Summer of Night

ELEVEN

Duane McBride left for the library as soon as morning chores were done on Tuesday. The Old Man was awake and sober and in the foul mood which that combination usually brought. Duane went into the Old Man's workshop to tell him he was leaving.

"Chores done?" grunted his father. He was tinkering with the newest model of his "learning machine." The Old Man's workroom had once been the family dining room, but since Duane and his father ate only in the kitchen-when they ate together at all, which was rarely-the Old Man had turned the dining room into his workshop. Half a dozen doors on sawhorses served as massive tables, and most of these were littered with variations on the learning machine or other prototypes.

The Old Man was a real inventor; he had five patents approved, although only one of these-the automatic mailbox alarm-had ever made any money for him. Most of his devices were as impractical as the learning machine over which he now fussed: a massive metal box with cranks, viewing panel, buttons, punch-card slots, and assorted lights. The thing was supposed to revolutionize education. When properly programmed with scrolls of the appropriate reading/questioning material and the required student-response punch cards, the machine could provide hours of instructional choices and private tutoring. The problem-as Duane had pointed out repeatedly-was that each learning machine would cost almost a thousand dollars with the necessary printed stuff, and it was mechanical.

Duane had long argued that computers would someday do this stuff, but his father disliked electronics as much as Duane loved it. You know how big a computer would have to be to carry out the simplest autonomous teaching task? his father would demand. As Big as Texas, Duane would respond. With the hourly total flow of Niagara Falls required to cool it. But then he would add, But that's with vacuum tubes, Pop. They're doing exciting things with transistors and resistors now.

The Old Man would grunt and go back to work on a new learning-machine prototype. Duane had to admit they were fun-he'd run through an entire high-school political science course on one when he was eight-but they were clunky and forbidding. Only one had been sold-almost four years earlier, to the Brimfield School District, and Uncle Art knew a purchasing guy there. Meanwhile, prototypes continued to clutter the workshop tables and end up taking space in the hallways and empty bedrooms upstairs.

Duane figured that as a hobby, the perpetual-motion learning-machine project wasn't as harmful as the full-serve twen-ty-four-hour-a-day rural shopping center the Old Man had tried to run back in the mid-fifties. There had been two stores in the "shopping center," a hardware store and the Old Man's multipurpose OmniMart, which sold mainly bread and milk, but the Old Man had been the entire delivery force, taking calls at home in the middle of the night and driving down gravel and dirt backroads at all hours, delivering a loaf of bread at four a.m. to some old lady over in Knox County only to discover that she wanted it put on the OmniMart Instant Credit Plan. Uncle Art-who'd run the hardware store-was as glad as Duane to see that vision die. To this day, the Old Man insisted that he'd been right about "shopping centers"-just look at Sherwood Center now growing up in Peoria, nine stores!-but that he'd been ahead of his time. The Old Man predicted that someday shopping centers would be huge, indoor affairs-dozens of specialty stores under a single glassed roof like the gallerias he'd seen in Ital) after the war. Most people would listen and ask Whyl with a puzzled expression, but Duane and Uncle Art had learned to nod and keep quiet.

"Chores done?" repeated the Old Man.

Duane shook himself out of his contemplation of the learning machines. "Yeah. Thought I'd go into the library."

The Old Man looked up and let his close-work glasses slip down on his nose. "Library? Why today? Didn't you go Saturday?"

"Yeah, but I forgot to see if they had a small-motor repair manual."

The Old Man frowned. The pump on the old windmill needed repair. "I thought you already knew all about that stuff."

Duane shrugged. "That motor's old. It was put in before the rural electrification around here. I'd better have a manual if I'm going to do anything but change the belts and brushes.''

The Old Man's gaze lost focus and Duane could imagine what he was thinking: he'd been spooked by the truck trying to kill his boy the day before-when they'd buried Witt in the afternoon, Duane had thought he'd seen tears in the Old Man's eyes . . . but the wind was blowing and it might've just been blowing sand irritating them-but on the other hand, the Old Man couldn't keep Duane penned up at home all summer or drive him around all the time.

"Can you get there without taking the road in?"

"Yeah, easy," said Duane. "I'll just cut back through the south pasture and walk the edge of Johnson's fields."

The Old Man looked back at the web of gears and pulleys he was adjusting. "All right. Just be home for supper, understand?"

Duane nodded, went to the kitchen, made himself a couple of baloney sandwiches and stuck them in a greasy sack, filled a Thermos with coffee and hung it on his belt by the cup handle, checked to make sure he had his notebook and pen in his pocket, and ambled out. He'd made four steps toward the barn to say good-bye to Witt before he remembered. Duane adjusted his glasses and went through the gate, heading for the south pasture just as he'd told the Old Man.

And he would use the Johnson fields to get as far west as tfie railroad tracks. He hadn't lied to his father. But he hadn't exactly told the truth, either: the library he was heading for wasn't the tiny one in Elm Haven, a little more than two miles away ... it was the library in Oak Hill, more than eight miles along the backroads and easily more than ten the way Duane was planning to go.

