Summer of Night

  Even later, Jim Harlen couldn't say why he had chosen not to show the two men this hard evidence that someone or something had been in his home. Perhaps he knew at that moment that he would have to handle this himself. Or perhaps it was just that some things were too embarrassing to share… that showing them the bed would be too much like pulling the magazines out of their hiding place and bragging about them.

  She was here. It was here.

  The hot chocolate was pretty good. Dr. Staffney had cleaned off the kitchen table and the three men sat there and talked until about twelve-thirty, when Harlen's mother came through the back door.

  Harlen went upstairs then, found an extra blanket in the closet and pulled it up over him without worrying about sheets. He went right to sleep, smiling slightly at the sound of angry voices from downstairs.

  It was a lot like when Dad used to live there.

  TWENTY-THREE

  During the worst part of his fever, Mike dreamed that he was talking to Duane McBride.

  Duane didn't look dead. He wasn't all torn to shreds the way everyone in town said he'd been. He didn't lurch around like a zombie or anything; he was just the Duane that Mike had known all those years-heavy, slow-moving, corduroy pants and plaid flannel shirt. Even in the dream, Duane would take time to adjust his black-rimmed glasses every once in a while.

  They were in some place that was unknown to Mike but quite familiar: a rolling pasture with high, rich grass. Mike wasn't sure what he was doing there, but he saw Duane and joined him on a rock near the edge of a cliff. The cliff was higher than anything Mike had seen in real life, higher even than Starved Rock State Park, where his family had gone when he was six. The view stretched on forever. There were cities down there, and a wide river with slow-moving barges on it. Duane wasn't even looking at the view; he was writing in his notebook. He looked up when Mike sat next to him.

  "Sorry you're sick," said Duane and adjusted his glasses. He put his notebook away.

  Mike nodded. He wasn't sure whether to say what he wanted to say, but he said it anyway. "Sorry you got killed."

  Duane shrugged.

  Mike bit his lip. He had to ask. "Did it hurt? Getting killed, I mean."

  Duane was eating an apple now. He paused to swallow. "Sure it hurt."

  "Sorry." Mike couldn't think of anything else to say. There was a puppy playing with a chew-toy over on the other side of Duane's rock, but Mike noticed with the kind of calm acceptance that's so much a part of dreams that it wasn't a dog, it was some sort of little dinosaur. The chew-toy was a green gorilla.

  "You're having a real problem with that soldier," said Duane. He offered a bite of the apple to Mike.

  Mike shook his head. "Yeah."

  "The other guys are having problems, too, you know."

  "Yeah?" said Mike. There was an airplane that was part bird blocking the sun. It soared out over the valley. "What other guys?"

  "You know, the other guys."

  That explained it to Mike. He was talking about Dale and Harlen. Maybe Kev.

  "If you guys try to keep fighting this thing by yourselves," said Duane, adjusting his glasses and finally looking out at the view,"you're going to end up like me."

  "What can we do?" asked Mike. He was vaguely aware that a dog was barking somewhere… a real dog… and there were sounds in the background that reminded him more of his house in the afternoon than this place.

  Duane didn't look at him. "Find out about who these guys are. Start with the Soldier."

  Mike stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff. He couldn't see anything down there now; it was all fog or clouds or something. "How do I do that?"

  Duane sighed. "Well, who is it after?"

  Mike didn't even think it was strange that Duane had said 'it' rather than 'he." The Soldier was an it. "It's after Memo."

  Duane nodded and adjusted his glasses with an impatient move of his finger. "Well then, ask Memo."

  "OK," agreed Mike. "But what about figuring out all the rest of the junk. I mean, we're not as smart as you were."

  Duane hadn't moved, but somehow he was sitting much farther away now. The same rock, but far off. And they weren't on a hilltop any longer, but on a city street. It was dark, sort of cold… a winter day maybe. Duane's rock was really a bench. It looked like he was waiting for a bus. He was frowning at Mike, looking almost angry. "You can always ask me," said Duane. When he saw that Mike didn't understand that, he added, "Plus, you are smart."

