Summer of Night

TWENTY-EIGHT

The latticework on the west side of the bandstand carved the afternoon light into a discrete set of diamonds that crept across the dark soil toward Mike and Mink Harper as the old man alternated between long swigs of the champagne, bouts of moody silence, and longer bouts of slurred narrative.

"It was that cold winter right after the new year begun . . . new century begun too ... an' I was just a little shaver, no older'n you are now. How old are you? Twelve? No ... eleven? Yeah, that's about how old I was when they hung the nigger.

"I wasn't in school no more. Most of us didn't stay in no longer than we had to ... learn to read as much as we needed, sign our names, be able to cipher a bit. . . that's all a man needed to know in them days. My daddy, he needed all us boys on the farm to work. So's I'd already left my schoolin' behind when they hung the nigger there . . .

"Kids was disappearin' that year. The little Campbell girl got all the attention, 'cause they found her body and her family was rich and all, but there was four or five more who didn't come home from chores that winter. I remember me a little Polack kid named Strbnsky, his daddy'd worked on the railroad work gang'd come through town an' stayed, Stefan was his name . . . well, Stefan and me'd been hangin' around the saloon lookin' for our daddies a few weeks before Christmas, an' I got mine and took him home in the back of the wagon my brother Ben an' me drove in, but Stefan, he didn't get home. Nobody seen him after that. I remember the last time I seen him, trudgin' across the drifts on old Main Street in his patched knickers and haulin' that bucket he used to carry his old lady's beer home in. ... Somethin' got Stefan, just like it got the Myers twins and whatshisname, that little spic kid who lived out where the dump is now . . . but it was the Campbell girl who got all the attention, her bein' the doctor's niece and all.

"So when the Campbell girl's cousin, little Billy Phillips, come into the saloon . . . not Carl's, Carl's wasn't built yet . . . was that big building where the goddamn dry goods is now . . . anyway, when that snotnose little Billy Phillips comes in out of the cold one evenin' saying that there was a nigger down by the tracks who had his sister's petticoat in his duffel, well, hell, that place emptied out in about thirty seconds ... me too, I remember runnin' to keep up with my old man's big strides . . and there was Mr. Ashley sittin' out in front in that fancy buggy of his, a shotgun acrost his lap-same gun he used to kill hisself a few years later-sittin' there just like he was waitin' for all of us.

" 'Come on, boys,' he yelled. 'Justice got to be done.'

"And that whole crowd of men sorta shouted and roared the way mobs do ... mobs don't got any more sense than a hound after a bitch in heat, boy . . . and then we was all off, our breaths puffin' out in the late afternoon light that was all golden sort of ... even the horses' breath, I remember that now, Mr. Ashley's team of black mares and some of the men's teams . . . and slicker'n snot on grease we was out north of town, where the old railroad cut useta be up beyond the taller' factory, and the nigger looked up once from where he was crouched over a fire cookin' fatback, and then the men was all over him. A couple of his nigger friends was there-they never went nowhere alone in those days and wasn't allowed in town after dark, of course-but his friends, they didn't put up no fight, they just slunk away like dogs that know there's a beatin' comin'.

"The nigger had this big old bedroll, and the men tore through it, and sure enough . . . there was that little Campbell girl's petticoat, all covered with dried blood and . . . and other stuff, boy. You'll know what I mean someday.

"So they dragged him down to the schoolhouse, that bein' sort of the center of everything in them days. We had our town meetin's in the schoolhouse, and the votin' come election time, and all sorts of bazaars and every sort of truck imaginable. So they dragged the nigger there ... I remember standin' outside while the bell was being rung to tell everybody to come quick, that somethin' important was happenin'. An' I remember standin' out in the snow exchangin' snowballs with Lester Collins and Merriweather Whittaker and Coony Day singer's daddy . . . whatever his name was . . . and a whole bunch a other boys who'd come on down with their daddies. But by and by it got dark for real. . . and cold . . . that winter was colder'n a crib full of witch's tits, the whole goddamn town was cut off, you know, sorta sealed off by the icy roads and drifts. Couldna even got to Oak Hill that winter, damn roads was so bad. Train got through, but not every day. Not for weeks that time of year, what with the drifts north of town where the cut was and the railroad havin' no snowplows up this way and all. So we was on our own.

