Summer of Night

  Dale fought back the urge to ask C. J. if the rifle was loaded with a.22-long cartridge.

  "Wouldja like that, fuckhead?" C. J. asked again, sighting down the barrel as if to pick exactly which tooth he would fire through.

  Dale shook his head again. His arms were at his side and he thought it might be a good idea to raise them, but they didn't seem to want to move.

  "Shoot him! Shoot him, C. J.!" Archie's voice was cracking with either excitement or puberty or both. "Kill the little fucker."

  "Shut up," said Congden. He squinted at Dale. "You're that Stewart fuck, aren't you?"

  Dale nodded. His fear of C. J. over the years and his anger and frustration after the beatings had put him in such an intimate relationship with the bully that the thought of Congden not knowing his name seemed incredible.

  C. J. squinted at him again. "You gonna tell me what the fuck you were doin' spying on us an' grinning at us, or you want me to pull this trigger?"

  The question was too complicated for Dale at this moment and he shook his head again. It seemed that the most important part to respond to was the question about whether he wanted the trigger pulled. He did not.

  "OK, then, fuckface, you called it," said C. J., evidently taking Dale's gesture as a refusal to talk. He pulled the hammer back on the single-shot rifle with an audible click and lowered his cheek to the stock.

  Dale's breathing simply stopped. His chest was frozen. He wanted to raise his hands in front of his face, but he saw the image of the bullet passing through his palms before smashing into his mouth. Dale realized for the first time what death was: it was not walking any farther on the railroad tracks, not eating dinner tonight or seeing his mom or watching Sea Hunt on TV. It wasn't even being allowed to mow the lawn next Saturday or help his dad rake the leaves come fall.

  It was having no choice at all except lying dead here on the cinders beside the railroad track, letting the birds pluck your eyes like berries and the ants stroll across your tongue. It was no choices, no decisions, no future at all. It was like being grounded for all eternity.

  "Bye-bye," said Congden.

  "You pull it, I'll blow your fuckin' melon to bits," came a voice from behind Dale.

  Congden and Archie jumped as if someone had startled them in a dark room. C. J. glanced to his left but didn't lower the rifle.

  Still not breathing, Dale found that he could move his head a little bit to the right to see who was there.

  Cordie Cooke had come out of the woods and was standing with one foot still in weeds and the other on the cinders of the railbed. The double-barreled shotgun was raised, stock firmly against her small shoulder, and both barrels were aimed at C. J. Congden.

  "Cooke, you little cunt…" began Archie Kreck in his high, broken voice.

  "Shut up," said C. J. The bigger boy's voice was calm enough. "What do you think you're doing, Cordie?"

  "I'm aimin' my daddy's twelve-gauge at your zitty face, moron." Cordie's voice was as thin and scratchy as ever-skinny chalk on old slate-but it was absolutely steady.

  "Put the gun down, stupid," said C.J. "This doesn't have nothing to do with you."

  "You put yours down," said Cordie. "Lay it on down and walk away your ownself.”

  C. J. glanced at her again as if judging how long it would take to swing the barrel in her direction. At that second, grateful to Cordie as he was for the intervention, Dale fervently hoped C. J. would aim it at her. Anything was better than having that muzzle aimed at your own face.

  "What's it to you if I shoot this little fuck?" C. J. asked in a conversational tone. The muzzle was still ten inches in front of Dale.

  "Put it on down, Congden." Cordie's voice sounded much as it did in class to Dale, on those rare occasions when she spoke: soft, out of it, vaguely bored. "Lay it on down and back away. You can come get it again when I'm gone. I ain't gonna touch it."

  "I'm gonna shoot him and then shoot you, you little cunt," snapped C. J. He was angry now. The pustules and rivulets of acne on his skinny face grew livid, then red again.

  "It's a single-shot Remington, Congden," said Cordie.

  Dale glanced at her again. Her finger was curled around both triggers of the ancient shotgun. The thing looked huge and heavy, the barrels tinged with what might have been rust, the wood stock splintered with age. But Dale had no doubt but that it was loaded. He wondered idly if the spread pattern of the buckshot would hit him when it took C. J."s head off.