Duane settled down into his distance-gobbling waddle, the Thermos batting against his left leg with every other step, his black sneakers scaring grasshoppers into flight in the high weeds. The sun was out today and the morning was the hottest of the summer so far. Duane opened the top two buttons of his flannel shirt and considered whistling a tune as he walked.

He decided not to.

The best way to get to Oak Hill from Duane's house would have been to go north on County Six until it ran into the unnumbered gravel road north of the Barminton farm, head west until that road intercepted State Highway 626, better known as Oak Hill Road, and then take that the final four and half miles into town. But that meant roads.

Duane crossed his first road north of Elm Haven-moving quickly across the gravel road that ran south to become First Avenue-and then cut through the forest of metal grain-storage silos arrayed north of the town's playing fields. A row of pines that ran west from the water tower obscured the view for Duane, so he couldn't check to see if his friends were playing ball that day.

West of there, he ambled north again to avoid the town and the upper reaches of Broad Avenue.

He did have to follow a narrow lane through the bushes to the railroad tracks after Catton Road ended, but he couldn't imagine the Rendering Truck forcing its way through the branches and shrubs here. He realized then that he was only a few hundred yards from the tallow plant-the place from which Congden had said the truck had been "stolen"-but the woods were so thick here that Duane couldn't even see the tin roof of the place.

The railroad embankment was a relief after all the underbrush, and Duane slowed his pace enough to unhitch his Thermos and pour himself a cup of coffee. He did not stop, but sipped as he walked, putting up with coffee spilled on his shirt and pants. Well, the pants were about the same color as the stains.

He smelled the dump before he saw it, and just at that second he saw the squalid huddle of shacks just outside the south entrance to the dump. Cordie Cooke lived in one of those homes-if you could call that collection of tarpaper and tin on cinderblocks home-but Duane wasn't sure which one. Something moved in the shrubbery on the west side of the tracks, but although Duane looked over his shoulder, he caught no glimpse of the animal.

He ambled on, passing the heaps of the county dump-the mountains of garbage clearly visible through and above the trees-and then crossing the low trestle over what, three miles east of here, would become Corpse Creek. He was in luck: the wind was blowing from the north, so once he left the dump behind, he left it behind.

From the dump, it was a simple seven-mile walk through the fields and forests of Creve Coeur County and Duane made it in a little over two hours.

Oak Hill was more than three times as large as Elm Haven, boasting almost 5,500 people. It had a small hospital as well as a library bigger than a chicken coop, a small factory on its outskirts, a county courthouse, a block of suburbs-everything.

Duane came down off the tracks as the railroad embankment curved east to miss the town. He didn't mind walking the tree-lined streets of Oak Hill, although every time a car or truck turned a corner behind him, he glanced over his shoulder quickly and was peripherally aware of porches within running distance.

He paused on the courthouse lawn in the shade of an oak and a bronze cannon to eat his baloney sandwiches and finish his coffee. He was hot-it was at least in the nineties today-but his flannel shirt wasn't sticking to him. Finished, he tucked the Thermos on his belt and crossed to the hospital on the south side of the square.

The lady's name on the green badge was Miss Alnutt, her desk was planted firmly in the middle of the only corridor leading to the wards, and she was implacable. "You can't come in," she said in her maiden-aunt rasp. The talcum-powder and old-skin scent of her wafted to Duane on the slight breeze from the overhead fan. "You're too young." Duane nodded. "Yes, ma'am. But Jimmy's my only cousin and his mama said I could come see him."

Miss Alnutt jerked her head in what might have been dismissal. "You're too young. No one under sixteen is allowed in the patients' wing. No exceptions." She peered at him through the half-lenses perched on her nose. "Besides, no extraneous food or drink is allowed in the patients' rooms." Duane glanced down at his Thermos and quickly unhooked it from his belt. "Yes, ma'am. I could leave this here. I only want to see him for a minute or two-I promise I'll just look in on him and come right back."

Miss Alnutt made a flicking motion with her veined wrist and turned her attention back to the cards in her small file box. Duane had noticed the room number when he'd first asked about Harlen. Now he said, "Thank you, ma'am," and turned to trudge back through the lobby.

The only pay phone was down the corridor to the public restrooms. The only phone he had seen in the lobby was at the admissions desk, twenty paces beyond his corridor and around the corner. He'd brought fifty cents in change, just in case. He only needed a nickel. The number was in the tattered phone book.

They didn't page her. One of the nurses from the lobby came around, whispered to Miss Alnutt, and walked with her as the older lady rushed to the front desk. It was, after all, an important call.

Duane strolled by the empty desk, turned into the patients' ward, and for the second time that day, resisted the impulse to whistle.

After breakfast, Dale Stewart borrowed his dad's binoculars and headed down Depot Street to the depot and then out the railroad tracks to Cordie's. He didn't really want to go-that whole side of town gave him the willies because of Congden's house, and the woods out by the dump were worse-but after the talk in the chickenhouse the night before, Dale sort of felt it was his duty. But what Cordie and Tubby Cooke had to do with some jerk scaring Duane with the Rendering Truck, Dale had no idea.

