Summer of Night

TWENTY

Dale was playing baseball with the guys on Saturday morning when he heard the news. Chuck Sperling and some of his friends had just ridden up on their expensive bikes.

"Hey, your friend Duane is dead," Sperling called to Dale where he stood on the pitcher's mound.

Dale stared at him.

"You're nuts," said Dale at last, feeling how dry his mouth had suddenly become. Then he realized what they were talking about. "You mean Duane's uncle, right?"

"Uh-uh," said Sperling. "Uh-uh, I'm not talking about his uncle. That was last Monday, right? I'm talking about Duane McBride. He's dead as a roadkill."

Dale opened his mouth but found nothing to say. He tried to spit. His mouth was too dry. "You're a fucking liar," he managed.

"Uh-uh," said Digger Taylor, the undertaker's son. "He's not lying."

Dale blinked and looked back at Sperling as if the tall boy was the only one who could stop the joke.

"No shit," said Sperling, tossing the ball into the air and catching it. "They called Digger's dad out to McBride's farm this morning. The fat kid fell into a combine ... a combine for Chrissakes. It took 'em more than an hour to get his body out of the gears and stuff. Torn to shit. Your dad says it'll never be an open-coffin funeral, isn't that right, Digger?"

Digger said nothing. He was looking directly at Dale with his pale gray eyes showing nothing. Chuck Sperling continued to toss the ball to himself.

"Take it back." Dale had dropped his mitt and ball and was walking slowly toward the taller boy.

Sperling freed his hand and frowned. "What the hell's wrong with you, Stewart? I thought you'd wanna know that. . ."

"Take it back," whispered Dale, but he did not wait for a response. He launched himself at Chuck Sperling, charging with his head down. Sperling got his arms up and bounced a rabbit chop off the top of Dale's head as Dale got inside the other boy's reach and started swinging. He punched Sperling hard in the gut, heard the wind go out of him, and got in three or four hard punches to the ribs, landing one right above the heart.

Sperling exhaled deeply and sagged back against the wire backstop. When his arms came down, Dale started punching him in the face. The second blow sent blood flying from Sperling's nose, the third crunched teeth, but Dale didn't feel the pain of his knuckles being ripped raw. Sperling began to fold up, whimpering and covering his face with his forearms, his hands on the top of his head.

Dale kicked him in the side, twice, very hard. When Sperling's arms came down, Dale got him by the throat and dragged him up against the wire. His left hand was choking him while his right was free and punching again, hitting him in the ear, the forehead, the mouth . . .

There were shouts very far away. Hands pulled and tore at Dale's t-shirt. He ignored them. Sperling swung wildly, slapping at Dale's face with his open palms. Dale blinked and hit the taller boy in the left eye as hard as he could.

Suddenly Dale felt a terrible pain in the kidneys, a hand grabbed under his chin and pulled him back, and he was torn away.

Digger Taylor moved between him and Sperling. Dale shouted something and started to charge through the short boy. Digger dropped his shoulder and punched Dale once, very hard, just above the solar plexus.

Dale went down into the dust, gasping and retching. He rolled up against the wire and toed to pull himself up. His lungs couldn't get any air and it felt as if his heart had stopped.

Lawrence came screaming off the old bench along the fence, launching himself six feet into the air and landing on Digger's back. Digger flipped the eight-year-old into the wire.

Lawrence bounced off and landed on his feet as if the fence were a vertical trampoline. His head was down and his arms were a blur as he waded into Taylor. Digger backed away, trying to hold Lawrence's head down and away. Both of them topped over the wailing Chuck Sperling and went down in a heap, Lawrence still swinging and flinging dirt. Barry Fussner walked in, pranced around the edge of the melee, and toed an effeminate kick at Lawrence's head.

"Hey!" cried Kevin, stepping closer for the first time. He shoved Fussner away. Barry toed kicking Kevin, but Kev grabbed the heavy boy's foot and flipped him into the dirt behind the plate. Bill Fussner shouted something and pranced forward, backing away as Kevin turned to face him. Bob McKown and Gerry Daysinger shouted general encouragement. Tom Castanatti had stayed where he was in the field.

Digger grabbed Lawrence by the t-shirt and swung him into the air, tossing him over the long bench. He picked Sperling up and began backing toward their two bikes. Lawrence leapt to his feet, fists clenched.

Dale staggered away from the fence, still unable to get a breath but not letting that stop him, and raised his fists. He took three steps toward Taylor and Sperling, knowing that this time he wasn't going to go down until they killed him or Sperling took the lie back.

Heavy hands fell on Dale's shoulders from behind. He toed to shrug them off, couldn't, cursed something and kicked backward, turning to fight off this hindrance so he could get at Sperling.

"Dale! Stop it, Dale!" His father loomed over him, holding him with one arm around his middle now.