  Mike started to protest, to tell Duane how he didn't understand half of what the bigger boy was talking about usually and read about one book a year, but he noticed that Duane was getting on his bus. Only it wasn't a bus, it was some sort of gigantic farm machine with windows on the side, a little wheelhouse on top like those Mike had seen in pictures of riverboats, and a paddle wheel on front made of what looked like revolving razor blades.

  Duane leaned out one of the windows. "You're smart," he called down to Mike. "Smarter than you think. Plus you've got a real advantage."

  "What's that?" shouted Mike, running to keep up with the bus/machine now. He couldn't tell which of the heads and waving arms belonged to Duane McBride.

  "You're alive," came Duane's voice. The street was empty.

  Mike woke up. He was still hot and he ached all over, but his pajamas and sheets were soaked through with sweat. It felt like early afternoon. Reflected sunlight and a slow stirring of air came through the screens. It must be a hundred degrees up here, even with the hall fan turning. Mike could hear his mother or one of his sisters vacuuming downstairs.

  Mike was dying for a drink of water, but he felt too weak to get up right then and he knew they couldn't hear him downstairs over the sound of the Hoover. He contented himself with rolling closer to the window so a bit of breeze found him. He could see the grass on the front yard near the birdbath his grandfather had given them years before.

  Ask Memo.

  OK, as soon as he felt well enough to get into his jeans and get downstairs, he'd do it.

  All the next day, Sunday the tenth, Harlen's ma was mad at him, as if he'd yelled at her instead of Barney and Dr. Staffney. The house was full of the kind of silent tension that Harlen remembered from the fights Ma and his dad used to have: an hour or two of yelling and three weeks of cold silence. Harlen didn't give a shit. If it'd keep her home, keep her between him and the face at the window, he'd call the constable over every other night to give her a good yelling-at.

  "It's not as if 1 abandon you," she'd snapped at him when he was heating some soup for his lunch. It was the first time she'd spoken to him all day. "God knows I spend enough hours working my fingers to the bone taking care of you, taking care of the house…"

  Harlen glanced toward the living room. The only empty surfaces were the ones he or the two men had cleared off the night before. Barney had washed the dishes the night before and the clean counter looked alien to Harlen.

  "Don't you dare take that tone with me, young man," Ma snapped.

  Harlen stared at her. He hadn't said a word.

  "You know what I mean. These two… intruders… come in here and presume to lecture me on watching out for my child. Reckless abandonment he calls it." Her voice was shaking. She paused to light a cigarette and her hands were shaking as well. She fanned the match out, exhaled smoke, and stood tapping her lacquered nails on the counter. Harlen stared at the ring of lipstick on the cigarette. He hated; that-the lipstick on cigarette butts around the house-more than anything else. It drove him crazy and he had no idea why.

  "After all," she continued, in control of her voice now,"you are eleven years old. Almost a young man. Why, when I was eleven, I was taking care of three younger children in the family and working part time at the One-Fifty-One Diner over in Princeville."

  Harlen nodded. He'd heard the story.

  His mother inhaled smoke, and turned away, the fingers of her left hand still tapping out a fast tattoo on the counter, the cigarette jutting aggressively in the
other hand the way only women held it. "The nerve of those idiots."

  Harlen poured his tomato soup into a bowl, found a spoon, and hunkered over it, letting it cool. "Ma, they were only here because that crazy lady was in the house. They were worried she'd come back."

  She did not turn back toward him. Her back had the same rigid look he'd seen turned toward his father so many times.

  He tried the soup. It was too hot. "Really, Ma," he said. "They didn't mean anything. They only…"

  "Don't tell me what they meant, James Richard," she snapped, finally turning toward him, one arm crossed in front of her, the other arm vertical, smoke still rising. "I understand an insult when I hear it. What they didn't understand is that you almost certainly imagined seeing someone through the window. They didn't understand that Doctor Armitage at the hospital said that you had a very serious blow to the head… a subdural hemmy… hemo…"

  "Subdural hematoma," said Harlen. The soup was cool enough now.

  " "A very serious concussion,” she finished and took a drag. "Dr. Armitage warned me that you might experience some whatchamacallims… hallucinations. I mean, it's not as if you saw somebody you knew, right? Somebody real?"

