Summer of Night

FIVE

Dale smelled Death before he saw it.

It was Friday, the third of June, their second day of summer, and the bunch of them had been playing ball since just after breakfast-by midafternoon they were caked with dust made muddy by their sweat-when Dale smelled Death coming.

"Je-zuz!" cried Jim Harlen from his place between first and second base. "What is that?"

Dale was just stepping up to the plate to bat, but now he stepped back and pointed.

The smell had come from the east, blowing with the breeze down the dirt road that connected the city ballpark to First Avenue. The smell was Death-corruption, the stench of recent roadkill, the bloated-to-bursting gasses of bacteria working in dead stomachs-and it was coming closer.

"Oh, yechhh," said Donna Lou Perry from the pitcher's mound. She kept the ball in her right hand, raised her baseball mitt to her mouth and nose, and turned to look the direction Dale was pointing.

The Rendering Truck turned slowly from First Avenue and rolled down the hundred yards of dirt road toward them. The truck's cab was scabrous red and the bed behind was shielded by solid wooden slats. Dale could see four legs protruding straight up-a cow perhaps, or a horse, it was hard to tell at this distance-the corpse obviously tossed in among others, the hoofs pointing skyward like a cartoon of a dead animal.

This was no cartoon.

"Aww, give us a break," said Mike from his catcher's position behind the plate. He lifted his t-shirt over his mouth and nose as the stench came on stronger.

Dale took another step away from the plate, his eyes watering and stomach churning. The Rendering Truck reached the end of the dirt road and pulled into the grassy parking lot behind the bleachers to their right. The air seemed to grow thick around them as the stench of dead things closed over Dale's face like a hand.

Kevin jogged in from third base. "Is that Van Syke?"

Lawrence came off the bench and stood next to Dale as they both squinted toward the truck, the bills of their wool baseball caps pulled low.

"I don't know," said Dale. "Can't see in the cab because of the stupid glare. But Van Syke usually drives it in the summer, doesn't he?"

Gerry Daysinger had been waiting on-deck behind Dale. Now he held his bat like a rifle and made a face. "Yeah, Van Syke drives it ... most of the time."

Dale glanced at the shorter boy. All of them knew that Gerry's dad sometimes drove the Rendering Truck or mowed the cemetery . . . odd jobs around town that Van Syke usually took care of. No one had ever seen Mr. Van Syke with a friend, but Gerry's dad sometimes hung around with him.

As if reading their thoughts, Daysinger said, "It's Van Syke. My old man's up at Oak Hill today working on a construction job."

Donna Lou walked in from the mound, her mitt still over the lower part of her face. "What's he want?"

Mike O'Rourke shrugged. "I don't see any dead things around here, do you?"

"Just Harlen," said Gerry, flicking a clod of dirt at Jim as he loped in to join the group.

The Rendering Truck sat there, ten yards away, the windshield opaqued by glare and the thick layers of paint on the cab looking like caked blood. Through the slats on the side, Dale could catch a glimpse of hides gray and black, another hint of hoof near the tailgate, something large and brown and bloated just behind the cab. The four legs jutting skyward belonged to a cow. Dale pulled the bill of his cap lower and could see white bone showing through rotted hide. The air was thick with the buzzing of the flies that hung over the truck like a blue cloud.

"What's he want?" Donna Lou asked again. The sixth grader had hung around with the Bike Patrol boys for years-she was the best pitcher on their pickup teams-but this summer Dale had noticed how tall she'd grown . . . that and the curves under her t-shirt.

"Let's go ask him," said Mike. He tossed down his glove and started walking toward the opening in the backstop.

Dale felt his heart lurch. He didn't like Van Syke at the best of times. When he thought of him-even in the context of school with teachers and Dr. Roon within shouting distance-he had the image of long, spidery fingers with dirt under the nails, dirt-lined wrinkles on the back of a blister-reddened neck, and yellow teeth which were much too large. Like the teeth on the rats at the dump.

And the thought of walking closer to that truck-that smell -made Dale's insides quiver again.

Mike had reached the fence and was going through the narrow gap there.

"Hey, wait a minute!" called Harlen. "Look!"

A kid was riding down the dirt road and now the bike swerved into right field and crossed the, dirt infield in a spray of clods. Dale saw that it was a girl's bike, and that the girl riding it was Sandra Whittaker, Donna Lou's friend.

"Oh, peww," said Sandy as she brought the bike to a sliding halt near the group of them. "What died?"

"Mike's dead cousins just drove up," said Harlen. "He was just going over to give them a hug."

Sandy gave Harlen a look and dismissed him with a flounce of her braids. "I've got news. Something weird's going on!"

"What?" said Lawrence and adjusted his glasses. The third grader's voice was tense.

"J.P. and Barney and everybody's over at Old Central. Cordie's there and her weird-looking mom. Roon's out there. Everybody. They're looking for Cordie's stupid brother."

"Tubby?" said Gerry Daysinger. He rubbed his runny nose with his hand and wiped it on his gray t-shirt. "I thought he ran away on Wednesday."

"Yeah," panted Sandy, talking to Donna Lou now, "but Cordie thinks he's still in the school! Weird, huh?"

