Mike slid to a stop at the intersection of Depot and Second Avenue, the schoolyard an entire block of darkness behind them.
"Tomorrow?" he said.
"Yeah," said Dale.
"Yeah," said Lawrence.
Mike nodded and was gone.
Dale and Lawrence put their bikes around back on the small open porch. They could see their mother moving around in the lighted kitchen. She was baking something and her face was flushed.
"Listen," said Lawrence, grabbing his older brother's hand.
Across the street, in the darkness around Old Central, there was a sibilant rush as of voices speaking hurriedly in an adjoining room.
"It's just a TV somewhere…" began Dale, but then he heard the sound of breaking glass, a shout quickly stifled.
They stood there another minute but a wind had come up and the leaves rustling in the broad oak over the drive drowned any further sound.
"Come on," said Dale, still holding his brother's hand.
They went into the light.
FOUR
Duane McBride waited in Bandstand Park until the Old Man got drunk enough to be thrown out of Carl's Tavern. It was past eight-thirty when the Old Man came staggering out, stood weaving on the curb, shook his fist and shouted curses at Dom Steagle, the owner of Carl's (there had been no Carl since 1943), and then tumbled into the pickup, cursing as he dropped his keys on the floor, cursing again as he found them, ground the starter, and flooded the engine. Duane hurried. He knew that the Old Man was drunk enough to forget that Duane had ridden with him when they had come into town almost ten hours earlier 'to pick up a few things at the coop."
"Duanie," said the Old Man, squinting at his son. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Duane said nothing, letting the Old Man's memory work.
"Oh, yeah," the Old Man said at last,"did you see your friends?"
"Yeah, Dad." Duane had left Dale and the others in late afternoon when they'd gone over to the city ballpark to play a pickup game. There had been a chance that the Old Man would stay sober enough to head home before Dom threw him out.
"Hop in, kiddo." The Old Man was enunciating with the precise care and south Boston accent that came out only when he was seriously drunk.
"No thanks, Dad. I'll ride in the back if that's OK."
The Old Man shrugged, ground the starter again, and got the heap started. Duane jumped into the back next to the tractor parts they'd picked up that morning. He stuck his notebook and pencil in his shirt pocket and crouched low on the metal truckbed, peering over the side, hoping that the Old Man wouldn't rack up this new GM junker the way he had the last two used trucks they'd owned.
Duane saw Dale and the others riding down Main in the dim light, but he didn't think they'd seen this vehicle before so he lay low in the truckbed while the Old Man weaved past. Duane heard the shouted "Lights!" but the Old Man ignored them or hadn't heard. The truck screeched around the corner on First Avenue and Duane sat up in time to see the old brick home on the east side-the Slave House the town kids called it although most didn't know why.
Duane knew why. It was the old Thompson place and it had been a way station on the Underground Railroad in the 1850s. Duane had become interested in the slave escape route when he was in third grade and had done some research in the city library over in Oak Hill. Besides the Thompson place, there had been two other Underground Railroad way stations in Creve Coeur County… one, an old frame farmhouse belonging to a Quaker family in the Spoon River valley toward Peoria, had burned down before the Second World War. But the other one had belonged to the family of a kid in Duane's third-grade class and one Saturday Duane had ridden his bike there-eight and a half miles each way-just to see the place. Duane had shown the kid and his family where the hidden room was behind the closet under the stairway. And then he had pedaled home. The Old Man hadn't been drinking that Saturday and Duane had avoided a beating.
They roared past Mike O'Rourke's place, out past the city ballpark north of town, and turned east at the water tower. Duane shifted around in the truckbed as they hit gravel. He hunkered down and closed his eyes as gravel flew and dust surrounded him, tickling his neck under his heavy plaid shirt, settling in his hair and between his teeth.
The Old Man didn't run off the road, although he almost missed the turnoff to County Road Six. The truck braked, skidded, tipped, righted itself, and then they were pulling nto the crowded parking lot of the Black Tree Tavern.
"I'll be just a minute, Duanie." The Old Man slapped at Juane's arm. "Just stop in to say hi to the boys before we head home to work on the tractor."
