Summer of Night

  "I thought it was winter when this happened," said Dale. "January."

  Mr. Ashley-Montague shrugged. "A warm spell," he said. "Possibly… quite probably… the accused man broke through the surface of ice. Midwinter thaws are quite common around here."

  Dale had nothing to say about that. "Could we borrow the county history that Dr. Priestmann wrote?"

  Mr. Ashley-Montague showed what he thought of such a presumptuous request, but he folded his arms and said, "And then will you allow me to get back to work?"

  "Sure," said Dale. He wondered what Mike would say when he reported on such a fruitless conversation. And now Congden's gonna kill me… for what?

  "Wait here," said the millionaire and went up the steep ladder to the library balcony. He peered through his thick glasses at the titles, moving slowly down the row.

  Dale wandered under the balcony overhang, looking at the row of books at eye level closest to the millionaire's desk. Dale liked to keep his favorite books in places where he could get to them easily; maybe millionaires thought the same way.

  "Where are you?" called the voice from above.

  "Just lookin' out the window," replied Dale while he was scanning the rows of ancient, leatherbound volumes. Many of the titles were in Latin. Few of the English titles made any sense to him. The old book dust in the air here made him want to sneeze.

  "I'm not sure I have… ah… here it is," said Mr. Ashley-Montague on the balcony above. Dale heard the sound of a heavy volume being slid out.

  Dale's finger was tapping across the book spines; otherwise he wouldn't have noticed that one small book was pulled out farther than the rest. He could not read the embossed symbols on the spine, but when he pulled it out, there was an English subtitle under the same symbols on the cover: The Book of the Law. Under the title, in gold script, were the words-Scire, Audere, Velle, Tacere. Dale knew that Duane McBride had been able to read Latin easily-and some Greek-and he wished that his friend were there.

  "Yes, this is it," came the voice from directly above Dale. Footsteps moved along the balcony toward the ladder.

  Dale pulled the book all the way out, saw several small, white bookmarks among the pages, and-in an instant of pure bravado-stuck the small volume in the waistband of his jeans in back, tugging his t-shirt loose to hide it.

  "Young man?" said Mr. Ashley-Montague, his polished black shoes and gray trousers becoming visible on the ladder three feet from Dale's head.

  Dale quickly loosened the other volumes so that the gap where the book had been did not seem so visible, took three quick steps toward the window, and half-turned toward the descending man, keeping his back to the wall and staring out the wide window as if enraptured by the scenery.

  Mr. Ashley-Montague was puffing slightly as he crossed the carpet and offered the historical volume. "Here. This book of notes and almost random photographs is the only thing Dr. Priestmann had sent to me. I have no idea what you think you will find in it… there is nothing there about the bell or the sad incident of the accused Negro… but you are welcome to take it home and peruse it if you promise to return it through the post… in as good a condition as you find it here."

  "Sure," said Dale, accepting the heavy book and feeling the smaller volume settle lower into the seat of his jeans. The outline of it must be visible now below the line of his t-shirt. "I'm sorry if I bothered you."

  Mr. Ashley-Montague nodded curtly and returned to his desk as Dale circled slowly, trying to keep his front to the man while not making that too obvious. "You can find your way out, of course," said Mr. Ashley-Montague, already going through the notes on his desk.

  "Well…" said Dale, thinking of how he'd have to turn to leave the room and Mr. A.-M. would look up and… was it grand larceny to steal an expensive book? He guessed it depended on the book." "Actually, no sir," said Dale. There was a bell on the corner of the man's desk, and Dale was sure that he would ring it and the skinny butler would come in to show him out, and then both men would see the suddenly square seat to his jeans. Maybe he could use the butler's entrance as a distraction to hitch up his pants without being seen, pull his shirt looser…

  "Come this way," said Mr. Ashley-Montague in an exasperated voice. He led the way out of the study at a fast pace. Dale hurried to keep up, glancing at the huge rooms as they passed through them, hugging the Priestmann volume to his chest and feeling the smaller book sink lower into the seat of his jeans. The top of it must be poking up at his shirt now, quite visible.

