Summer of Night

EIGHTEEN

On Thursday the Old Man had to go back to Uncle Art's house to dig out some legal papers and Duane went along despite his father's unease at having him there.

The Old Man was edgy and irritable, obviously on the verge of falling off the wagon in a serious way. Duane knew that he had held on this long out of love for his brother and a real need not to disgrace himself in front of the family.

Part of the Old Man's anxiety had come from his indeci-siveness about what to do with Uncle Art's ashes. He had been appalled when the mortuary people had given him the heavy decorative urn which had ridden back from Peoria with them like a silent and unwanted passenger.

After dinner on Wednesday evening, before Dale Stewart called, Duane had gone in to peek inside the urn. The Old Man had come into the room at that moment, lighting his pipe.

"Those white chunks that look like bits of broken chalk are bone," the Old Man had said, puffing the pipe alight.

Duane had resealed the lid.

"You'd think that when they put a body in a furnace approaching the temperature of the surface of the sun," his father said, "that there'd be nothing left but ash and memories. But bones are persistent things."

Duane had sat on a seldom-used chair near the fireplace. Suddenly his legs had felt both heavy and weak at the same time. "Memories are persistent things, too," he'd said, wondering aloud why he'd chosen a cliche.

The Old Man had grunted. "I don't have the damnedest idea where to spread those. Barbaric custom when you think about it."

Duane had glanced at the urn. "I think you're supposed to scatter them at some place important to the person's life," he said softly. "Some place they were happy."

The Old Man grunted again. "You know that Art left a will, Duanie. But he damn well didn't tell me where to toss his ashes. Some place where he was happy. . . ." He fell into musing, puffing at the pipe.

Duane said, "The main reading room of the Bradley Library would be a good place."

The Old Man guffawed. "That'd make Art laugh, too." He removed the pipe and stared away for a moment. "Any other ideas?"

"He used to love fishing along the Spoon." Duane felt the scalding peristalsis of grief seize his throat and heart again. He went into the kitchen for a glass of water. When he returned, the Old Man's pipe had gone out and he was cleaning it, tapping ashes into the fireplace. Ashes.

"You're right," the Old Man said suddenly. "That was probably the place he most enjoyed. He and I used to fish there even before Art moved down from Chicago. He used to take you there all the time, didn't he?"

Duane nodded, using a sip of the water as an excuse not to talk. Just then the phone had rung with Dale's call and when Duane returned, the Old Man had gone into his workroom to putter around with the Mark V learning machine.

They'd gone to the river just after sunrise, when the fish were rising to the surface to feed with great ripples, making Duane wish he'd brought his pole. There was no real ceremony; the Old Man had held on to the vase for a moment, as if suddenly reluctant to release the contents, and then as sunlight first illuminated the cypress and willows above them, he'd sprinkled the ashes, tapping the bottom of the vase until the final remnants had dropped away.

There were bones, making small splashes that attracted catfish and at least one bass that Duane could see in the shallow water near the shore. The ashes stayed together at first, forming a gray film that followed the currents and whirled around the snags that Duane knew so well from fishing here over the years. Then the faster current downstream toward the bridge caught them and the line of gray was torn apart, whirled under, and mixed with the waters of the river.

Duane tossed a rock in, remembering the times he'd done that when he was bored as a little kid. Probably scaring all the fish away that Uncle Art had been trying to catch. His uncle had never complained.

Then he had brushed his hands and followed the trail up the steep bank toward the car, noticing as he climbed how thin his father had grown over recent weeks and how sunburned and lined the back of his neck was. With his new growth of gray stubble, the Old Man finally looked old to Duane.

Uncle Art's house had lost the smell of the man and now merely smelled musty and unused.

As the Old Man went through the drawers and file cabinet, Duane surreptitiously checked old note pads and went through the wastebasket. Like Duane himself, Uncle Art had been a compulsive note-taker, reminder-writer, and record-keeper.

Bingo. The crumpled paper in the wastebasket had been lying beneath a cigar wrapper and some other junk. It had probably been written on Saturday night, the night before the accident.