"Let's go," said Harlen, running for the row of bikes near first base. The others followed, pulling handlebar grips away. from the fence, tucking baseball gloves on their handlebars or onto bats thrown over their shoulders.

"Hey!" called Mike from the other side of the backstop. "What about Van Syke?"

"Give him a kiss for us," yelled Harlen and started pedaling down the dirt road.

Dale followed, Lawrence and Kevin right behind him. Dale pedaled hard, pretending to be excited about Sandy's news. Anything to get away from the stench of Death and the silent Rendering Truck.

Mike waited a minute while the others fled, dust rising behind them. Day singer didn't have a bike but he rode on the front of Grumbacher's, Kevin's long legs rising and falling as he pedaled hard. Donna Lou glanced toward Mike and then got on her aqua and white bike, threw her mitt in the basket, and rode off with Sandy.

For a moment Mike was all alone on the ballfield. Just him and the terrible stench of dead things and the silent truck. Mike stood there, just behind the backstop, and glared at the truck. It was at least ninety degrees out today-the sun so fierce that it made the sweat run in rivulets down his dusty neck and cheeks. How could Van Syke stand it if he was in that cab with the windows closed?

Mike stood there as the gang of kids reached First Avenue and swung right onto the asphalt street. Sandy and Donna Lou were the last to turn out of sight behind the row of elms there.

Flies buzzed. Something in the back of the Rendering Truck shifted with a soft, liquid sound and the stench grew worse, became almost visible in the thickening air. Mike felt panic begin to rise in him the way it did late at night when he heard a scrabbling in his grandmother's room below him and thought it was her soul scratching to get free ... or when he knelt too long at High Mass, half-hypnotized by the incense and litany and his own sleepiness, thinking of his sins and the terrible fires of hell and the slimy things waiting for him there. . . .

Mike took another five steps closer to the truck. Grasshoppers jumped away in the dry grass. There was a shadow just visible through the windshield glare.

Mike stopped and gave the truck and its occupants-living and dead-the finger. Then he turned slowly and walked back through the gap in the wood-and-wire backstop, willing himself not to run but waiting for the slam of the cab door and the rush of heavy footsteps.

There was only the sound of flies. Then, softly, unmistakably, there rose from the truckbed a soft mewling which grew to an infant's wail. Mike froze in the act of sliding his mitt onto his handlebars.

No mistake. A baby was crying back there in that crib of death filled with roadkill scraped off asphalt, dead dogs with their guts spilling out, bloated cattle and white-eyed horses, flattened piglets and the rotting offal of a dozen farms.

The crying rose in pitch and intensity, shifted to a wail which perfectly matched Mike's sudden stab of terror, and then fell off to a gurgling ... as if whatever was there was feeding. Nursing.

Mike pushed his bike away from the fence with legs gone soft. He pedaled out past first base, turned onto the dirt road, and headed for First Avenue.

He did not stop.

He did not look back.

They saw the cars and commotion a block away. J. P. Cong-den's matte-black Chevy was parked in the school lot next to the constable's car and an old blue panel truck that Dale guessed belonged to Cordie Cooke's mom. Cordie was there, wearing the same shapeless dress she'd worn the entire last month of school, and the overweight, moonfaced woman next to her had to be her mother. Dr. Roon and Mrs. Doubbet stood at the base of the stairs at the north entrance as if blocking the way. The justice of the peace and the town constable-Barney-stood between the two groups like referees.

Dale and the others slid to a stop on the grassy field about twenty-five feet from the group of adults: not so close so they'd be shooed away, not so far away they couldn't hear. Dale looked up as Mike pedaled up and slid to a stop. His friend's face was pale.

"And I say that Terence never came home Wednesday!" shouted Mrs. Cooke. The woman's fat face was browned and wrinkled into folds which made Dale think of Mike's catcher's mitt. Her eyes had the same gray, washed-out, hopeless look that he recognized from his classmate Cordie.

"Terence?" whispered Jim Harlen and made a face.

"Yes, ma'am," said Barney, still standing between the fat woman and the principal and teacher. "Dr. Roon understands that. But they're sure he left the school. We need to find out where he went after school."

"Bullshit!" cried Mrs. Cooke. "My Cordelia says that she didn't see him crossin' the schoolyard . . . and my Terence wouldna left school without permission nohow. He's a good boy. And I woulda tanned his behind to the bone if he hadda."

Kevin turned toward Dale and raised an eyebrow. Dale didn't look away from the group of intense adults.

"Now, Mrs. Cooke," began the short, bald, mean little justice of the peace, "we all know that Tubby ... uh ... Terence had his mis-chevious ways about him and ..."

Mrs. Cooke rounded on the little man. "Shut your face, J.P. Congden. Everybody knows your boy C.J. is the meanest little asshole who ever carried a switchblade. Don't you be tellin' me about my Terence's ways." She looked back at the skinny constable everyone in town called Barney and thrust a blunt finger toward Dr. Roon and Old Double-Butt. "Constable, these people is hidin' something."

Barney made a gesture with both hands, palms out. "Now, now, Mrs. Cooke. You know they looked everywhere. Mrs. Doubbet saw Terence leaving school that afternoon before the children were dismissed ..."