  "Then I'll shoot you first," snarled C. J. But he didn't swing the barrel in her direction.

  Dale saw the muscles tensing in the punk's bare upper arms, and he realized that Congden was as frozen with fear as he was.

  "Get her, Archie," commanded C. J.

  Kreck hesitated, his head swiveling as he used his good eye to take in the situation, and then he nodded, reached into his droopy jeans to pull out a knife, clicked the five-inch blade open, and began to shuffle across the rails toward Cordie.

  "He comes across the second rail, you're dog food," she said to Congden.

  "StopV shouted C. J. It was a general command, almost a scream, but Archie was the one who stopped. He looked to his leader for further directions.

  "Back off, goddamn you to hell you stupid fuck," C. J. said to his best friend.

  Archie backed off to the far side of the first rail. Dale realized that he was breathing again. Time was moving again-slower than usual, but definitely moving-and he wondered what he should do. He'd watched about a million cowboy shows where Sugarfoot or Bronco Lane or somebody had a gun on them, sort of like this, and they wrestled it away from the bad guy. It'd be easy enough to do: the barrel was still ten inches from Dale's face and all Congden's attention was on Cordie now. All he had to do was grab it and twist. Dale realized that he could more easily walk on air than make a move at this moment.

  "Come on," said Cordie in her tired monotone. "Make up your stupid mind, Congden. My finger's getting tired." The muscles on C. J."s cheek spasmed. Dale could see sweat dripping from the bully's nose and chin.

  " "You know I'll get your ass, don't you, Cordie? You know I'll lay for you and do somethin' real bad, don't you? Ain't no getting away with this, you know."

  Cordie seemed to shrug, although the barrels didn't waver. "You do anything to me that doesn't kill me, C. J., you know I'll come after you with Daddy's twelve-gauge. I sicced the dogs on Mr. Aleo last year. I ain't gonna mind killing you."

  Dale knew about the episode with the music teacher and the dogs. Everyone in town knew about it. Cordie had been suspended for ten weeks. When she came back to school, Mr. Aleo had left for Chicago.

  "Fuck you," said C. J. And he laid the rifle down slowly, setting it on the wooden ties with great care. He backed away. "And you, Stewart, Fuckface Stewart, don't think I'll forget you." C. J. backed away from the rifle and nodded toward Archie. Knife still brandished, Archie joined him and the two walked backward down the railbed, turned when they got to the weeds, and moved quickly into the trees.

  Dale stood there a second, staring at the rifle at his feet as if it would suddenly float into the air and threaten him again. When it didn't, he felt the earth lurch back into its usual gravity field. He almost fell, found his balance, staggered a few feet, and sat on the rail. His knees were shaking.

  Cordie waited until C. J. and Archie had disappeared completely in the small woods, and then she shifted so that the shotgun was pointed toward Dale. Not at him exactly, but in his general direction.

  Dale didn't notice. He was too busy staring at Cordie with a perception made acute by great quantities of adrenaline. She was short and pudgy; her dress was the same shapeless, dirty gray thing she'd worn to school so often; she wore filthy sneakers with her right big toe poking through; her nails and elbows were dirty, her hair hung down in limp, oily strands, and her face was flat, doughy, and moon-shaped, with her tiny eyes, thin lips, and blob of a nose pushed together in the center as if designed for a much thinner face.

  At that
second, she was the most beautiful thing Dale had ever seen.

  "What the hell were you doin' followin' me, Stewart?"

  Dale found that his voice was still shaky, but he tried to answer. "I wasn't…"

  "Don't give me that cowflop," she said and the shotgun twitched a bit morein his direction. "I seen you with your little spyglasses there, peekin' at my house. Then you come sneakin' along behind me like I couldn't see and hear you plain as day. Answer me."

  Dale was too wrung out to try a lie. "I was following you because… some of us are trying to find Tubby."

  "Whaddya you want with Tubby?" When Cordie squinted, if was as if she had no eyes at all.

  Dale realized that his pulse was no longer filling most of his hearing. "We don't want anything with him. We just want to… find him. See if he's OK."

  Cordie broke the breech of the shotgun and cradled it in her pudgy right arm. "An' you think I done somethin' with him?"

