Duane nodded.
Jim Harlen came home from the hospital on Sunday, exactly one week after he'd been hospitalized. His left arm was in a clumsy cast, his head and ribs were still bandaged, he had raccoon eyes where the blood had drained, and he was still on medication for the pain. But his doctor and mother decided that it was time for him to go home.
Harlen did not want to go home.
He did not quite remember the accident. He remembered more than he admitted: sneaking off to the Free Show that Saturday, following Old Double-Butt, even deciding to climb the school to get a peek inside. But of the actual fall-or what caused it-Harlen could not remember. Each night in the hospital he awoke from nightmares, panting, heart and head pounding, grasping the metal rail of the bed for support. Those first nights his mother had been there; after a while he learned to ring for the nurse, just to have a grown-up in the room. The nurses-especially Mrs. Carpenter, the old one-humored him and stayed in the room, sometimes stroking his short hair, until he fell asleep again.
Harlen didn't remember the dreams that sent him screaming up from sleep, but he remembered the feeling that they gave him, and that was enough to make him sick and goosefleshy. He had the same feeling about going home.
A friend of his mother's whom Harlen had never met drove them home, Harlen stretched out in the rear of the man's station wagon. He felt foolish and awkward in the cast, and had to lift his head from the pillows just to see the landscape go by. Each mile of the fifteen-minute trip from Oak Hill to Elm Haven seemed to absorb light, as if the car were moving into a zone of darkness.
"Looks like it might rain," said his mother's boyfriend. "Heaven knows the crops need it."
Harlen grunted. Whoever this dipshit was-Harlen had already forgotten the name his mother twittered at him during the introduction, so carefree and casual, as if this guy was an old family friend whom Harlen should know and love- whoever he was, he was no farmer. The clean and waxed station wagon, a Woody, and the man's soft hands and tweedy, citified suit proved that. This bozo probably didn't know or care whether the crops needed rain or manure.
They arrived home about six-his mother was supposed to pick him up at two but was hours late-and Bozo made a big production of helping Harlen up to his room, as if it had been his legs broken rather than his arm. Harlen had to admit that the exercise of climbing the stairs made him dizzy. He sat in his own bed, looking around at his room-seeming very strange and alien-and tried to blink away his headache while his mother ran downstairs for the medication. Harlen could hear hushed conversation and then a long silence. He imagined the kiss, imagined Bozo getting the old tongue in there and his mother bending her right leg up and back, long-heeled shoe dangling the way it always did when she gave her bozos their goodnight kiss while Harlen watched from the window in his room.
A sick yellow light coming through the window filled the room with a sulfurous tint. He realized suddenly why his room seemed so weird: his mother had cleaned it up. Cleaned up the piles of clothes, the heaps of comics, the toy soldiers and broken models, the dusty junk under his bed, even the heap of old Boy's Life that had sat stacked in the corner for years. With a rush of warm guilt, Harlen wondered whether she'd cleaned deep enough in his closet to find the nudie magazines. He started to get up to check, but the dizziness and headache pulled him back to the pillow. Fuck it. To add to the chorus of pain, his arm kicked in with its evening bone-deep ache. They had put a steel pin in it for Chrissakes. Harlen closed his eyes and tried to imagine a steel nail the size of a railroad spike driven through his splintered humerus.
Nothin' humorous about my humerus, thought Jim Harlen and realized that he was perilously close to tears. Where the fuck is she? Or maybe, where is she fucking?
His mother came into the room, all atwitter with good spirits and pleasure at having her little Jimmy home. Harlen saw how thick the makeup was on her cheeks. And her perfume wasn't the soft flowery scent of the nurses who checked on him at night; she smelled like some musky night-burrowing animal. A mink maybe, or a weasel in heat.
"Now take your pills and I'll get busy making dinner," she chirped.
She gave him the bottle of pills rather than the little cup the nurses used to dole out prescribed doses. Harlen swallowed three of the codeine pills rather than the one he was supposed to take. Fuck this pain stuff. His mother was too busy flitting around the room, fluffing pillows and unpacking his hospital suitcase, to notice. If she was going to make a big deal out of the dirty magazines, Harlen realized, she was saving it for another day.