J. P. Congden's shabby house was on the same block as Harlen's home, but the black Chevy wasn't where it was usually parked in the yard and nothing stirred in the weedy backyard. Dale wasn't so much afraid of the justice of the peace-although the old fart had scared him well enough yesterday-but he was afraid of J.P's juvenile-delinquent son, C.J. Every kid in town was afraid of C.J.

C. J. Congden had finally dropped out of school the previous year-sixteen years old and still in eighth grade, who could blame him?-and most of the boys in Elm Haven felt like giving a victory party that day. Congden was like some cartoon stereotype of what a small-town bully should be: duck's-ass haircut, zits that looked like some sort of tropical disease was eating his sallow face, greasy t-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled up in the sleeve, tall, lean, but well-muscled with big, mean hands, grimy jeans slung so low that guys watching him walk half-expected his dick to pop out above the beltline, heavy engineer boots with metal taps that kicked up sparks on the cement as he scuffed along, a can of snuff in his back pocket and a folded knife in his front pocket. . . Dale once remarked to Kevin that C. J. Congden must have some Manual for Bullies that he referred to.

But Dale didn't make jokes about C. J. where they might be overheard or repeated. When the Stewarts had first moved to Elm Haven from Peoria four years earlier-Dale just entering third grade and Lawrence going into first-Dale had made the mistake of catching C.J.'s attention. Congden was twelve years old and still a fifth grader then, but he roamed the small kids' playground like a shark among schools of rainbow fish.

After the second schoolyard beating, Dale had gone to his dad for help. His dad told him that all bullies were cowards, that if you stood up to them, they backed down. The next day, Dale stood up to C.J.

Dale had lost two of his baby teeth that day and had several of the permanent ones loosened. His nose bled on and off for three days, and he still carried the scar on his hip where C.J. had kicked him after he'd fallen down and curled up. Dale hadn't felt quite the same about his father's advice since that week.

Dale tried bribery. Congden took the Twinkies and lunch money and beat the shit out of Dale anyway. Dale tried being a follower, even going so far as to try to slouch around the playground as part of the bully's entourage of toadies. Congden kicked the hell out of him at least once a week on general principles.

What made matters worse, was that Congden's one legitimate sidekick-Archie Kreck-was in Dale's class. Archie would have been the town bully himself if Congden hadn't existed: he affected the same wardrobe, had cleats on his boots, was short and stocky and mean, looked a bit like Mickey Rooney's evil twin, and had a glass eye.

No one knew how Archie had lost his real eye . . . word on the playground was that C. J. Congden had dug it out with a penknife as part of some bizarre initiation when Archie was only six or seven . . . but the glass eye, his left, was used to good effect. Sometimes when Mrs. Howe was droning on in a geography lesson, Archie would pop out the eye, set it in the pencil trough at the front of his desk, and pretend to doze off while his eye kept watch.

Dale had laughed the first time he'd seen this, but Archie had waited after the principal was through with him and jumped Dale on the way to the boys' (or boy's as it was marked in Old Central) John. Archie had held Dale's face in the urinal for five flushes while urging him to laugh again. After school that day, Archie and C.J. were both waiting at the edge of the playground. Dale had never run so fast-scooting down the alley behind Mrs. Moon's house, crashing through Mike's chickenhouse, cutting back through Grayson's garden, and then sprinting across the street to his own house, slamming through the front door two seconds in front of the two human Dobermans in engineer boots.

They'd caught up to him two days later and kicked the shit out of him. Despite what fathers say and mothers don't understand, there's no escaping bullies. And these two were world class.

Dale was pleased to be past the Congden place: C.J. didn't have his own car, and his old man wouldn't let him drive the souped-up Chevy, but Dale had seen him driving a lot of his "friends' " cars. It was wonderful when the town bully began driving; it got him off the streets.

Harlen's house was three doors down, just a hundred yards from the old depot. Dale slid his bike to a stop by the front stoop and rapped on the door, but the house looked closed and silent and no one came to the door. Still glancing down the street to make sure that C.J. and Archie didn't suddenly show up, Dale walked his bike down the street. His dad's leather binocular case bounced against his chest as he walked.

There were two ways to get to Cordie Cooke's house: push the bike over the railroad embankment and through the weeds to the gravel road that ran back to the dump; or leave his bike somewhere and walk the tracks.

Dale didn't like to leave his bike in this part of town-once Lawrence's bike had ended up missing for two weeks until Harlen found it in the orchard behind Congden's house-but he also remembered Duane's game of tag with the truck.

Dale stowed the bike in the weeds behind the depot, pulling branches to camouflage it completely, and-scanning with the binoculars to make sure that C.J. wasn't lurking around somewhere-moved cautiously down the west side of the embankment until he was out past the grain elevator. Then he picked up a branch and walked the right rail, whistling and hitting pebbles into the fields. He wasn't worried about trains: the line was rarely used-sometimes weeks went by between freights, according to Harlen, who lived close to the tracks.

Beyond Catton Road, the trees disappeared except for the cottonwoods by the stream and occasional patches of timber between the fields. Dale began wondering what he was going to do. What if someone caught him peeking at the Cookes' house with binoculars? Wasn't there a law against doing that? What if Cordie's drunken father caught him ... or he ran into one of the other creepos that lived out by the dump? What if the binoculars got broken?