1) The damned Borgia Bell or Stele of Revealing or whatever it is survived after all. Mention of it in the Medici section of The Book of the Law.

2) Sixty years, six months, six days. Assuming that the absurd and impossible has become reality, that the events Duane's talking about are because the thing has been "activated" after all these centuries, then the sacrifice would have been made around the turn of the century. Sometime after New Year in 1900. Check in town. Find people who would remember. Don't talk to Duane until there are some answers.

3) Crowley says the Bell, the Stele, used people. And summoned "agents from the Dark World," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Re-check the accounts of "things in the streets of Rome" in the time of the Borgia pope and the Medici section.

4) Get in touch with Ashley-Montague. Make him talk.

Duane took a breath, folded the paper into the pocket of his flannel shirt, and went out onto the porch. The grass of the lawn was growing wild. Insects hopped. Somewhere along the edge of the treeline, cicadas made a loud buzzing that made Duane a bit dizzy. He sat in the metal chair, lifted his legs to the low railing, and stared out at nothing, thinking. It wasn't until the Old Man came out onto the porch and paused with his hand still on the screen door that Duane realized what he looked like in this chair, this posture . . . who he must have looked like.

The Old Man had found the papers. They took care closing the house up, knowing that it might be weeks or even months until they came to clean it out before the auction.

Duane didn't look back as they bumped down the lane.

Duane chose Mrs. Moon.

The librarian's mother was in her eighties, had lived in Elm Haven all of her life, and had resided across the street from Old Central on the southeast comer of Depot and Second since she was a young woman. Duane knew her only slightly, mostly from seeing her with Miss Moon on their walks when he was visiting town.

Miss Moon, he knew well. Duane had been four when Uncle Art had taken him into town to get a library card.

Miss Moon had frowned slightly, shaken her head, and peered at the chubby little boy in front of her desk. "We have very few picture books, Mr. McBride. We prefer that the parents of ... ah ... pre-readers use their own cards when checking out books for the little ones."

Uncle Art had said nothing. Pulling the nearest volume off the shelf, he had handed it to four-year-old Duane. "Read," he'd said.

"Chapter One ... I am born," read Duane. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to . . ."

"OK," Uncle Art had said and returned the book to its shelf.

Miss Moon had frowned and fussed with the chain of her glasses, but she'd written out a lending card to Duane McBride. For years that card had been Duane's prize possession, despite the fact that Miss Moon always treated him with a chilliness bordering on resentment. Finally she had denned her role as one of limiting the number of books the overweight little boy could check out, remonstrating firmly with him when he returned something late-not, as it turned out, because he had tarried in reading it, but almost always because he had devoured the stack of books during the first few days after returning to the farm, then waited weeks for the Old Man to find time to drive him into town again.

When, in second grade, Duane had gone on a Nancy Drew mystery binge, alternating the female detective's adventures with C. S. Forester and everything by Robert Louis Stevenson, Miss Moon had pointed out that the Nancy Drews were girls' books-her term-and she asked pointedly whether Duane had a sister.

Duane had grinned at her, adjusted his glasses, and said, "Nope," checking out his limit of five books, all Nancy Drews. When that series was finished, he'd discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs and spent a delirious summer traversing the steppes of Barsoom, the jungles of Venus, and-most eagerly-swinging from the "middle terrace" of Lord Greystoke's jungle. Duane wasn't quite sure what the middle terrace was, but he'd tried to simulate it in the low oaks down by the creek, Witt watching him with a cocked head and puzzled eyes while Duane swung from limb to limb and ate lunch in the branches.

The following summer, Duane was reading Jane Austen but Miss Moon said nothing this time about girls' books.

Duane hiked into town just after he finished his morning chores. The Old Man had been tilling less and less acreage every year, leasing out most of the three hundred and forty acres to Mr. Johnson, so there wasn't too much to do. Duane still watched over the livestock, made sure they had water in the back pasture, but they were much less of a problem now that they were out of the barn. The dreaded manure-hauling had been completed in May, so Duane didn't have to worry about that.

