Summer of Night

TEN

The attempt on Duane McBride's life was the topic of earnest discussion for half an hour or more, but after a while the boys lost interest and went off to play ball. Mike deferred his Bike Patrol meeting until after the game or when Duane finally came into town, whichever came first.

The city ballfield was in the field behind Kevin's and Dale's homes, and to get there most of the kids in town climbed the Stewarts' fence where the thick wooden post had a diagonal wooden crossbrace on this side. That turned the Stewarts' driveway and the west side of their long yard into a public thoroughfare for kids-which was fine with Dale and Lawrence-and the result was that their home was a constant meeting place for kids from around town. It also didn't hurt that Dale's mom was one of the few who didn't mind mobs of boys there-in fact, she went so far as to provide sandwiches and lemonade and other treats for the packs of kids.

On this day the pickup game started slow-Kevin and Dale versus Mike and Lawrence for the first hour, with the pitcher's-hands-out rule in effect-but by lunchtime they'd been joined by Gerry Daysinger and Bob McKown, Donna Lou Perry and Sandy Whittaker-Sandy could bat all right but threw like a girl, but she was Donna Lou's friend and both teams wanted Donna Lou-and then some of the guys from the ritzier end of town showed up: Chuck Sperling, Digger Taylor, Bill and Barry Fussner, and Tom Castanatti. Other kids heard the noise or caught a glimpse of the crowd and by early afternoon they were on their third game and playing with regulation-size teams and bench-sitters rotating in.

Chuck Sperling wanted to be captain-he always wanted to be captain; his dad managed Elm Haven's only Little League team so that Chuck could be captain as well as pitcher, even though Chuck threw a little less well than Sandy Whitta-ker-but today he was shouted down. Mike was first captain when they chose up for the fourth game, and Castanatti-a chunky, quiet kid who had the best bat in town (he was a good batter, but mainly he owned the best bat, a beautiful white-ash Louisville Slugger that his dad had got from a friend on the Chicago White Sox team), was the second to choose.

Mike chose Donna Lou first and nobody minded. She'd been the best pitcher in town for as long as anybody could remember, and if the Little League had allowed girls, most of the guys on the team-or at least the guys who weren't afraid of Chuck Sperling's father-would have petitioned him to let her pitch so they could win a few games.

The team selection more or less shook down to the north end of town-Dale's end, the poor end-playing the south end, and while the dress code was the same, jeans and white t-shirts, the difference could be seen in mitts: Sperling and the others from the south end played with new, relatively huge, and rather stiff baseball gloves, while Mike and the others were fielding with hand-me-down mitts their fathers had used. The old mitts didn't really have pockets as such-they looked more like gloves than the tapered, pocketed leather wonders Sperling and Taylor wore-and it hurt to catch fastballs, but the boys didn't mind. It was part of the game, just like the bruises and scrapes that went with a day on the diamond. None of the boys ever played Softball except when Mrs. Doubbet or some other old crone insisted at school, and then they switched to the forbidden hardball as soon as the teacher wandered away.

But now teachers were the last thing on their mind as Mrs. Stewart came out with a hamper of baloney and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and a cooler of Kool-Aid; the guys called a brief seventh-inning stretch even though it was only the second inning, and then they went back to work. The sky stayed gray but the heat had returned, rising into the nineties and building to a solid wall of moist discomfort. The kids ignored it. They shouted and played, batted and fielded, jogged into the benches and back out to the field, argued about whose turn it was to rotate in or who had held what position too long, but generally got along better than most Little League teams. There was good-natured heckling-especially when Sperling insisted on pitching and gave up five runs in the fourth inning-and a lot of joking, but mostly the boys and two girls took their baseball seriously and played it with the Zen-poem perfection of wordless concentration.

It was the rich southside against the lower-middle-class northside-although none of the kids thought of it that way-and the northside kicked butt. Castanatti hit well and got four of his team's six runs in the first game, but Donna Lou shut down most of the other batters and Mike, Dale, and Gerry Day singer had a good day, scoring at least four runs each. At the end of their second nine-inning game, Mike's team had won 15-6 and 21-4. Then they shuffled players and started the third game.