  Dale shook his head. "Uh-uh. I just wanted to see what was going on out at your place."

  "Why do you give a damn about Tubby?"

  I don't, thought Dale. He said, "I just think something's going on. Dr. Roon and Mrs. Doubbet and those guys aren't telling the truth."

  Cordie spat and hit the rail. "You said 'we." Who else is messin' around with you tryin' to find Tubby?"

  Dale glanced at the shotgun. He was more certain now than ever that Cordie Cooke was as crazy as a loon. "Just some friends."

  "Hmmmph," snorted Cordie. "Must be O'Rourke and Grumbacher and Harlen and those other pansies you hang around with."

  Dale blinked. He'd had no idea that Cordie had ever noticed who he hung around with.

  The girl walked toward him, lifted the Remington, broke the breech, extracted a.22 cartridge, tossed it into the woods, and laid the weapon in the weeds. "Come on," she said,"let's get goin' before those two piss-ants get each other's courage goin'."

  Dale got to his feet and hurried to keep up with her as she strode toward town. Fifty yards down the tracks, she went down into the trees and headed for the fields beyond.

  "If you're huntin' for Tubby," she said, not looking at Dale, "how come you're out at my house where's the one place he ain't?"

  Dale shrugged. "Do you know where he is?" Cordie glanced at him with disgust. "If I knew where he was, you think I'd be huntin' for him like I am?"

  Dale took a breath. "Do you have any idea what happened to him?"

  "Yeah."

  Dale waited twenty strides, but she said nothing else. "What?" he prompted.

  "Somebody or somethin' at that goddamn school killed him."

  Dale felt his breath lurch from him again. For all the Bike Patrol's interest in finding Tubby, none of them had thought the boy was dead. Run away probably. Kidnapped maybe. Dale had never really thought of his classmate being dead. With the memory of the muzzle still fresh in his mind and viscera, the word had taken on new meaning. He said nothing.

  They reached Catton Road near where another lane ran south to become Broad Avenue.

  "You better be gettin'," saidCordie. "Don't you nor none of your Boy Scout buddies get in my way in findin' my brother, hear?"

  Dale nodded. He glanced at the shotgun. "You going into town with that?”

  Cordie treated that question with the silent disgust she obviously thought it deserved.

  "What're you going to do with it?" Dale asked.

  "Find Van Syke or one of them other shits. Get'em to tell me where Tubby is."

  Dale swallowed. "They'll throw you in jail."

  Cordie shrugged, pulled a few strands of stringy hair out of her eyes, turned, and headed toward town.

  Dale stood there staring. The little figure in the gray sack dress was almost in the shade of the elms at the head of Broad Avenue when he suddenly yelled. "Hey, thanks!"

  Cordie Cooke did not stop or look back.

  TWELVE

  After seeing Jim Harlen, Duane sat in the shade on the courtyard square for several minutes, drinking coffee from his Thermos and thinking. He didn't know Jim well enough to know if he was telling the truth about not remembering what had happened on Saturday night. If he wasn't telling the truth, why the lie? Duane sipped coffee and considered possibilities: (A) Something had scared Harlen so badly that he wouldn't… or couldn't… talk about it.

  (B) Someone had told him not to talk and backed it up with sufficient threat to make Harlen obey.

  (C) Harlen was protecting someone.

  Duane finished his coffee, screwed the lid on the Thermos, and decided that the last possibility was the least likely. The first choice seemed the most likely, although there was nothing but a feeling Duane had to suggest that Jim Harlen had been lying. Any head injury serious enough to leave someone unconscious for more than twenty-four hours certainly could leave that person without memory of the injury.

  Duane decided that it would be safest to assume that Jim did not remember what happened. Perhaps later.

  He crossed the square to the library and hesitated before going in. What did he expect to find here that would help O'Rourke and company find out anything about Tubby, Van Syke, Harlen's injury, Duane's own close call, or anything else? Why the library? Why look at the history of Old Central when it was obviously some individual bit of insanity-or probably just Van Syke's perversity-that was behind these seemingly random events?