"An' I say bullshit to that!" shouted Cordie's mother. Cordie herself looked over her shoulder, saw the group of kids, and gave them a blank stare.

Mrs. Doubbet seemed to come out of her daze. "No one speaks to me like that. I have been an educator in this district for almost four decades and I ..."

"I don't give a pig's ass how long you been teachin' ..." began Mrs. Cooke.

"Ma, she's lyin'!" cried Cordie, tugging on her mother's shapeless dress. "I was lookin' out the window and I didn't see Tubby nowhere. Old Double-Butt wasn't even lookin'."

"Just a minute, young lady," began Dr. Roon. His long fingers played with the watch chain across his vest. "We understand you are upset by your brother's ... ah ... temporary absence, but we cannot allow such ..."

"You tell me where my boy is!" cried Mrs. Cooke, pressing forward against the justice of the peace as if trying to get her small, fat hands on the principal.

"Hey! Hey!" cried J. P. Congden, taking a step back.

Barney stepped between the two again, spoke quickly and earnestly to Cordie's mother in tones the kids could not hear, and then said something softly to Dr. Roon.

"I agree that we should continue the discussion out of the . . .ah. . . public glare," came Dr. Roon's sepulchral tones.

Barney nodded, said something else, and the group went into Old Central. Cordie looked back over her shoulder once at Dale and the others but there was no hostility in her face now . . . only sadness and something which might have been fear.

"It would be better if ... ah ... Mr. Cooke could join us," Dr. Roon was saying as they went inside.

"He's been feelin' poorly all this week," Cordie's mother said in a tired monotone.

"He's been drunk as a junkyard skunk all this week," said Jim Harlen in a passable imitation of Mrs. Cooke's Okie twang. Harlen squinted at the sun and the now-empty parking lot. "Shit, it's getting late and I promised Mom I'd get the yard mowed. I think the fun's over here."

Lawrence pushed his glasses higher on his nose. "Where do you think Tubby went?"

Harlen leaned over the third grader, twisted his face into a terrible grimace, and raised fingers like claws. "Something got him, punko. And tonight it's gonna get you!" He leaned closer, saliva dribbling onto his chin.

"Knock it off," said Dale, stepping between Harlen and his brother.

"Knock it off," Harlen parroted in falsetto. "Don't distoib my wittew brudder!" He minced and pirouetted, all wrists and fluttered fingers.

Dale said nothing.

"You'd better go if you're going to mow the yard," said Mike. There was an edge to his voice.

Harlen glanced at O'Rourke, hesitated, said, "Yeah. See ya, simps," and pedaled away down Depot Street.

"See. I toldya it was weird," said Sandy and rode away with Donna Lou. Donna shouted "Tomorrow!" back over her shoulder as they reached the line of sentinel elms on the southeast side of the schoolyard.

Dale waved.

Gerry Daysinger said, "Hell, nothing else's going to happen. I'm going home to get a soda pop." He ran off toward his frame-and-tarpaper house on cinderblocks across School Street.

"Ke-VIIINNN!" The shrill cry sounded like a Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan shout. Mrs. Grumbacher's head and shoulders were just visible at the front door.

Kevin wasted no time for farewells but spun his bike and was gone.

The shadow of Old Central spread almost to Second Avenue, pulling the color from the playing fields lying green where sunlight touched and shading the lower levels of three great elms.

J.P. Congden emerged a few minutes later, shouted something bullying at the kids, and then drove away in a shower of gravel.

"My dad says that he uses that Chevy to trick people into speeding," said Mike.

"How?" said Lawrence.

Mike sat down in the grass and plucked a blade of grass. "J.P. hides down in the dairy driveway on the hill where the' Hard Road dips down to cross Spoon River. When people come along, he roars out and tries to race them. If they race, he puts his light on top of his car and arrests them for speeding. Drags them to his house and fines them twenty-five dollars. If they don't race ..."

"Yeah?"

"He gets in front of them right before the bridge, slows down, and arrests them for passing within a hundred feet of the bridge when they finally go around."

Lawrence chewed on his grass and shook his head. "What a shitheel."

"Hey!" said Dale. "Watch your mouth. If Mom hears you talking like that ..."

"Look," said Lawrence, jumping up and running over to a furrowed ridge in the soil. "What's this?"

The two boys ambled over to look. "Gopher," said Dale.

Mike shook his head. "Too big."

"They probably dug a ditch to lay in some new sewer pipe or something and the hump's still here," said Dale. He pointed. "See. There's another ridge. They both run to the school."

Mike walked over to the other furrow, followed it until it disappeared under the sidewalk near the school, and chewed on his blade of grass. "Doesn't make much sense to put in new pipes."

"Why not?" said Lawrence.

Mike gestured toward the shaded side of the school. "They're tearing it down. A couple more days, once they get all the junk out, they'll be boarding up the windows. If they ..." Mike stopped, squinted up toward the eaves, and backed away.

Dale Walked over to join him. "What is it?"

Mike pointed. "Up there. See in the center window on the high-school floor?"

Dale shielded his eyes. "Uh-uh. What?"

"Somebody looking out," said Lawrence. "I saw a white face before it moved away."