"OK, Dad." Duane settled lower into the pickup bed, propped his head against the back of the cab, and pulled out his worn notebook and pencil. It was full dark now, the stars were visible beyond the trees behind the Black Tree, but enough yellow light spilled through the screen door to allow Duane to read if he squinted.
The notebook was thick, warped with sweat and smeared with dust, and the pages were almost filled with Duane's tiny script. There were almost fifty similar notebooks in the secret hiding place in his basement room at home.
Duane McBride had known that he wanted to be a writer since he was six years old. Duane's reading-he had read complete books since he was four years old-had always been another world for him. Not an escape, since he rarely sought escape… writers had to confront the world if they were going to observe it accurately… but another world nonetheless. One filled with powerful voices relaying even more powerful thoughts.
Duane would always love the Old Man for sharing books and the love of reading with him. Duane's mother had died before he was old enough to really know her, and the intervening years had been rough, what with the farm going to hell and the Old Man's drinking, the occasional beatings and even more occasional abandonments, but there were good times too-the normal flow of days when the Old Man was on the wagon, the easy cycle of hard work in the summers even if they couldn't keep up, the long evenings with the two of them talking to Uncle Art… three bachelors cooking steaks in the backyard and talking about everything under the stars, including the stars.
Duane's old man had dropped out of Harvard but gotten his master's in engineering at the University of Illinois before coming back to run his mother's farm. Uncle Art had been a traveler and poet-merchant marine one year, teaching at private schools in Panama or Uruguay or Orlando the next. Even when they drank too much, their talk was interesting to the third bachelor in the circle, young Duane, and he drank in information with the insatiable appetite of the terminally gifted.
No one in Elm Haven or in the Creve Coeur County school system thought of Duane McBride as gifted. The term simply did not exist in 1960 rural Illinois. He was fat. He was odd.
The teachers often had described him-in written comments and the rare parent-teacher conferences-as unkempt, unmo-tivated, and inattentive. But not a discipline problem. Merely a disappointment. Duane did not apply himself.
When confronted by his teachers, Duane would apologize, smile, and amble on with whatever private thoughts and projects were possessing him at the time. School was not a problem, not even a hindrance really since he liked the idea of school… it was merely a distraction from his studies and his preparation for becoming a writer.
Or it would have been merely a distraction if there hadn't been something about Old Central that bothered him. Not the kids so much. Not even the principal and teachers, slow-witted and provincial as they seemed. There was something else.
Duane squinted in the dim light and flipped his notebook back a few pages to yesterday, the final day of school: "Others don't seem to notice the smell here, or if they do, they don't talk about it: a smell of coldness, meat-locker taint, faint hint of corruption like the time the heifer died down behind the south pond and the Old Man and I didn't find it for a week.
"Light is odd in Old Central. Thick. The time the Old Man took me to the abandoned hotel in Davenport when he was going to salvage all that
stuff and make a fortune. Thick light. Filtered through dust and thick drapes and memories of former glory. Same musty, hopeless smell too. Remember shafts of light from a high window to the parquet floor in that abandoned ballroom-like the stained-glass windows above the stairways in Old Central?
"No. More a sense of… foreboding? Evil? Too melodramatic. A sense of awareness to both places. That and the sound of rats scurrying in the walls. Wonder why no one else talks about the sound of the rats in Old Central. Wouldn't think the county health people would be too thrilled with an elementary school with rats, rat droppings everywhere, rats running on top of the pipes down in the basement where the restrooms are. I remember when I was in second grade in Old Central and I went down there…"
Duane skipped ahead to the notes he had made that afternoon in Bandstand Park.
"Dale, Lawrence (never Larry), Mike, Kevin, and Jim. How to describe peas in a pod?
"Dale, Lawrence, Mike, Kevin, and Jim. (How come everybody calls Jim "Harlen'? You get the feeling even his mom does. Course she's not even a Harlen anymore. Took her old name back when she got divorced. Who else do I know in E.H. who got divorced? Nobody if you don't count Uncle Art's wife who I never met and who he probably doesn't even remember because she was Chinese and the marriage only lasted two days, twenty-two years before I was born.)
