Summer of Night

  "Want what?" Mike had his arms folded and was looking toward the street.

  "The radios," said Harlen, exasperated. "You want 'em, I'll have 'em for you by tomorrow. Just say the word."

  "Word," said Mike.

  Harlen bent low, salaamed again, and backed into the crowd, almost knocking over a seven-year-old preparing to launch a Jart.

  It was late, after nine, and Mike was ready to head home by himself if Dale and Kev weren't ready to leave, when Michelle Staffney came up to him while he was finishing his third hot dog.

  "Hi, Mike."

  Mike said something with his mouth full, pushed the last of the bun in, and tried again. It wasn't much more successful the second time.

  "I haven't seen you much lately," said the redhead. "You know… since we changed grades and all."

  "You mean since I flunked," managed Mike. He'd gotten most of the mouthful down without choking, but he wasn't going to smile for fear of stray bits of bun flying out.

  "Well, yes," Michelle said demurely. "I guess I miss our talks."

  "Yeah," said Mike, not having the faintest idea what talks she was talking about. They'd been in the same class from first grade through fourth-Mike's folks had kept him out of kindergarten-but he didn't remember talking to Michelle Staffney more than once or twice in all those years, and those 'talks' were on the order of a shouted "Hey, Michelle, throw the ball back, wouldja?" on the playground. "Yeah," he said again.

  "You know," she said, leaning closer and almost whispering,"those talks we used to have about religion."

  "Oh, yeah," said Mike, getting the last of the hot dog down and wishing desperately for a soft drink, a glass of water… anything liquid. He did remember talking to Michelle once in second grade-they'd been waiting for a turn on adjacent teeter-totters-and saying something about how weird it was being Catholic when most of the kids weren't. "Yeah," he said a fourth time, realizing that this particular bit of repartee might be getting a bit worn.

  Michelle looked beautiful tonight, although ravishing was the word that came to Mike's mind. She was wearing a green chiffon dress, sort of pooched out like a ballerina's whatchamacallit although not as short, and her long red hair was held back by a green hairband and one green ribbon. Her eyes were green. Her legs were very long. Mike noticed that she'd… well, changed… in the past few months, possibly during the six weeks since school let out. The upper part of her dress was… well, fuller… and her legs were different, and her hips were different, and when she lifted her bare arm to adjust the hairband just so, Mike noticed the tenderest stipple in the gentle curve of her armpit. Does she shave there? Like Peg and Mary? Does she shave her legs?

  Mike realized that Michelle had said something to him. "I'm sorry… what?"

  "I said, I'd like to talk to you a little later. Talk to you about something important."

  "Sure," said Mike. "When?" He figured perhaps August.

  "How about in thirty minutes. In the barn?" Michelle gestured toward the large structure with a graceful sweep of her hand.

  Mike turned, stared, blinked, and nodded as if he had never noticed the huge barn before. "Yeah," he said, mystified, but Michelle was already gone, moving gracefully away to mix with more of her guests. Maybe she's inviting everybody to the barn. Somehow, Mike didn't think so.

  He wandered back toward the barbecue pit, all thoughts of leaving early banished from his mind. His mom and the girls were up tonight, taking care of Memo. He wished Harlen had brought his bottle of whiskey or wine or whatever to the party rather than his dumb gun.

  "How about in thirty minutes? In the barn?" echoed through his skull as he tasted and tested the precise intonation, connected it with the exact motions. Like most of the boys in Elm Haven, Mike had had a crush on Michelle Staffney for… well, forever. But unlike most of the other boys, possibly because he'd flunked out of her grade and therefore, in his mind, out of her thoughts, he hadn't been fixated on the crush. It was easier ignoring Michelle when you only saw her on the playground or once in a while in church or at school when she was eating a baloney sandwich for lunch.

  Mike doubted if he would ignore her again soon. Poor Harlen, he thought with a pang of sympathy for his friend and his bow tie. Then he thought, Screw Harlen.