"When we got cold we went in and the trial . . . they called it a trial . . . was almost over. Couldna took no more than an hour. There wasn't no real judge . . . Judge Ashley retired young and was a bit crazy . . . but they called it a trial anyhow. Mr. Ashley, he looked the part. I remember standin' up there with the other boys on the mezzanine where the books used to be, looking down on the center hall where all the men was crowded in, and marvelin' at how Judge Ashley looked so handsome, what with his expensive gray suit and silk cravat and that silk top hat he wore everywhere. 'Course he didn't have the top hat on when he was judgin' ... I remember seein' the lamplight sort of glowin' on his white hair and wonderin' how a man that young could look so wise. ...

"Anyway, Billy Phillips was just finishin' tellin' how he was walkin' home when the nigger tried to catch him . . . said he run after him sayin' he was goin' to kill him an' eat 'im the way he done the girl. . . and Billy, God that kid was the biggest liar I ever knowed . . . little shit useta play hooky back when I was still in school and then come creepin' in an' say he was helpin' his sick momma-Old Lady Phillips was always sick and dyin' of somethin'-said he was sick when we all knowed that he was out screwin' around or fishin' or somethin'. Anyway, Billy says he got away from the nigger, but he went back and spied on the nigger's camp and saw him take out the little Campbell girl's petticoat-she was Billy's cousin, did I tell you that?-take out her petticoat and sort of touch it there around that campfire. He says then he run into town and told the men at the saloon.

"Another guy, coulda been Clement Day singer come to think of it . . . that was his name, Clement ... he said that he seen the nigger hangin' around Dr. Campbell's house before Christmas, 'bout the time the little girl up and disappears. Said he hadn't remembered it before, but now it come back to him and he was sure the nigger was hangin' around real suspicious like. After Clement, some of the other folks remember the nigger lurkin' around there too.

"So Judge Ashley banged his big old Colt pistol like a whatchamacallit ... a gavel . . . and he says 'Do you got anything to say for your own self?' to the nigger, but the nigger just glares at everybody out of his yellowy eyes and didn't say nothing. 'Course his usual fat lips was all swole up fatter 'cause some of the men'd found cause to beat on him, but I think that nigger coulda spoke if he'd wanted to. I guess he didn't want to.

"So Judge Ashley ... we was all thinkin' of him as a real judge again by then ... he pounds his Colt on the table they dragged out into the hall there, and he says, 'You're guilty, by God, and I hereby sentence you to hang by the neck until you're dead and may God have mercy on your soul.' An' then that mob of men just sorta stood there for a minute until finally the Judge shouted somethin' and old Carl Doubbet, he laid hands on the nigger, and pretty soon there were a couple dozen of the men draggin' that nigger down past the little kids' classrooms, and then up the big stairway under the stain glass, and then up where us boys was watchin' . . . dragged that nigger past me so close I coulda reached out and touched those fat lips that were turnin' all purple . . . and then us kids followed as they dragged him up the stairs where the high-school level was . . . that was where Carl or Clement or one of the men stuck the black hood on him . . . and then they drug him up those last steps, the ones that aren't out in the open anymore, where they put that wall in, you know . . . and they took him out on that little catwalk that ran around the inside of the belfry.

"You can't see it no more . . . I've helped Karl Van Syke and Miller before him clean that place for forty years, so I know what I'm talkin' about . . . you can't see it no more, but it useta be that the belfry had that little catwalk around the inside and you could see down all the way to the first floor, like three rings of balconies goin' right up to that big old bell that Mr. Ashley brung back from Europe. Anyway, we was all standin' around these balconies, the first floor filled with men . . . and some womenfolk too, I remember seeing Sally Moon's mommy Emma there with her weak-kneed little husband Orville, both their faces just gleamin' they was so happy and excited . . . everyone starin' up at Judge Ashley and the few others standing around that nigger up there in the belfry.

