He still felt uneasy about it all, he realized. Not about the bomb itself, perhaps, but something else, something that was connected with it. He wondered why he had this feeling. Knowing about the bomb, he all but had it made. All he’d have to do would be to locate it and dig it out from beneath the sun dial. He would have the time to do it. The day-long celebration would end at six in the evening and the Punks could not set the bomb to explode earlier than midnight. Any blast before midnight would be a violation of the truce.
He scooped fried potatoes from the dish onto his plate and speared a piece of meat. Nora poured his coffee and, pulling out a chair, sat down opposite him.
“You aren’t eating?” he asked.
“I ate early, Max.”
He ate hungrily and hurriedly, for there still were things to do. She sat and watched him eat. The clock on the kitchen wall ticked loudly in the silence.
Finally she said: “It is getting somewhat grim, Max.”
He nodded, his mouth full of food and unable to speak.
“I don’t see,” said the cook, “why the Crawfords want to stay here. There can’t be much pleasure in it for them. They could move into the city and it would be safer there. There are the juvenile gangs, of course, but they mostly fight among themselves. They don’t make life unbearable for all the other people.”
“It’s pride,” said Max. “They won’t give up. They won’t let Oak Manor beat them. Mr. and Mrs. Crawford are quality. They have some steel in them.”
“They couldn’t sell the place, of course,” said Nora. “There would no one buy it. But they don’t need the money. They could just walk away from it.”
“You misjudge them, Nora. The Crawfords in all their lives have never walked away from anything. They went through a lot to live here. Sending Johnny off to boarding school when he was a lad, since it wouldn’t have been safe for him to go to school with the Punks out there. I don’t suppose they like it. I don’t see how they could. But they won’t be driven out. They realize someone must stand up to all that trash out there, or else there’s no hope.”
Nora sighed. “I suppose you’re right. But it is a shame. They could live so safe and comfortable and normal if they just moved to the city.”
He finished eating and got up.
“It was a good meal, Nora,” he said. “But then you always fix good meals.”
“Ah, go on with you,” said Nora.
He went into the basement and sat down before the short-wave set. Systematically, he started putting in his calls to the other strongholds. Wilson stronghold, over in Fair Hills, had had a little trouble early in the evening—a few stink bombs heaved across the fence—but it had quieted down. Jackson stronghold did not answer. While he was trying to get through to Smith stronghold in Harmony Settlement, Curtis stronghold in Lakeside Heights began calling him. Everything was quiet, John Hennessey, the Curtis custodian told him. It had been quiet for several days.
He stayed at the radio for an hour and by that time had talked with all the nearby strongholds. There had been scattered trouble here and there, but nothing of any consequence. Generally it was peaceful.
He sat and thought about the time bomb and there was still that nagging worry. There was something wrong, he knew, but he could not put his finger on it.
Getting up, he prowled the cavernous basement, checking the defense material—extra sections of fencing, piles of posts, pointed stakes, rolls of barb wire, heavy flexible wire mesh and all the other items for which some day there might be a need. Tucked into one corner, hidden, he found the stacked carboys of acid he had secretly cached away. Mr. Crawford would not approve, he knew, but if the chips ever should be down, and there was need to use those carboys, he might be glad to have them.
He climbed the stairs and went outside to prowl restlessly about the yard, still upset by that nagging something about the bomb he could not yet pin down.
The moon had risen. The yard was a place of interlaced light and shadow, but beyond the fence the desert acres that held the other houses lay flat and bare and plain, without a shadow on them except the shadows of the houses.
Two of the dogs came up and passed the time of night with him and then went off into the shrubbery.
He moved into the backyard and stood beside the sun dial.
The wrongness still was there. Something about the sun dial and the bomb—some piece of thinking that didn’t run quite true.
He wondered how they knew that the destruction of the sun dial would be a heavy blow to the owner of the stronghold. How could they possibly have known?
The answer seemed to be that they couldn’t. They didn’t. There was no way for them to know. And even if, in some manner, they had learned, a sun dial most certainly would be a piddling thing to blow up when that single bomb could be used so much better somewhere else.
Stony Stafford, the leader of the Punks, was nobody’s fool. He was a weasel—full of cunning, full of savvy. He’d not mess with any sun dial when there was so much else that a bomb could do so much more effectively.
And as he stood there beside the sun dial, Max knew where that bomb would go—knew where he would plant it were he in Stafford’s place.
At the roots of that ancient oak which leaned toward the fence.
He stood and thought about it and knew that he was right.
Billy Warner, he wondered. Had Billy double-crossed him?
Very possibly he hadn’t. Perhaps Stony Stafford might have suspected long ago that his gang harbored an informer and, for that reason, had given out the story of the sun dial rather than the oak tree. And that, of course, only to a select inner circle which would be personally involved with the placing of the bomb.
In such a case, he thought, Billy Warner had not done too badly.