It probably wouldn't have happened if Digger Taylor, McKown and a couple of the others hadn't ended up playing on Donna Lou's team this time around. It was three innings in, she had pitched twenty-one straight innings, and her arm was as strong as ever when she struck out Chuck Sperling for about the millionth time and Mike's team trotted in to the bench. Lawrence was the first one up, so the others leaned back against the wire of the backstop and stuck their legs out: ten clones in faded jeans and white t-shirts. Sandy had gotten tired of playing and had wandered off when Becky Cramer and a couple of her friends had come by: Donna Lou was the only girl left.

"It's a shame we can't tell the teams apart," said Digger Taylor.

Mike mopped muddy sweat from his brow with his t-shirt.

"Whaddya mean?"

Taylor shrugged. "I mean it's too bad we all gotta look alike. Both teams, I mean."

Kevin cleared his throat and spat in that rather prissy way he had. "You think we need uniforms or something?" The idea was silly. Even the town Little League team only had unnumbered t-shirts with the official logo printed on it, and the logo faded away after about a dozen washings.

"Naw," said Taylor. "I was just thinking shirts and skins."

"Hey, yeah," said Bob McKown, a kid who lived in a grungy tarpaper house near Daysinger's grungy tarpaper house, "I'm too hot anyway." He peeled off his t-shirt. "Hey, Larry!" he shouted to Lawrence. "We're skins now! Get outta your t-shirt or get out in the field!"

Lawrence glared at the older boy for calling him by the forbidden name, but he peeled out of his size-seven Fruit of the Loom and stepped up to bat. His skinny little spine poked against the pale flesh of his back like miniature stegosaurus scales.

"Yeah, hot!" hooted one of the Fussner twins and both of them tugged off their shirts. They had identical little potbellies.

McKown slapped his bare chest and turned to Kevin sitting next to him. "You gonna skin down or join the other side?"

Kevin shrugged and pulled off his shirt, folding it next to him on the bench. There were pale freckles on his sunken chest.

Daysinger was next, and he made a production out of sailing his shirt over the backstop. It struck on the top, twelve feet up, and the kids in the field roared. A ten-year-old named Michael Shoop-a troublemaker in school and a total klutz on the field-was sitting next in line and he wadded his gray shirt up and managed to land it next to Daysinger's on the top of the fence. It was the first good throw Dale had seen the kid make all day.

Mike O'Rourke was next. He looked slightly disgusted, but he pulled off his shirt. His skin was tanned, the muscles well-defined beneath the skin.

Dale Stewart was next. He'd already pulled off his wool cap and reached for the bottom of his shirt before he realized who was next. He paused for a second. Donna Lou was the last one on the bench. She wasn't looking at him; she didn't seem to be looking at anything. She was wearing dirty sneakers, faded jeans, and a white t-shirt. Even though the shirt was looser than most of the rest of theirs, Dale realized that he could see the curves through it. Donna Lou's body had developed over the winter-the previous summer her t-shirt had been as tight and flat as anyone else's on the team-and while they weren't exactly mountains yet, her breasts were suddenly noticeable.

Dale hesitated a second. He didn't exactly know why he was hesitating-Donna Lou's t-shirt was Donna Lou's problem, wasn't it?-but he also felt that something wasn't quite right. He'd played ball with Mike and Kevin and Harlen and Lawrence and her all these years, not with these other jerks on the bench and in the field now.

''Whatcha afraid of?'' Chuck Sperling called in from where he'd been demoted to first base. "Got something to hide, Stewart?"

"Yeah, come on!" called Digger Taylor from the far end of the bench. "We're skins, Stewart."

"Shut up," said Dale. But he could feel the blush hot on his cheeks and behind his ears. Partially to conceal it, he pulled off his shirt. The air was hot but his skin felt cold and clammy. He turned and looked at Donna Lou Perry.