  Mike had no watch so he stayed near Kevin for the next thirty minutes, sometimes lifting his friend's wrist to check the time without asking. Once Mike noticed Donna Lou Perry and her friend Sandy in one of the clusters of kids on the front lawn and he had the impulse to go over and talk to her-give her the apology for the skins-and-shirts thing on the ball diamond last month-but Donna Lou was laughing and talking with her friends and Mike had only eight minutes left.

  The barn was beyond the limits of the party, and although the wide main doors were padlocked, there was a smaller door in the shadows under the large oak that towered over the driveway. Mike clicked open the latch and stepped in. "Michelle?" The place smelled of old wood and straw that had been heated by the warm day. Mike was about to call again when he realized that he was being teased: Michelle had no thought of talking to him in private-it was just another put-on like the way she must have tantalized poor dumb Harlen.

  And now poor dumb Mike, thought Mike, turning back to the door.

  "Up here," came Michelle Staffney's soft voice.

  At first Mike couldn't locate the source of that voice, but then the light from the strung bulbs outside, diffused as it was through dusty panes, illuminated a ladder rising between empty stalls to what must be a loft. The roof of the barn was lost in shadows thirty feet above.

  "Come on up, silly," called Michelle.

  Mike climbed, feeling the small vial of holy water in his pocket-a last-minute attempt to prepare for all eventualities before leaving home. Hi, is that a vial of holy water in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

  The loft was a dark litter of straw, but a soft light shone through a door in the north wall that partitioned the old barn from the newer addition of garage. Mike realized that the Staffneys had added a little room over the garage.

  Michelle leaned on the doorframe, smiling at him. The colored light through two little windows on the east and west side of the little room backlighted her and created a corona around her red hair. "Come on in," she said shyly, stepping back to let him through. "This is my secret place."

  "Hmmm," said Mike, stepping past her and feeling more aware of her warm presence there than of the little room under the eaves with its desk, dark lamp, and assortment of undersized chairs. An old sofa ran close under the bare boards of the eaves. "Sort of like a clubhouse, huh?" he said and mentally kicked himself. Idiot.

  Michelle smiled. She stepped close to him. "Do you know why this month is special, Mikey?"

  Mikey? "Uh, because it's your birthday?"

  "Well, yes," said Michelle, taking another step closer. Mike could smell the soap-and-shampoo cleanness of her. The pale skin of her arms looked slightly rose-colored from the glow of colored bulbs in the high branches outside. "A girl's twelfth birthday is important," she said, almost whispering,"but there are things that happen to a girl that are more important, if you know what I mean."

  "Sure," said Mike, almost whispering because she was so close. He had not the foggiest idea in the world what she was talking about.

  Michelle stepped back and put one finger to her lips, smiling slightly as if debating whether to tell him a secret. "Do you know that I've always liked you, Mikey?"

  "Uh…no," Mike said truthfully.

  "It's true. Ever since we used to play together in first grade. Remember when we used to play house out on the playground… you'd be the daddy and I'd be the mommy?"

  Mike vaguely remembered playing girls' games during part of first grade. He'd soon learned to stick on the boys' side of the playground. "Sure," he said with much more enthusiasm than he felt.

  Michelle half turned, pirouetting like a ballerina or something. "Do you like me, Mikey?"

  "Sure." What was he sup
posed to say-Uh-uh, you look like a toad? And truth be told, he liked her very much at that moment. He liked the way she looked and smelled and the soft sound of her voice and he liked the warm tension of being with her-so different than the cold, stomach-tensing nervousness of the rest of this mad summer… "Yeah," he said, "I like you."

  Michelle nodded as if he had said some magic word. She took two steps back, stopping near the window, and said, "Close your eyes."

  Mike hesitated only a second. With his eyes closed, he could smell the straw from the loft next door, a soft mixture of oil and concrete and fresh-cut pine from the garage below, and still-elusive but present-the scent of her shampoo and warm flesh.

  There was a soft rustling and Michelle whispered, "All right."

  Mike opened his eyes and felt as if someone had hit him solidly in the solar plexus.