That was fine with him. She could go down and burn whatever dinner she was planning-she cooked about twice a year and it was always a disaster-Harlen already felt the numbing buzz of the medication and was ready to drift into that nice, warm, wall-less space where he'd spent so much time the first few days in the hospital, when they'd given him the stronger stuff for the pain.
He asked his mother something.
"What, dear?" She paused in hanging up his robe and Harlen realized that his voice had sounded pretty slurry. He tried again: "My friends come over?"
"Your friends? Why yes, dear, they're very worried and said to wish you their best."
"Who?"
"Pardon, dear?"
"Who?" snapped Harlen, and then worked to control his voice. "Who came over?"
"Why, you said that nice farm boy… whatshisname, Donald, came to the hospital last week…"
"Duane," said Harlen. "And he's not a friend. He's some farm kid with straw behind his ears. I mean, who came over to the house?"
His mother frowned and fluttered her fingers the way she did when she was flustered. Harlen thought that the bright-red nail polish made her white fingers look like they ended in bloody stumps. The idea amused him somehow. "Who?" he said. "O'Rourke? Stewart? Daysinger? Grumbacher?"
His mother sighed. "I can't remember your little friends' names, Jimmy, but I did hear from them. At least from their mothers. They're all very worried. That nice lady who works at the A and P was especially concerned."
"Mrs. O'Rourke," sighed Harlen. "But Mike or the guys haven't come by?"
She folded up his hospital pajamas under her arm, as if cleaning them was a priority. As if his dirty pajamas and underwear hadn't laid around on this very floor for weeks before he went into the hospital. "I'm sure they have, darling, but I've been… well, busy, naturally, what with spending so much time in the hospital and having to look after… other things."
Harlen tried to roll over on his right side; the cast was an awkward protuberance on his left arm, bent at the elbow but heavy and stiff. He felt the codeine beginning to carry him away. Maybe he could con her into leaving the whole fucking bottle so he could take care of the pain himself. The doctors didn't care if you hurt; it was no skin off their noses if you woke up in the night scared and hurting so bad that you wanted to piss your pajama bottoms. Even the nice nurses who smelled so good didn't really give a shit; they'd come when called all right, but then they squeaked their shoes down the tile hall, went off duty, and went to screw some guy at home.
His mother kissed him and he smelled Bozo's cologne on her. He pulled his face away before her cigarette breath and Bozo's spoor made him sick.
"You sleep well now, dear." She tucked him in like he was a baby, except the cast didn't fit under the blankets and she had to sort of poke the covers around it like a Christmas-tree skirt. Harlen was floating on the sudden release from pain, the numbness that made him feel more alive than he had been all week.
It wasn't dark yet. Harlen allowed himself to fall asleep when it was daytime… it was the goddamn dark he hated. He could nap a bit before he woke to his silent sentinel duty. Trying to be alert in case it came.
In case what came?
The medication seemed to free his mind, as if the barriers to what had happened-what he saw-were ready to come down. The curtains ready to open.
Harlen tried to roll over, came up against the cast, and moaned fitfully, feeling the p
ain as some detached thing, like a small but persistent dog pulling at his sleeve. He wouldn't let the barriers come down, the curtains open. Whatever it was that woke him every night, sweating, heart pounding, he didn't want it to come back.
Fuck O'Rourke and Stewart and Daysinger and the rest. Fuck them all. They weren't real friends anyway. Who needed them? Harlen hated this whole fucking town with its fat, fucking people and its fucking stupid kids.
And the school.
Jim Harlen fell into a fitful doze. The sulfur yellow light shifted to red on his wallpaper before fading to darkness as the storm growled its approach.
Several blocks east on Depot Street, Dale and Lawrence sat on the porch railing an hour after nightfall and watched the heat lightning illuminating the dark sky. Their parents relaxed in their wicker porch chairs. Every time the silent lightning flashed, Old Central would be revealed through the screen of elms across the street, its brick and stone walls painted an electric blue by the strobe. The air was still, the wind in front of the storm having not yet arrived.