This morning he had finished the maintenance work on the six-row cultivator; the hydraulic lift on the rear gangs was lowering too quickly, so Duane had adjusted the portable hydraulic-lift cylinder and oiled and tightened the implement setting frame. All the while Duane had been working on the cultivator, the big combine with the cornpicker-husker had been hovering over him in the barn. The Old Man had driven the thing into the central maintenance area to fiddle with the picker unit; he was always trying to improve the things, always modifying, adapting, and converting something on the farm machinery until they barely resembled the factory units. With the cornpicker, Duane noticed, the Old Man was doing something with the cornhead attachments. The shields were off each of the eight-row units and Duane could look in and see the bright steel of the snapping rolls, conveyors, and gather chains.

Most of the farmers in the area dragged cornpicker units behind their tractors or bought a self-propelled one, but the Old Man had bought an old full-size combine and attached the eight-row cornhead to it. It meant fast work in high-yield years, but mostly it meant lots of maintenance keeping the old combine running and "modifying" the threshing, husking, shelling, and cleaning parts of the huge machine.

Sometimes Duane thought that the Old Man only stayed in farming to tinker with the machinery.

That morning Duane had finished with the cultivator and turned to look at the combine looming behind him, snapping rolls reaching toward him like augered sword blades in the circle of light from overhead, and he'd considered doing some of the obvious modification himself as a surprise for his father. Then he'd decided not to spoil the Old Man's fun. Besides, he had more animals to feed and rows to hoe in the garden before breakfast, and he wanted to get into town before ten.

Duane would have liked to have waited for a ride-he still didn't like walking that last mile and a half down Jubilee College Road-but he knew the Old Man had held off all week to start his serious binge on Friday night at Carl's or the Black Tree, and Duane didn't want to ride with him then.

So he walked. The day was bright and clear and stiflingly hot. Duane unbuttoned the top three buttons on his plaid shirt, seeing where the darkly tanned skin ended in a sharp V and his pale flesh began.

He paused by Mike O'Rourke's house on the edge of town. Mike wasn't home but one of his older sisters said that it was all right for Duane to get a drink from the backyard pump. Duane drank deeply, tasting the iron and other elements in the water, and then splashed his head and forearms liberally.

When he tapped on Mrs. Moon's screen door, the old lady hobbled toward the light with her two canes and retinue of cats.

"Do I know you, young man?" Duane thought that Mrs. Moon's voice sounded like a parody of an old lady's voice-high, quivery, sliding the scale of inflection.

"Yes'm. I'm Duane McBride. I've been over a few times with Dale Stewart and Michael O'Rourke when they came over to take you for a walk."

"Who did you say?"

Duane sighed and repeated everything in a louder voice.

"I'm not ready for my walk. I haven't eaten supper yet." Mrs. Moon sounded querulous and a bit doubtful. The mob of cats brushed around her canes and rubbed up against swollen legs wrapped in flesh-colored tape. Duane thought of the Soldier with his puttees.

"No, ma'am," he said. "I just wanted to ask you some questions about something."

"Questions?" She took a step back into the dimness of her parlor. The old house was small, white-frame, and smelled as if it had been home to uncounted generations of cats that never went outside.

"Yes'm. Just a couple."

"What about?" She peered myopically at him and Duane realized that he must be only a rounded shadow filling her doorway. He took a step back ... the clever salesman's move, showing deference and a lack of threat.

"Just about ... the old days," he said. "I'm writing a school paper about what life was like in Elm Haven around the turn of the century. I wondered if you'd be so kind as to give me some . . . well, some atmosphere."

"Some what?"

"Some details," said Duane. "Please?"

The old woman hesitated, turned with a stiff movement of both canes, and receded with her retinue of cats, leaving him standing there alone. Duane hesitated.

"Well," came her voice from the darkness, "don't just stand there. Come on in. I'll put on tea for us."

Duane sat and sipped tea and munched cookies and asked questions and listened to tales of Mrs. Moon's childhood and her father and Elm Haven in the good old days. Mrs. Moon nibbled at cookies as she spoke and slowly but surely a small litter of crumbs had grown up on her lap. The cats took turns leaping onto the couch to eat the crumbs as she petted them absently.