Dale tossed the stick into the weeds and walked along, one hand on the leather case.

This is nuts.

He saw the roof of the tallow plant off to the left, but no red Rendering Truck came charging out of the bushes to squash him. Then he smelled the dump and saw Cordie's place through the trees.

Dale got off the embankment and slipped down through marshy grass, staying where the trees were thickest. It was almost a hundred yards to the house itself, so he felt fairly safe here in the woods. No one could see him from the dump road or from the tracks behind him. It'd be hard to sneak up on him because of all the dry sticks lying around. He settled back in an enclosed area between two trees and a thick bush, focused the binoculars on Cordie's house, and waited.

Cordie's house was a mess. It was so small that it was hard to believe that four adults-a couple of her uncles lived there-and a bunch of kids could inhabit the place. The house made Daysinger's shack and Congden's rattrap look like palaces.

Three old homes lay in the hollow near the gate to the dump. Cordie's place was the worst, and they were all awful. All the houses were set on cinderblocks, but her place looked like it'd fallen off in the back and actually slanted like some boat beached after a storm. Grass grew thick and green along the edge of the woods and beside the stream thirty yards behind the house, but the yard was packed dirt relieved only by deep mud puddles. Junk was strewn everywhere.

Like most guys, Dale liked junk. If the dump didn't have so many mean rats and neighbors like the Cookes and the Congdens, he and the other boys would be out here playing, digging, exploring, and retrieving all the time. As it was, the Bike Patrol spent more time checking out things being thrown away along the town's alleys and streets on pickup day than in any other activity. Junk was neat. People threw away the neatest things. Once Dale and Lawrence had found an actual tank helmet-some sort of cushioned thing with real leather and German writing on the inside-and Lawrence had used it in his one-against-ten football games ever since. Another time, Dale and Mike had found a great sink that they'd carried all the way back to Mike's chickenhouse before Mr. O'Rourke screamed at them to take it back. Junk was neat.

But not this junk. Behind Cordie's house there were rusted springs, broken toilets-although Dale was sure that Cordie'd said once that they had an outhouse-car windshields with shards of broken glass slanting up through chokeweeds, rusted auto parts that looked like the organs of some monster robot, hundreds of rusty old cans with their sharp lids raised like buzzsaw blades, broken tricycles that looked like they'd been smashed by a truck driving back and forth over them, discarded dolls with mold on their pink plastic flesh and dead eyes staring skyward. Dale spent at least ten minutes inspecting the junkyard behind Cordie's house before lowering the glasses and rubbing his eyes. What the heck do they do with all that crap?

Spying was boring business, Dale discovered. Within a half an hour his legs felt cramped, bugs were crawling on him, the heat was making his head hurt, and all he'd seen was Cordie's mother out back pulling wash off the line-the sheets looked gray and spotted-and shouting at the two grimy little Cooke kids who sat splashing each other in the deepest mud puddle, while picking their noses and wiping it on their shorts.

No sign of Cordie. No sign of whatever he was looking for. What was he looking for? Hell, let Mike come out and do this if he wanted to check out Cordie Cooke.

Dale was about ready to call it a day when he heard footsteps on the cinders along the railroad embankment. He crouched down, shielding the glasses, so sun wouldn't glint off the lenses, and tried to catch a glimpse of who it was. He saw corduroy pants through the leaves, legs walking in a familiar waddle.

What the heck is Duane doing over here?

Dale ran to a different position, making noise in the underbrush as he did so, but the railbed curved out of sight a hundred feet north, and by the time Dale got where he could see something, there wasn't anything left to see.

He started walking back to his observation post, but a movement of gray in the trees ahead of him made him take cover and use the glasses.

Cordie was striding purposefully through the woods, heading for the tracks. She was carrying a double-barreled shotgun.

Dale felt his knees go sort of weak. What if she'd seen him? Cordie was crazy-that wasn't an insult, just a fact. The year before, in fifth grade, there was a new music teacher she didn't like-Mr. Aleo from Chicago-and Cordie sent him a letter saying that she was going to sic her dogs on him and have them tear his arms and legs and other stuff off. She'd read the letter to the class on the playground before going in to give it to him.

It was the line about the "other stuff being torn off that probably had gotten her suspended. Mr. Aleo gave up on Elm Haven and went back to Evansville before the school year was over. Cordie was crazy. Fact. If she'd seen Dale, she could easily be hunting him with murder on her mind.

Dale flattened himself in the weeds, trying not to breathe, trying not even to think, since he had a theory that crazy people were telepathic.

Cordie did not look right or left as she strode through the woods, climbed the embankment about fifty feet south of where Dale had come down, and began walking toward town. The gun was bigger than she was and she carried it over one shoulder like some midget soldier.

Dale waited until she was out of sight, and then he began to follow, being careful not to show himself. They were halfway back to town, between the tallow plant and the abandoned grain elevator, and Cordie was still a couple of hundred feet ahead-never looking back, never looking from side to side, marching from railroad tie to railroad tie like a windup toy in a grungy gray dress-when suddenly he came around a turn and she was gone.