"Doesn't feel quite like tornado weather," said Dale's dad.
Their mother sipped her lemonade and said nothing. The air was thick, heavy with the approach of storm. Each time the silent lightning illuminated the school and playground and Second Avenue stretching south toward the Hard Road, she flinched slightly.
Dale was fascinated by the sudden explosions of light and by the strange color they imparted to the grass, homes, trees, and asphalt of the streets. It was as if they were watching their black-and-white Sylvania Halolight TV and suddenly it had begun transmitting, at least intermittently, in color.
The lightning rippled around the eastern and southern horizons, flickering above the treetops like a fierce aurora bore-alis. Dale remembered stories his Uncle Henry had told about artillery barrages in the First World War. Dale's dad had served in Europe in the more recent war, but never spoke about it.
"Look," said Lawrence softly and pointed toward the schoolyard.
Dale bent closer to follow his brother's pointing arm. When the heat lightning flashed, he saw the furrow across the playground ball diamond. There had been a few such furrows visible there since school had let out, as if someone had been laying pipe. But neither Dale nor anyone else in the family had seen men working in the schoolyard during the day. And why would they lay pipe to a school that was going to be torn down any day?
"Come on," whispered Dale, and he and his brother jumped from the railing to the stone steps, from the steps to the front lawn.
"Don't go far!" called their mom. "It's going to rain." "We won't," Dale called over his shoulder. They jogged across Depot Street, jumping the low, grassy ditches on each side which substituted for storm sewers in town, and ran beneath the outstretched branches of the giant sentinel elm across the street from their house.
Dale looked around, realizing for the first time what a solid barrier the giant elms made. While it was simple to walk between them onto the playground, the effect was a bit like passing through a fortress wall into the courtyard of a castle. And Old Central looked every bit the brooding castle this night. Lightning flickered and was reflected from the un-boarded windows on the high dormers. The stone and brick looked oddly greenish in the light. The arched entranceway shielded only darkness.
"There," said Lawrence. He had stopped six feet from the mole-burrowish furrow which cut right across the playground. It was as if someone had laid a pipeline from the school-Dale could see where the mound touched brick near a basement window-straight through second base toward the pitcher's mound. But they had stopped halfway across the playground.
Dale turned and looked down the direction the furrow would take if it were extended farther. He was staring at his own front porch thirty yards away.
Lawrence let out a shout and jumped back. Dale wheeled.
In the brief explosion of light from the sky, Dale watched as the ground buckled, sods of dirt were pushed up-grass still intact-and the long line of mounded earth extended another four feet, then stopped less than a yard from his sneakers.
Mike O'Rourke was feeding Memo while the lightning pulsed beyond the curtain. Feeding the old lady was not pleasant: her throat and digestive system worked after a fashion, otherwise they couldn't take care of her at home and she would have been in an Oak Hill nursing home. But she could only eat strained baby foods and her mouth had to be opened and closed before and after each mouthful. Swallowing appeared to be more an act of choking it down than anything else. Invariably, much of the food ended up on his grandmother's chin and the wide bib they tied around her neck.
But Mike went through the process patiently, speaking to her of small things-delivering the Sunday papers, the coming rain, his sisters' exploits-during the long intervals between spoonsful.
Suddenly, between bites, Memo's eyes became very wide and she began blinking quickly, trying to communicate something. Mike often wished that she and the family had learned Morse code before her stroke; but why would they have thought they needed it? Now it would have come in handy as the old woman blinked, paused, blinked repeatedly, paused again.
"What is it, Memo?" whispered Mike, bending closer and cleaning her chin with a napkin. He glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to see a dark shape at the window. Instead there was only the darkness between the curtains, then a sudden ripple of heat lightning which revealed the leaves of the linden tree and the fields across the street. "It's OK," Mike said softly and offered another spoonful of strained carrots.
