Summer of Night

  "A friend of Grampa's?"

  No.

  "An enemy of Grampa's?"

  She hesitated. Blinked once. Her mouth and chin were moist with saliva. Mike used the linen handkerchief on the night table to dry it. "So he was an enemy of Grampa's and yours?"

  No.

  Mike was sure that she had blinked twice, but he didn't understand why. She'd just said…

  "An enemy of Grampa's," he whispered. The vacuum had quit running upstairs, but he could hear his mother humming as she dusted in the girls' rooms. "An enemy of Grampa's but not of yours?"

  Yes.

  "This soldier was your friend?"

  Yes.

  Mike rocked on his heels. Fine, now what? How could he find out who this person had been, why he was haunting Memo?

  "Do you know why he's come back, Memo?"

  No.

  "But you're scared of him?" It was a stupid question, Mike knew.

  Yes. Pause. Yes. Pause. Yes.

  "Were you scared of him when… when he was alive?"

  Yes.

  "Is there a way I can find out who he was?"

  Yes. Yes.

  Mike stood and paced in the small space. A car went by on First Avenue beyond the screen. The scent of flowers and new-mown grass came in the window. Mike realized with a guilty start that his father must have mowed the yard while he was sick. He crouched next to Memo again. "Memo, can I go through your stuff? Do you mind if I look at your stuff?” Mike realized that he'd phrased it so she couldn't answer. She looked at him, waiting.

  "Do I have your permission?" he whispered.

  Yes.

  Memo's trunk was in the corner. All of the kids were under strict orders not to get into it: the things there were their grandmother's most prized and private possessions and Mike's mom kept them as if the old lady would have use for them someday.

  Mike dug down through clothes until he came to the package of letters, most of them from his grandfather during his sales trips through the state.

  "In here, Memo?"

  No.

  There was a box of photos, most of them sepia tinted. Mike held them up.

  Yes.

  He thumbed through them quickly, aware that his mom was finishing with the girls' rooms and had only his room to go. He was supposed to be resting in the living room while she aired the room out and changed linen.

  There must have been a hundred pictures in the box: oval portraits of known relatives and unknown faces, Brownie snapshots of their grampa when he was young, tall, and strong- Grampa in front of his Pierce Arrow, Grampa posing proudly with two other men in front of the cigar store they had owned briefly-and disastrously-in Oak Hill, Grampa and Memo in Chicago at the World's Fair, pictures of the family, pictures of picnics and holidays and idle moments on the porch, a photo of an infant, dressed in a white gown and apparently sleeping on a silken pillow-Mike realized with a shock that it was his dad's twin brother who had died as a baby-the photo was taken after the baby died. What a terrible custom.

  Mike thumbed through the pictures faster. Photos of Memo as an older lady now-Grampa pitching horseshoes, a family picture when Mike was a baby, the older girls smiling into the camera, more old pictures…

  Mike actually gasped. He dropped the rest of the photos into the box and held the one cardboard-framed picture at arm's length, as if it were diseased. The soldier stared out proudly. The same khaki uniform, the same leggings-whatever the hell Duane had called them, the same campaign hat and Sam Browne belt and… it was the same soldier. Only here the face wasn't sketched in on wax, it was a human face: small eyes narrowed at the camera, a thin-lipped smile, a hint of greased-back hair over large ears, a small chin, predominant nose. Mike turned the photo over. In his grandmother's perfect Palmer script, the legend said-William Campbell Phillips: Nov. 9, 1917.

  Mike held the picture up.

  Yes.

  "This is it then? It's really him?"

  Yes.

  "Is there anything else in the trunk, Memo? Anything else to tell me about him?" Mike couldn't believe there was. He wanted to get things closed up before his mom came down.

  Yes.

  He blinked his surprise. He held up the box of photos.

  No.

  What else? Nothing but a small, leather notebook. He lifted it, opened it to a page halfway through. The entry was in his grandmother's hand. The date read January 1918.

  "A diary," he breathed.

  Yes. Yes. The old lady closed her eyes and did not open them.

  Mike slammed the trunk shut, kept the photo and the diary, and moved quickly to her bedside, lowering his face until his cheek was almost touching her mouth. A soft dry breath moved through her lips.

