Farewell Summer Read online

  ‘The thing is, one way or another, I got the lightning to knock the bellybuttons off the old sailors and Civil War vets on the lawn. They’re all home now, dying like flies. Flies.’

  ‘Only one thing wrong,’ said Charlie. ‘The chess pieces are ours right now, sure. But – I’d give anything for a good hot dog.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  At which moment lightning struck a tree right outside the attic window. The boys dropped flat.

  ‘Doug! Heck! Make it stop!’

  Eyes shut, Douglas shouted, ‘I can’t! I take it back. I lied!’

  Dimly satisfied, the storm went away, grumbling.

  As if announcing the arrival of someone or something important, a final distant strike of lightning and a rumble of thunder caused the boys to look toward the stairwell, leading down to the second floor of the house.

  Far below, someone cleared his throat.

  Douglas pricked his ears, moved to the stairwell, and intuitively called down.

  ‘Grandpa?’

  ‘Seems to be,’ a voice said from the bottom of the stairs. ‘You boys are not very good at covering your tracks. You left footprints in the grass all the way across town. I followed along, asking questions along the way, getting directions, and here I am.’

  Doug swallowed hard and said again: ‘Grandpa?’

  ‘There seems to be a small commotion back in town,’ said Grandpa, far below, out of sight.

  ‘Commotion?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Grandpa’s voice.

  ‘You coming up?’

  ‘No,’ said Grandpa. ‘But I have a feeling you’re coming down. I want you to come see me for a visit and we’re gonna have a little talk. And then you’ve got to run an errand because something has been purloined.’

  ‘Purloined?’

  ‘Mr Poe used that word. If need be, you can go back and check the story and refresh your memory.’

  ‘Purloined,’ said Douglas. ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Whatever was purloined – and right now I’m not quite sure what it was,’ said Grandpa, far away, ‘–but whatever it was, I think, son, that it should be returned to where it belongs. There are rumors that the town sheriff has been called, so I think you should hop to it.’

  Douglas backed off and stared at his companions, who had heard the voice from below and were now frozen, not knowing what to do.

  ‘You got nothing more to say?’ called Grandpa from down below. ‘Well, maybe not here. I’m gonna get going; you know where to find me. I’ll expect you there soon.’

  ‘Yeah, yes, sir.’

  Doug and the boys were silent as they listened to Grandpa’s footsteps echo throughout the haunted house, along the hall, down the stairs, out onto the porch. And then, nothing.

  Douglas turned and Tom held up the burlap sack.

  ‘You need this, Doug?’ he whispered.

  ‘Gimme.’

  Doug grabbed the gunnysack and scraped all the chess pieces up and dropped them, one by one, into the sack. There went Pete and Tom and Bo and all the rest.

  Doug shook the gunnysack; it made a dry rattling sound like old men’s bones.

  And with a last backward glance at his army, Doug started down.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Grandpa’s library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.

  Here it was that Grandpa sat in place with now this book and now that in his lap and his gold specs on his nose, welcoming visitors who came to stay for a moment and lingered for an hour.

  Even Grandmother paused here, after some burdensome time, as an aging animal seeks the watering place to be refreshed. And Grandfather was always here to offer cups of good clear Walden Pond, or shout down the deep well of Shakespeare and listen, with satisfaction, for echoes.

  Here the lion and the hartebeest lay together, here the jackass became unicorn, here on Saturday noon an elderly man could be found underneath a not too imaginary bough, eating bread in the guise of sandwiches and pulling briefly at a jug of cellar wine.

  Douglas stood on the edge of it all, waiting.

  ‘Step forward, Douglas,’ said Grandfather.

  Douglas stepped forward, holding the gunnysack in one hand behind his back.

  ‘Got anything to say, Douglas?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Nothing at all about anything?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What you been up to today, son?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘A busy nothing or a nothing nothing?’

  ‘A nothing nothing, I guess.’

  ‘Douglas.’ Grandpa paused to polish his gold–rimmed specs. ‘They say that confession is good for the soul.’

