Summer of Night

  "Book?" said the sheriff. "Uh-uh, I didn't see any book. Is it important, son?"

  "Yes," said Duane. And added, "To me." "Well, I didn't see it at the accident site. Of course the whole area hasn't been cleaned up yet. And it could have been in that mess… it could've been in the car." "Where's the car now? Ernie's?" "Yeah. Ernie's or J. P. Congden's place." "Congden?" Duane tossed the crust of his bread into the garbage. "Why would it be at Mr. Congden's place?"

  Duane heard the sheriff let out a breath that might have been a soft sound of disgust. "Well, J.P. hears about road accidents on his police band radio, then he does a deal with Ernie sometimes. J.P. pays Ernie for the wreck and sells it to the auto salvage yard over at Oak Hill. At least that's what we think he does with them."

  Like most of the kids in town, Duane had heard adults talking about the rumors that the justice of the peace dealt in stolen cars. Duane wondered if parts from these wrecks would be useful in such a racket. He said, "Do you know where it went today?"

  "Nope," said the sheriff. "Probably down to Ernie's lot, though, since he had to get the wrecker back. He's the only one on duty on Sunday and his wife hates pumpin' gas. But don't worry, son, any personal possessions we find'll be given to you and your dad. You are next of kin, aren't you?"

  "Yes," said Duane, thinking about what an ancient and honorable word 'kin' was. He remembered reading Chaucer-Uncle Art's copy-where the word was cyn. Uncle Art was kin. "Yes," he said again, softly.

  "Well, don't you worry, son. Any book or anything else that was in the car will come to you folks. I'll go to Ernie's in the morning and check on it myself. Meanwhile, I may need to check some things for the report I'm writing. You and your dad be home tonight?"

  "Yes."

  The house seemed empty after the conversation ended. Duane heard the ticking of the big clock over the stove and the cattle lowing far out in the west pasture. The clouds had moved in again. Despite the heat, there was no real sunlight whatsoever.

  Dale Stewart heard about Duane's uncle's death late that afternoon from his mom, who'd been talking to Mrs. Grum-bacher who had heard it from Mrs. Sperling who was good friends with Mrs. Taylor. He and Lawrence were making a model Spad when their mother told them, her voice soft. Lawrence's eyes had filled and he'd said, "Gosh, poor Duane. First his dog and now his uncle."

  Dale had punched his brother hard on the shoulder then; he wasn't sure why.

  It had taken him awhile to work up the courage, but then he went to the phone in the hall and called Duane's number, letting the party-line phone ring twice the way he was supposed to. There was a click and that weird recording machine came on and said in Duane's emotionless voice, "Hi. We can't answer the phone right now, but whatever you say will be taped and we'll get back to you. Please count to three and speak."

  Dale counted to three and hung up, face burning. He'd have enough trouble talking to poor Duane right now; expressing his condolences to a tape recorder was beyond him. Dale left Lawrence working on the model, his brother's tongue sticking out and eyes almost crossed with concentration, and rode down the street to Mike's.

  "Eeawkee!" Dale let out the shout, hopped off the bike, and let it glide a few yards on its own before crashing onto the grass.

  "Keeawee." Mike's answering shout came from the giant maple that overhung the street.

  Dale jogged back, climbed the few remaining rungs to the lower treehouse fifteen feet up, and then continued climbing through branches toward the higher, secret platform thirty feet higher. Mike sat with his back to a bole of one of the diverging trunks, his legs dangling over the three-board platform. Dale pulled himself up and sat back against the other trunk. He looked down, but the ground was lost behind leaves and he knew that they were invisible from the ground. "Hey," he said, "I just heard…"

  "Yeah," said Mike. He was chewing on a long piece of grass. "I heard a little while ago, too. I was going to come over to talk to you after a while. You know Duane better."

  Dale nodded. He and Duane had become friends through discovering a common interest in books and rocketry in fourth grade. But Dale had dreamed of rockets; Duane had built them. Dale's reading was precocious-he'd read Treasure Island and the real Robinson Crusoe by fourth grade-but Duane's reading list was beyond belief. Still, the two had stayed friends, spending recesses together, seeing each other a few times over the summer. Dale thought that he might be the only person whom Duane had told about his ambition to become a writer. "There's no answer," said Dale. He made an awkward gesture. "I called."