It obviously wasn't OK. Memo's blinking became more agitated and the muscles of her throat worked so rapidly that Mike feared she was going to regurgitate the evening meal. He bent closer to make sure that she wasn't choking, but it seemed she was breathing all right. The blinking became a frenzied staccato. Mike wondered if she were having another stroke, if she were actually dying this time. But he did not call his parents. Something about the pre-storm stillness outside had invaded his motions and emotions, freezing him in his chair as he bent toward Memo with spoon extended.
The blinking stopped and Memo's eyes grew very wide. At the same instant something scratched against the floorboards of the old house-Mike knew that there was nothing but a low crawlspace there-the scratching audible under the floor of the kitchen on the southwest corner of the house and then moving, scurrying, quicker than a cat or dog would run, across the kitchen, across the corner of the living room and the bit of hallway, under the floor of the parlor-of Memo's room-under Mike's feet and the massive brass bed where the old lady lay.
Mike looked down beneath his still-extended arm, between his sneakers on the frayed rug. The scratching was as loud as if someone on a railed dolly had slid under the house with a long knife or metal rod, clawing at every cross brace and stud under the old floorboards. Now it became a pounding, a chipping away, as if that same blade were being used to hack away at the boards between Mike's sneakers.
He stared down, open-mouthed, waiting for whatever it was to rip its way through the floorboards, imagining bladed fingers emerging and seizing his leg. One glance told him that Memo had quit staring andhad closed her eyes as tightly as they could shut.
Suddenly, immediately, the clawing stopping. Mike found his voice. "Mom! Dad! Peg!" He was shouting, not quite screaming. His hand holding the spoon was still extended, but shaking now.
His father came in from the bathroom just across the hall, suspenders Hanging loose, his massive belly and undershirt far out over the waistband of his trousers. His mother came in from their room, belting her old robe. A clatter on the stairs announced not Peg but Mary, leaning on the doorframe and peering into the parlor.
There was a cluster of questions snapped at him. "What in the hell are you screaming about?" his father repeated when there was a pause.
Mike looked from face to face. "You didn't hear it?"
"Hear what?" asked his mother in her voice that was always harsher than she meant it to be.
Mike looked down at the
carpet between his sneakers. He could feel whatever it was down there. Waiting. He glanced back at Memo. Her eyes were still shut tightly, her body rigid.
"A sound," said Mike, hearing how lame his voice sounded. "A terrible sound from underneath the house."
His father shook his head and lifted a towel to dry his jowls. "I didn't hear anything in the bathroom. Must be one of those godda-' He glanced at his frowning wife. "One of those darned cats again. Or maybe another skunk. I'll go out with a flashlight and broom and shoo it away."
"No!" cried Mike, much louder than he had meant to. Mary made a face and his parents looked at him quizzically. "I mean, it's going to rain," he said. "Let's wait till tomorrow, when it's light. And I'll go in there and get it out."
"Watch for the black widow spiders," said Mary with a shudder and pounded back up the stairs. Mike could hear rock-and-roll music from her radio.
His father went back into the bathroom. Mike's mother came in, patted Memo's head, felt her cheek, and said, "It looks as if Mother has drifted off to sleep. I'll wait here to feed her when she wakes up if you want to go up and get ready for bed."
Mike swallowed and lowered his shaking arm, bracing it on a knee that wasn't that steady. He could feel something down there, separated just by three-quarters of an inch of wood and a forty-year-old carpet. He could feel it down there in the dark, waiting for him to leave.
"No," he said to his mother. "I'll stay and finish it." He gave her a smile. She touched his head and went back into her room.
Mike waited. After a moment, Memo opened her eyes. Outside, the heat lightning flashed silently.
SIXTEEN
It did not rain on Sunday night, nor on Monday, although the day was gray and thick with humidity. Duane's father had set Wednesday for Uncle Art's cremation in Peoria and there were details to be taken care of, people to notify. At least three people-an old army buddy of Uncle Art's, a cousin he had known well, and an ex-wife-insisted on coming, so there was to be a short memorial service after all. The Old Man arranged it for three o'clock in Peoria at the only mortuary which did cremations.