Dale hesitated, scanned the railbed and woodline ahead with the glasses, and cautiously poked his head up to see if she'd gone into the woods on the east side of the tracks.

A familiar voice behind him said, "Hey, it's the fucking Stewart kid. You lost, punk?"

Dale turned slowly, still holding his dad's binoculars. C. J. and Archie were both there, not ten feet behind him. He'd been so careful not to let Cordie see or hear him that he'd never checked his tail.

Archie was shirtless, a red bandanna tied around his forehead. Greasy hair stuck out above it. His fat face was flushed and the glass eye glinted in the late-morning light. C. J. was standing with one foot up on the rail, the other boot on the cinder right-of-way. The pose made Dale think of some sort of acned white hunter on safari. It was perfect right down to the rifle C. J. held in the crook of his arm.

Jesus Christ, thought Dale. His legs suddenly were so weak that he didn't think he could run if he got the chance. What is this, National Gun Day? He imagined saying that aloud, as dumb as it sounded. He imagined C. J. and Archie laughing, maybe one of them clapping him on the back, and then the two of them turning around and heading back to the dump to shoot rats.

"What the fuck are you smiling at, punk?" snapped C. J. Congden, only son of Elm Haven's justice of the peace.

He raised the rifle and pointed it directly at Dale's face from ten feet away. There was a click of a safety being slid off, or maybe the hammer being lifted.

Dale tried to close his eyes but couldn't even manage that. He realized that he was shielding the binoculars so that the bullet wouldn't smash them when it passed through his chest. He felt the urge to hide behind something so strongly it was like the need to urinate when you just couldn't stand it any longer . . . but the only thing to hide behind was himself.

Dale's right leg began vibrating slightly. His heart was pounding so wildly that it seemed to have ruined his hearing; C. J. was saying something, but no sound came through.

Congden took two steps and set the muzzle against Dale Stewart's throat.

Duane McBride found Jim Harlen's room easily enough. It was a double room, but the curtain was pulled back and the second bed was empty. Rich June light filled the window and painted a white rectangle on the tile floor.

Harlen was sleeping. Duane checked the empty corridor and pulled the door shut just as the squeak of a nurse's shoes approached the corner.

Duane stepped closer and hesitated. He hadn't been sure what to expect-Harlen in an oxygen tent, perhaps, features distorted by clear plastic, all but surrounded by tall oxygen bottles the way Duane's granddad had looked just before he'd died two years ago-but Jim was sleeping peacefully enough under a starched sheet and a thin blanket, with only the thick cast on his left arm and the white crown of bandages around his head testifying to his injuries. Duane stood there until the squeak of shoes in the corridor went past, and then he stepped closer to the bed.

Harlen opened his eyes quickly, like an owl waking up, and said, "Hey, McBride."

Duane almost jumped backward. He blinked and said, "Hey, Harlen. You OK?"

Harlen tried to smile and Duane noticed how thin and bloodless the other boy's lips looked. "Yeah, I'm OK," Harlan said. "I woke up here with this terrible damn headache and my arm all torn and smashed to shit. Other than that, I'm great."

Duane nodded. "We thought you were . . ."He paused, not wanting to say "in a coma."

"Dead?" said Harlen.

Duane shook his head. "Unconscious."

Harlen's eyes fluttered as if he were sliding back into a coma. He opened them wide and frowned as if trying to focus. "I guess I was. Unconscious, I mean. I woke up a few hours ago with this stinking lousy headache to find my mom sitting on the edge of the bed. I thought it was Sunday morning for a while. Shit, I didn't even know where I was for a few minutes." He looked around as if he still was not sure where he was.

"Where's your mother now, Jim?"

"She went across the square to get lunch and call her boss." Harlen spoke slowly, as if each word hurt.

"You OK, then?" Duane asked again.

"Yeah, I think so. This morning there were a bunch of doctors in here, shining lights in my eyes and making me j count to fifty and everything. They even asked me if I could tell 'em who I was."

"Could you?" *

'' Sure. I said I was Dwight Goddamn Eisenhower.'' Harlen smiled through the pain.

Duane nodded. He didn't have much time. "Jim, do you remember how you got hurt? What happened?"

Harlen stared up at him for a very long moment, and Duane noticed how wide the pupils of the boy's eyes were. Harlen's lips were trembling now as if he were trying to keep the smile in place. "No," he said at last.

"You can't remember being at Old Central?"

Harlen closed his eyes and his voice was almost a whine. "I don't remember friggin' anything," he said. "At least anything after our stupid half-assed meeting out at the Cave."

"The cave," repeated Duane. "You mean Saturday at the culvert."

"Yeah."

"Do you remember Saturday afternoon? After the Cave?"

Harlen's eyes flickered open and there was anger there. "I just said I didn't, fatso."

Duane nodded. "You were in the dumpster at Old Central when they found you on Sunday morning ..."

"Yeah, Mom told me. She started cryin' when she told me, like it was her fault."

"But you don't know how you got there?" Duane heard the intercom paging some doctor in the hall outside.

"Uh-uh. I don't remember anything about Saturday night. For all I know, you and O'Rourke and a bunch of other shits dragged me out of bed, hit me with a board, and dumped me there."