  ‘They do say that.’

  ‘And they must mean it or they wouldn’t say it.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Know it, Douglas, know it. Got anything to confess?’

  ‘About what?’ said Douglas, keeping the gunnysack behind him.

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. You going to help?’

  ‘Maybe you could give me a hint, sir.’

  ‘All right. Seems there was flood tide down at the City Hall courthouse today. I hear a tidal wave of boys inundated the grass. You know any of them?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Any of them know you?’

  ‘If I don’t know them, how could they know me, sir?’

  ‘Is that all you got to say?’

  ‘Right now? Yes, sir.’

  Grandpa shook his head. ‘Doug, I told you, I know about the purloineds. And I’m sorry you think you can’t tell me about them. But I remember being your age, and getting caught red–handed at doing something I knew I shouldn’t do, but I did anyway. Yes, I remember.’ Grandpa’s eyes twinkled behind his specs. ‘Well, I think I’m holding you up, boy. I think you got somewhere to go.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, try to hurry it up. The rain’s still coming down, lightning all over town, and the town square is empty. If you run and let the lightning strike, maybe you’ll do a fast job of what you should be doing. Does that sound reasonable, Doug?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well then, get to it.’

  Douglas started to back away.

  ‘Don’t back off, son,’ said Grandpa. ‘I’m not royalty. Just turn around and skedaddle.’

  ‘Skedaddle. Was that originally French, Grampa?’

  ‘Hell.’ The old man reached for a book. ‘When you get back, let’s look it up!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Just before midnight, Doug woke to that terrible boredom that only sleep ensures.

  It was then, listening to Tom’s chuffing breath, deep in an ice–floe summer hibernation, that Doug lifted his arms and wiggled his fingers, like a tuning fork; a gentle vibration ensued. He felt his soul move through an immense timberland.

  His feet, shoeless, drifted to the floor and he leaned south to pick up the gentle radio waves of his uncle, down the block. Did he hear the elephant sound of Tantor summoning an ape–boy? Or, half through the night, had Grandpa, next door, fallen in a grave of slumber, dead to the world, gold specs on his nose, with Edgar Allan Poe shelved to his right and the Civil War dead, truly dead, to his left, waiting in his sleep, it seemed, for Doug to arrive?

  So, striking his hands together and wiggling his fingers, Doug made one final vibration of his literary tuning fork and moved with quiet intuition toward his grandparents’ house.

  Grandpa, in his grave of sleep, whispered a call.

  Doug was out the midnight door so fast he almost forgot to catch the screen before it slammed.

  Ignoring the elephant trumpet behind, he barefooted into his grandparents’ house.

  There in the library slept Grandpa, awaitin
g the breakfast resurrection, open for suggestions.

  Now, at midnight, it was the unlit time of the special school, so Doug leaned forward and whispered in Grandpa’s ear, ‘1899.’

  And Gramps, lost in another time, murmured of that year and how the temperature was and what the people were like moving in that town.

  Then Douglas said, ‘1869.’

  And Grandpa was lost four years after Lincoln was shot.

  Standing there, watching, Douglas realized that if he visited here night after night and spoke to Grandpa, Grandpa, asleep, would be his teacher and that if he spent six months or a year or two years coming to this special long–after–midnight school, he would have an education that nobody else in the world would have. Grandpa would give his knowledge as a teacher, without knowing it, and Doug would drink it in and not tell Tom or his parents or anybody.

  ‘That’s it,’ whispered Doug. ‘Thank you, Grandpa, for all you say, asleep or awake. And thanks again for today and your advice on the purloineds. I don’t want to say any more. I don’t want to wake you up.’

  So Douglas, his ears full up and his mind full brimmed, left his grandpa sleeping there and crept toward the stairs and the tower room because he wanted to have one more encounter with the night town and the moon.

  Just then the great clock across town, an immense moon, a full moon of stunned sound and round illumination, cleared its ratchety throat and let free a midnight sound.