  Mike studied the piece of grass he was chewing and dropped it into the layer of leaves fifteen feet below. "Yeah. My mom called this afternoon too. Got that machine. She's going out there later with a bunch of ladies bringing food. Your mom'll probably go."

  Dale nodded again. A death in Elm Haven or the outlying farms meant a battalion of women descending like Valkyries bringing food. Duane told me about Valkyries. Dale couldn't quite remember what Valkyries did, but he remembered that they came down when someone died. He said, "I've only met his uncle a couple of times. He seemed real nice. Smart, but nice. Not touchy like Duane's dad."

  "Duane's dad is an alcoholic," said Mike. His voice said that it wasn't a judgment or criticism, merely a statement of fact.

  Dale shrugged. "His uncle has… had white hair and used to wear a white beard. I talked to him once when I was out at the farm playing and he was… funny."

  Mike plucked a leaf and began stripping it. "I heard Mrs. Somerset tell my mom that Mrs. Taylor said that he was torn apart when a steering wheel thingie went through him. She said Mr. Taylor said that no way could they have an open coffin. She said that Duane's dad came in and threatened to rip Mr. Taylor a new asshole if he touched his brother's body. Mr. McBride's brother's body, I mean."

  Dale found a leaf for himself. He nodded. He'd never heard the phrase 'rip him a new asshole' before and he had to fight to keep from smiling. It was a good phrase. Then he remembered what they were talking about and any threat of a smile fled.

  "Father Cavanaugh went over to the funeral home," Mike was saying. "Nobody knew what religion Mr. McBride- the uncle Mr. McBride-was, so Father C. gave him Extreme Unction just in case."

  "What's extreme… whatever?" asked Dale. He finished with the leaf and started on another. Some girls skipped by far below, never guessing that people were talking softly forty feet above them.

  "The Last Rites," said Mike.

  Dale nodded, although he understood no better than before. Catholics had lots of weird things that they assumed everybody knew about. Dale had watched in fourth grade when Gerry Day singer had made fun of Mike's rosary-Gerry had stuck it around his own neck and danced around with it, accusing Mike of carrying a necklace around. Mike hadn't said anything, he'd merely pounded Daysinger's face in, sat on his chest, and carefully removed the rosary. No one had teased Mike about it since.

  "Father C. was there when Duane's dad came in," contin ued Mike,"but he didn't want to talk or anything. He just told Mr. Taylor to keep his ghoul's hands off his brother and told him where to send the body for cremation."

  "Cremation," whispered Dale.

  "That's when they burn you instead of bury you."

  "I know that, stupid," snapped Dale. "I was just… surprised." And relieved, he realized. In the past fifteen minutes part of his mind had been imagining going down to Taylor's to the funeral, having to see the body during the visitation, sitting with Duane. But cremation… that meant no funeral, didn't it? "When's it going to be?" he asked. "The cremation?" It was such an adult and final word.

  Mike shrugged. "You want to go out and see him?"

  "See who?" asked Dale. He knew that Digger Taylor sometimes snuck his friends into the coffin room before the viewing, showing them corpses. Chuck Sperling once bragged that he and Digger had seen Mrs. Duggan when she was laid out naked in the embalming room.

  "Who? Duane, of course," said Mike. "Who else do you think we ought to go see, dipstick?"
br />   Dale grunted, crumbled the last of the leaf, and tried to brush sap from his hand. He squinted up at the sky through the thinning canopy above them. "It'll be dark pretty soon." "No, it's not. We've got another couple of hours. The days are longer this week than any time in the whole year, dopehead. It's just cloudy this evening."

  Dale thought about the long pedal out to Duane's house. He remembered Duane talking about the time the Rendering Truck had tried to run him down. They'd be on the same road. He thought of having to talk to Mr. McBride and whatever other grown-ups were out there. What could be harder to do than visit someone after a death? "OK," he said. "Let's go."