"Not somebody," said Mike. "It was Van Syke."

Dale glanced over his shoulder, past his house, to the fields beyond. Tree shadow and distance kept him from seeing if the Rendering Truck was still out by the ballfield.

Eventually Mrs. Cooke, Cordie, Barney, and Old Double-Butt came out, said a few unheard words, and drove away in different directions. Only Dr. Roon's car remained and just before dark, just before Dale and Lawrence were called in for dinner, he too came out, locked the school door, and drove away in his hearselike Buick.

Dale kept watching from his front door until his mother ordered him to the table, but Van Syke did not emerge.

He checked after dinner. Evening light touched only the tops of the trees and the scabby green cupola. The rest was darkness.

Six

Saturday morning, the first Saturday of summer, and Mike O'Rourke was up at dawn. He went into the darkened parlor to check on Memo-she hardly slept at all anymore-and when he saw the pale glint of skin and the blink of an eye.in the tangle of comforters and shawls, was sure that she was still alive, he kissed her-smelling the faintest hint of the decay that had come from the Rendering Truck the day before, and then he went out to the kitchen. His father was already up and shaving over the cold-water tap there; he clocked in at seven a.m. at the Pabst brewery in Peoria and the city was more than an hour's drive away. Mike's dad was massive-six feet tall but well over three hundred pounds, most of it in a wide, round belly that kept him far from the sink even while he shaved. His red hair had receded until it was little more than an orange fuzz over his ears, but his forehead was sunburned from weekends working in the garden and broken capillaries in his cheeks and nose added to the general rosiness of his complexion. He shaved with the antique straight razor that had belonged to his grandfather, and he paused now-finger on one stretched cheek, blade poised -to nod at his son as Mike headed for the outhouse. Mike had only recently come to realize that his was the only family in Elm Haven that still had to use an outhouse. There were other outhouses-Mrs. Moon had one behind her old frame house, Gerry Day singer had one behind his toolshed-but those were just remnants, artifacts from an earlier age. The O'Rourkes used their outhouse. For years Mike's mother had been talking about putting in plumbing other than the pump over the sink, but Mike's dad always decided that it was too expensive since the city had no sewer system and septic tanks cost a fortune. Mike suspected that his father didn't want a bathroom inside: with Mike's four sisters and mother always talking, talking, talking in the tiny house, Mike's dad often said that the only place he found true peace and quiet was out back in the John.

Mike finished up, walked back along the flagstone walk that wound between his mother's flower garden and his father's vegetable garden, glanced up to see starlings whirling among high leaves catching the first light of dawn, went in through the small back porch, and washed his hands at the kitchen sink which his father had just vacated. Then he went to the junk cupboard, got out his writing tablet and school pencil, and sat at the table.

"Gonna be late for the papers," said his dad. He was standing at the counter, drinking coffee and looking out through the kitchen window at the garden. The wall clock said 5:08.

"No, I'm not," said Mike. The papers were dropped off at five-fifteen in front of the bank next to the A&P on Main Street where Mike's mother worked. He had never been late in picking them up.

"What're you writing there?" asked his dad. The coffee had seemed to focus him.

"Just some notes to Dale and the guys."

His father nodded, not really seeming to hear, and looked out at his garden again. "That rain the other day really helped the corn."

"See you, Dad." Mike folded the notes in his jean pockets, pulled on a baseball cap, gave his father a bop on the shoulder, and was out the door and on his ancient bike, pedaling down First at full speed.

As soon as Mike finished his morning paper route, he would pedal to St. Malachy's over on the west side of town near the railroad tracks, where he would serve as altar boy while Father Cavanaugh said Mass. Mike did this every day of the year. He had been an altar boy since he was seven, and although other kids came and went, Father C. said that none were as dependable as Mike . . . nor pronounced the Latin as carefully and reverently. The schedule was hard sometimes, especially in winter when the drifts were deep and he couldn't use his bike to get around town. Sometimes then he'd come running into St. Malachy's, tuck his surplice and cassock on without taking time to shrug out of his coat or get into his brown oxfords, say Mass with snow melting from the soles of his boots, and then, if only the usual seven-thirty congregation was there-Mrs. Moon, Mrs. Shaugh-nessy, Miss Ashbow, and Mr. Kane-Mike would, with Father C. 's permission, take off right after Communion so he could get to school before the last bell rang.

He was still late frequently. Mrs. Shrives wouldn't even talk to him anymore as he came in, merely glower and nod toward the principal's office. Mike would wait there for Dr. Roon to find time to scold him or give him a rap with the Enforcer, the paddle Roon kept in his lower lefthand drawer. The whippings didn't bother Mike anymore, but he hated to sit in the office and miss reading class and most of math.

Mike put the thought of school out of his mind as he sat on the high sidewalk in front of the bank and waited for the truck carrying the Peoria morning paper. It was summer.

The thought of summer, the warmth-in-the-face, smell-of-warming-pavement-and-moist-crops reality of it, filled Mike's spirit with energy and seemed to expand his chest with air even as the truck arrived, even as he unbundled the papers and folded them-sticking notes in some and setting those in the extra pocket of his delivery bag, even as he rode the morning streets, tossing papers, shouting good mornings to the women getting their milk bottles and the men getting into their cars for the commute elsewhere, and the reality of it, the lessened-gravity of summer, continued to buoy him up even as he leaned his bike against the wall of St. Malachy's and rushed into the cool shade-and-incense interior of his favorite place in the world.