  One.

  Douglas climbed the stairs.

  Two. Three.

  Four. Five.

  Reaching the tower window, Douglas looked out upon an ocean of rooftops and the great monster clock tower as time summed itself up.

  Six. Seven.

  His heart floundered.

  Eight. Nine.

  His flesh turned to snow.

  Ten. Eleven.

  A shower of dark leaves fell from a thousand trees.

  Twelve!

  Oh my God, yes, he thought.

  The clock! Why hadn’t he thought of that?

  The clock!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The last vibration of the great clock bell faded.

  A wind swayed the trees outside and the pekoe curtain hung out on the air, a pale ghost.

  Douglas felt his breath siphon.

  You, he thought. How come I never noticed?

  The great and terrible courthouse clock.

  Just last year, hadn’t Grandpa laid out the machinery’s blueprint, lecturing?

  The huge round lunar clock was a gristmill, he’d said. Shake down all the grains of Time – the big grains of centuries, and the small grains of years, and the tiny grains of hours and minutes – and the clock pulverized them, slid Time silently out in all directions in a fine pollen, carried by cold winds to blanket the town like dust, everywhere. Spores from that clock lodged in your flesh to wrinkle it, to grow bones to monstrous size, to burst feet from shoes like turnips. Oh, how that great machine at the town’s center dispensed Time in blowing weathers.

  The clock!

  That was the thing that bleached and ruined life, jerked people out of bed, hounded them to schools and graves! Not Quartermain and his band of old men, or Braling and his metronome; it was the clock that ran this town like a church.

  Even on the clearest of nights it was misted, glowing, luminous, and old. It rose above town like a great dark burial mound, drawn to the skies by the summoning of the moon, calling out in a grieved voice of days long gone, and days that would come no more, whispering of other autumns when the town was young and all was beginning and there was no end.

  ‘So it’s you,’ whispered Douglas.

  Midnight, said the clock. Time, it said, Darkness. Flights of night birds flew up to carry the final peal away, out over the lake and into the night country, gone.

  Doug yanked down the shade so Time could not blow through the screen.

  The clock light shone on the sidings of the house like a mist breathing on the windows.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Boy, I just heard the craziest things.’ Charlie strolled up, chewing on a clover–blossom. ‘I got me a secret service report from some girls.’

  ‘Girls!’

  Charlie smiled at how his ten–inch firecracker had blown the laziness off his pals’ faces. ‘My sister said way back last July they got old lady Bentley to admit she never was young. I thought you’d like that news.’

  ‘Charlie, Charlie!’

  ‘Burden of proof,’ said Charlie. ‘The girls told me that old lady Bentley showed some pictures, junk and stuff, which didn’t prove nothin’. Fact is, when you think on it, fellas, none of these old ginks look like they were ever young.’

  ‘Why didn’t you think of that, Doug?’ said Tom.

  ‘Why don’t you shut up?’ said Douglas.

  ‘I guess this makes me a lieutenant,’ said Charlie.

  ‘You just moved up to sergeant yesterday!’

  Charlie stared hard at Douglas for a long moment.

  ‘Okay, okay, you’re a lieutenant,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Charlie. ‘What’ll we do about my sister? She wants to be part of our army – a special spy.’

  ‘To heck with her!’

  ‘You got to admit that’s great secret stuff she turned in.’

  ‘Boy, Charlie, you sure think of things,’ said Tom. ‘Doug, why don’t you think of things?’

  ‘Darn it!’ cried Douglas. ‘Whose idea was the graveyard tour, the candy, the food, the chess pieces, all that?’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Tom. ‘The graveyard tour, I said that. The candy, yeah, was yours, but I gotta tell ya, the food experiment was a failure. Heck, you haven’t said anything new in a coupla hours. And all the chessboards are full of chess pieces again and those old men are busy pushing the pieces – us – around. Any moment now we’ll feel ourselves grabbed and moved and we won’t be able to live our own lives anymore.’