"I remember thinkin' that they was gonna scare the nigger real bad . . . put that rope around his scrawny black neck and scare him so bad that he'd just have to start talkin', start tellin' the truth . . . but that ain't what they did. No sir, what they did was, Judge Ashley borrowed a knife from one of the men there, it coulda been Cecil Whittaker's, and he cut that damned bell rope that hung down all the way to the first floor. I remember leanin' over that high-school-level balcony and starin' down as that rope just sort of folded up and come crashin' down, folks jostlin' to get out of its way and then fillin' back in the space, their faces lookin' up past me at the nigger again. And then Judge Ashley did a strange thing.

"I shoulda figured it when he cut the rope, but I didn't. They was fiddlin' with that nigger's hood, and I figured Now they're gonna take it off an' scare him, say they're gonna throw him over to the crowd or somethiri . . . but they didn't. What they done was take that short end of the bell rope and tie it around the nigger's neck, the hood still on him, and Judge Ashley nods to the men up there with him and somehow they got that nigger up on that little railing that went around the inside of the belfry . . . and then, boy, there was this damn pause ... I couldn't hear nothin' of the crowd. Musta been three hundred people there, but you couldn't hear nothin' of the usual snufflin' or scrapin' or mumblin' or even breathin' that you get from a crowd that size. Just silence. Every man, woman, and child-'cludin' me-starin' up three floors at that nigger teeterin' there on the edge of that balcony, his face hid by that damn black hood, his hands tied behind his back, nothin' holdin' him there except a couple men's hands on his arms.

"And then someone-I 'spect it was Judge Ashley, though I didn't see too clear 'cause it was dark in that belfry and I was watchin' the nigger, just like everybody else-then somebody shoved him off.

"Nigger kicked, of course. The fall wasn't far enough that it'd break his neck like a real hangin'. He kicked like a royal sonofabitch, swinging from one side of the open stairwell to t'other, kickin' his black ass off and makin' wild chokin' sounds under his hood. I could hear him real good. His feet was just a few feet from my head ever' time he swung over to our side of the high school balcony. I remember that nigger lost one shoe and the other had a hole in it that his big toe was stickin' out of, even as he was kickin'. I remember too that Coony Daysinger reached out and sorta tried to touch the nigger while he was swingin' and kickin' . . . not to stop him from swingin' or pull him in or anything like that, just touch him, sorta like you would somethin' at the sideshow if they'd let you . . . but just then we see the nigger piss his pants . . . swear to God, you could see his raggedy pants gettin' dark with the stain as it was runnin' down his leg and then the folks down on the first floor was makin' noise all right, and shovin' to get out of the way. And then the nigger quit kickin' and just swung silent-like, so Coony, he pulled back his hand an' none of the rest of us tried it neither.

"You know the strange thing, boy? When that nigger went off the ledge, the big ol' bell started ringin', which makes sense. And it kept on ringin' when the nigger was swingin' and kickin' and chokin', which nobody took no notice of 'cause all his bobbin' up and down on the end of the rope woulda made any bell ring like a sonbitch ... but you know the strange part, boy? Some of us hung around, so to speak, 'till after they cut that nigger down and took his body out to the dump or somewhere to get rid of ... and that goddamn bell kept ringin'. I think the fuckin' thing rang all that night and off an' on the next day, like that nigger was still swingin' from it. Somebody said that the hangin' musta messed up the bell's balance or somethin'. But it was a strange sound . . . I swear to you . . . ridin' outa town that night with the Old Man, smelling the cold air and the snow and the Old Man's whiskey and the sound of the horses' hooves on the ice and frozen dirt underneath, Elm Haven nothin' but dark trees and cold chimney smoke glowin' in the moonlight behind us ... and that damn bell still ringin' its ass off.

"Say, you got another bottle of this fine champagne, boy? This one's one dead soldier."

"So you see," Mr. Dennis Ashley-Montague was saying, "your so-called legend of the Borgia Bell is as fake as the so-called authenticity certificates which caused my grandfather to buy it in the first place. There is no legend . . . only an old, poorly cast bell sold to a gullible Illinois traveler."

