Raymond Bradbury: Farewell Summer

"How long's it been? Tom, check your watch. How long?"

"Jeez!"

"Whatta you mean 'jeez'? Don't look at your watch! Look at calendars. Seven days is a fast!"

They sat a while longer in silence. Then Charlie said, "Tom, how long's it been now?"

"Don't tell him, Tom!"

Tom consulted his watch, proudly. "One hour and twelve minutes!"

"Holy smoke!" Charlie squeezed his face into a mask. "My stomach's a prune! They'll have to feed me with a tube. I'm dead. Send for my folks. Tell 'em I loved 'em." Charlie shut his eyes and flung himself backward onto the floorboards.

"Two hours," said Tom, later. "Two whole hours we've been starving, Doug. That's sockdolager! If only we can throw up after supper, we're set."

"Boy," said Charlie, "I feel like that time at the dentist and he jammed that needle in me. Numb! And if the other guys had more guts, they'd tell you they're bound for Starved Rock, too. Right, fellas? Think about cheese! How about crackers?"

Charlie ran on. "Chicken a la king!" They groaned. "Turkey drumsticks!"

"See." Tom poked Doug's elbow. "You got 'em writhing! Now where's your revolution?!"

"Just one more day!"

"And then?"

"Gooseberry pie, apple-butter, onion sandwiches?"

"Cut it out, Charlie."

"Grape jam on white bread!"

"No, sir!" Charlie snorted. "Tear off my chevrons, General. This was fun for the first ten minutes. But there's a bulldog in my belly. Gonna go home, sit down real polite, wolf me half a banana cake, two liverwurst sandwiches, and get drummed outta your dumb old army, but at least I'll be a live dog and no shriveled-up mummy, whining for leftovers."

"Charlie," Doug pleaded, "you're our strong right arm. ”

Doug jumped up and made a fist, his face blood-red. All was lost. This was terrible. Right before his face his plan unraveled and the grand revolt was over.

At that very instant the town clock boomed twelve o'clock, noon, the long iron strokes which came as salvation because Doug leapt to the edge of the porch and stared toward the town square, up at that great terrible iron monument, and then down at the grassy park, where all the old men played at their chessboards.

An expression of wild surmise filled Doug's face.

"Hey," he murmured. "Hold on. The chessboards!" he cried. "Starvation's one thing, and that helps, but now I see what our real problem is. Down outside the courthouse, all those terrible old men playing chess."

The boys blinked.

"What?" said Tom.

"Yeah, what?" echoed the boys.

"We're on the chessboard!" cried Douglas. "Those chess pieces, those chessmen, those are us! The old guys move us on the squares, the streets! All our lives we've been there, trapped on the chessboards in the square, with them shoving us around."

"Doug," said Tom. "You got brains!"

The clock stopped booming. There was a great wondrous silence.

"Well," said Doug, exhaling, "I guess you know what we do now! ”

IN THE GREEN PARK BELOW THE MARBLE SHADOW of the courthouse, under the great clock tower's bulk, the chess tables waited.

Now under a gray sky and a faint promise of rain, a dozen chessboards were busy with old men's hands. Above the red and black battlefields, two dozen gray heads were suspended. The pawns and castles and horses and kings and queens trembled and drifted as monarchies fell in ruin.

With the leaf shadows freckling their moves, the old men chewed their insunk mouths and looked at each other with squints and coldnesses and sometimes twinkles. They talked in rustles and scrapings a few feet beyond the monument to the Civil War dead.

Doug Spaulding snuck up, leaned around the monument, and watched the moving chess pieces with apprehension. His chums crept up behind him. Their eyes lolled over the moving chess pieces and one by one they moved back and drowsed on the grass. Doug spied on the old men panting like dogs over the boards. They twitched. They twitched again.

Douglas hissed back at his army. "Look!" he whispered. "That knight ' s you, Charlie! That king's me!" Doug jerked. "Mr. Weeble's moving me now, ah! Someone save me!" He reached out with stiff arms and froze in place.

The boys' eyes snapped open. They tried to seize his arms. "We'll help you, Doug!"

"Someone's moving me. Mr. Weeble!"

"Darn Weeble!"

At which moment there was a strike of lightning and a following of thunder and a drench of rain.

"My gosh!" said Doug. "Look."

The rain poured over the courthouse square and the old men jumped up, momentarily forgetting the chess pieces, which tumbled in the deluge.

"Quick, guys, now. Each of you grab as many as you can!" cried Doug.

They all moved forward in a pack, to fall upon the chess pieces.

There was another strike of lightning, another burst of thunder.

"Now!" cried Doug.

There was a third strike of lightning and the boys scrambled, they seized.

The chessboards were empty.

The boys stood laughing at the old men hiding under the trees.

Then, like crazed bats, they rushed off to find shelter.

"BLEAK!" QUARTERMAIN BARKED INTO HIS TELEPHONE.

"Cal?"

"By God, they got the chess pieces that were sent from Italy the year Lincoln was shot. Shrewd damn idiots! Come here tonight. We must plan our counterattack. I'll call Gray."

"Gray's busy dying."

"Christ, he's always dying! We'll have to do it our-

"Steady now, Cal. They're just chess pieces."

"It's what they signify, Bleak! This is a full rebellion."

"We'll buy new chess pieces."

"Hell, I might as well be speaking to the dead. Just be here. I'll call Gray and make him put off dying for

Bleak laughed quietly.

"Why don't we just chuck all those Bolshevik boys into a pot, boil them down to essence of kid?"

"So long, Bleak!"

He rang off and called Gray. The line was busy. He slammed the receiver down, picked it up, and tried again. Listening to the signal, he heard the tapping of tree branches on the window, faintly, far away.

My God, Quartermain thought, I can hear what he's up to. That's dying all right.

THERE WAS THIS OLD HAUNTED HOUSE ON THE far edge of the ravine.

How did they know it was haunted?

Because they said so. Everyone knew it.

It had been there for close on to one hundred years and everybody said that while it wasn't haunted during the day, at nighttime strange things happened there.

It seemed a perfectly logical place for the boys to run, Doug leading them and Tom bringing up the rear, carrying their wild treasure, the chess pieces.

It was a grand place to hide because no one-except for a pack of wild boys-would dare come to a haunted house, even if it was full daytime.

The storm still raged and if anyone had looked close at the haunted house, chanced walking through the creaky old doors, down the musty old hallways, up even creakier old stairs, they would have found an attic full of old chairs, smelling of ancient bamboo furniture polish and full of boys with fresh faces who had climbed up in the downfall sounds of the storm, accompanied by intermittent cracks of lightning and thunderclaps of applause, the storm taking delight in its ability to make them climb faster and laugh louder as they leapt and settled, one by one, Indian style, in a circle on the floor.

Douglas pulled a candle stub, lit it, and stuffed it in an old glass candlestick holder. At last, from a burlap gunnysack, he pulled forth and set down, one by one, all the captured chess pieces, naming them for Charlie and Will and Tom and Bo and all the rest. He tossed them forth to settle, like dogs called to war.