  There are real people in the world who I don't know, Harlen was tempted to reply. He didn't. One day of this cold shoulder was enough. "Uh-uh," he said.

  Ma nodded as if the point was made. She turned to stare out the kitchen window as she finished her cigarette. "I'd like to know where those high and mighty gentlemen were when I was spending twenty-four hours a day at your bedside at the hospital," she muttered.

  Harlen concentrated on finishing his soup. He went to the fridge but the only milk carton had been there a long, long time and he had no intention of opening it. He filled a jelly glass with water from the tap. "You're right, Ma. But I was glad to see you when you came home."

  The sudden rigidness of her back told him not to pursue that topic. "Weren't you going over to Adelle's Salon today to get your hair done?"

  "If I do, I suppose you'll have that cop back here filing charges that I'm an unfit mother,” she said, her voice carrying a freight of sarcasm he hadn't heard since Dad left. The smoke rose above her stack of dark hair and caught the sunlight in a pale halo.

  "Ma," he said,"it's daytime. I'm not afraid of anything in the daytime. She's not gonna come back in the daytime." Actually, Harlen knew that only the first of those three statements was definitely true. The second was a lie. The third… he didn't know.

  Ma touched her hair, stubbed the cigarette out in the sink. "All right. I'll be back in about an hour, maybe a little more. You got Adelle's number."

  "Yeah."

  He rinsed the soup bowl out and stacked it with the breakfast dishes. The Nash made its usual loud noises as it disappeared down Depot Street. Harlen waited two more minutes-Ma often forgot something and came rushing back in hunting for it-but when it was certain that she was gone, he went slowly upstairs, into her room. His heart was beating like crazy.

  That morning, while Ma was sleeping, he'd rinsed the sheets and pillowcases out in the tub, then thrown them onto the washing machine in the utility room. The pajamas he'd tossed into the garbage can along the side of the garbage. No way was he going to sleep in those again.

  Now he went through his Ma's dresser drawers, poking under the silken underwear, feeling an excitement like the first time he'd bought one of those magazines from C. J. and brought it home. It was hot in the room. The thick sunlight lay over the tangled sheets and spread of Ma's bed; he could; smell her perfume thick and heavy. The Sunday papers lay scattered where she'd left them on the bed.

  The gun wasn't in the dresser. Harlen checked in the nightstand next to her bed, shoving aside the empty cigarette packs and an almost-full package of Trojans. Rings, ballpoint pens that didn't work, matches from different supper clubs and nightclubs, pieces of paper and napkins with guys' names scribbled on them, some sort of mechanical muscle-relaxer thing, a paperback. No gun.

  Harlen sat on the bed and looked around the room. The closet just had her dresses and shoes and crud… wait. He pulled over a chair so he could reach to the back of the only shelf, feeling around behind hatboxes and folded sweaters. His hand fell on cold metal. He pulled out a framed photo. His dad was smiling, one arm around Ma and the other around a grinning, dumb four-year-old that Harlen vaguely recognized as himself. One of the kid's front teeth was missing but he didn't seem to care. The three of them were standing in front of a picnic table; Harlen recognized Bandstand Park downtown. Maybe it was before a Free Show.

  He tossed the picture onto the bed and felt under the last old sweater up there. A curved handle. Metal trigger guard.

  He lowered it slowly in both hands, taking care to keep his finger away from the trigger. The thing was surprisingly heavy for its size. The metal parts were a dark blue steel; the barrel was surprisingly short, maybe two inches. The stock was a nice knurled wood, checked. It looked a lot like a toy.38 Harlen had played with when he was little, a year or two ago, and his guess was that this was a real.38. What had his dad called it when he was showing Ma how to hold it years ago? A belly gun. Harlen wasn't sure whether that was because it was small enough to carry around in your belt-if you were a man, of course-or if it was meant to be shot into somebody's belly.