"Dale, Lawrence, Mike, Kevin, and Jim.
"How to compare peas in a pod? Haircuts: Dale's got the basic Elm Haven crew cut-old Friers does it in his spooky barbershop (barber pole = guild sign. Blood spiraling down. Maybe they were vampires in the Middle Ages). But Dale's crew cut is a little longer in front-hair almost long enough to make bangs. Dale doesn't pay attention to his hair. (Except that time his mom cut it when we were in third grade and left those chunks and gashes… little archipelago of bald spots… then Dale kept his Cub Scout cap on, even in class.)"
"Lawrence's hair is shorter, stuck up in front with butch wax. Goes with his glasses and buck teeth. Make a skinny face skinnier. Wonder what haircuts'11 look like in the future? Say, 1975? One thing's for sure-won't look like the science fiction movies where the actors've got today's look with shiny clothes and skullcaps on. Maybe long hair? Like in T. Jefferson's day? Or greased down and parted in the middle like the way the Old Man looks in his old Harvard photos? One thing's for sure, we'll all look back at our photos from now and think we look like geeks."
Duane paused, took his glasses off, and thought about the origins of the word 'geek." He knew it meant the guy in the circus sideshow who bit the heads off chickens… Uncle Art had told him that and Art was reliable with words… but what was the etymology?
Duane cut his own hair. When he remembered. It was long on top… much longer than common for a boy in 1960… but cut quite short over the ears. He did not comb it. Now it felt grimy-the dusty ride from Elm Haven. Duane opened the notebook again.
"Mike: same crewcut-type haircut, probably from his mom or one of his sisters since they don't have enough money for barber, but somehow it looks better on O'Rourke. Longer in front but not sticking up, not bangs either. Never noticed but Mike has eyelashes as long as a girl's. His eyes are strange-so gray-blue you notice them from far away. His sisters would probably kill to have eyes like that. But he's not sissified, effeminate (sp.?)… just handsome in a way. Sort of like Senator Kennedy only not like him at all, if that makes sense. (Don't like it when Mailer or somebody describes a character as looking like an actor or something. Lazy.)
"Kevin Grumbacher's hair sort of leaps straight up, like curry comb above a rabbit's face. Goes with his prominent Adam's apple and freckles and nervous grin and general air of anxious consternation. Always waiting for his mommy to call him home.
"Jim's hair-Harlen's hair-not really a crew cut, although it's short. Sort of a squarish face with a wisp of hair on top. Jim Harlen reminds me of that actor we saw in the Free Show last summer, in the movie Mr. Roberts, the fellow who played Ensign Pulver. Jack Lemmon. (Oops, here you go again. Just describe characters in your books as looking like movie stars; it'll help the casting when they sell to H'wood.) But Harlen does look like the Ensign Pulver guy. Same mouth. Same nervous, funny mannerisms. Same tense, sarcastic chatter. Same haircut? Who cares.
"O'Rourke's sort of calm, a leader, the way Henry Fonda was in that movie. Maybe Jim Harlen's just acting out his character from that film, too. Maybe we're all imitating characters we saw at the Free Show last summer and we don't know…"
Duane closed the notebook, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He was tired although he'd done no work that day. And hungry. He tried to remember what he'd fixed for breakfast, gave it up. When the others had scattered for lunch, Duane had stayed in the chickenhouse, making notes, thinking.
Duane was tired of thinking.
He jumped down from the pickup and walked to the edge of the woods. Fireflies winked against the blackness. Duane could hear the frogs and cicadas calling from around the creek in the ravine below him. The hillside behind Black Tree Tavern was littered with garbage and junk, black shapes against the blacker background, and Duane unzipped and urinated into the darkness, hearing the patter fall on something metallic below. Heavy laughter came through a lighted window and Duane could pick out the Old Man's voice, rising above the others, getting ready to hit them with the punch line to the story.