"Uh-huh," said Dale. Mr. Ashley-Montague had been talking for several minutes, the sunlight from the diamond-paned window behind him lying rich and heavy across the massive oak desk and creating a corona of light around his thinning hair. "Well, I guess I don't believe you," saidDale.

The millionaire scowled and folded his arms, obviously not used to being called a liar by an eleven-year-old. One pale eyebrow arched. "Oh? And what do you believe, young man? That this bell is causing all sorts of supernatural events? Aren't you a bit old for that?"

Dale ignored the question. He thought of Harlen out in the Chevy keeping a restless Congden from driving off, and knew that he didn't have much time. "You told Duane McBride that the bell was destroyed?"

Mr. Ashley-Montague frowned. "I have no recollection of such a discussion." But his voice was hollow-sounding to Dale, as if he knew that there might have been witnesses. "Very well, he may have asked me. The bell was destroyed, melted down for scrap iron during the Great War.''

"What about the Negro?" persisted Dale.

The thin man smiled slightly. Dale knew the word "condescending" and thought it applied well to that smile. "What Negro is that, young man?"

"The Negro that got hung in Old Central," said Dale. "Hung from the bell."

Mr. Ashley-Montague shook his head slowly. "There was an unfortunate incident early in the century involving a man of color, but I assure you that no one was hung, as you put it, and certainly not hanged from the bell in Elm Haven's school."

"OK," said Dale, sitting in the high-backed chair across the desk from the man, and folding his legs as if he had all the time in the world. "Tell me what did happen."

Mr. Ashley-Montague sighed, looked as if he were considering sitting down himself, and contented himself with pacing back and forth in front of the window as he spoke. Far behind him, Dale could see a long barge working its way up the Illinois River.

"What I know is sketchy," said the man. "I was not born at the time. My father was in his late twenties but had not yet married ... the Ashley-Montagues pride themselves in taking brides later in life. At any rate, what I know is just through family stories . . . my own father died in 1928, you know, shortly after I was born, so there is no way I can check on the accuracy of the details. Dr. Priestmann did not mention this incident in his county histories.

"At any rate, I understand there was some unpleasantness in your part of the county around the turn of the century. One or two children disappeared, I believe, although it is quite possible that they were runaways. Life on the farms was very harsh in those days, and it was not uncommon for children to run away from home rather than continue a life of hard labor with one's own family. At any rate, there was one child ... the daughter of a local doctor, if I'm not mistaken . . . who was found. It seems she had been ... ah ... brutalized as well as murdered. Shortly thereafter, several of the more prominent townspeople-including my grandfather, who had the distinction of being a retired judge, you know-were presented with incontrovertible evidence that an itinerant Negro had carried out this crime ..."

"What kind of evidence?" interrupted Dale.

Mr. Ashley-Montague paused in his pacing and frowned. "Incontrovertible. It is a big word, isn't it? It means . . ."

"I know what incontrovertible means," said Dale, biting his lip before adding the dipshit. He was beginning to think and talk like Harlen. "It means not capable of being denied. I mean what kind of evidence!"

The millionaire picked up a curved blade of a letter opener and tapped it irritably on the oak desk. Dale wondered if the man was going to call his butler and have him thrown out. He didn't. "Does it matter what kind of evidence?" he said and began pacing again, tapping the small knife on the desk after each circuit. "I seem to remember that it was some article of the child's clothing. And perhaps the murder weapon as well. Whatever it was, it was incontr-It was incontestable."

"And then they hanged him?" asked Dale, thinking of C. J. Congden getting antsy outside.

Mr. Ashley-Montague glared at Dale, although the effect was ruined somewhat by the millionaire's thick glasses. "I told you, no one was hanged. There was a makeshift trial , . . perhaps that was at the school, although it would have been most unusual. The townspeople present ... all respected citizens, I might add . . . served as a sort of de facto grand jury ... Do you also know what a grand jury is?"

"Yeah," said Dale although he couldn't have defined it. He was guessing at de facto from context.

"Well, instead of the leader of this slavering lynch mob which you seem to want to portray, young man, my grandfather was the voice of law and moderation. Perhaps there were elements which wished to punish the Negro then and there ... I don't know, my father never said . . . but my grandfather insisted that the man be taken to Oak Hill to be turned over to the law enforcement agency there ... the sheriff's office, if you will."