  Duane knew why he was going to the library. He'd grown up searching out things there-answering the many private mysteries that arose in the mind of a kid too smart for his own good. The library was a no-questions-asked, private source of information. There had to be many intellectual puzzles that could not be solved by a visit-or many visits-to a good library, but Duane McBride hadn't found one yet.

  Besides, he realized, this whole tempest-in-a-teacup mystery had begun because of his and the other kids' bad feeling about Old Central. It was something that had bothered Duane and the others long before Tubby Cooke disappeared. This research was overdue.

  Duane sighed, set his Thermos behind a bush alongside the library steps, and went inside.

  It took more hours than Duane had expected, but eventually he found most of what he wanted.

  Oak Hill Library had only one microfiche machine and few things actually on microfiche. For the history of Elm Haven-and of Old Central in particular-he had to go back into the stacks for the locally published and bound books kept there by the Creve Coeur County Historical Society. Duane knew that the Historical Society actually had been one man-Dr. Paul Priestmann, former professor at Bradley University and a local historian who had died less than a year earlier-but the ladies who had collected money to publish Dr. Priestmann's books, the last volume posthumously Duane discovered, kept the Society alive even if only in name.

  Old Central had a prominent part in the history of Elm Haven-and in Creve Coeur County, Duane discovered-and it took half of his notebook to record the pertinent parts. Every time Duane visited this library, he wished that it had one of the new Xerox copying machines that businesses were beginning to use. It would make the job of copying information from reference books one couldn't check out ever so much easier.

  Duane looked at the pages of old photographs Dr. Priestmann had set in to illustrate the construction of Old Central… just Central School in 1876… and then more pages, the photos sepia tinted and frozen in the formality of early, slow photography, showing the opening ceremonies in the late summer of 1876, the Old Settlers' Picnic held on the school grounds in August of that year, the first class to enter Central-29 students who must have been lost in that huge building-and ceremonies at Elm Haven's train depot as the bell arrived earlier that summer.

  The large-print caption under the last photo read: Mr. and Mrs. Ashley and Mayor Wilson Greet Borgia Bell for New School. And the subcaption went on: Historic bell to be crowning achievement for Elm Haven's citadel of learning and pride of County.

  Duane paused. The belfry on Old Central had been boarded and sealed for as long as he could
remember. He had never heard any mention of a bell, much less of something called a Borgia Bell.

  Duane leaned close to the page. In the old photograph, the bell was still in its crate on the flatcar, the bell itself partially in shadow, but obviously huge: it stood almost twice as tall as the two men on the flatcar who stood shaking hands in the center of the picture-the better-dressed man with mustaches and a well-dressed woman hovering near his side probably Mr. Ashley; the shorter, bearded and bowler-hatted man perhaps Mayor Wilson. The base of the bell looked to be eight or nine feet wide. Although the ancient photo was of too poor a quality to give much detail-a carriage on the far side of the tracks seemed to be hitched to two phantom horses because the time exposure was too slow to capture their movements-Duane used his glasses as a magnifying glass to make out metal scrollwork or some sort of inscriptions running in a band around the bell about two-thirds of the way up.

  He sat back and tried to imagine how much a bell ten or twelve feet tall and eight feet wide might weigh. He couldn't do the math, but the mere thought of it hanging on rotted timbers above his and the other kids' heads over the past years made the flesh on his neck go cold. Surely it couldn't still be there.

  For the next few hours, Duane pored through the Historical Society books and spent a dusty hour in the 'archives'-a long, narrow room off the room where Mrs. Frazier and the other library employees ate their lunch-going through the tall books holding old copies of the Oak Hill Sentinel Times-Call, the local paper that Duane's Old Man invariably referred to as the Sentimental Times-Crawl.

  Newspaper articles from the summer of 1876 were the most informative, going on in their overwrought, hyperbolic Victorian style about the "Borgia Bell' and its place in history. Evidently Mr. and Mrs. Ashley had discovered the artifact in a warehouse on the outskirts of Rome during their honeymoon-cum-Grand Tour of the Continent, verified its authenticity via local and imported historians, and then purchased the thing for six hundred dollars to be the piece de resistance for the school the Ashley family had been so instrumental in building.