Dale squirmed for a second, but then he looked up at his dad, saw his father's eyes, and knew. He sagged to his knees in the dirt and only his father's arm around him kept him from falling forward.

Digger Taylor and Chuck Sperling rode off, Sperling's bike wobbling as the boy tried to ride while doubled over and weeping. The Fussners loped along behind. Lawrence was standing at the edge of the parking lot, throwing rocks after them until his father ordered him to stop.

Dale never remembered the walk back to the house. Perhaps he leaned on his father's arm. Perhaps he walked alone. He remembered that he did not cry. Not then. Not yet.

Mike was getting ready to serve as altar boy at an old lady's funeral Mass when he heard about Duane. He'd just pulled his surplice over his cassock when Rusty Ramirez, the only other altar boy to show up that day, said, "Jeez, didja hear about the kid who got killed on a farm this morning?"

Mike froze. Somehow he knew at once what farm, what kid. But he said, "Was it Duane McBride?"

Ramirez told him. "They said he fell into some farm machinery. Maybe early this morning. My dad's on the volunteer fire department and they called them all out there. Couldn't do nothing for the kid ... he was dead . . . but it took 'em a whole bunch of time to get him out of the machine an' all."

Mike sat down on the nearest bench. His legs and arms felt like water. The corners of his vision went sort of dark, so he lowered his head, his elbows on his knees. "You sure that it was Duane McBride?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah. My dad knows his dad. He saw him at the Black Tree just last night. My dad says that the kid musta been drivin' this combine rigged for huskin' corn, you know? Like he was crazy or something. Pickin' in June. An' somehow he fell out and got in the picker part . . . you know where the grinders and stuff are? Dad wouldn't tell me everything, but he said they couldn't get the kid out in one piece and when they tried to pull the arm ..."

"That's enough!" snapped Father Cavanaugh from the doorway. "Rusty, go out and get the wine and water ready. Now." When the boy left, the priest came over to Mike and put his hand gently on his shoulder. Mike's vision was fine now, but for some reason he was shivering. He gripped his thighs tightly to stop the shaking, but he couldn't.

"You knew him, Michael?"

Mike nodded.

"A close friend?"

Mike took in a breath. He shrugged, then nodded. The shaking seemed to have moved into his bones now.

"Was he Catholic?" asked Father C.

Mike lowered his head again. His first response was to say, Who the fuck cares? "No," he said. "I don't think so. He never came to church here. I don't think he or his dad belong to any church."

Father C. made a soft noise. "It doesn't matter. I'll go out to visit him right after this service."

"You can't go out there to see Mr. McBride, Father," Rusty said from the doorway. He had the small bottles of wine and water in his hands. "The cops've got the kid's dad over to Oak Hill. They think maybe he murdered him."

"That's enough, Rusty," Father C. said in a deeper tone than Mike had ever heard him use. Then, amazingly, the priest said, "Now get your ass out there and wait for Michael and me."

Rusty's jaw dropped, he stared wide-eyed at Father C. for a second, and then he scurried out to the altar. Mike could hear the mourners for Mrs. Sarranza's funeral beginning to file in.

"We'll think of your friend Duane as we say Mass and ask for God's mercy," Father Cavanaugh said softly, touching Mike's shoulder a final time. "Ready?"

Mike nodded, lifted the tall crucifix that lay ready against the wall, and followed the priest out to the altar in solemn procession.

Late that afternoon, Dale's father came upstairs to talk to him. Dale was lying on his bed, listening to the shouts and cries of younger children playing in the schoolyard across the street. The happy noises sounded very far away.

"How you doing, tiger?"

"Fine."

"Lawrence is eating some dinner. Sure you won't join us?"

"No. Thanks."

His dad cleared his throat and sat on Lawrence's bed. Dale was lying on his back, his fingers laced on his forehead, staring at the tiny cracks in the ceiling. He listened when his dad sat down, half expecting to hear a stirring under the bed. There was only the outside noise, drifting through the screens like the heavy air. The day was gray and thick with humidity.

"I called Constable Sills again," said his dad. "I finally got through."

Dale waited.

"It's true about the accident," said his dad. His voice sounded hoarse, strained. "There was some terrible accident with the machine they used to harvest corn. Duane . . . well, Barney thinks that it probably happened very quickly. In all probability, Duane didn't suffer. ..."

Dale flinched slightly, concentrated on finding a pattern in the cracks above him.

"The police were out there all morning," continued his dad, evidently understanding that no matter how terrible these facts were, they were what Dale needed now. "They're going to continue the investigation, but they're pretty sure it was an accident."

"What about his father?" rasped Dale.

"What?"

"Duane's father. Didn't the police arrest him?"

Dale's dad scratched his upper lip. "Who told you that?"