Dale woke late, after eight, and lay in bed a long moment. Light and leaf-shadow from the giant elm outside filled the window. Warm air came through the screens. Lawrence was gone already; Dale could hear the cartoon sounds from the living room downstairs as his brother watched Heckle and Jeckle and Ruff and Reddy.

Dale got up, made both his and Lawrence's beds, pulled on underwear, jeans, a t-shirt, clean socks and his sneakers, and went downstairs to breakfast.

His mother had his favorite cereal and raisin toast ready.

She was chipper, chatting about what movies might be shown at the Free Show that night. Dale's dad was still gone on a road trip-his sales territory stretched across two states-but he'd be home late that night.

Lawrence called from the living room that Dale should hurry, that he was missing Ruff and Reddy.

"That's a little kids' show!" Dale shouted back. "It doesn't interest me." But he ate more quickly.

"Oh, this was in the paper this morning," said his mom. She set the note next to his bowl.

Dale smiled at the sight of the cheap Big Chief Tablet paper, recognized Mike's careful writing and awful spelling:

EVERYBODY MEAT AT THE CAVE AT NINE THIRTY

-M

Dale scooped up the last of his Wheaties and wondered what was so important that they had to go all the way out there to meet. The Cave was reserved for special events-secrets, emergency powwows, the special Bike Patrol meetings back when they were young enough to care about such things.

"Now it's not really a cave, is it, Dale?" his mother said, a slight undertone of worry in her voice.

"Uh-uh, Mom. You know it's not. It's just that old culvert out beyond the Black Tree."

"All right, just as long as you remember that you promised to mow the yard before Mrs. Sebert come over to visit this afternoon."

Duane McBride's father didn't subscribe to the Peoria paper-he didn't read any newspaper except for The New York Times, and that only rarely-so Duane didn't receive one of Mike's notes. The phone rang around nine a.m. Duane waited: they were on a party line-one ring meant their closest neighbors, the Johnsons; two rings meant Duane's line; and three rings meant a call for Swede Olafson down the road. The phone rang twice, stopped, rang twice again.

"Duane," came Dale Stewart's voice. "I figured you'd be out doing your chores."

"Already did my chores," said Duane. "Your dad home?"

"He went to Peoria to buy some things." There was a silence. Duane knew that Dale knew that Duane's Old Man often didn't return from his Saturday "buying trips" until late Sunday night.

"Hey, we're getting together at the Cave at nine-thirty. Mike's got something to tell us."

"Who's 'we'?" Duane glanced down at his notebook. He'd been working on his character sketch since after breakfast. This particular piece had been in progress since April and the notebook was filled with scratch outs, substitutions, entire passages and pages X'ed out, notations scrawled in tiny margins. He knew that this exercise was going to be as far from perfect as all the rest.

"You know," said Dale, "Mike and Kevin and Harlen and maybe Daysinger. I don't know. I just got the note in the paper a while ago."

"How about Lawrence?" Duane looked out at the ocean of corn rising-almost knee-high now-on either side of the long gravel road to their house. His mother, when she was alive, had forbidden the planting of anything taller than beans in the front twenty acres. "It makes me feel too isolated when the corn gets tall," she'd told Uncle Art. "Too claustrophobic." So the Old Man had humored her and planted beans. But Duane couldn't remember a time when summer did not mean the slow secession of their farm home from the world around them. "Waist-high by the Fourth of July," went the old saying about corn, but usually the corn in this part of Illinois was shoulder-high to Duane by the Fourth of July. And beyond that point of the summer, it wasn't so much that the corn grew as the farmhouse shrank. Duane couldn't even see the county road at the end of the lane unless he went to the second floor to peer over the corn. And neither he nor his Old Man went up on the second floor anymore. "What about Lawrence?" said Dale. "Is he coming?" "Sure he's coming. You know he always hangs around with us."

Duane smiled. "Just didn't want you to forget your little brother," he said.

There was an exasperated noise on the line. "Look, Duane, are you coming or not?"

Duane thought of the work he had to do around the farm that day. He'd be lucky to be finished by dark even if he started at once. "I'm pretty busy, Dale. You say you don't know what Mike has in mind?"

"Well, I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with Old Central. Tubby Cooke missing. You know."

Duane paused. "I'll be there. Nine-thirty, huh? If I start walking now, I should get there about then."

"Jeez," said Dale, his voice tinny over the line, "haven't you got a bike yet?'

"If God had meant for me to have a bike," said Duane, "I would have been born with Schwinn as my last name. See you there." He hung up before Dale could reply.

Duane went downstairs to find his notebook with his word-sketch of Old Central in it, pulled on a cap with the word cat on it, and went out to call his dog. Witt came at once. The name was pronounced "Vit" and was short for Wittgenstein, a philosopher that the Old Man and Uncle Art argued over incessantly. The old collie was almost blind now and moved with the slow-motion painfulness of arthritis, but he sensed that Duane was going somewhere and approached with the hopeful tail-wagging that showed he was ready to join the expedition.