Duane loved the Old Man's stories, but not when he was drinking. The usually humorous tales turned mean and dark, edged with cynicism. Duane knew that the Old Man thought of himself as a failure. Failed Harvard man, failed engineer, failed farmer, failed inventor, failed get-rich-quick businessman, failed husband, failed father. Duane generally agreed with the Old Man's assessment although he thought that the jury might still be out on the last charge.
Duane went back to the pickup and climbed into the cab, keeping the door open to let the whiskey smell out. He knew that whatever bartender was working tonight would toss the Old Man out just before he got violent. And he knew that he'd get the Old Man into the back of the pickup so he wouldn't struggle or grab the wheel, and then he-Duane, eleven years old last March, a C student with an IQ of 160 + according to Uncle Art, who'd dragged him up to the U. of I. two winters ago to be tested for God knows what reason-then he would drive the Old Man home, put him to bed, make supper, and go out to the barn to see if the parts fit in the John Deere.
Later, much later, Duane was awakened by a whispering in his ear.
Even half asleep he knew that he was home-he'd driven the Old Man over the two hills, past the cemetery and Dale's Uncle Henry's place, then out County Six to the farm; he'd planted the Old Man snoring in his bed and set in the new distributor before coming in to cook some hamburger-but he was surprised that he'd gone to sleep with the radio receiver still whispering in his ear.
Duane slept in the basement, in a corner he'd partitioned off with a hanging quilt and some crates. It wasn't as pathetic as it sounded. The second floor was too cold and empty in the winter and the Old Man had given up sleeping in the bedroom he had shared with Duane's mother. So now the Old Man slept on the daybed in the parlor and Duane had his basement; it was warm down there near the furnace, even when the winds blew across stubbled fields in the cold belly of winter, there was a shower there and only a tub on the second floor, and Duane had brought down a bed, a dresser, his lab and darkroom stuff, his workbench, and his electronics.
Duane had listened to the radio late at night since he was three years old. The Old Man used to, but had given it up some years before.
Duane had crystal sets and store-bought receivers, Heath kits and rebuilt consoles, shortwave and even a new transistor model. Uncle Art had suggested that Duane get into ham radio, but Duane wasn't interested. He didn't want to send, he wanted to listen.
And listen he did, late at night in the shadows of his basement with antenna wire strung everywhere, running up conduits and out windows. Duane listened to Peoria stations, and Des Moines, and Chicago, and the big stations from Cleveland and Kansas C
ity, of course, but he most enjoyed the distant stations, the whispers from North Carolina and Arkansas and Toledo and Toronto, and occasionally, when the ion layer was right and the sunspots quiet, the babble in Spanish or slow Alabama tones almost as foreign, or the call letters of a California station or a Quebec call-in show. Duane listened to sports, closing his eyes in the Illinois darkness and imagining the floodlit ballfields where the grass was as green as arterial blood was red, and he listened to music-he liked classical, loved Big Band, but lived for jazz-but most of all, Duane listened for the call-in talk shows where patient, unseen hosts waited for useless listeners to call in with their rambling but fervent comments.
Sometimes Duane imagined that he was the single crewman on a receding starship, already light-years from Earth, unable to turn around, doomed never to return, unable even to reach his destination in a human lifetime, but still connected by this expanding arc of electromagnetic radiation, rising now through the onionlike layers of old radio shows, traveling back in time as he traveled forward in space, listening to voices whose owners had long since died, moving back toward Marconi and then silence.
Someone was whispering his name.
Duane sat up in the darkness and realized that his earphones were still in place. He had been testing the new Heath kit before falling asleep.
The voice came again. It was probably feminine but seemed oddly sexless. The tone was made tenuous by distance but was as clear as the stars he had seen on his way in from the barn at midnight.
She… it… was calling his name.
"Duane… Duane… we're coming for you, my dear."
Duane sat up on his bed, clamped the earphones tighter. The voice didn't seem to be coming through the earphones. It seemed to be coming from under his bed, from the darkness above the heating pipes, from the cinderblock walls.
"We will come, Duane, my dear. We will come soon."
No one called Duane 'my dear." Not even in jest. He had no idea if his mother had when she was alive. Duane ran his hand down the earphone cord, found the cold jack on his blankets where he had pulled it free after turning off the receiver.