Max turned around and went back to the house, walking heavily. He climbed the stairs to his attic room and went to bed. It had been, he thought just before he went to sleep, a fairly decent day.
III
The police showed up at eight o’clock. The carpenters came and put up the dance platform. The musicians appeared and began their tuning up. The caterers arrived and set up the tables, loading them with food and two huge punch bowls, standing by to serve.
Shortly after nine o’clock the Punks and their girls began to straggle in. The police frisked them at the gates and found no blackjacks, no brass knuckles, no bicycle chains on any one of them.
The band struck up. The Punks and their girls began to dance. They strolled through the yard and admired the flowers, without picking any of them. They sat on the grass and talked and laughed among themselves. They gathered at the overflowing boards and ate. They laughed and whooped and frolicked and everything was fine.
“You see?” Pollard said to Max. “There ain’t nothing wrong with them. Give them a decent break and they’re just a bunch of ordinary kids. A little hell in them, of course, but nothing really bad. It’s your flaunting of this place in their very faces that makes them the way they are.”
“Yeah,” said Max.
He left Pollard and drifted down the yard, keeping as inconspicuous as he could. He wanted to watch the oak, but he knew he didn’t dare to. He knew he had to keep away from it, should not even glance toward it. If he should scare them off, then God only knew where they would plant the bomb. He thought of being forced to hunt wildly for it after they were gone and shuddered at the thought.
There was no one near the bench at the back of the yard, near the flowering almond tree, and he stretched out on it. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but the day was warm and the air was drowsy. He dropped off to sleep.
When he woke he saw that a man was standing on the gravel path just beyond the bench.
He blinked hard and rubbed his eyes.
“Hello, Max,” said Stony Stafford.
“You should be up there dancing,
Stony.”
“I was waiting for you to wake up,” said Stony. “You are a heavy sleeper. I could of broke your neck.”
Max sat up. He rubbed a hand across his face.
“Not on Truce Day, Stony. We all are friends on Truce Day.”
Stony spat upon the gravel path.
“Some other day,” he said.
“Look,” said Max, “why don’t you just run off and forget about it? You’ll break your back if you try to crack this place. Pick up your marbles, Stony, and go find someone else who’s not so rough to play with.”
“Some day we’ll make it,” Stony said. “This place can’t stand forever.”
“You haven’t got a chance,” said Max.
“Maybe so,” said Stony. “But I think we will. And before we do, there is just one thing I want you to know. You think nothing will happen to you even if we do. You think that all we’ll do is just rip up the place, not harming anyone. But you’re wrong, Max. We’ll do it the way it is supposed to be with the Crawfords and with Nora. We won’t hurt them none. But we’ll get you, Max. Just because we can’t carry knives or guns doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways. There’ll be a stone fall on you or a timber hit you. Or maybe you’ll stumble and fall into the fire. There are a lot of ways to do it and we plan to get you plenty.”
“So,” said Max, “you hate me. It makes me feel real bad.”
“Two of my boys are dead,” said Stony. “There are others who are crippled pretty bad.”
“There wouldn’t be nothing happen to them, Stony, if you didn’t send them up against the fence.”
He looked up and saw that hatred that lay in Stony Stafford’s eyes, but washing across the hatred was a gleam of triumph.
“Good-by, dead man,” said Stony.
He turned and stalked away.
Max sat quietly on the bench, remembering that gleam of triumph in Stony Stafford’s eyes. And that meant he had been right. Stony had something up his sleeve and it could be nothing else but the bomb beneath the oak.
The day wore on. In the afternoon, Max went up to the house and into the kitchen. Nora fixed him a sandwich, grumbling.
“Why don’t you go out and eat off the tables?” she demanded. “There is plenty there.”
“Just as soon keep out of their way,” said Max. “I have to fight them all the rest of the year. I don’t see why I should pal up with them today.”
“What about the bomb?”
“Shhh,” said Max. “I know where it is.”
Nora stood looking out the window. “They don’t look like bad kids,” she said. “Why can’t we make a peace of some sort with them?”
Max grunted. “It’s gone too far,” he said.
Pollard had been right, he thought. It was out of hand. Neither side could back down now.
The police could have put a stop to it to start with, many years ago, if they had cracked down on the vandals instead of adopting a kids-will-be-kids attitude and shrugging it all off as just an aggravated case of quarreling in the neighborhood. The parents could have stopped it by paying some attention to the kids, by giving them something that would have stopped their running wild. The community could have put a stop to it by providing some sort of recreational facilities.
But no one had put a stop to it. No one had even tried.
And now it had grown to be a way of life and it must be fought out to the bitter end.
Max had no illusions as to who would be the winner.
Six o’clock came and the Punks started drifting off. By six thirty the last of them had gone. The musicians packed up their instruments and left. The caterers put away their dishes and scooped up the leftovers and the garbage and drove away. The carpenters came and got their lumber. Max went down to the gates and checked to see that they were locked.