"Mike stopped by. He heard it from some kid. They said that Duane's dad had been arrested for murder."

His father shook his head. "Darren McBride was questioned according to the constable. He was . . . out drinking until late last night and couldn't account for his actions early this morning. But both Mr. Taylor's and the coroner's report . . . Dale, you don't want to hear this . . ."

"Yes," demanded Dale.

"Well, I guess they have ways of telling how long it's been since . . . since someone's passed away. At first they thought the accident had happened this morning, after Mr. McBride had gone home and . . . gone to sleep ..."

"Passed out," said Dale.

"Yes. Well, at first they'd thought the accident had happened this morning, but then the coroner was sure that it occurred last night, sometime around midnight. Mr. McBride had been at the Black Tree until long after midnight. There were witnesses. Also, Barney says that the man is beside himself . . . hardly rational. ..."

Dale nodded again. Midnight was correct. He remembered the peal of the bell toward twelve. The bell that did not exist in Elm Haven. He said, "I want to go out there."

His father leaned forward. Dale could smell the soap and tobacco scent of his hands and forearms. "Out to the farm?"

Dale nodded. He thought he could see a pattern in the cracks now. A pattern like a large question mark made of zigzag lines.

"I don't think it would be a good idea today," his dad said softly. "I'll call later. See how Mr. McBride's holding up. See if there'll be a memorial service or funeral. Then we'll take some food out. Perhaps tomorrow ..."

"I'm going," said Dale.

His father thought that he meant to the funeral. He nodded, touched his son on the head, and went downstairs.

Dale lay there thinking for some time. He must have dozed because when he opened his eyes again, the room was gray with fading light, the children's cries had been replaced by crickets and night sounds, and darkness had crept from the corners. Dale lay perfectly still, hardly breathing, waiting for a sound from under Lawrence's bed, for the peal of a bell, for something. . . .

When the rain came, opening up as fiercely and quickly as a turned tap, Dale sat by the window and watched the leaves outlined against silent lightning, heard the gurgle of water in the pipes and the pattering of rain on leaves and the cinder driveway as the downpour lessened. A flash illuminated Depot Street wet and black in the night, the belfry of Old Central rising above the sentinel elms across the street.

The breeze coming in through the screen was chilly now. Dale shivered slightly but did not get back under the covers. Not yet. He had to think.

He and Mike went out after each had gone to their respective churches the next day. Dale had found Reverend Miller's sermon a distant drone; later, driving home, his mother had commented on how thoughtful the Reverend's comments about the McBride tragedy had been, but Dale hadn't heard them.

He told his mom that he was going over to Mike's chick-enhouse; he didn't know what Mike told his family, if anything. Dale didn't have to eeawkee-Mike was waiting under the big elm where they'd first met. Mike was wearing a rubber poncho that the Peoria Journal-Star had given him for his delivery route.

"You're going to get soaked," said Mike when Dale slid to a stop on the sidewalk.

Dale peered up through the branches. It was still raining hard; he hadn't really noticed, although he realized he'd pulled on a windbreaker. The bill of his wool ballcap was already dripping. He shrugged. "Let's go."

Rain pattered on the knee-high corn as they pedaled out past the water tower, east on Jubilee College Road, north again on County Six. They hid their bikes in the high weeds on the hill to Uncle Henry's house. The rain was coming down harder now and Mike fussed about the bike getting wet.

"Come on," whispered Dale.

They climbed the fence and went into Mr. Johnson's woods. They could see the cemetery on the next hill behind them, the black iron fence giving off a wintry feeling outlined as it was against a gray sky. The woods dripped and Dale felt his tennis shoes getting more soaked as he and Mike climbed up through wet umbrella plants and knee-high weeds. The hillside was slippery and on the steeper parts they had to grab trees or weeds to pull themselves up.

They came out into the narrow pasture abutting the south side of the McBride farm and Mike led the way west, toward the back field. Duane's farm was just visible across almost a mile of low corn. The sky was a mottled variety of grays that seemed to lie low as a ceiling above them. They paused at the fence.

"I think this is breaking a law," whispered Mike.

Dale shrugged.

"Not just trespassing," said Mike. He adjusted the hood of his poncho and water slooshed off. "Messing up a crime scene or something."

"They said it was an accident." Dale found himself whispering even though no one was within a mile of them. "How can there be a crime scene if it was an accident?"

"You know what I mean." Mike pulled his hood off and stared out over the field. There was no sign of a combine. No sign of anything at all. The McBride barn was far away and it looked like any other barn.

"Are we going to do it or not?" asked Dale.

"Yeah." Mike tugged his hood back on and they clambered over the fence.

They moved across the field in a crouch. The road was several hundred yards away, but they felt exposed in the low corn. Dale felt like he was playing soldiers, running forward in a burst of speed, crouching low and gesturing Mike on. In that manner they crossed the field.