Duane looked at the massive cast on Harlen's arm. "Kevin's mom says that your mom says that your bike was up on Broad Avenue, near Old Double-Butt's house."

"Yeah? She didn't tell me that." Harlen's voice sounded flat, listless, and devoid of curiosity.

Duane ran his fingers along the soft border of the blanket. "Do you think you might've left it there because you were following Mrs. Doubbet somewhere? To the school?"

Harlen raised his left hand to cover his eyes again. His fingernails had been chewed to the quick. "Look, McBride, I said I didn't goddamn know. So leave me alone, OK? You're not even supposed to be in here, are you?"

Duane patted Harlen's shoulder through the crinkly hospital gown. "We all wanted to know how you were," he said. "Mike and Dale and the other guys want to come see you when you feel better."

"Yeah, yeah." Harlen's voice was muffled with the palm of his hand over his lower face. His fingers tapped at the bandages.

"They'll be glad to hear you're OK." Duane glanced toward the hall, where there were more footsteps: hospital people coming back on duty after lunch maybe. "Anything we can bring you?"

"Michelle Staffney naked," said Harlen, his hand still over his face.

"Right," said Duane and moved to the door. The hall was empty for the moment. "We'll catch you later, Fried P'tater." That phrase had been a big deal among the boys when they were all in fourth grade.

Harlen sighed. "McBride?"

"Yeah."

"You can do one thing." The intercom squawked on in the hall. Outside the window, someone fired up a lawnmower. Duane waited. "Turn on the light," said Harlen. "Would you?"

Duane squinted in the bright sunlight already filling the room, but he switched on the light. The additional brightness wasn't noticeable in the glare.

"Thanks," said Harlen.

"Can you see all right, Jim?" Duane's voice was soft.

"Yeah. I can see." Harlen lowered his hand and stared at Duane with an unreadable expression. "It's just that. . . well . . . if I go back to sleep, I don't want to wake up in the dark.

You know?"

Duane nodded, waited a moment, thought of nothing else to say, waved toward Harlen, and slipped out, heading for the side exit.

Dale Stewart stared down the rifle barrel at C. J. Congden's pimply face and thought, Jesus, I'm going to die. It was a new idea and it seemed to freeze the scene around him into a single block of impressions: Congden, Archie Kreck, the sunshine warm on Dale's face, the shadowed leaves and blue sky above and behind C. J., the heat reflected from the cinders and rails, the blue steel of the rifle barrel and the slight but somehow giddy ing scent of oil that rose from the weapon-all this combined to seal the moment in time as surely as Mike's block of amber had captured a spider from a million years ago.

"I asked you a fucking question, you stupid fuckface,"

rasped C. J.

Dale seemed to hear Congden's voice from very, very far away. His pulse was still pounding loudly in his ears. Although it took most of his concentration just to avoid surrendering to the dizziness that was assailing him, Dale managed an answer. "Huh?"

Congden sneered. "I said, what the fuck are you smiling at?" He raised the stock of the rifle to his shoulder, never allowing the barrel to lose contact with the base of Dale's throat.

"I'm not smiling." Dale heard the quaver in his own voice and realized that he should be ashamed of it, but it was a distant thing. His heart seemed to be trying to tear itself out of his chest. The earth felt like it was tilting slightly, so Dale had to concentrate on keeping his balance.

"The fuck you ain't!" shouted Archie Kreck. The second-string bully's face was turned slightly in profile and Dale could see that his glass eye was slightly larger than his real one.

"Shut up," C. J. said absently. He raised the barrel so that the pressure left Dale's throat-he could feel the pain now from where the muzzle had pressed and knew there was a red ring there-and aimed it directly at the younger boy's face. "You're still grinnin', fuckface. How'd you like it if I blew a hole in that stupid grin?"

Dale shook his head, but he couldn't stop grinning. He could feel the smile, a rictus he could not control. His right leg was shaking visibly now and his bladder felt very full. He concentrated on keeping his balance and not wetting his pants.

The muzzle of the rifle was ten inches in front of his face. Dale could not believe how large it was. The black opening seemed to fill the sky and dim the sunlight; Dale recognized it as a .22 caliber rifle, the kind one broke at the breech to load a single cartridge at a time-good for shooting rats at the dump, which is where these two rats probably had been headed-and his imagination allowed him to see the .22 shell at the base of that barrel, awaiting only the drop of the hammer to send the lead slug through Dale's teeth and tongue, the roof of his mouth, his brains. He tried to remember what damage a .22 slug would do to an animal's brains, but all he could remember from his dad's teaching during preparation for their hunting together was that a .22-long could travel a mile.

Dale fought back the urge to ask C. J. if the rifle was loaded with a .22-long cartridge.

"Wouldja like that, fuckhead?" C. J. asked again, sighting down the barrel as if to pick exactly which tooth he would fire through.

Dale shook his head again. His arms were at his side and he thought it might be a good idea to raise them, but they didn't seem to want to move.

"Shoot him! Shoot him, C. J.!" Archie's voice was cracking with either excitement or puberty or both. "Kill the little fucker."

"Shut up," said Congden. He squinted at Dale. "You're that Stewart fuck, aren't you?"