  They were almost to the foyer when the sound of a television set in a small room off the main hall made both Mr. A.-M. and Dale turn. A crowd was roaring on the screen of the TV, someone was giving a speech and the echoes filled a huge hall. Mr. Ashley-Montague paused to look for an instant and Dale slipped by him, swiveling to keep his front toward the man, hanging on to the history volume with one hand while the other fumbled for the doorknob. The butler's footsteps echoed on a tile corridor.

  Dale could have slipped out then, but what he saw on television made him pause and stare with Mr. Ashley-Montague. David Brinkley was saying, in his strange, clipped voice, "And so, the Democrats have chosen to give us… this year… what must certainly be… the strongest Civil Rights plank in the history… of the Democratic Party… wouldn't you say… Chet?"

  Chet Huntley's woeful visage filled the small black-and-white screen. "I'd say without a doubt, David. But the interesting thing in this floor fight is…"

  But what had compelled Dale's attention was not the newscasters speaking, nor the crowds the camera kept cutting to, but the man's picture on many of the hundreds of posters that were rising and bobbing above that red-white-and-blue crowd like flotsam on a political sea. The words on the signs said ALL THE WAY WITH JFK and, simply, KENNEDY IN '60. The poster picture was of a handsome man with very white teeth and a full head of chestnut hair.

  Mr. Ashley-Montague shook his head and made a snorting noise as if witnessing something or someone beneath contempt. The butler had come up to stand beside his master as the millionaire returned his attention to the boy. "I hope you have no more questions," he said as Dale backed out the door and stood on the broad stoop. Jim Harlen shouted something from the backseat of the car thirty feet away on the wide driveway.

  "Just one," said Dale, almost falling down the stairs, squinting in the sunlight and using the conversation as a reason to keep backing away from the two men at the door. "What's on the Free Show this Saturday?"

  Mr. Ashley-Montague rolled his eyes but glanced at his butler.

  "A Vincent Price film, I believe, sir," said the man. "A motion picture called The House of Usher."

  "Great," shouted Dale. He had backed almost to the black Chevy now. "Thanks again!" he called as Harlen opened the door behind him and he jumped in. "Go," he said to Congden.

  The teenager sneered, nicked a cigarette into the manicured grass, and floored the accelerator, half-skidding around the long turn of drive. He was doing fifty miles an hour as they approached the heavy gates.

  The black iron opened in front of them.

  Mike did not want to stay down there any longer. The half-gloom under the bandstand, the smell of raw earth and the heavier scent of Mink himself, even the progression of diamond-shaped nodes of light across the dark soil-all conspired to give Mike a terrible sense of claustrophobia and gloom, as if he and the old drunk were lying together in a roomy coffin, waiting for the men with spades to arrive. But Mink had not finished either an extra bottle he had found under his newspapers or his story.

  "That woulda been the end of it," Mink was saying,"the hanging of the nigger an' all, but it turned out that nothin' was quite the way it seemed.” He drank deeply from his wine bottle, coughed, wiped his chin, and stared at Mike with great intensity. His eyes were very red. "That next summer, some more kids up and disappeared…"

  Mike sat up very straight. He could hear a truck passing on the Hard Road, little kids playing in the shade near the War Monument at the front of the pa
rk, and farmers chatting across the street at the John Deere dealership, but all of his attention was on Mink Harper at that moment.

  Mink took a drink and smiled as if he were very aware of Mike's riveted attention. The smile was quick and furtive; Mink had about three teeth left and none of them were worth exhibiting for any length of time. "Yep," he said,"that next summer… summer of nineteen hundred… couple more li'l kids got disappeared. One of them was Merriweather Whittaker, my ol' pal. The grown-ups, they said that no one never found him, but a couple years later I was out by Gypsy Lane-must've been more'n a couple years 'cause I was out there with a girl, tryin' to get into her pants, if y' know what I mean. In those days, girls didn't wear no pants except their underwear so the meanin' was clear, if you get my drift." Mink took another drink, wiped his dirty brow with a dirty hand, and frowned. "Where was I?"

  "You were out by Gypsy Lane," whispered Mike. He was thinking It's weird that the kids then knew about Gypsy Lane.