"And was he?" asked Dale.

Mr. Ashley-Montague quit pacing. "No. That was the tragedy . . . and it weighed heavily upon my grandfather's and father's consciences. It seems the Negro was being taken to Oak Hill by carriage when he bolted ... ran ... and although he was in manacles and leg chains, he managed to get into a swampy area just off the Oak Hill road near where 5ie Whittaker farm is now. The men escorting him could not reach him in time because the treacherous soil would not hold their weight either. He drowned . . . asphyxiated, rather, for the swamp was essentially mud."

"I thought it was winter when this happened," said Dale. "January."

Mr. Ashley-Montague shrugged. "A warm spell," he said. "Possibly . . . quite probably ... the accused man broke through the surface of ice. Midwinter thaws are quite common around here."

Dale had nothing to say about that. "Could we borrow the county history that Dr. Priestmann wrote?"

Mr. Ashley-Montague showed what he thought of such a presumptuous request, but he folded his arms and said, "And then will you allow me to get back to work?"

"Sure," said Dale. He wondered what Mike would say when he reported on such a fruitless conversation. And now Congden's gonna kill me . . . for what?

"Wait here," said the millionaire and went up the steep ladder to the library balcony. He peered through his thick glasses at the titles, moving slowly down the row.

Dale wandered under the balcony overhang, looking at the row of books at eye level closest to the millionaire's desk. Dale liked to keep his favorite books in places where he could get to them easily; maybe millionaires thought the same way.

"Where are you?" called the voice from above.

"Just lookin' out the window," replied Dale while he was scanning the rows of ancient, leatherbound volumes. Many of the titles were in Latin. Few of the English titles made any sense to him. The old book dust in the air here made him want to sneeze.

"I'm not sure I have ... ah ... here it is," said Mr. Ashley-Montague on the balcony above. Dale heard the sound of a heavy volume being slid out.

Dale's finger was tapping across the book spines; otherwise he wouldn't have noticed that one small book was pulled out farther than the rest. He could not read the embossed symbols on the spine, but when he pulled it out, there was an English subtitle under the same symbols on the cover: The Book of the Law. Under the title, in gold script, were the words-Scire, Audere, Velle, Tacere. Dale knew that Duane McBride had been able to read Latin easily-and some Greek-and he wished that his friend were there.

"Yes, this is it," came the voice from directly above Dale. Footsteps moved along the balcony toward the ladder.

Dale pulled the book all the way out, saw several small, white bookmarks among the pages, and-in an instant of pure bravado-stuck the small volume in the waistband of his jeans in back, tugging his t-shirt loose to hide it.

"Young man?" said Mr. Ashley-Montague, his polished black shoes and gray trousers becoming visible on the ladder three feet from Dale's head.

Dale quickly loosened the other volumes so that the gap where the book had been did not seem so visible, took three quick steps toward the window, and half-turned toward the descending man, keeping his back to the wall and staring out the wide window as if enraptured by the scenery.

Mr. Ashley-Montague was puffing slightly as he crossed the carpet and offered the historical volume. "Here. This book of notes and almost random photographs is the only thing Dr. Priestmann had sent to me. I have no idea what you think you will find in it ... there is nothing there about the bell or the sad incident of the accused Negro . . . but you are welcome to take it home and peruse it if you promise to return it through the post . . . in as good a condition as you find it here."

"Sure," said Dale, accepting the heavy book and feeling the smaller volume settle lower into the seat of his jeans. The outline of it must be visible now below the line of his t-shirt. "I'm sorry if I bothered you."

Mr. Ashley-Montague nodded curtly and returned to his desk as Dale circled slowly, trying to keep his front to the man while not making that too obvious. "You can find your way out, of course," said Mr. Ashley-Montague, already going through the notes on his desk.

"Well ..." said Dale, thinking of how he'd have to turn to leave the room and Mr. A.-M. would look up and . . . was it grand larceny to steal an expensive book? He guessed it depended on the book.