She'd finally turned to look at the others. Lawrence had struck out and now stopped near the head of the bench. He was all ribs and powdered dust, his wrists and neck comically darker than his torso, as he paused with the bat on his shoulder and frowned at the sudden silence. No one got up to step into the on-deck circle. No one in the field made a noise. The bench was silent, all heads were turned toward Donna Lou. They sat there-Taylor, Kevin, Bill and Barry, McKown, Daysinger, Michael Shoop, Mike, and Dale-nine sets of jeans and sneakers and bare upper bodies.

"Come on," said Digger Taylor softly. There was something strange about his voice. "We're skins, Perry. Get it off."

Donna Lou stared at him.

"Yeah," said Daysinger. He nudged Bob McKown with his elbow. "Come on, Donna Lou. You with the team or not?"

A gust of wind came in from center field and lifted a streamer of dust past Castanatti on the pitcher's mound. He didn't move. No one in the field spoke.

"Come on," said Michael Shoop in that insect whine of his, "hurry up and get it off before they call delay of game."

No one corrected him by pointing out that he was mixing up football rules with baseball. No one said anything. Dale was so close to Donna Lou that his elbow was almost touching hers-had been absently touching hers a second before-and now he looked into eyes that he suddenly realized were blue and filling with tears. She didn't say anything either, just sat there, her old first baseman's-type mitt still on her right hand, her left hand-her pitching hand-curled into a weak fist in the center of it.

"Come on, Perry. Hurry it up," Digger said. There was a new, older, meaner tone in his voice now. "Take it off. We don't care what you have. We're skins now. You're either with us or off the team."

Donna Lou sat there for another ten seconds of silence so deep that Dale could hear the corn rustling in the fields north of them. Somewhere far above, a hawk made a soft cry. Dale could see the freckles on the bridge of Donna Lou's small nose, the sweat on her forehead in the shadow of her blue wool cap, and her eyes-very blue and very bright now-as she looked at him, at Mike, at Kevin. Dale knew that there was a question or plea in that look, but he didn't know what it was.

Digger Taylor started to say something else, but shut his mouth as the girl rose.

Donna Lou stood there a second, then walked over to get her baseball and bat from where they lay near the fence. Then she walked away. She didn't look back.

"Shit," said Chuck Sperling from first base. He gave his friend Taylor a smirking look.

"Yeah," laughed Digger. "Thought we were gonna see some itty bitty titty today." Michael Shoop and the Fussner twins laughed.

Lawrence looked around, frowning, not quite understanding. "Is the game over?"

Next to Dale, Mike stood and pulled on his shirt. "Yeah," he said, his voice sounding tired and disgusted. "It's over."

He got his own mitt, bat, and ball, and walked off toward the fence behind Dale's house.

Dale sat there, feeling . . . strange . . . sort of a combination of excitement and sadness and an odd feeling of having had the wind knocked out of him. At the same time he felt as if something important had happened that he had missed-something that had gone by him as surely as it had Lawrence-but it left an autumny, end-of-things feel to it, much like when the Old Settlers fair was over in August and had moved on, leaving nothing ahead but the dreaded resumption of school. He felt a little like laughing and a lot like crying, and he had no idea why he felt either emotion.

"Pussy!" Digger Taylor shouted after Mike.

Mike didn't look back. He tossed his stuff across the fence, grabbed the post, easily vaulted the high fence, picked up his gear, and crossed the yard to disappear into the elm shadows near Dale's driveway.

Dale sat there, waiting for a break between innings before he'd tell Lawrence that they had to get home, even though it wasn't dinnertime yet. The sky seemed to be a darker, featureless gray, hiding the horizon in haze and leeching light from the afternoon.

The game went on.

It was evening before Duane came.

Dale had eaten dinner and was lying around on his bed upstairs, reading an old Scrooge McDuck comic as the light softened through the screens, only half aware of the evening coming on and the rich scent of new-mown grass on the breeze, when Mike called from the front lawn.