  "Oh, yeah. Well, the young lady friend I was with didn't care none for what I had in mind-goddamned if I know why she thought I'd got her out there, sure as hell wasn't to smell the gladiolas… but she left in a huff to find her friend… we was supposed to be havin' a picnic as I remember… and I was sorta pullin' up grass and throwin' sod at a tree, you know how it is when your John Henry's all worked up an' don't have nothin' to do with it… an' I pulled this hunk a grass outa the ground and there was a bone-goddamned white bone-rather'n a root. Bunch a goddamn bones. Human bones, too… including a little skull about Merri-weather's size. Damn thing'd been caved in an' sort a hollered out, like someone was scoopin' brains out of it for a dessert, sorta."

  Mink took a final drink and flung the bottle across the dark space. He rubbed his cheeks as if he'd lost track of his story again. When he spoke it was in lower tones, in an almost confidential manner. "Sheriff told me it was cow bones… shee-it, as if I didn't know the difference between cow bones and human bones… he tried to pretend I hadn't seen me the skull and such my ownself… but I did, an' I know that that ol' part of Gypsy Lane ran through the back of Old Man Lewis's spread. Wouldna been hard for someone to take Merriweather out there, do whatever they done to him, and then bury his bones in a shallow grave there.

  "More'n that… more'n Merriweather's goddamn bones… a few years after that, I was drinkin' with Billy Phillips before he went off to the war…"

  "William Campbell Phillips?" said Mike.

  Mink Harper blinked at him. "Sure, William Campbell Phillips… who'd'ya think Billy Phillips was? Cousin to the little Campbell girl who got herself killed. Billy was always a whinin' little toad… always moppin' his runny nose and figurin' out a way to get out of work or runnin' to his mommy when he got in trouble… I can tell you I almost dropped my teeth when he up and enlisted during the war… Where was I, boy?"

  "You were drinking with Billy Phillips." "Oh, yeah, me and Billy was liftin' a few right before he went overseas durin' the Great War. Normally, Billy wouldn't drink with us workin' types… he was a teacher…just taught those snot-nosed little kids down to the school, but to hear Billy tell he was a Harvard professor… anyway, him and me was in the Black Tree one night, him in his uniform an' all, and after a few drinks, snotty Billy Phillips got almost human on me. Started talkin' about what a bitch his ma was and how she'd kept him from havin' any fun… how she sent him away to college an' all rather'n let him marry the woman he loved…"

  Mike interrupted. "Did he say who that woman was?" Mink squinted and licked his lips. "Huh? No… I don't think… no, I'm sure he didn't name nobody… probably one of them schoolmarm types he hung around with. One little old lady 'mongst a bunch of 'em's the way we thought about Billy Phillips. Where was I?"

  "Having a drink with Billy… he got human…" "OK, yeah. Me an' Billy was hoistin' a few on the night before he was to go over to France where he got killed… died of pneumonia or some damn thing… and after he got sort of loose, he says to me, "Mink…," they called me Mink way back then, "Mink, you know that little girl an' her petticoat an' the alleged crime an' all?" Billy was always usin' fifty-cent words like 'alleged," probably thinkin' that everybody in Elm Haven was too stupid to understand him…"

  "And what did he say about the petticoat?" prompted Mike.

  "Heh? Oh, he says, "Mink, it wasn't that nigger's petticoat at all. I never went nowhere near that nigger. It was Judge Ashley who paid me a silver dollar to hide that petticoat in the nigger's bedroll." You see, the way Billy'd figured it when he was just a little snot, was that the Judge knew who'd done it, and needed Billy's help to get him,"cause they just didn't have no evidence an' all. But I guess when Billy got older, after goin' off to college to get smart an' all, he musta figured what the dumbest Polack in town could figure out… which is, namely, where in hell did the Judge get that little girl's underclothes?"

  Mike leaned closer. "Did you ask him that?"

  "Hmmm? No, don't think I did. Or if I did, I don't remember no answer. What I do remember is Billy sayin' somethin' about gettin' out of town before the Judge an' the others knew he wasn't with 'em no more."

  "With who?" whispered Mike.

  "How the hell do I know, boy?" growled Mink Harper. He leaned closer, squinted, and breathed wine fumes on Mike. "This was more'n forty years ago, y' know. What'ya think I am, a damn memory machine?"