  They climbed down, grabbed their bikes, and headed out of town. The sky in the east was almost black, as if a storm were coming. The air was dead calm. Halfway to County Six, a truck became visible ahead of them as a cloud of dust. Dale and Mike pulled far to the right, almost into the ditch, to let it pass.

  It was Duane and his dad going the other way in their pickup. The truck did not stop.

  Duane saw his two friends on their bikes and guessed that they were probably headed out to the farm to see him, and he glanced over his shoulder in time to see them stopped and standing, staring after the truck for the few seconds before the cloud of dust enveloped them. The Old Man hadn't even noticed Mike and Dale. Duane said nothing.

  It hadn't been easy convincing the Old Man that the book was important enough to go hunting for tonight. Duane had played the tape.

  "What the hell is all this about?" the Old Man had asked. He'd been in a murderous depression since he'd returned from Taylor's.

  Duane hesitated only a second. He could tell the Old Man everything, just as he'd explained it to Uncle Art. But the time seemed all wrong. The stuff about a Borgia Bell seemed idle nonsense in the face of the reality of loss the Old Man and he were feeling. Duane explained that he and Uncle Art had been researching this bell… an artifact one of the Ashley-Montagues had brought back from Europe and which seemed to have been forgotten by everyone. Duane made it sound like a lark, one of the uncountable projects he had shared with Uncle Art, like the times they had gone buggo on astronomy and built their own telescopes, or the autumn they had tried to build every device Leonardo da Vinci had designed. That kind of thing.

  The Old Man understood but he didn't see the urgency in driving into town to stare at the wreck of the Cadillac again that night. Duane knew that the Old Man's temporary sobriety was tearing at him like steel pins. He also knew that if he let the Old Man get out of his sight into Carl's or the Black Tree, it would be days before he saw him again. The taverns were officially closed on Sunday but certain patrons found their way in the back door easily enough.

  "Maybe I could go check for the book and you could pick up a bottle of wine or something," Duane said. "You know, have a toast tonight in Uncle Art's memory."

  The Old Man glared at him, but slowly relaxed his features. He rarely settled on a compromise himself, but he knew a good one when he heard it. Duane knew that the Old Man had been warring between the necessity to stay sober until the arrangements for Uncle Art were concluded, and the absolute requirement to tie one on.

  "OK," said the Old Man. "We'll take a look and I'll pick up something to bring home. You can lift a toast to him too." Duane nodded. The one thing in life that he was terrified of… until now… was liquor. He was afraid that the disease ran in the family and that one drink would send him over the edge, creating the craving in him that had driven the Old Man for thirty some years. But he had nodded and they had left for town after staring at a dinner neither one of them touched.

  Ernie's Texaco was closed. It usually shut down at four p.m. on Sunday and today was no exception. There were three wrecks around back, but no Caddy. Duane told the Old Man what the sheriff had said about Congden.

  The Old Man turned away but not before Duane heard a muttered 'goddamn thieving capitalist sonofabitch."

  Old Central was in shadows as they rolled up Second Avenue past it and turned down Depot Street. Duane saw Dale Stewart's parents sitting on their long porch and saw their posture change as they recognized him. They continued west on Depot past Broad.

  Congden's black Chevy wasn't in the yard or parked on the muddy ruts that might have been a driveway around the side of the shabby house. The Old Man pounded at the door but there was no response except for the frenzied barking of what sounded like a very large dog. Duane followed the Old Man around back, across a weedy lot filled with springs, beer cans, an old washing machine, and an assortment of rusted things out behind a small shed.

  There were eight cars there. Two were up on blocks and looked as if they might be rebuilt someday; the others were sprawled in the high weeds like metal corpses. Uncle Art's Cadillac was the closest to the shed.

  "Don't get into it," said the Old Man. There was something strange about his voice. "If you see the book in there, I'll get it out."

  On its wheels again, the damage was even more obvious. The roof was smashed down almost to the level of the doors. Even from the passenger side where they stood, it was obvious that the heavy car had been twisted on its own axis by the collision with the bridge. The hood was gone, and Congden or someone had already spread engine parts across the grass. Duane walked around to the driver's side.

  "Dad."

  The Old Man came around and stared with him. Both the driver's and left-rear doors were missing.