"Actually, no sir," said Dale. There was a bell on the corner of the man's desk, and Dale was sure that he would ring it and the skinny butler would come in to show him out, and then both men would see the suddenly square seat to his jeans. Maybe he could use the butler's entrance as a distraction to hitch up his pants without being seen, pull his shirt looser. . . .

"Come this way," said Mr. Ashley-Montague in an exasperated voice. He led the way out of the study at a fast pace. Dale hurried to keep up, glancing at the huge rooms as they passed through them, hugging the Priestmann volume to his chest and feeling the smaller book sink lower into the seat of his jeans. The top of it must be poking up at his shirt now, quite visible.

They were almost to the foyer when the sound of a television set in a small room off the main hall made both Mr. A.-M. and Dale turn. A crowd was roaring on the screen of the TV, someone was giving a speech and the echoes filled a huge hall. Mr. Ashley-Montague paused to look for an instant and Dale slipped by him, swiveling to keep his front toward the man, hanging on to the history volume with one hand while the other fumbled for the doorknob. The butler's footsteps echoed on a tile corridor.

Dale could have slipped out then, but what he saw on television made him pause and stare with Mr. Ashley-Montague. David Brinkley was saying, in his strange, clipped voice, "And so, the Democrats have chosen to give us ... this year . . . what must certainly be ... the strongest Civil Rights plank in the history ... of the Democratic Party . . . wouldn't you say . . . Chet?"

Chet Huntley's woeful visage filled the small black-and-white screen. "I'd say without a doubt, David. But the interesting thing in this floor fight is . . ."

But what had compelled Dale's attention was not the newscasters speaking, nor the crowds the camera kept cutting to, but the man's picture on many of the hundreds of posters that were rising and bobbing above that red-white-and-blue crowd like flotsam on a political sea. The words on the signs said

ALL THE WAY WITH JFK and, simply, KENNEDY IN '60. The poster picture was of a handsome man with very white teeth and a full head of chestnut hair.

Mr. Ashley-Montague shook his head and made a snorting noise as if witnessing something or someone beneath contempt. The butler had come up to stand beside his master as the millionaire returned his attention to the boy. "I hope you have no more questions," he said as Dale backed out the door and stood on the broad stoop. Jim Harlen shouted something from the backseat of the car thirty feet away on the wide driveway.

"Just one," said Dale, almost falling down the stairs, squinting in the sunlight and using the conversation as a reason to keep backing away from the two men at the door. "What's on the Free Show this Saturday?"

Mr. Ashley-Montague rolled his eyes but glanced at his butler.

"A Vincent Price film, I believe, sir," said the man. "A motion picture called The House of Usher."

"Great," shouted Dale. He had backed almost to the black Chevy now. "Thanks again!" he called as Harlen opened the door behind him and he jumped in. "Go," he said to Congden.

The teenager sneered, nicked a cigarette into the manicured grass, and floored the accelerator, half-skidding around the long turn of drive. He was doing fifty miles an hour as they approached the heavy gates.

The black iron opened in front of them.

Mike did not want to stay down there any longer. The half-gloom under the bandstand, the smell of raw earth and the heavier scent of Mink himself, even the progression of diamond-shaped nodes of light across the dark soil-all conspired to give Mike a terrible sense of claustrophobia and gloom, as if he and the old drunk were lying together in a roomy coffin, waiting for the men with spades to arrive. But Mink had not finished either an extra bottle he had found under his newspapers or his story.

"That woulda been the end of it," Mink was saying, "the hanging of the nigger an' all, but it turned out that nothin' was quite the way it seemed.'' He drank deeply from his wine bottle, coughed, wiped his chin, and stared at Mike with great intensity. His eyes were very red. "That next summer, some more kids up and disappeared. ..."

Mike sat up very straight. He could hear a truck passing on the Hard Road, little kids playing in the shade near the War Monument at the front of the park, and farmers chatting across the street at the John Deere dealership, but all of his attention was on Mink Harper at that moment.