  Michelle Staffney had slipped out of her party dress and stood before him only in a small white brassiere and simple white underpants. Mike felt as if he had never seen anything so clearly-her pale white shoulders with gold freckles on her arms and upper chest, the white curve of her small breasts above the line of elastic of her bra, her long hair flowing behind her, a corona of red light with the light flowing through it, the soft black curve of her eyelashes on her cheek as she blinked-Mike tried not to let his jaw drop as he took in the curve of her hip and the fullness of white thigh, the slender ankles with her short white socks still on…

  Michelle stepped closer and he could see the blush on her cheeks now and the flush of red on her neck. Her whisper was barely audible. "Mikey… I thought we could just… you know… look at each other." She moved closer, so close that he could have put his arms around her if his arms had been able to function. She touched his warm cheek with a cool hand.

  The warmth of her face came closer and Mike realized that she had whispered something to him.

  "What?" His voice was too loud.

  "I just said," she whispered,"that if you take off your shirt, I'll take off something else."

  Mike felt as if he were somewhere else, watching himself on television or on a movie screen as he tugged his shirt over his head, dropped it on the couch behind him. His arms did go around Michelle now as they turned slightly so that the light was behind him, the panes of the rear window six feet from his face. People were singing out on the lawn.

  "My turn," whispered Michelle. He was sure that she would take off her socks, but instead she put one hand behind her back and-in a motion that took Mike's breath away with its feminine alienness-somehow unhooked the brassiere. It fell to the floor between them.

  Mike could not stop himself from looking down, noticing as he did so that Michelle's eyes were either closed or almost so, the long coppery lashes fluttering against her cheek. Her breasts were pale, soft, the nipples not yet risen from the pink areolae that tipped them.

  Michelle put one forearm across her small breasts as if suddenly shy and leaned closer, raising her face to Mike's. With a rush of feeling so strong that Mike felt dizzy, he realized that she was going to kiss him, that he must kiss her back, and that his mouth and lips had gone as dry as sticks.

  She touched her lips to his, pulled her face back slightly as if to look at him quizzically, and kissed him again, sharing her moisture.

  Mike put his arms around her, felt his excitement growing, knew that she must feel it too, but did not move back. He thought of confession, of the darkness of the confessional with the priest's soft, interrogative voice. It was the same excitement he had known on his own, known as a solitary sin, but it was not the same at all-this warmth between them as they held each other, the kiss going on and on and on-the excitement he felt, his erection chafing against his Jockey shorts and jeans, the excitement Michelle returned to him through the softest motion of her hips and lower body-all this belonged in a different universe from the solitary imaginings and sins that Mike had confessed in the darkness. This was a new world of experience, and part of Mike's consciousness realized it even as that consciousness was submerged in sensation, even as they broke from the kiss for a second to gasp unromantically for air, then pressed their lips together again, Michelle's right hand on his chest now, palm sliding across him, and Mike's fingers pressing on the perfect curve of the small of her back, moving to feel her tiny shoulder blades.

  They dropped to their knees, somehow moved to their right to lie upon the sofa cushions, never breaking contact for a moment. When the kiss ended for a second, Mike felt Michelle's soft gasps in his right ear, and he marveled at how perfectly the curve of her cheek fit into the line between his jaw and neck. He could feel her pressing against him and he realized that nothing in his life had prepared him for the swirling thrill of that second.

  Mike tasted her hair on his lips, moved it aside with a gentle hand, and opened his eyes for a second.

  Less than six feet in front of him, staring in through the small paned windows set in the wall a sheer twenty feet above the alley behind the garage, Father Cavanaugh stared in with dead, white eyes.

  Mike gasped and pulled back, striking the arm of the sofa.

  Father Cavanaugh's pale face and black shoulders seemed to float outside the window. His mouth was open wide, hanging slack like a corpse's jaw which no one has thought to shut. Gibbets of brown drool trailed from his lips and chin. The priest's cheeks and forehead were pitted with what Mike first thought were scars or scabs, but then realized were perfectly round holes in the flesh, each at least an inch wide. The apparition's hair seemed to float around it in an electrified tangle. Black lips were pulled back from long teeth.