“Not a bad day,” said Pollard, speaking through the gates to Max. “They really aren’t bad kids, if you’d just get to know them.”
“I know them plenty now,” said Max.
He watched the police car drive off, then turned back up the driveway.
He’d have to wait a while, he knew, until the dusk could grow a little deeper, before he started looking for the bomb. There would be watchers outside the fence. It would be just as well if they didn’t know that he had found it. It might serve a better purpose if they could be left to wonder if it might have been a dud. For one thing, it would shake their confidence. For another, it would protect young Billy Warner. And while Max could feel no admiration for the kid, Billy had been useful in the past and still might be useful in the future.
He went down to the patio and crawled through the masking shrubbery until he was only a short distance from the oak.
He waited there, watching the area out beyond the fence. There was as yet no sign of life out there. But they would be out there watching. He was sure of that.
The dusk grew deeper and he knew he could wait no longer. Creeping cautiously, he made his way to the oak. Carefully, he brushed away the grass and leaves, face held close above the ground.
Halfway around the tree, he found it—the newly upturned earth, covered by a sprinkling of grass and leaves, and positioned neatly between two heavy roots.
He thrust his hand against the coolness of the dirt and his fingers touched the metal. Feeling it, he froze, then very slowly, very gently, pulled his hand away.
He sat back on his heels and drew in a measured breath.
The bomb was there, all right, just as he had suspected. But set above it, protecting it, was a contact bomb. Try to get the time bomb out and the contact bomb would be triggered off.
He brushed his hands together, wiping off the dirt.
There was, he knew, no way to get out the bombs. He had to let them stay. There was nothing he could do about it.
No wonder Stony’s eyes had shown a gleam of triumph. For there was more involved than just a simple time bomb. This was a foolproof setup. There was nothing that could be done about it. If it had not been for the roots, Max thought, he might have taken a chance on working from one side and digging it all out. But with the heavy roots protecting it, that was impossible.
Stony might have known that he knew about it and then had gone ahead, working out a bomb set that no one would dare to mess around with.
It was exactly the sort of thing that would be up Stony’s alley. More than likely, he was setting out there now, chuckling to himself.
Max stayed squatted, thinking.
He could string a line of mesh a few feet inside the tree, curving out to meet the auxiliary fence on either side. Juice could be fed into it and it might serve as a secondary defense. But it was not good insurance. A determined rush would carry it, for at best it would be flimsy. He’d not be able to install it as he should, working in the dark.
Or he could rig the tree with guywires to hold it off the fence when it came crashing down. And that, he told himself, might be the thing to do.
He got up and went around the house, heading for the basement to look up some wire that might serve to hold the tree.
He remembered, as he walked past the short wave set, that he should be sitting in on the regular evening check among the nearby strongholds. But it would have to wait tonight.
He walked on and then stopped suddenly as the thought came to him. He stood for a moment, undecided, then swung around and went back to the set.
He snapped on the power and turned it up.
He’d have to be careful what he said, he thought, for there was the chance the Punks might be monitoring the channels.
John Hennessey, custodian of the Curtis stronghold, came in a few seconds after Max had started calling.
“Something wrong, Max?”
“Nothing wrong, John. I was just wondering—do you remember telling me about those toys that you have?”
“Toys?”
“Yeah. The rattles.”
He could hear the sound of Hennessey sucking in his breath.
Finally he said: “Oh, those. Yes, I still have them.”
“How many would you say?”
“A hundred, probably. Maybe more than that.”
“Could I borrow them?”
“Sure,” said Hennessey. “Would you want them right away?”
“If you could,” said Max.
“Okay. You’ll pick them up?”
“I’m a little busy.”
“Watch for me,” said Hennessey. “I’ll box them up and be there in an hour.”
“Thanks, John,” said Max.
Was it wrong? he wondered. Was it too much of a chance?
Perhaps he didn’t have the right to take any chance at all.
But you couldn’t sit forever, simply fending off the Punks. For if that was all you did, they’d keep on coming back. But hit back hard at them and they might get a belly full. You might end it once for all. The trouble was, he thought, you could strike back so seldom. You could never act except defensively, for if you took any other kind of action, the police were down on you like a ton of bricks.
He licked his lips.
It was seldom one had a chance like this—a chance to strike back lustily and still be legally defensive.
IV
He got up quickly and walked to the rear of the basement, where he found the heavy flexible mesh. He carried out three rolls of it and a loop of heavy wire to hang it on. He’d have to use some trees to stretch out the wire. He really should use some padding to protect the trees against abrasion by the wire, but he didn’t have the time.
Working swiftly, he strung the wire, hung the mesh upon it, pegged the bottom of the mesh tight against the ground, tied the ends of it in with the auxiliary fence.
He was waiting at the gates when the truck pulled up. He used the control box to open the gates and the truck came through. Hennessey got out.
“Outside is swarming with Punks,” he told Max. “What is going on?”