They were more than halfway across when they saw the swath of cleared corn. It was like someone had taken a lawn-mower to the field, gouging out a drunken path of stubble through the green shoots. Then they saw the yellow tape.

They crossed the last twenty yards in a low shuffle that got their knees and hands muddy.

"God," whispered Mike.

The yellow tape said police scene-do not cross, the message repeated indefinitely, and the plastic stretched in a rough rectangle at least fifty feet on a side. Within that rectangle, the swath of harvested corn suddenly ended and there was an area that had been trampled by many feet.

Dale paused a second where the tape draped over the cornstalk, and then he crossed it, moving quickly to the cleared area. Mike followed.

"God," Mike whispered again.

Dale didn't know what he expected; the combine still to be there maybe, a human outline chalked on the ground like in the TV shows he watched. There was only the trampled corn ... he could see where the big machine had turned around, where the wheels had left deep gouges in the dirt now turned to mud. It looked like the field where they held the Old Settlers' carnival each August, trampled by thousands of feet. Dale saw cigarettes lying in the wet and trampled cornstalks, a Red Pouch Tobacco bag, scraps of paper, some plastic wrappers. It was hard to tell exactly where the combine had been . . . where the accident had happened.

"Here," called Mike.

Dale moved over, staying low in case Mr. McBride or anyone at the farm was looking this way. He couldn't see the pickup in the barnyard or drive, but the house and barn shielded much of the view.

"What?" he said.

Mike pointed. Some of the trampled corn here looked as if the stalks had been sprayed a deep reddish-brown. Some of the color had faded because of the rain, but the undersides of the corn were still marked.

Dale crouched, touched a plant, brought his fingers up.

There was a faint rusty residue there in the seconds before the rain washed it from his fingers.

Duane's blood? The thought was unsupportable. He got up and began moving around the circle of ravaged plants, seeing the turmoil everywhere, remembering overhearing his father telling his mother that Barney said that the state troopers and the volunteer firemen had stomped up the scene so much that the Oak Hill police hadn't been able to reconstruct much. Reconstruct, mused Dale. Strange word for figuring out the way something or someone is destroyed.

"What are we looking for?" whispered Mike from twenty feet away. "There's just a lot of crap lying around."

"Keep looking," Dale whispered. "We'll know when we find it." He stepped out into the corn, beyond the police line, crouching as he moved down the row.

Another five minutes and he found it, less than ten yards from the ravaged area. It was hard to see beneath the leaves of growing corn, but his sneaker had twisted in something and he'd bent to investigate. Mike ran over when he waved. The two crouched on hands and knees, the rain pattering on cornstalks next to their ears.

"A hole," whispered Dale. He measured it with his two hands. Not quite a foot across, but the earth looked bunched and strange around it. He put his hand into it but Mike quickly grabbed it and pulled it back.

"Don't."

"Why?" said Dale. "I just wanted to see if it was wider on the inside. It is. Feel."

Mike shook his head.

"The sides feel funny too," said Dale. "Sort of stiff. And the hole has ridges along the side.'' He raised his head. There was no movement from the McBride farm, but he had the distinct impression that they were being watched. "Let's see if there are any more."

They found six more. The biggest was more than eighteen inches across, the smallest hardly larger than a gopher hole. There was no pattern to them, although most of them were closer to the farm, on either side of the harvested swath.

Dale wanted to sneak up on the barn and look in to see if the combine was there.

"Why the hell . . . why do you want to do that?" Mike whispered, pulling his friend down lower. They were too close. The boys could read the numbers on the tags in the ears of the few cows behind the barn.

"I just want to ... I need to . . ." Dale took a breath.

The sound of a door slamming sent both boys flopping into the mud between the rows. Lying there, hearing a truck engine starting up, Dale realized that it had almost stopped raining. The air was still bleeding a fine mist, but the downpour had stopped.

"It's gone down the drive," whispered Mike. "But I think somebody's still there. Let's head back to the woods."

"One peek in the barn," Dale whispered back and began to rise.

Mike tugged him down. "I've seen those things before."

Dale crouched and blinked at Mike's ponchoed figure. "What things?"

"The holes. Those tunnels."

"Where?"

Mike turned back and began moving away from the farm. "Come on back with me and I'll tell you." He was gone, moving down the next row in a low crouch.

Dale hesitated. He was only a hundred feet or so from the barn. The feeling that he was being watched-observed -was still strong, but so was the desire to see the machine. There was little or no morbid curiosity in the desire; the thought of seeing the blades or gears or whatever that had actually killed his friend made him sick, but he had to know ... to begin to understand.

The rain had started up again. Dale looked toward the south, caught the slightest glimpse of Mike's poncho moving above the corn, and then he turned and followed.

There'd be time.