Mink took a drink and smiled as if he were very aware of Mike's riveted attention. The smile was quick and furtive; Mink had about three teeth left and none of them were worth exhibiting for any length of time. "Yep," he said, "that next summer . . . summer of nineteen hundred . . . couple more li'l kids got disappeared. One of them was Merriweather Whittaker, my ol' pal. The grown-ups, they said that no one never found him, but a couple years later I was out by Gypsy Lane-must've been more'n a couple years 'cause I was out there with a girl, tryin' to get into her pants, if y' know what I mean. In those days, girls didn't wear no pants except their underwear so the meanin' was clear, if you get my drift." Mink took another drink, wiped his dirty brow with a dirty hand, and frowned. "Where was I?"

"You were out by Gypsy Lane," whispered Mike. He was thinking It's weird that the kids then knew about Gypsy Lane.

"Oh, yeah. Well, the young lady friend I was with didn't care none for what I had in mind-goddamned if I know why she thought I'd got her out there, sure as hell wasn't to smell the gladiolas . . . but she left in a huff to find her friend . . . we was supposed to be havin' a picnic as I remember . . . and I was sorta pullin' up grass and throwin' sod at a tree, you know how it is when your John Henry's all worked up an' don't have nothin' to do with it... an' I pulled this hunk a grass outa the ground and there was a bone-goddamned white bone-rather'n a root. Bunch a goddamn bones. Human bones, too . . . including a little skull about Merri-weather's size. Damn thing'd been caved in an' sort a hollered out, like someone was scoopin' brains out of it for a dessert, sorta."

Mink took a final drink and flung the bottle across the dark space. He rubbed his cheeks as if he'd lost track of his story again. When he spoke it was in lower tones, in an almost confidential manner. "Sheriff told me it was cow bones . . . shee-it, as if I didn't know the difference between cow bones and human bones ... he tried to pretend I hadn't seen me the skull and such my ownself. . . but I did, an' I know that that ol' part of Gypsy Lane ran through the back of Old Man Lewis's spread. Wouldna been hard for someone to take Merriweather out there, do whatever they done to him, and then bury his bones in a shallow grave there.

"More'n that. . . more'n Merriweather's goddamn bones ... a few years after that, I was drinkin' with Billy Phillips before he went off to the war ..."

"William Campbell Phillips?" said Mike.

Mink Harper blinked at him. "Sure, William Campbell Phillips . . . who'd'ya think Billy Phillips was? Cousin to the little Campbell girl who got herself killed. Billy was always a whinin' little toad . . . always moppin' his runny nose and figurin' out a way to get out of work or runnin' to his mommy when he got in trouble ... I can tell you I almost dropped my teeth when he up and enlisted during the war . . . Where was I, boy?"

"You were drinking with Billy Phillips." "Oh, yeah, me and Billy was liftin' a few right before he went overseas durin' the Great War. Normally, Billy wouldn't drink with us workin' types ... he was a teacher . . .just taught those snot-nosed little kids down to the school, but to hear Billy tell he was a Harvard professor. . . anyway, him and me was in the Black Tree one night, him in his uniform an' all, and after a few drinks, snotty Billy Phillips got almost human on me. Started talkin' about what a bitch his ma was and how she'd kept him from havin' any fun . . . how she sent him away to college an' all rather'n let him marry the woman he loved ..."

Mike interrupted. "Did he say who that woman was?" Mink squinted and licked his lips. "Huh? No ... I don't think ... no, I'm sure he didn't name nobody . . . probably one of them schoolmarm types he hung around with. One little old lady 'mongst a bunch of 'em's the way we thought about Billy Phillips. Where was I?"

"Having a drink with Billy ... he got human ..." "OK, yeah. Me an' Billy was hoistin' a few on the night before he was to go over to France where he got killed . . . died of pneumonia or some damn thing . . . and after he got sort of loose, he says to me, 'Mink . . . ,' they called me Mink way back then, 'Mink, you know that little girl an' her petticoat an' the alleged crime an' all?' Billy was always usin' fifty-cent words like 'alleged,' probably thinkin' that everybody in Elm Haven was too stupid to understand him ..."

"And what did he say about the petticoat?" prompted Mike.