  Douglas could feel Charlie and Tom creeping up on him, taking the war out of his hands like a ripe plum. Private, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant. Today, lieutenant; tomorrow captain. And the day after?

  ‘It’s not just ideas that count.’ Douglas wiped his brow. ‘It’s how you stick ’em together. Take this fact of Charlie’s – it’s secondhand. Heck, girls thought of it first!’

  Everybody’s eyebrows went up.

  Charlie’s face fell.

  ‘And anyway,’ Douglas went on, ‘I’m puttin’ ideas together for a real bang–up revelation.’

  They all looked at him, waiting.

  ‘Okay, Doug, go on,’ said Charlie.

  Douglas shut his eyes. ‘And the revelation is: Since old people don’t look like they were ever kids, they never were! So they’re not humans at all!’

  ‘What are they, Doug?’

  ‘Another race!’

  Everybody sat, stunned by the vast sunburst caused by this explosion, this incredible revelation. It rained upon them in fire and flames.

  ‘Yes, another race,’ said Douglas. ‘Aliens. Evil. And we, we’re the slaves they keep for nefarious odd jobs and punishments!’

  Everybody melted with the after–effects of this announcement.

  Charlie stood up solemnly and announced: ‘Doug, old pal, see this beanie on my head? I’m taking my beanie off to you!’ Charlie raised his beanie to applause and laughter.

  They all smiled at Doug, their general, their leader, who took out his pocketknife and casually started a philosophical game of one–finger mumblety–peg.

  ‘Yeah, but …’ said Tom, and went on. ‘The last thing you said didn’t work out. It’s okay to say the old people are from another planet, but what about Grandpa and Grandma? We’ve known them all our lives. Are you saying that they’re aliens, too?’

  Doug’s face turned red. He hadn’t quite worked this part out, and here was his brother – his second–in–command, his ju
nior officer – questioning his theory.

  ‘And,’ Tom went on, ‘what do we have new in the way of action, Doug? We can’t just sit here. What do we do next?’

  Doug swallowed hard. Before he had a chance to speak, Tom, now that everybody was looking at him, said slowly, ‘The only thing that comes to mind right now is maybe we stop the courthouse clock. You can hear that darned thing ticking all over town. Bong! Midnight! Whang! Get outta bed! Boom! Jump into bed! Up down, up down, over and over.’

  Ohmigosh, thought Douglas. I saw it last night. The clock! Why in heck didn’t I say so first?

  Tom picked his nose calmly. ‘Why don’t we just lambaste that darn old clock – kill it dead! Then we can do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it. Okay?’

  Everyone stared at Tom. Then they began to cheer and yell, even Douglas, trying to forget it was his younger brother, not himself, who was saving the day.

  ‘Tom!’ they all shouted. ‘Good old Tom!’

  ‘Ain’t nothin’,’ said Tom. He looked to his brother. ‘When do we kill the blasted thing?’

  Douglas bleated, his tongue frozen. The soldiers stared, waiting.

  ‘Tonight?’ said Tom.

  ‘I was just going to say that!’ Douglas cried.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The courthouse clock somehow knew they were coming to kill it.

  It loomed high above the town square with its great marble façade and sun–blazed face, a frozen avalanche, waiting to bury the assassins. Simultaneously, it allowed the leaders of its religion and philosophy, the ancient gray–haired messengers of Time and dissolution, to pass through the thundering bronze doors below.

  Douglas, watching the soldiery of death and mummification slip calmly through the dark portals, felt a stir of panic. There, in the shellac–smelling, paper–rustling rooms of Town Hall, the Board of Education slyly unmade destinies, pared calendars, devoured Saturdays in torrents of homework, instigated reprimands, tortures, and criminalities. Their dead hands pulled streets straighter, loosed rivers of asphalt over soft dirt to make roads harder, more confining, so that open country and freedom were pushed further and further away, so that one day, years from now, green hills would be a distant echo, so far off that it would take a lifetime of travel to reach the edge of the city and peer out at one lone small forest of dying trees.