Dale nodded. His fear of C. J. over the years and his anger and frustration after the beatings had put him in such an intimate relationship with the bully that the thought of Congden not knowing his name seemed incredible.

C. J. squinted at him again. "You gonna tell me what the fuck you were doin' spying on us an' grinning at us, or you want me to pull this trigger?"

The question was too complicated for Dale at this moment and he shook his head again. It seemed that the most important part to respond to was the question about whether he wanted the trigger pulled. He did not.

"OK, then, fuckface, you called it," said C. J., evidently taking Dale's gesture as a refusal to talk. He pulled the hammer back on the single-shot rifle with an audible click and lowered his cheek to the stock.

Dale's breathing simply stopped. His chest was frozen. He wanted to raise his hands in front of his face, but he saw the image of the bullet passing through his palms before smashing into his mouth. Dale realized for the first time what death was: it was not walking any farther on the railroad tracks, not eating dinner tonight or seeing his mom or watching Sea Hunt on TV. It wasn't even being allowed to mow the lawn next Saturday or help his dad rake the leaves come fall.

It was having no choice at all except lying dead here on the cinders beside the railroad track, letting the birds pluck your eyes like berries and the ants stroll across your tongue. It was no choices, no decisions, no future at all. It was like being grounded for all eternity.

"Bye-bye," said Congden.

"You pull it, I'll blow your fuckin' melon to bits," came a voice from behind Dale.

Congden and Archie jumped as if someone had startled them in a dark room. C. J. glanced to his left but didn't lower the rifle.

Still not breathing, Dale found that he could move his head a little bit to the right to see who was there.

Cordie Cooke had come out of the woods and was standing with one foot still in weeds and the other on the cinders of the railbed. The double-barreled shotgun was raised, stock firmly against her small shoulder, and both barrels were aimed at C. J. Congden.

"Cooke, you little cunt ..." began Archie Kreck in his high, broken voice.

"Shut up," said C. J. The bigger boy's voice was calm enough. "What do you think you're doing, Cordie?"

"I'm aimin' my daddy's twelve-gauge at your zitty face, moron." Cordie's voice was as thin and scratchy as ever-skinny chalk on old slate-but it was absolutely steady.

"Put the gun down, stupid," said C.J. "This doesn't have nothing to do with you."

"You put yours down," said Cordie. "Lay it on down and walk away your ownself.''

C. J. glanced at her again as if judging how long it would take to swing the barrel in her direction. At that second, grateful to Cordie as he was for the intervention, Dale fervently hoped C. J. would aim it at her. Anything was better than having that muzzle aimed at your own face.

"What's it to you if I shoot this little fuck?" C. J. asked in a conversational tone. The muzzle was still ten inches in front of Dale.

"Put it on down, Congden." Cordie's voice sounded much as it did in class to Dale, on those rare occasions when she spoke: soft, out of it, vaguely bored. "Lay it on down and back away. You can come get it again when I'm gone. I ain't gonna touch it."

"I'm gonna shoot him and then shoot you, you little cunt," snapped C. J. He was angry now. The pustules and rivulets of acne on his skinny face grew livid, then red again.

"It's a single-shot Remington, Congden," said Cordie.

Dale glanced at her again. Her finger was curled around both triggers of the ancient shotgun. The thing looked huge and heavy, the barrels tinged with what might have been rust, the wood stock splintered with age. But Dale had no doubt but that it was loaded. He wondered idly if the spread pattern of the buckshot would hit him when it took C. J.'s head off.

"Then I'll shoot you first," snarled C. J. But he didn't swing the barrel in her direction.

Dale saw the muscles tensing in the punk's bare upper arms, and he realized that Congden was as frozen with fear as he was.

"Get her, Archie," commanded C. J.

Kreck hesitated, his head swiveling as he used his good eye to take in the situation, and then he nodded, reached into his droopy jeans to pull out a knife, clicked the five-inch blade open, and began to shuffle across the rails toward Cordie.

"He comes across the second rail, you're dog food," she said to Congden.

"StopV shouted C. J. It was a general command, almost a scream, but Archie was the one who stopped. He looked to his leader for further directions.

"Back off, goddamn you to hell you stupid fuck," C. J. said to his best friend.

Archie backed off to the far side of the first rail. Dale realized that he was breathing again. Time was moving again-slower than usual, but definitely moving-and he wondered what he should do. He'd watched about a million cowboy shows where Sugarfoot or Bronco Lane or somebody had a gun on them, sort of like this, and they wrestled it away from the bad guy. It'd be easy enough to do: the barrel was still ten inches from Dale's face and all Congden's attention was on Cordie now. All he had to do was grab it and twist. Dale realized that he could more easily walk on air than make a move at this moment.

"Come on," said Cordie in her tired monotone. "Make up your stupid mind, Congden. My finger's getting tired." The muscles on C. J.'s cheek spasmed. Dale could see sweat dripping from the bully's nose and chin.

"You know I'll get your ass, don't you, Cordie? You know I'll lay for you and do somethin' real bad, don't you? Ain't no getting away with this, you know."