"Heh? Oh, he says, 'Mink, it wasn't that nigger's petticoat at all. I never went nowhere near that nigger. It was Judge Ashley who paid me a silver dollar to hide that petticoat in the nigger's bedroll.' You see, the way Billy'd figured it when he was just a little snot, was that the Judge knew who'd done it, and needed Billy's help to get him, 'cause they just didn't have no evidence an' all. But I guess when Billy got older, after goin' off to college to get smart an' all, he musta figured what the dumbest Polack in town could figure out. . . which is, namely, where in hell did the Judge get that little girl's underclothes?"

Mike leaned closer. "Did you ask him that?"

"Hmmm? No, don't think I did. Or if I did, I don't remember no answer. What I do remember is Billy sayin' somethin' about gettin' out of town before the Judge an' the others knew he wasn't with 'em no more."

"With who?" whispered Mike.

"How the hell do I know, boy?" growled Mink Harper. He leaned closer, squinted, and breathed wine fumes on Mike. "This was more'n forty years ago, y' know. What'ya think I am, a damn memory machine?"

Mike looked over his shoulder at the entrance to the crawl-space under the bandstand, a small rectangle of escape that seemed very far away. The sound of smaller kids playing in the park had long since faded; there was no traffic.

"Can you remember anything else about Old Central or the bell?" asked Mike, not flinching away from Mink's inspection.

Face inches from Mike's, Mink showed his three teeth again. "Never seen or heard the bell again ... not till last month when it woke me up from a deep sleep here in my dry little home . . . but I know one thing ..."

"What's that?" Mike found it very hard not to lean back out of the range of Mink's breath and stare.

"I know that when Old Man Ashley stuck his two-barreled Boss shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger 'bout a year after the war was over ... the First War, I mean . . . that he done us all a favor. Burned down his goddamn house, too. His boy came home from Peoria where the old man's new grandbaby was just born, and he found his pappy . . . the Judge that was . . . lyin' dead with his brains bio wed out. Everybody thinks it was either a accident or the ol' Judge who burned the place . . . wasn't ... I happened to be out in the gardenin' shed with one of the servants when I seen the young Mr. Ashley's carriage comin'-he called himself Ashley-Montague after he married that fancy woman from Venice-yeah, I was in the gardenin' shed when we heard the shot and saw Mr. Ashley-Montague go in, then come out bawlin' and shoutin' at the sky and spreadin' kerosene oil everywhere on the big house. One of the servants tried to stop him . . . there'd been more of 'em at the house but they'd been laid off during that recession after the war . . . but there was no stoppin' him. He threw that oil everywhere an' lit it up and stood back to watch it burn. They never come home after that, him and his bride and the baby. Jes' to show the goddamn Free Show, that's all."

Mike nodded, thanked Mink, and scrambled for the opening, suddenly eager to get back out into the sunlight. At the exit, his body out into the fresh air, Mike asked one more question. "Mink, what did he shout?"

"Whaddya mean, boy?" the old man seemed to have forgotten what they had been talking about.

"The Judge's son. When he burned the place down. What was he shouting?"

Mink's three teeth gleamed yellowly in the dimness. "Oh, he was shoutin' that they wasn't gonna get him . . . no, by God, they wasn't gonna get him."

Mike let out a breath. "I don't suppose he said who 'they' were?"

Mink frowned, pursed his lips in a parody of deep thought, and then grinned again. "Yeah, he did, now that I 'member it. Called the guy by name." "Guy?"

"Yeah . . . Cyrus, only pronounced like that flat cloud . . . cirrus. He kept saying 'No, O'Cyrus, you ain't gonna get me.' The way he said it, I thought maybe it was some Irishman's name. O'Cirrus."

"Thanks, Mink." Mike stood up, feeling his shirt plastered to his body, wiping a bead of perspiration from his nose. His hair was wet and his legs felt shaky for some reason. He found his bike, crossed the Hard Road, noticed how long the shadows were getting, and pedaled slowly up Broad under the canopy of arching branches. He was remembering Duane's notebooks and the slow translation he and Dale had done from the Gregg shorthand. The part where Duane had copied bits from his uncle's diary was especially tough. One word had sent them checking the squiggles and codes over and over again; Dale had recognized it from some book he'd read about Egypt: Osiris.