  He hopped down, found a catch that slid aside so that he could peer into the cylinder… he sure as hell wasn't going to turn it around so the muzzle was aimed at his face. The one hole was empty. It took another minute before he found out how to move the cylinder around freely; all the holes were empty. Harlen cursed, stuck the pistol in his belt-feeling the cold steel warm against the skin of his belly-and searched the rest of the shelf for bullets. Nothing. Ma probably threw them all out. He straightened the shelf up, put the chair back, took the gun out, and stood there holding it.

  What the hell good was this thing if he didn't have bullets?

  He looked under Ma's bed again, checked the whole room out, even emptied the junk in her cedar blanket chest. No bullets. He was sure that they'd been in a box.

  Harlen checked one last time that he hadn't left any telltale signs of his search-it was hard to tell in the messy room-and then went downstairs.

  Where the hell can I buy some bullets? Do they sell them to kids? Could I just go into Meyers' Hardware or Jensen's AP and ask for some 38-caliber bullets? Harlen didn't think the AP carried them and Mr. Meyers didn't like him; he'd almost refused to sell him nails when he was working on his treehouse last summer… no way was he going to sell him bullets.

  Harlen had one last idea. His ma kept a lot of booze in the liquor cabinet, but she always had a bottle hidden away on the last shelf of the kitchen, way up on top. Like someone was going to steal the other stuff and she needed some hidden away. There were other bottles and crap up there.

  Harlen stood on the counter, the snub-nosed revolver in his bandaged left hand while he searched. There were two bottles of vodka hidden away there. Some sort of jar filled with rice, another with what looked like peas. The third jar had a metallic glint to it. Harlen lifted it out into the light.

  The bullets were all tumbled loose into the bottom of the canning jar. The lid was sealed. Harlen counted at least thirty or more. He found a knife, cut the seal, levered the lid open, and dumped the cartridges onto the counter. He was more excited than when he'd brought home C. J."s dirty magazines for the first time. It took Harlen only a few seconds to figure out how to load the empty chambers, then spin the cylinder to make sure it was fully loaded. He filled the pockets of his jeans with the other bullets, put the jar back where it'd been, and went out back, climbing the fence and heading into the orchard, hunting for someplace to practice. And for something to practice on.

  Memo was awake. Sometimes her eyes were open but she was not really aware. This was not one of those times. Mike crouched by her bedside. His mother was home-it was Sunday on the tenth of July, the first Sunday Mass Mike had missed serving at in almost three years-
and the vacuum was running, upstairs in his room now. Mike leaned close to the bed, seeing Memo's brown eyes following him. One of her hands was curved on the coverlet like a claw, the fingers gnarled, the back of her hand routed with veins.

  "Can you hear me, Memo?" He was whispering, his mouth not too far from her ear. He leaned back and watched her eyes.

  Blink. Yes. The code had been once for yes, twice for no, three times for "I don't know' or "I don't understand." It's how they communicated the most simple things to her: when it was time to change her linen or clothing, time to use the bedpan-things like that.

  "Memo," whispered Mike, his lips still parched from the four days of fever,"did you see the soldier at the window?"

  Blink. Yes.

  "Have you seen him before?"

  Yes.

  "Are you afraid of him?"

  Yes.

  "Do you think he's here to hurt us?"

  Yes.

  "Do you still think he's Death?"

  Blink. Blink. Blink. I don't know.

  Mike took a breath. The weight of his fever dreams hung on him like chains. "Do you… did you recognize him?"

  Yes.

  "Is he someone you know?"

  Yes.

  "Is he someone Mom and Dad would know?"

  No.

  "Would I know him?"

  No.

  "But you do?"

  Memo closed her eyes for a long time, as if in pain or exasperation. Mike felt like an idiot, but he didn't know what else to ask. She blinked once. Yes. She definitely knew him.

  "Someone who is… who is alive now?"

  No.

  Mike was not surprised. "Someone you know is dead then?"

  Yes.

  "But a real person? I mean someone who used to be alive?"

  Yes.

  "Do you… do you think it's a ghost, Memo?"

  Three blinks. A pause. Then one.

  "Is this somebody you and Grampa knew?"

  Pause. Yes.

  "A friend?"

  She did not blink at all. Her dark eyes burned at Mike, demanding that he ask the right questions.