"Uh-uh," said Duane, worried that the walk would be too much for his old friend in this heat. "You stay here today, Witt. Guard the spread. I'll be back by lunchtime."

The collie's cataract-clouded eyes managed to look both hurt and imploring. Duane patted him, led him back to the barn, and made sure his water bowl was full. "Keep the burglars and corn monsters at bay, Witt."

The collie surrendered with a canine sigh and settled onto the blanket on straw that served as his bed.

The day was hot as Duane ambled down the lane toward County Six. He rolled up the sleeves of his plaid flannel shirt and thought about Old Central and about Henry James. Duane had just read The Turn of the Screw and now he thought about the estate called Bly, about James's subtle suggestion that a place could resonate with such evil that it provided "ghosts" to haunt the children Miles and Flora.

The Old Man was an alcoholic and a failure, but he was also a thoughtful atheist and dedicated rationalist, and he had raised his son that way. As early as Duane could remember, he had viewed the universe as a complex mechanism following sensible laws: laws that were only partially and poorly understood by the feeble intellects of humankind, but laws nonetheless.

He flipped his notebook open and found the passage about Old Central. "... a sense of ... foreboding? Evil? Too melodramatic. A sense of awareness. ..." Duane sighed, ripped the page out, and stuck it in the pocket of his corduroy pants.

He reached County Six and turned south. Sunlight blazed off the white gravel of the road and burned against Duane's exposed forearms. Behind him, in the fields on either side of the lane to his home, insects rustled and stirred in the growing corn.

Dale, Lawrence, Kevin, and Jim Harlen rode to the Cave together. "Why do we have to meet so damn far away?" grumbled Harlen. His bike was smaller than the others', a seventeen-incher, and he had to pedal twice as hard to keep up.

They rode past O'Rourke's house under its large shade trees, north toward the water tower, then east on the wide gravel road, Kevin and Dale and Lawrence in the hard-packed left rut, Harlen on the right. There was no traffic, no wind, and no sound except for their breathing and the crunch of gravel under their tires. It was almost a mile to County Six. In the fields beyond and to the northeast of the junction, hills and heavy timber began. If they had stayed on the road from the water tower, they would have run into the hilly country between Elm Haven and the almost abandoned town called Jubilee College. County Six continued south for a mile and a half, connecting to Highway 151 A, the Hard Road that ran through Elm Haven, but that shortcut was little more than dirt ruts through fields and was impassable during most of the winter and spring.

They turned north, passed the Black Tree Tavern, and roared down the first steep hill, almost standing on their brake pedals. The trees arched over the narrow road here, dappling it in deep shadow. The first time Dale had heard "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" when Mrs. Grossaint, their fourth-grade teacher, had read it to the class, he had pictured this place with a covered bridge at the bottom.

There was no covered bridge, only rotting wooden railings on either side of the gravel road. The kids slid to a stop at the bottom and walked their bikes down a narrow trail through the weeds on the west side of the road. The weeds were waist-high or taller here, and covered with dust from cars that had passed. Barbed-wire fences separated the dark woods from the thick foliage along the roadside. They stowed their bikes under shrubs, making sure they were invisible from the road, and then followed the trail farther down, into the coolness of the creekside.

At the bottom, the trail was almost invisible as it led under the tall weeds and short trees, winding along the narrow stream. Dale led the others into the Cave.

It wasn't a cave. Not exactly. For some reason the county had laid a precast-cement culvert under the road here, rather than use the thirty-inch corrugated steel pipes found everywhere else. Perhaps they had expected spring floods; perhaps they had a cement culvert they hadn't known what to do with. For whatever reason, the thing was huge-six feet across-and there was a fourteen-inch groove in the base of it that let the stream trickle through so that the kids could recline on the curved base of the culvert and stretch their legs out without getting wet. It was cool in the Cave on the hottest of days, the entrances were almost covered over with vines and weeds, and the sound of cars passing on the roadbed ten feet above them just made the hiding place seem that much more concealed.

Beyond the far end of the Cave, a small drainage pond had formed. It was only seven or eight feet wide and perhaps half that deep in summer, but it had a certain surprising beauty about it, with the water dripping from the culvert like a miniature waterfall and the surface of the pond made almost black by deep shade from the trees.

Mike had named the stream that fed it Corpse Creek because the small pool so frequently held roadkill tossed from the road above. Dale could remember finding the bodies of possum, raccoon, cats, porcupine, and once the corpse of a large German shepherd in the pool. He recalled lying there at the edge of the Cave, elbows on cool cement, and staring at the dog through four feet of perfectly clear water: the German shepherd's black eyes had been open, staring back at Dale, and the only hint that the animal was dead-other than the fact it was lying on the bottom of a pond-was a small trail of what looked like white gravel coming from its open muzzle, as if it had vomited stones.

Mike was waiting for them in the Cave. A minute later, Duane McBride joined them, huffing and panting as he came down the trail, his face red under his cap. He blinked in the sudden darkness of the culvert. "Ah, the Thanatopsis Clam and Chowder Society convening," he said, still wheezing a bit.