Cordie seemed to shrug, although the barrels didn't waver. "You do anything to me that doesn't kill me, C. J., you know I'll come after you with Daddy's twelve-gauge. I sicced the dogs on Mr. Aleo last year. I ain't gonna mind killing you."

Dale knew about the episode with the music teacher and the dogs. Everyone in town knew about it. Cordie had been suspended for ten weeks. When she came back to school, Mr. Aleo had left for Chicago.

"Fuck you," said C. J. And he laid the rifle down slowly, setting it on the wooden ties with great care. He backed away. "And you, Stewart, Fuckface Stewart, don't think I'll forget you." C. J. backed away from the rifle and nodded toward Archie. Knife still brandished, Archie joined him and the two walked backward down the railbed, turned when they got to the weeds, and moved quickly into the trees.

Dale stood there a second, staring at the rifle at his feet as if it would suddenly float into the air and threaten him again. When it didn't, he felt the earth lurch back into its usual gravity field. He almost fell, found his balance, staggered a few feet, and sat on the rail. His knees were shaking.

Cordie waited until C. J. and Archie had disappeared completely in the small woods, and then she shifted so that the shotgun was pointed toward Dale. Not at him exactly, but in his general direction.

Dale didn't notice. He was too busy staring at Cordie with a perception made acute by great quantities of adrenaline. She was short and pudgy; her dress was the same shapeless, dirty gray thing she'd worn to school so often; she wore filthy sneakers with her right big toe poking through; her nails and elbows were dirty, her hair hung down in limp, oily strands, and her face was flat, doughy, and moon-shaped, with her tiny eyes, thin lips, and blob of a nose pushed together in the center as if designed for a much thinner face.

At that second, she was the most beautiful thing Dale had ever seen.

"What the hell were you doin' followin' me, Stewart?"

Dale found that his voice was still shaky, but he tried to answer. "I wasn't ..."

"Don't give me that cowflop," she said and the shotgun twitched a bit morein his direction. "I seen you with your little spyglasses there, peekin' at my house. Then you come sneakin' along behind me like I couldn't see and hear you plain as day. Answer me."

Dale was too wrung out to try a lie. "I was following you because . . . some of us are trying to find Tubby."

"Whaddya you want with Tubby?" When Cordie squinted, if was as if she had no eyes at all.

Dale realized that his pulse was no longer filling most of his hearing. "We don't want anything with him. We just want to ... find him. See if he's OK."

Cordie broke the breech of the shotgun and cradled it in her pudgy right arm. "An' you think I done somethin' with him?"

Dale shook his head. "Uh-uh. I just wanted to see what was going on out at your place."

"Why do you give a damn about Tubby?"

I don't, thought Dale. He said, "I just think something's going on. Dr. Roon and Mrs. Doubbet and those guys aren't telling the truth."

Cordie spat and hit the rail. "You said 'we.' Who else is messin' around with you tryin' to find Tubby?"

Dale glanced at the shotgun. He was more certain now than ever that Cordie Cooke was as crazy as a loon. "Just some friends."

"Hmmmph," snorted Cordie. "Must be O'Rourke and Grumbacher and Harlen and those other pansies you hang around with."

Dale blinked. He'd had no idea that Cordie had ever noticed who he hung around with.

The girl walked toward him, lifted the Remington, broke the breech, extracted a .22 cartridge, tossed it into the woods, and laid the weapon in the weeds. "Come on," she said, "let's get goin' before those two piss-ants get each other's courage goin'."

Dale got to his feet and hurried to keep up with her as she strode toward town. Fifty yards down the tracks, she went down into the trees and headed for the fields beyond.

"If you're huntin' for Tubby," she said, not looking at Dale, "how come you're out at my house where's the one place he ain'tT'

Dale shrugged. "Do you know where he is?" Cordie glanced at him with disgust. "If I knew where he was, you think I'd be huntin' for him like I am?"

Dale took a breath. "Do you have any idea what happened to him?"

"Yeah."

Dale waited twenty strides, but she said nothing else. "What?" he prompted.

"Somebody or somethin' at that goddamn school killed him."

Dale felt his breath lurch from him again. For all the Bike Patrol's interest in finding Tubby, none of them had thought the boy was dead. Run away probably. Kidnapped maybe. Dale had never really thought of his classmate being dead. With the memory of the muzzle still fresh in his mind and viscera, the word had taken on new meaning. He said nothing.

They reached Catton Road near where another lane ran south to become Broad Avenue.

"You better be gettin'," saidCordie. "Don't you nor none of your Boy Scout buddies get in my way in findin' my brother, hear?"

Dale nodded. He glanced at the shotgun. "You going into town with that?''

Cordie treated that question with the silent disgust she obviously thought it deserved.

"What're you going to do with it?" Dale asked.

"Find Van Syke or one of them other shits. Get'em to tell me where Tubby is."

Dale swallowed. "They'll throw you in jail."

Cordie shrugged, pulled a few strands of stringy hair out of her eyes, turned, and headed toward town.

Dale stood there staring. The little figure in the gray sack dress was almost in the shade of the elms at the head of Broad Avenue when he suddenly yelled. "Hey, thanks!"

Cordie Cooke did not stop or look back.