  He touched her hair once, gently, and then hid the diary and photo in his shirt and went out to the couch to 'rest."

  Jim Harlen found out that his father's phrase 'belly gun' probably meant that you had to stick the damn thing in someone's belly to hit anything. The little gun couldn't hit shit.

  He'd gone about two hundred feet into the small orchard behind his house and the Congdens', found a tree that looked like a good target, stepped off about twenty paces, raised his good arm straight and steady, and squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened. Or rather, the hammer rose a bit and fell back. Harlen wondered if there was some sort of safety on the damn thing… no, there weren't any switches or doodads except for the one that had given him access to the cylinder. It was just harder to pull the trigger than he'd thought. Plus the damn cast was sort of throwing him off balance.

  He crouched a bit and used the crook of his thumb to pull the hammer back until it clicked and cocked. Readjusting his hand on the grip, Harlen aimed the thing at the tree-wishing all the time it had a better sight than the little nub of metal at the end of the tiny barrel-and squeezed again.

  The blast almost made him drop the gun. It was a fairly small pistol; he'd expected the sound and recoil to be small… sort of like the.22 rifle Congden let him fire every once in a while. It wasn't.

  The loud crack had made Harlen's ears ring. Dogs started barking in the yards along Fifth Avenue. Harlen smelled what he thought was gunpowder-although it didn't smell a lot like the gunpowder stink of the firecrackers he'd fired off a week earlier-and his wrist carried the memory of energy expended. He walked over to see where the bullet had struck.

  Nothing. He hadn't touched the tree. Eighteen inches across and he'd missed the whole damn thing. Harlen stepped off fifteen paces this time, took care cocking the damn thing, took greater care aiming, held his breath, and squeezed off another shot.

  The pistol roared and leapt in his hand. The dogs went nuts again. Harlen ran up to the tree, expecting to see a hole dead center. Nothing. He looked around on the ground as if there might be a visible bullet hole there.

  "Fuck this," he whispered. He walked back ten short steps, took careful aim, and fired again. This time, he found, he'd just nicked the bark on the right side, about four feet higher than he'd aimed. From ten fucking feet away! The dogs were going crazy and somewhere beyond the trees a screen door slammed open.

  Harlen cut west to the tracks and headed north, away from town, out past the empty grain elevators almost to the tallow factory. There was a swampy tangle of trees and shrubs west of the tracks there and he figured he could use the embankment as a backstop. He hadn't thought of that before and felt a cold flush as he wondered if one of the bullets had traveled all the way across Catton's road into the pasture-and maybe one of the dairy cows-there. Surprise, Bossie!

  Safely hidden in the thickets half a mile south of the dump, Harlen reloaded, found some bottles and cans along the dirt road heading out to the dump, set them as targets against the weedy embankment, braced the grip against his thigh as he reloaded, and began practicing.

  The gun didn't shoot worth shit. Oh, it fired all right… Harlen's wrist ached and his ears were echoing… but the bullets didn't go where he aimed them. It looked so easy when Hugh
O'Brian as Wyatt Earp shot somebody from fifty or sixty feet away-and that was to wing them. Harlen's favorite hero had been the Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman in Trackdown, starring Robert Culp. Hoby had a real neat pistol and Harlen had enjoyed the shows right up to the time Track-down had gone off the air the year before.

  Maybe it was the short barrel on his dad's stupid gun. Whatever it was, Harlen found that he had to be ten feet away from something to hit it, and then it took three or four shots just to get the damn beer can or whatever. He did get better at cocking it, although he had the feeling that you were supposed to pull the trigger and let the hammer rise and fall on its own. He managed to do that, but it took enough strength that it screwed up his aim even more.

  Well, if I use this cocksucker on someone, I'll have to wait until I can set it against their chest or head or whatever so I don't miss.

  Harlen had fired twelve of the bullets and was loading six more when he heard a slight sound behind him. He whirled with the pistol half-raised, but the cylinder loading-gate thing was still open and only two cartridges stayed in it. The others dropped to the grass.

  Cordie Cooke stepped out of the trees behind him. She was carrying a double-barreled shotgun that was as tall as she was, but it was broken open at the breech the way Harlen had seen men carrying the guns out hunting. She looked at him with her piggy little eyes scrunched up.