"Huh?" said Jim Harlen.

"Never mind," said Duane. He sat down and mopped his face with the tail of his flannel shirt.

Lawrence was poking at a large spiderweb with a stick he'd found. He turned around as Mike began to speak. "I've got an idea."

"Whoa, stop the presses," said Harlen. "New headline for tomorrow's paper."

"Shut up," said Mike with no anger in his voice. "You guys were all there yesterday at the school when Cordie and her mom came looking for Tubby." "I wasn't there," said Duane.

"Yeah." Mike nodded. "Dale, tell him what happened." Dale described the confrontation between Mrs. Cooke and Dr. Roon and J. P. Congden. "Old Double-Butt was there, too," he concluded. "She said she saw Tubby leave. Cordie's ma said that was bullshit." Duane raised an eyebrow.

"So what's your idea, O'Rourke?" asked Harlen. He was using twigs and leaves to build a small dam in the groove in the bottom of the culvert. Water was already backing up and pooling on the cement.

Lawrence moved his sneakers before they got wet. "You want us to go give Cordie a smooch so she's not unhappy anymore?" asked Harlen.

"Uh-uh," said Mike. "I want to find Tubby."

Kevin had been tossing pebbles into the pond. Now he stopped. His freshly laundered t-shirt looked very white in the gloom. "How are we supposed to do that if Congden and Barney can't? And why should we?"

"The Bike Patrol should," said Mike. "That's the kind of thing we wanted to do when we made up the club. And we can because we can go places and see things that Barney and Congden can't."

"I don't get it," said Lawrence. "How do we find Tubby if he ran away?''

Harlen leaned over and pretended to grab Lawrence's nose. "We use you as a bloodhound, punk. We give you an old pair of Tubby's stinky socks and you sniff him out. OK?"

"Shut up, Harlen," said Dale.

"Make me," said Jim Harlen, flicking some water toward Dale's face.

"Shut up both of you," said Mike. He went on as if he hadn't been interrupted. "What we do is, we follow Roon and Old Double-Butt and Van Syke and the others, find out if they did anything to Tubby."

Duane was playing cat's cradle with a string he'd found in his pocket. "Why would they do anything to Tubby Cooke?"

Mike shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe because they're creeps. Don't you think they're weirdos?"

Duane didn't smile. "I think a lot of people are weirdos, but that doesn't give them a motive to go around kidnapping fat kids."

"If it did," said Harlen, "you'd be a goner."

Duane smiled, but turned slightly toward the other boy. Harlen was a foot shorter than Duane and weighed about half as much. "Et tu, Brute?" Duane said.

"What's that mean?" asked Harlen, his eyes narrowing.

Duane went back to his cat's cradle. "That's what Caesar said when Brutus asked him if he'd eaten any Harlenburgers that day."

"Hey," said Dale, "let's get this decided. I have to get home to mow the yard."

"And I'm helping my father clean the milk truck's tank this afternoon," said Kevin. "Let's decide."

"Decide what?" said Harlen. "Whether we're following Roon and Double-Butt around to see if they killed and ate Tubby Cooke?"

"Yeah," said Mike. "Or if they know what happened to him and are covering it up for some reason."

"Do you want to follow Van Syke around?" Harlen asked Mike. "That guy's the only one of the Old Central weirdos nuts enough to kill a kid. And he'd kill us if he found us following him."

"I'll take Van Syke," said Mike. "Who wants Roon?" "Me," said Kevin. "He never goes anywhere except the school and that room he rents, so it shouldn't be hard to follow him."

"How about Mrs. Doubbet?" asked Mike.

"Me!" said Harlen and Dale at the same time. Mike pointed at Harlen. "You take her. But make sure she doesn't know you're following her." "I'll blend in with the trees, man." Lawrence knocked Harlen's dam apart with his stick. "Who do Dale and I get?"

"Somebody should check on Cordie and her family," said Mike. "Tubby might come back while we're farting around and we wouldn't know it."

"Aw," said Dale. "They live way out by the dump." "You don't have to go every hour. Just check on them every day or two, keep your eye out for Cordie coming into town, that sort of thing." "OK."

"What about Duane?" said Kevin. Mike tossed a rock into the pond and looked at the bigger boy. "What do you want to do, Duano?"

Duane's string now resembled Lawrence's spiderweb in complexity. He sighed and collapsed the intricate arrangement. "What you guys really want to do is nuts, you know. You want to know if Old Central is behind this somehow. So I'll follow Old Central."

"Think you can keep up with it, lard bucket?" asked Harlen. He'd stepped to the edge of the culvert and was urinating into the dark pool.

"What do you mean you'll follow it?" asked Mike. Duane rubbed his nose and adjusted his glasses. "I agree that something's strange about that school. I'll research it. Get some background information. Maybe I can dig up something on Roon and the others, too."

"Roon's a vampire," said Harlen, flicking away the last few drops and zipping up. "Van Syke's a werewolf." "What's Old Double-Butt?" asked Lawrence. "She's an old bitch who gives too much homework." "Hey," said Mike. "Watch the anguagelay in front of the idkay."

"I'm no idkay," said Lawrence.

Mike said to Duane, "Where would you get this information?"