"Eeawkee!"

Dale rolled off his bed and cupped his hands to his mouth. "Keeawee!" He rattled down the stairway, crashed through the front door, and jumped the four steps from the porch.

Mike stood with his hands in his pockets. "Duane's in the chickenhouse."

Mike hadn't bothered with his bike so Dale left his lying in the side yard. Both boys jogged east down Depot Street.

"Where's Lawrence?" asked Mike as he ran. He wasn't breathing hard.

"Went on a walk with Mrs. Moon and Mom."

Mike nodded. Mrs. Moon was eighty-six, but still enjoyed her evening walks. Most people in the neighborhood took turns walking with her when her daughter-Miss Moon, the librarian-wasn't able to.

Mike's backyard was a mass of shadows from the big oaks and elms along the street and the apple trees behind the house. Fireflies were winking along the edge of Mr. O'Rourke's half-acre of garden. The chickenhouse glowed white in the gloom, its door a black rectangle. Dale stepped in ahead of Mike and let his eyes adapt to the dimness.

Duane was there, standing next to the empty console radio. Kevin lay on the couch, his t-shirt a startling white. Dale glanced around for Harlen before remembering that their friend was in the hospital.

Dale bent over to catch his breath while Mike stepped into the center of the room.-"It's good that Lawrence isn't here," said Mike. "What Duane has to say is sort of spooky."

"You OK?" Dale asked the overweight boy. "How'd you get to come into town?"

"The Old Man came in to go to Carl's," said Duane and adjusted his glasses. He seemed even more distracted than usual. "It really happened," he added. "The Rendering Truck really tried to kill me today." His voice was as soft and unexcited as ever, but Dale thought he heard the slightest undertone of tension.

"I'm sorry about Witt," said Dale. "So's Lawrence."

Duane nodded again.

"Tell them about the soldier," said Mike.

Duane told them about his father's return late Saturday night-early Sunday morning actually-and about the young man in the odd uniform who had hitched a ride.

Kevin put his hands behind his head. "So? What's weird about that?"

Mike told them about the same guy following him down Jubilee College Road the evening before. "It was sort of spooky," he finished. "I began running ... I usually run pretty good ... but somehow this guy almost kept up just by walking. Finally, I got fifty or sixty feet ahead of him, but when I turned by the water tower I couldn't see him anymore."

"Was it dark?" asked Dale.

"About like now. Not so dark I couldn't see him a minute before. I even walked back to where the road turns, but it was empty all the way back the way I'd come."

Kevin began humming the theme music from that new TV show called The Twilight Zone.

Dale sat in the sprung easy chair under the narrow window. "The guy could've hidden in the fields. Laid down in the corn."

"Yeah," said Mike, "but why? What was he doing?" He told about the hole he'd seen in the toolshed behind Calvary Cemetery.

Kevin sat up. "Jeez, O'Rourke, you actually broke inV

"Yeah. But that's not the point."

Kevin whistled. "It'll be the point if Congden or Barney finds out."

Mike stuck his hands in his pockets again. He seemed as distracted as Duane and far more out of sorts. "Barney's OK, but I think Congden's a real creepo. You saw him today with Duane's dad. I think the guy was lying about Van Syke."

Dale leaned forward. "Lying? Why?"

"Because he's with them," said Mike. "Or helping them."

"With who?" said Kevin.

Mike went to the door and looked out with his hands still jammed deep in his pockets. The darkness outside was just enough lighter than the darkness inside to silhouette him in the doorway. "With them," he said. "Dr. Roon Van Syke. Probably Old Double-Butt. Whoever's doing this stuff."

"And the soldier guy," said Dale.

Duane cleared his throat. "The uniform's consistent with what doughboys wore back during the First World War."

"What's a doughboy?" asked Mike.

Both Dale and Duane began to explain. Duane nodded and Dale finished the explanation.

"And when was that war?" asked Mike, although he knew from Memo's stories.

Duane told him.