  Mike looked over his shoulder at the entrance to the crawl-space under the bandstand, a small rectangle of escape that seemed very far away. The sound of smaller kids playing in the park had long since faded; there was no traffic.

  "Can you remember anything else about Old Central or the bell?" asked Mike, not flinching away from Mink's inspection.

  Face inches from Mike's, Mink showed his three teeth again. "Never seen or heard the bell again… not till last month when it woke me up from a deep sleep here in my dry little home… but I know one thing…"

  "What's that?" Mike found it very hard not to lean back out of the range of Mink's breath and stare.

  "I know that when Old Man Ashley stuck his two-barreled Boss shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger 'bout a year after the war was over… the First War, I mean… that he done us all a favor. Burned down his goddamn house, too. His boy came home from Peoria where the old man's new grandbaby was just born, and he found his pappy… the Judge that was… lyin' dead with his brains bio wed out. Everybody thinks it was either a accident or the ol' Judge who burned the place… wasn't… I happened to be out in the gardenin' shed with one of the servants when I seen the young Mr. Ashley's carriage comin'-he called himself Ashley-Montague after he married that fancy woman from Venice-yeah, I was in the gardenin' shed when we heard the shot and saw Mr. Ashley-Montague go in, then come out bawlin' and shoutin' at the sky and spreadin' kerosene oil everywhere on the big house. One of the servants tried to stop him… there'd been more of 'em at the house but they'd been laid off during that recession after the war… but there was no stoppin' him. He threw that oil everywhere an' lit it up and stood back to watch it burn. They never come home after that, him and his bride and the baby. Jes' to show the goddamn Free Show, that's all."

  Mike nodded, thanked Mink, and scrambled for the opening, suddenly eager to get back out into the sunlight. At the exit, his body out into the fresh air, Mike asked one more question. "Mink, what did he shout?"

  "Whaddya mean, boy?" the old man seemed to have forgotten what they had been talking about.

  "The Judge's son. When he burned the place down. What was he shouting?"

  Mink's three teeth gleamed yellowly in the dimness. "Oh, he was shoutin' that they wasn't gonna get him… no, by God, they wasn't gonna get him."

  Mike let out a breath. "I don't suppose he said who 'they' were?"

  Mink frowned, pursed his lips in a parody of deep thought, and then grinned again. "Yeah, he did, now that I 'member it. Called the guy by name." "Guy?"

  "Yeah… Cyrus, only pronounced like that flat cloud… cirrus. He kept saying "No, O'Cyrus, y
ou ain't gonna get me." The way he said it, I thought maybe it was some Irishman's name. O'Cirrus."

  "Thanks, Mink." Mike stood up, feeling his shirt plastered to his body, wiping a bead of perspiration from his nose. His hair was wet and his legs felt shaky for some reason. He found his bike, crossed the Hard Road, noticed how long the shadows were getting, and pedaled slowly up Broad under the canopy of arching branches. He was remembering Duane's notebooks and the slow translation he and Dale had done from the Gregg shorthand. The part where Duane had copied bits from his uncle's diary was especially tough. One word had sent them checking the squiggles and codes over and over again; Dale had recognized it from some book he'd read about Egypt: Osiris.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Dale, Lawrence, Kevin, and Harlen left on their camping trip after lunch the next day, Wednesday the thirteenth of July. Only Harlen's mother had been slow to give permission for the trip, but she relented, as Harlen put it,"when she realized she could go out on a date while I was gone."

  They had a ton of stuff to carry and it was difficult piling it on their bikes and tying it down, properly. Once secured, the heaps of sleeping bags, food, gear, and backpacks weighed down their already heavy bicycles so they had to pedal standing up the entire way out to Uncle Henry's, leaning over the handlebars and grunting with exertion on the hard-packed ruts between the loose gravel on Jubilee College Road and County Six.

  There were patches of timber-of a sort-along the railroad tracks northwest of town, but those woods were small and too near the dump for real camping. The real woods were a mile and a half away, east of Uncle Henry's farm and north of the Billy Goat Mountains quarry behind the cemetery. Near where Mink Harper had found the bones of Merriweather Whittaker along Gypsy Lane almost fifty years earlier.