  Jesus, thought Harlen, I'd forgotten how ugly she is. Cordie's face reminded him of a cream pie that someone had stuck eyes, skinny lips, and a lumpy potato of a nose in. Her hair was hacked just below her ears, and hung down over her eyes in greasy strands. She wore the same shapeless bag of a dress Harlen remembered from class, although it looked sweatier and dirtier now, gray socks that'd once been white, and lumpy brown shoes. Her little snaggly teeth were about the same tone of gray as her socks.

  "Hey, Cordie," he said, lowering the pistol to his side and trying to look casual. "What's happening?"

  She continued squinting at him. It was hard to tell if her eyes were even open under those bangs. She took three steps toward him. "Dropped your bullets," she said in that nasal monotone that Harlen had imitated more than a few times to make the other kids laugh.

  He twitched a smile at her and crouched to pick them up. He could only find two.

  "One's behind your left foot," she said. "T'other one's under your left foot."

  Harlen found them, stuck them in his pocket rather than finish loading now, closed the loading gate, and stuck the pistol in the waistband of his jeans.

  "Better watch it," drawled Cordie. "You'll shoot your weenie off."

  Harlen felt a flush rise from his neck to his cheeks. He adjusted his sling and frowned at the girl. "What the hell do you want?"

  She shrugged, moving the massive shotgun from one arm to the other. "Jes' curious who was bangin' away over here. Thought maybe that C. J."d got a bigger gun."

  Harlen remembered Dale Stewart's story about his confron tation with Congden. "That why you're carrying around that cannon?" he asked as sarcastically as he could.

  "Uh-uh. I ain't afraid of C. J. It's them others I gotta watch for."

  "What others?"

  She squinted more narrowly at him. "That piece of dog-poop Roon. Van Syke. Them what took Tubby."

  "You think they kidnapped Tubby?"

  The girl turned her flat face toward the sun and the railroad embankment. "They didn't kidnap him none. They kilt him."

  "Killed him?" Harlen felt his insides contracting. "How do you know?"

  She shrugged and set the shotgun on a stump. Her arms looked like skinny, pale pipes. She picked at a scab on her wrist. "I see him."

  Harlen gaped. "You saw your brother's body? Where?"

  "My window."

  The face at the window. No, that was the old lady… Mrs. Duggan. "You're lying," he said.

  Cordie looked at him with eyes the color of old dishwater. "I don't lie."

  "You saw him out your window? Of your house?"

  "What other window do I have, dipshit?"

  Harlen considered shoving her flat face in. He glanced at the shotgun and hesitated. "Why didn't the police come get him?"

  " "Cause he wouldn't have been there when they got there. And we ain't got a phone to call."

  "Wouldn't have been there?" It was a hot day. The sun was out. Harlen's t-shirt was plastered to his back and his arm was sweating freely under his cast; it itched. But he shivered right then.

  Cordie stepped closer until she could whisper and be heard. "He wouldn't have been there 'cause he was moving around. He was at my window,"n' then he went under the house. Where the dogs usually stay, but they won't go there no more."

  "But you said he was…"

  "Dead, yeah," said Cordie. "I thought maybe they just took him, but when I seen him, I knew he was dead." She walked over and looked at his row of bottles and cans. Only two of the cans had holes in them and all of the bottles were intact. She shook her head. "My ma, she seen him too, only she thinks he's a ghost. She thinks he just wants to come home."

  "Does he?" Harlen was amazed to hear that his voice was a hoarse whisper.

  "Naw." Cordie walked closer, stood staring at him through her bangs. Harlen could smell the dirty-towel scent of her. "It.ain't really Tubby. Tubby's dead. It's just his body that they're usin' somehow. He's tryin' to get me. "Cause of what I did to Roon."

  "What'd you do to Dr. Roon?" asked Harlen. The.38 was a cold weight against his stomach. While the shotgun was open, he'd seen that there were two brass circles showing. Cordie was carrying it around loaded. And she was crazy. He wondered if he could get the pistol out in time if she snapped the shotgun shut and started to aim it at him.

  "I shot him," Cordie said in the same flat tones. "Didn't kill him though. Wish't I had."

  "You shot Dr. Roon? Our principal?"