Mike swiveled in the doorway and slapped the doorframe. "Great. What's a guy dressed like a World War One soldier doing wandering around here?"

"Maybe he's taking a stroll near where he resides," said Kevin in his mocking tone.

"And where's that?" asked Dale.

"The cemetery."

Kevin had meant it as a joke, but it was too dark and the death of Duane's dog had been too recent. No one spoke for a while.

Mike broke the silence. "Anybody hear anything about Harlen?"

"Yeah," said Kevin. "Ma was up in Oak Hill this afternoon and saw his ma there. She was eating dinner in the drugstore just across the square from the hospital, and she told Ma that Harlen's still unconscious. His arm's all busted up. Multiple compound fractures."

"Is that bad?" asked Dale, realizing as he spoke how stupid the question sounded.

Mike nodded. He had more Scout badges in First Aid than anybody else Dale knew. "Compound fractures mean it's broken more than once. Bone probably came through the skin, too."

"Oh, yech," said Kevin. Dale felt a little sick at the thought.

"The concussion's probably the most serious thing," continued Mike. "If Harlen's still out, it's probably pretty bad."

There was another silence. A mouse or shrew made scurrying sounds beneath the floorboards. The room was dark enough now that Dale could see only the other boys' outlines-Kevin's shirt glowing the brightest, Duane's dark flannel only a shadow amidst shadows-and now there were more fireflies visible beyond the door and windows, glowing like embers in the dark. Like eyes.

"I'm going up to Oak Hill tomorrow," Duane said at last. "I'll check in on Jim and let you guys know how he is."

Kevin's t-shirt moved in the gloom. "Maybe we could all go."

"Uh-uh," came Duane's voice. "You guys have stuff to do around here, remember? Have you followed Roon yet?" The question was directed at Kev in the darkness.

Grumbacher grunted. "I've been busy."

"Yes," said Duane. "We all have. But I think we'd better do the things we agreed to do at the cave on Saturday. Something weird's going on."

"Maybe Harlen saw something," said Dale. "They found him in the garbage bin behind Old Central. Maybe he was following Old Double-Butt or something."

"Maybe," agreed Duane. "I'll try to find out tomorrow. In the meantime, it would help if someone else checked out Mrs. Doubbet until Jim's back."

"I will," said Dale, surprised to hear himself volunteer. Mike's shadow at the doorway said, "I didn't find Van Syke at the cemetery, but I'll get him tomorrow."

"Be careful," said Duane. "I didn't see him for sure in that truck, but I somehow was sure that it was him driving." The boys clamored for more details of the near disaster. Duane summarized it as briefly as he could. "I've got to get going," he said finally. "I don't want the Old Man drinking too much at Carl's."

The other three shifted in embarrassment, glad for the darkness. "Can I tell Lawrence this stuff?" Dale asked. "Yeah," said Mike. "But don't scare him to death." Dale nodded. The meeting was over, everybody was expected somewhere else, but nobody seemed to want to leave. One of the O'Rourke cats came in, leaped onto Dale's lap, and curled up, purring.

Kevin signed. "None of this shit makes sense." Kevin almost never swore.

The others said nothing, just staying there another moment, together in the darkness. Silence was their agreement.

That night, Mike O'Rourke lay awake counting fireflies out his window. Sleep was like a tunnel, and he had no intention of going in.

Something moved on the front lawn, under the linden tree. Mike leaned forward, set his nose against the screen, and tried to see between the leaves and the eaves of the small front porch.

Someone had moved out of the deep shadows under the tree near Memo's window and stepped out onto the road. Mike listened for footsteps on asphalt or the crunch of the gravel on the roadside, but there was no sound except for the silken rub of corn tassels.

He had only caught a glimpse, but Mike had seen the round shadow of the top of a hat. Too perfectly round to be a cowboy hat. More like a Boy Scout hat.

Or the campaign hat Duane had described on the soldier he'd called a doughboy.

Mike lay by the window, heart still pounding, holding sleep off like an enemy that had to be kept at bay.