve toward Old Central.

Several days after the fire, it was the sheriff who found pieces of metal in the wreckage with .45 caliber slugs in them. Kevin subsequently confessed that when he saw the truck being stolen, he had run in and grabbed his father's .45 and fired several shots after it. He didn't think that was what caused the driver to lose control, but he wasn't sure.

Ken Grumbacher shouted at his son for such irresponsibility and grounded him for a week, but seemed quietly proud of his boy's actions when discussing them with the other men over morning coffee or while transferring milk to the new bulk tanker. The truck had been adequately insured.

All of the other kids-except perhaps Cordie Cooke, who blended into the darkness later that night while the town was watching the fire department lose to the fire, and who was not seen again for more than a week-were questioned by parents and police. Mike's and Dale's and Lawrence's parents were shocked that their children had received burns and scratches in trying to pull open the jammed door of the truck before it exploded, trying to rescue the driver, whose identity they were not certain of. Jim Harlen stayed with the sheriff that Saturday night, and his mother was properly shocked and impressed by the report of her son's actions when she arrived home from Peoria the next morning.

Mike's grandmother, Memo, did not die. Instead she began showing marked improvement, and could whisper a few words and move her right arm by the second week in August. "Some old people, they put up good fight," was the prognosis of Dr. Viskes. Mr. and Mrs. O'Rourke spoke to Dr. Staffney about finding specialists to oversee therapy needed for her full recovery.

The week after the fire, the boys started playing a lot of baseball again-sometimes ten and twelve hours at a stretch-and it was Mike who went to Donna Lou Perry's house to apologize and ask her to join them again as pitcher. She slammed the door in his face, but her friend Sandy Whit-taker began playing with them the next day, and soon after several of the more athletic girls showed up for the morning choosing of sides. Michelle Staffney turned out to be a fairly decent third baseman.

Cordie Cook did not play baseball, but she went for hikes with the boys and often sat silently with them while they played Monopoly on rainy days or just hung around the chickenhouse. Her brother Terence was officially listed as a runaway by the County Sheriff's Office and the State Highway Patrol. Mrs. Grumbacher took an interest in helping the Cooke family after it was determined that Mr. Cooke was gone for good, and several other ladies in the Lutheran Care Society made visits to the Cooke house with food and other items.

Father Dinmen came down from Oak Hill to say Mass only on Wednesdays and Sundays at St. Malachy's, and Mike continued as altar boy, although he thought he might quit in October when the new priest was scheduled to be assigned to the diocese.

The days passed. The corn grew. The boys' nightmares did not disappear altogether, but they became less troublesome things.

The nights grew slightly longer each day, but seemed much shorter.

Mr. and Mrs. Stewart had come out to Uncle Henry's for steak dinner, and they had brought the O'Rourkes and the Grumbachers. Harlen's mother arrived later with a gentleman friend whom she was "seeing regularly" now. The man, named Cooper, was tall and quiet and actually looked a bit like the actor Gary Cooper, except that his front teeth were a bit crooked. It might have been why he rarely smiled. He gave Harlen a Mickey Mantle glove during the last weekend's visit and had smiled his shy smile when they shook hands. Harlen still wasn't sure about him.

The kids ate on the deck over Uncle Henry's garage, eating their steak on paper plates and drinking fresh milk and lemonade. After dinner, while the grown-ups talked on the patio out back, the kids made for the hammocks on the south end of the deck and stared at the stars.

During a lull in their conversation about extraterrestrial life and whether kids on planets around other stars would have teachers or not, Dale said, "I went out to see Mr. McBride yesterday."

Mike put his hands behind his head and rocked his hammock out over the railing. "I thought he was moving to Chicago or somewhere."

"He is," said Dale. "To be with his sister. He's already gone. I caught him Tuesday, right before he left. The house is empty now."

The five boys and a girl were quiet for a moment. Near the horizon, a meteorite streaked silently. "What'd you talk about?" Mike said after a while.

Dale looked at him. "Everything."

Harlen was tying his shoe and still rocking in his hammock. "Did he believe you?"

"Yeah," said Dale. "He gave me all of Duane's notebooks. All the old ones with the stuff he'd been writing about."

They were silent for another period. The soft conversation from the adults somehow blended with the cricket sounds and noise from the bullfrogs down by Uncle Henry's pond. "I know one thing," said Mike. "I'm never going to be a farmer when I grow up. Too much work. Construction maybe, working outside's OK, but never a farmer."

"Me neither," said Kevin. He was still chewing on a radish. "Engineering school for me. Nuclear engineering. Maybe I'll serve on a sub."

Harlen swung his legs out over the railing and rocked his hammock. "I'm gonna do something that makes me a lot of money. Real estate maybe. Or banking. Bill's a banker."

"Bill?" said Mike.

"Bill Cooper," said Harlen. "Or maybe I'll be a bootlegger."

"Whiskey's legal," said Kevin.