  "Yep." Suddenly she reached over, tugged up his t-shirt, and pulled out the pistol. Harlen was too surprised to stop her. "Goddamn, where'd you get this little thing?" She held it close, almost sniffing the cylinder.

  "My dad…" managed Harlen.

  "I had me an uncle'd had one of these. Little snub-nosed thing ain't worth shit over twenty feet or so," she said, still holding the shotgun in the crook of her left arm and pivoting to aim the pistol at the row of bottles. "Kapow," she said. She handed it back, butt first. "I wasn't kiddin' about not puttin' it in your pants like that," she said. "My uncle, he almost blew his weenie off once't when he stuck it in there when he was drunk and it was still cocked. Keep it in your back pocket and tug your shirt down."

  Harlen did so. It was bulky and clumsy, but he could get at it quickly if he had to. "Why'd you shoot at Dr. Roon?"

  "A few days ago," she said. "Right after the night Tubby come after me. I knew Roon'd sicced him on me."

  "Not when;" said Harlen. "Why."

  Cordie shook her head as if he were the slowest thing in the world." "Cause he killed my brother and sent that body-thing after me," she said patiently. "Something damn strange is goin' on this summer. Mama knows it. Pap does too, but he ain't hanging around to pay attention."

  "You didn't kill him?" said Harlen. The woods were suddenly dark and ominous around them.

  "Kill who?"

  "Roon."

  "Naw." She sighed. "I was too goddamn faraway. Pellets just tore the shit out of the side of his old Plymouth and hurt him a mite in the arm. Maybe I got him some in the ass, too, but I ain't sure."

  "Where?"

  "In the arm and the ass," she repeated, exasperated.

  "No, I mean whereabouts did you shoot at him? In town?"

  Cordie sat on the embankment. Her underpants were visible between skinny, pale thighs. Harlen had never thought he'd see a girl's underpants-on a girl-without being interested in the sight. He wasn't interested now. They were as gray as her socks. "If I shot him in town, shithead, don't you think I'd be in jail or somethin'?"

  Harlen nodded.

  "Uh-uh. I shot at him when he was out
to the tallow factory. Just got out of his goddamn car. I woulda got closer, but the woods stop about forty feet from the front door. He hopped… that's why I think I got him in the ass, I could see where the linin' on the arm of his suit was tore up… and then he jumped in that truck and took off with Van Syke. I think they seen me though."

  "What truck?" asked Harlen. He knew.

  "You know what truck," sighed Cordie. "The goddamn Renderin' Truck." She grabbed Harlen by the wrist and tugged hard. He went to his knees next to her on the railroad embankment. Somewhere in the woods a woodpecker started up. Harlen could hear a car or truck on Catton Road a quarter of a mile to the southeast.

  "Look," said Cordie, still hanging on to his wrist,"it don't take much in the way of brains to know that you seen something in Old Central. That's why you fell an' busted yourself up. And maybe you seen somethin' else, too."

  Harlen shook his head but she ignored him.

  "They killed your friend, too," she said. "Duane. I don't know how they done it, but I know it was them." She looked away then and a strange, vague look came over her face. "It's funny, I been in Duane McBride's class since we was all in kindergarten together, but I don't know if he ever said anything to me. I always thought he was real nice though. Always thinkin', but I didn't hold that against him. I useta imagine that maybe him and me would go for a walk someday, just talkin' about stuff and…" Her eyes focused and she looked down at Harlen's wrist. Released it. "Listen, you're not out here shootin' your daddy's gun 'cause you're tired of beatin' your weenie and you need some fresh air. You're scared shitless. An' I know what scared you."

  Harlen took a deep breath. "OK," he said, voice rasping. "What do we do about it?"

  Cordie Cooke nodded as if it was about time. "We get your buddies," she said. "All of them what's seen some of this stuff. We get 'em together and we go after Roon and the others-the dead ones and live ones. All of them that're after us."

  "And then what?" Harlen was leaning so close that he could see the fine hairs on Cordie's upper lip.

  "Then we kill the live ones," said Cordie and smiled, showing her gray teeth. "Kill the live ones, and the dead ones… well, we'll think of something." Suddenly she reached over and put her hand on Harlen's crotch, squeezing him through his jeans.