  "They were there when they fished the car out," said Duane. "I pointed the red paint out to the sheriff."

  "I remember." The Old Man found a metal tie-rod and started poking through the waist-high weeds as if he would find the doors there.

  Duane crouched and peered in, then went around back to look in through the opening where the rear window had been. He pried open a back door on the right side and leaned into what was left of the backseat.

  Twisted metal. Torn upholstery. Springs. Fabric and insulation from the roof hanging like stalactites. Broken glass. The smell of blood, gasoline, and transmission fluid. No book.

  The Old Man came back through the woods. "No sign of the doors. Find what you were after?"

  Duane shook his head. "We've got to go back to the accident site."

  "No." Duane heard a tone in his father's voice that said there would be no discussion. "Not tonight."

  Duane turned, feeling a deep depression drop on his shoulders, something even heavier than the sharp-edged grief he already felt. He started back around the shed, thinking about the evening ahead with the Old Man and a bottle. The trade had been for nothing.

  His hands were in his pockets when he came around the corner of the shed. The dog was on him before he could pull his hands free.

  At first Duane didn't know it was a dog. It was just something huge and black and growling with a sound unlike anything Duane had ever heard. Then the thing jumped, teeth gleamed at eye level, and Duane fell back across springs and broken glass, the mass of the dog's body going over him and twisting, growling, lunging to get at him.

  In that second, lying on the littered ground, hands free now but scraped and empty, Duane knew again what it meant to face death. Time seemed to freeze and he was frozen in it. Only the huge dog could move-move so fast that it was little more than a black blur-and it moved toward Duane, towering over him, nothing but teeth and flying saliva as it opened its huge mouth to rip at Duane McBride's throat.

  The Old Man stepped between the dog and his fallen son and swung. The tie rod caught the Doberman in the ribs and flung it ten feet back toward the house. The animal let out a screech that sounded like stripped gears.

  "Get up," panted the Old Man, crouching between Duane and the dog, which already had scrambled to its feet. Duane didn't know whether his father was talking to him or the Doberman.

  Duane was on his knees when the animal lunged again. This time the thing had to go through the Old Man to get to the boy and it showed every intention of doing so, leaping with a growl that made Duane's bowels go loose.

>   The Old Man pirouetted, gripped the tie rod in both hands, let the dog fly by him, and swung the metal bar upward. Duane thought he looked like a batter hitting pop flies to a distant outfield.

  The bar caught the Doberman under the jaw, snapped his head back in an impossible position, and caused the animal's body to do a perfect backflip before it crashed into the shed wall and slid down.

  He got to his feet and staggered away from the animal, but the Doberman wasn't getting up this time. The Old Man walked over and kicked the beast under the jaw and the thing's head bobbled like something attached by loose string. Its eyes were wide and already clouding with death.

  "Gosh," said Duane, feeling that if he didn't try to make a joke he'd just lie down again and start bawling, "Mr. Congden's' going to be surprised."

  "Fuck Congden," said the Old Man, but there was no passion in his voice. He sounded almost relaxed for the first time since the sheriff's car had pulled up the drive eight hours earlier. "Stay close."

  Still holding the tie rod, the Old Man led the way around the house on blocks and went up to pound on the front door. It was still locked. No one answered the knocking.

  "Hear that?" The Old Man stood tapping the metal rod.

  Duane shook his head.

  "Neither do I."

  Duane understood then. Either the dog inside was suddenly deaf or it was the same one lying dead in the backyard. Someone had let it out.

  The Old Man walked to the curb and looked up and down Depot Street. It was almost dark under the trees. A rumble from the east promised a storm. "Come on, Duanie," said the Old Man. "We'll find your book tomorrow."

  They were almost to the water tower and Duane had almost stopped shaking when he remembered. "Your bottle," he said, hating himself for reminding the Old Man but figuring that he deserved it.

  "Fuck the bottle." The Old Man looked at Duane and smiled very slightly. "We'll toast Art with Pepsi. That's what you and he used to drink all the time, isn't it? We'll toast him and tell tales about him and hold a real wake. Then we'll get to bed early so we can get going tomorrow and fix some things that need fixing. OK?"