The bigger boy shrugged. "There's almost nothing in Elm Haven's pitiful excuse for a library, but I'll try to get over to Oak Hill."

Mike nodded. "OK, well, we can get back together in a couple of days to . . ." He stopped. One or two cars had roared overhead while they had been talking, gravel flying into the leaves and dust drifting down after each vehicle passed, but now there came a rumbling so deep that it sounded like a semitrailer was lumbering overhead. The truck stopped with a screech of brakes.

"Shhh!" whispered Mike and the six of them lay on their bellies in the culvert as if that might conceal them further. Harlen moved back from the opening.

Overhead, an engine idled roughly. There came the sound of a truck door opening just as a terrible stench drifted down and settled around them like invisible but poison gas. "Oh, fuck," whispered Harlen. "The Rendering Truck." "Shut up," hissed Mike. Jim obeyed. Boots crunched on gravel above them. Then silence as Van Syke or whoever it was stood at the edge of the road directly above the pool.

Dale picked up Lawrence's dropped stick and held it like a skinny club. Mike's face seemed pale as cream. Kevin looked around at the others, his Adam's apple working. Duane folded his hands between his knees and waited.

Something heavy ripped through leaves and splashed into the pool, throwing water on Harlen.

"Shit!" cried Harlen and started to say more until Mike clamped a hand over his mouth.

More gravel crunched, then came the sound of weeds snapping as if Van Syke was starting down the hillside. Another car's engine became audible as a car or pickup came down the hill from Calvary Cemetery. Then the sound of brakes and a horn honking.

"He can't get around," whispered Kevin. Mike nodded. The crunch of weeds paused, receded. A truck door slammed again and the Rendering Truck moved uphill toward the Black Tree with a grinding of gears. The car behind it honked again. Within a minute it was quiet again and the stench had almost gone. Almost.

Mike stood up and moved to the edge of the culvert. "Holy shit," he whispered. Mike almost never cussed. The others crowded to the lip of the culvert. "What the hell is it?" whispered Kevin. He held his t-shirt up to his face to get away from the smell that seemed to rise from the dark water.

Dale looked over Kevin's shoulder. The ripples and disturbed mud were just settling down, the water was not quite clear, but he could make out the white flesh, bloated belly, thin arms, fingers, and the dead brown eyes staring up through the water.

"Oh, Jesus Christ, Jesus," gasped Harlen. "It's a baby. He threw a dead baby in there."

Duane took Dale's stick, got down on his stomach, reached his arm into the water, and poked at the dead thing, turning it over. Hair on the corpse's arms moved and fingers seemed to waggle. Duane brought the head almost to the surface.

The other boys backed away. Lawrence moved to the far end of the cave, whimpering slightly, close to tears.

"Not a baby," said Duane. "At least not a human baby. It's some sort of monkey. A rhesus monkey, I think. A macaque."

Harlen strained to see, but stepped no closer. "If it's a fucking monkey, where's its fur?"

"Hair," said Duane absently. He used another stick to turn the thing over. Its back broke the surface of the water, and they could plainly see the tail. It also was hairless. "I don't know what happened to its hair. Maybe it was sick. Maybe somebody boiled it off."

"Boiled it off," repeated Mike, staring at the pond with an expression of pure revulsion. Duane let the thing go, and they all watched as it settled back to the bottom. Its fingers moved as if it were signaling them or waving farewell.

Harlen tapped the curved cement wall above him in a tense staccato. "Hey, Mikey, you still want to take Van Syke?" Mike didn't turn around. "Yeah." "Let's get out of here," said Kevin. They scrambled out, smashed weeds in their hurry to get to their bikes, and milled around for a minute before pedaling uphill. The smell of the Rendering Truck still hung in the air here.

"What if it comes back?" whispered Harlen, saying what Dale was thinking.

"Dump the bikes in the weeds," said Mike. "Take off through the woods. Head for Dale's Uncle Henry's and Aunt Lena's."

"What if it comes back when we're on the road to town?" asked Lawrence. His voice was shaking.

"Into the cornfields," said Dale. He touched his little brother's shoulder. "Hey, Van Syke isn't after us. He was just dumping that dead monkey in the creek."

"Let's get going anyway," said Kevin and they mounted up, ready for the steep uphill slog.

"Wait a minute," said Dale. Duane McBride had just gotten up to the road. The heavy boy was red-faced and wheezing, his asthma audible. Dale turned his bike around. "You OK?"

Duane gestured with his hand. "Fine." "You want us to go back to the farm with you?" Duane grinned at them. "Then you going to stay and hold my hand until the Old Man gets home sometime after midnight? Or tomorrow?"

Dale hesitated. He was thinking that Duane should come home with him; that they should all stick together. Then he realized how silly the thought was.

"I'll get in touch with you guys when I find something out about Old Central," said Duane. He waved, turned, and began slogging up the first of the two steep hills that stood between him and the way home.

Dale waved and joined the others for the tiring pull up their own hill. Beyond the driveway to the Black Tree, the road was as flat as only Illinois roads could be. They pedaled hard and the water tower was within sight as soon as they turned off County Six onto the Jubilee College road.

No cars or trucks passed before they reached Elm Haven.