"And what about the bell?" he asked at last, having gotten a pretty good sounding on how reliable the elderly lady's memory was.

"Bell?" Mrs. Moon paused in her munching. A cat stretched upward as if it were going to steal the morsel from her fingers.

"You were mentioning some of the special things about the town," prompted Duane. "What about the big bell in the school belfry? Do you remember that being talked about?"

Mrs. Moon looked flustered for a moment. "Bell? When was there a bell there?"

Duane sighed. This whole mystery was nonsense. "In eighteen seventy-six," he said softly. "Mr. Ashley brought it back from Europe ..."

Mrs. Moon giggled. Her dentures were a bit loose and she used her tongue to adjust them. "You silly boy. I was born in eighteen seventy-six. How could I remember something from the year I was born?"

Duane blinked. He thought of this wrinkled and slightly senile lady as a wrinkled baby, pink and fresh and greeting the world in the year Custer's men were slaughtered. He thought of the changes she had lived through-horseless carriages appearing, the telephone, the First World War, the rise of America as a world power, Sputnik-all viewed from beneath the elms of Depot Street.

He said, "So you don't remember anything about a bell?" He was putting away his pencil and notebook.

"Why of course I remember the bell," she said, reaching for another of her daughter's cookies. "It was a beautiful bell. Mr. Ashley's father brought it from Europe on one of his voyages. When I went to school in Central, the bell used to ring every day at eight-fifteen and again at three."

Duane stared. He was aware that his hand was shaking slightly as he brought the notebook back out and began writing. This was the first confirmation-outside of books-that the Borgia Bell existed.

"Do you remember anything special about the bell?"

"Oh my, dear, everything about the school and the bell were special in those days. One of us . . . one of the younger children . . . was selected to pull the rope every Friday at the start of classes. I remember I was chosen once. Oh, yes, it was a beautiful bell. ..."

"Do you remember what happened to it?'

"Well, yes. I mean, I'm not certain ..." A strange look passed over Mrs. Moon's face and she absently set her cookie on her lap. Two cats devoured it as she raised trembling fingers to her lips. "Mr. Moon ... my Orville, I mean, not Father . . . Mr. Moon was not involved in what happened. Not in any way." She reached over and stabbed at Duane's notebook with a bony finger. "You write that down, now.

Neither Orville nor Father were there when . . . when that terrible thing happened."

"Yes, ma'am," said Duane, pencil stopped. "What did happen?"

Both of Mrs. Moon's hands were fluttering now. The cats jumped from her lap. "Why, the terrible thing. You know, that awful thing we don't want to talk about. Why would you want to write about thatl You seem like a nice young boy."

"Yes'm," said Duane, almost holding his breath. "But I was told to write about everything. I certainly would appreciate the help. What terrible thing are we talking about? Something about the bell?"

Mrs. Moon seemed to forget he was in the room with her. She stared into the shadows where her cats were a mere whisper of movement. "Why, no . . ." she began, voice little more than a cracked whisper. Duane could hear a truck pass on the street outside, but Mrs. Moon did not blink. "Not the bell," she said. "Although they hanged him from it, didn't they?"

"Hanged who?" Duane was whispering now.

Mrs. Moon turned her face back in his direction but her eyes still seemed blind. "Why, that terrible man, of course. The one who killed and ..." She made a noise and Duane realized that there were tears on Mrs. Moon's cheeks. One of them found its way down the gully of wrinkles to the corner of her mouth. "The one who killed and ate that little girl," she finished, voice stronger.

Duane stopped scribbling and stared.

"You write this down, now," commanded the old lady and stabbed a finger in his direction again. Her gaze had returned from wherever it had been and now it was burning into Duane. "It's time this was written down. Take it all down. Just be sure to include in your report that neither Orville nor Mr. Moon were there . . . why, they weren't even in the county when this terrible thing happened. Now you write this down now!"

And, as she talked in a voice which sounded to Duane like old parchment crinkling in a long-unopened book, he wrote it all down.