  Father Cavanaugh's eyes were open but blind, milky white, the eyelids fluttering as if in an epileptic fit.

  For a second Mike was sure that he was looking at the priest's corpse, that someone had tugged it into the trees with a wire around the neck, but then the jaw moved up and down, there came a sound like stones clacking in a small container, and then curled fingers clawed at the windowpane.

  Michelle heard the sound and pulled away, her arms going across her chest even as she looked over her shoulder.

  She must have caught a glimpse of something even as the dead face and black shoulders whisked out of sight as if being lowered on a hydraulic lift. Mike clamped his hand over the girl's mouth as she started to scream.

  "What?" she managed when he released the pressure on her.

  "Get dressed," whispered Mike, feeling a pulse pounding against his side but not knowing if it was hers or his. "Hurry"

  There was a second scraping against the rear window thirty seconds later, but they were both scrambling down the ladder from the loft, Mike going first into the darkness below, feeling the surge of sexual excitement fading even as the chemicals of terror replaced whatever hormones had controlled him a moment earlier.

  "What?" whispered Michelle as they paused by the door. She was straightening the straps of her party dress and crying softly.

  "Somebody was spying on us," whispered Mike. He looked around the barn walls for a weapon-a pitchfork, a shovel, anything-but the walls were bare except for some rotting leather tack.

  Impulsively, Mike leaned forward, kissed Michelle Staffney quickly but firmly, and then opened the door.

  No one noticed them returning from the shadows under the oak.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Dale was growing tired of the party and was about ready to leave on his own when he saw Mike and Michelle Staffney coming around the side of the house.

  Michelle's dad had been moving through the crowd for several minutes, asking kids if they'd seen his daughter. The doctor had a new Polaroid camera and wanted to take some pictures before the fireworks began.

  At one point Dale had gone through the kitchen and down the hall to use the bathroom-the one part of the interior of the house open to kids on this night of nights-and he passed a book-lined little room where a television set was flickering unattended. The TV set showed a mob of people under red, white, and blue banners. Dale had paid just enough at
tention to world events since visiting Ashley-Montague's place on Tuesday to know that tonight was the next-to-last night of the Democratic Convention. Dale stepped into the room long enough to get the gist of what Huntley and Brinkley were saying: Senator Kennedy was on the verge of being nominated as the Democrats' candidate for president. As Dale watched, a sweating man in a crowd shouted into the microphone: "Wyoming casts all fifteen votes for the next President of the United States!"

  The camera showed the number 763 superimposed. The crowd went insane. David Brinkley said, "Wyoming's put him over the top."

  Dale had just gone back outside when Mike and Michelle came out of the shadows of the backyard, Michelle picking up a flotilla of her girlfriends and running into the house, Mike looking around wildly.

  Dale went over to him. "Hey, you OK?" Mike didn't look OK. He was pale-even his lips were white-and there was a film of sweat on his brow and upper lip. His right hand was clenched in a fist and was shaking slightly.

  "Where's Harlen?" was all that Mike replied.

  Dale pointed to the cluster of kids where Harlen was holding forth on his terrible accident, telling all about how he'd been climbing on Old Central's roof on a dare when a gust of wind had sent him on a fifty-foot fall.

  Mike strode over and roughly pulled Harlen from the group.

  "Hey, what the shit…"

  "Give it to me," snapped Mike, using a tone that Dale had never heard from his friend before. He snapped his fingers in front of Harlen. "Hurry."

  "Give what…" began Jim, obviously ready to argue.

  Mike slapped Harlen's sling hard enough to make the smaller boy wince. He snapped his fingers again. "Give it to me. Now."

  Neither Dale nor anyone Dale knew-much less Jim Harlen-would have disobeyed Mike O'Rourke at that moment. Dale imagined an adult giving Mike whatever he wanted right then.

  Harlen glanced around, slipped the small.38 revolver out of his sling, and handed it to Mike.

  Mike glanced at it once to make sure that it was loaded, then he held it down at his side-almost casually, Dale thought, so that no one would look twice at his right hand and the pistol in it unless you knew that it was there. Then he left, moving toward the barn with long, quick strides.