Farewell Summer gt-2 Read online

  "No more, no more!" Quartermain grabbed the hard rubber wheels of his chair, causing them to stop short.

  "Face up to it," Bleak said. "We're both dumb old fools. A little late for wisdom, but better an ironic recognition than non at all."

  Uncurling his friend's fingers from the spider web wheel, Bleak pushed the chair around a corner so the light of the dying sun stained their faces a healthy red, and added, "Look, life gives us everything. Then it takes it away. Youth, love, happiness, friends. Darkness gets it all in the end. We didn't have enough sense to know you can will it-life-to others. Your looks, your youth. Pass it on. Give it away. It's lent to us for only a while. Use it, let go without crying. It's a very fancy relay race, heading God knows where. Except now, in your last lap of the race, you find no one waiting for you on the track ahead. Nobody for you to hand the stick to. You've run the race for no reason. You've failed the team."

  "Is that what I've done?"

  "Yes. You weren't hurting the boy. Actually, what you were trying to do was make him grow up. You were both wrong for a while. Now you're both winning. Not because you want to, but because you have to."

  "No, it's only he who's ahead. The idea was to grow them as fruit for the grave. But all I did was give them-"

  "Love," said Bleak.

  Quartermain could not say the word. That dreadful sweet, candy-sickening word. So trite, so true, so irritating, so wonderful, so frightening, and, in the end, so lost to himself.

  "They won. I did them a favor, my God, a favor! I was blind! I wanted them to race about, like we run about, and wither, and be shocked by their withering, and die, like I'm dying. But they don't realize, they don't know, they're even happier, if that's possible."

  "Yes." Bleak pushed the chair. "Happier. Because growing old isn't all that bad. None of it is bad if you have one thing. If you have the one thing that makes it all all right."

  That dreadful word again!

  "Don't say it!"

  "But I'm thinking it," said Bleak, trying mightily to keep an unaccustomed smile from creasing his lips.

  "So you're right, so I'm miserable, and here I sit, crying like a goddamn idiot fool!"

  The freckled leaf-shadows passed over his liver-spotted hands. They fitted, for a moment, like a jigsaw and made his hands look muscled, tanned, and young. He stared at them, as if delivered free of age and corruption. Then the freckling, twinkling motion of passing trees went on.

  "What do I do now, what do I do? Help me, Bleak."

  "We can help ourselves. You were heading for the cliff. I tried to warn you. You can't hold them back now. If you'd had any sense, you might have encouraged the children to continue their damned revolution, never grow up, to be egocentrics. Then they really would have been unhappy!"

  "A fine time to tell me."

  "I'm glad I didn't think of it. The worst thing is never to grow up. I see it all around. I see children in every house. Look there, that's Leonora's house, poor woman. And here's where those two old maids live, and their Green Machine. Children, children without love. And over there, take a look. There's the ravine. The Lonely One. There's a life for you, there's a child in a man's body. That's the ticket. You could make Lonely Ones of them all, given time and patience. You used the wrong strategy. Don't force people to grow. Baby them. Teach them to nurse their grievances and grow their private poison gardens. Little patches of hate and prejudice. If you wanted them unhappy, how much better to say, 'Revolt, I'm with you, charge! Ignorance, I'm for you! Down with the slob and the swine forever!'"

  "Don't rub it in. I don't hate them anymore, anyway. What a strange afternoon, how odd. There I was, in his face. There I was, in love with the girl. It was as if time had never passed. I saw Liza again."

  "It's still possible, of course, you can reverse the process. The child is in us all. It's not hard to keep the child locked there forever. Give it another try."

  "No, I'm done with it. I'm done with wars. Let them go. If they can earn a better life than I did, let them earn it. I wouldn't be so cruel as to wish them my life now. I was in his face, remember, and I saw her. God, what a beautiful face! Suddenly I felt so young. Now, turn me around and roll me home. I want to think about the next year or so. I'll have to start figuring."

  "Yes, Ebenezer."

  "No, not Ebenezer, not Scrooge. I'm not anything. I haven't decided to be anything. You can't be anything that quickly. All I know is I'm not quite the same. I've got to figure what I want to be."

  "You could give to charity."

  "You know me better than that."

  "You've got a brother."

  "Lives in California."

  "How long's it been since you've seen him?"

  "Oh, God, thirty years."

  "He has children, right?"

  "Yes, I think so. Two girls and a boy. Grown now. Got children of their own."

  "You could write a letter."

  "What kind?"

  "Invite them for a visit. You've got a big house. And one of those children, God help them, might seem like you. It struck me, if you can't have any private sense of destiny, immortality, you name it-you could get it secondhand from your brother's house. Seems to me you'd want to connect up with a thing like that."

  "Foolish."

  "No, common sense. You're too old for marriage and children, too old for everything except experiments. You know how things work. Some children look like their fathers, or mothers, or grandfathers, and some take after a distant brother. Don't you think you'd get a kick out of something like that?"

  "Too easy."

  "Think on it, anyway. Don't wait, or you'll sink back into being nothing but a mean old son-of-a-bitch again."

  "So that's what I've been! Well, well. I didn't start out intending to be mean, but I got there somehow. Are you mean, Bleak?"

  "No, because I know what I did to myself. I'm only mean in private. I don't blame others for my own mistakes. I'm bad in a different way than you, of course, with a sense of humor developed out of necessity." For a moment, Bleak's eyes seemed to twinkle, but maybe it was only the passing sun.

  "I'll need a sense of humor from here on out. Bleak, visit me more often." Quartermain's gnarled fingers grasped Bleak's hand.

  "Why would I visit you, you sorry old bastard, ever again?"

  "Because we're the Grand Army, aren't we? You must help me think."

  "The blind leading the sick," said Bleak. "Here we are."

  He paused at the walk leading up to the gray, flake-painted house.

  "Is that my place?" said Quartermain. "My God, it's ugly, ugly as sin. Needs paint."

  "You can think about that, too."

  "My God, what a Christ-awful ugly house! Wheel me in, Bleak."

  And Bleak wheeled his friend up the walk toward his house.

  CHAPTER Thirty-Two

  DOUGLAS STOOD WITH TOM AND CHARLIE IN THE moist-smelling warm late-summer-green ravine. Mosquitoes danced their delicate dances upon the silence. A dancing idiot hum-tune.

  "Everyone's gone," said Tom.

  Douglas sat on a rock and took off his shoes.

  "Bang, you're dead," said Tom, quietly.

  "I wish I was, oh, I wish I was dead," said Doug.

  Tom said, "Is the war over? Shall I take down the flag?"

  "What flag?"

  "Just the flag, that's all."

  "Yeah. Take it down. But I'm not sure if the war is really over yet… but it sure has changed. I've just got to figure out how."

  Charlie said, "Yeah, well, you did give cake to the enemy. If that wasn't the strangest thing…"

  "Ta-ta-tahhhh," hummed Tom. He made furling motions in the warm empty silent air. He stood solemnly by the quiet creek in the summer evening with the sun fading. "Ta-ta-tahhhh. Ta-ta-tahhhh." He hummed "Taps." A tear fell off his cheek.

  "Oh, for gosh sakes!" cried Douglas. "Stop!"

  Douglas and Tom and Charlie climbed out of the ravine, and walked through the boxed and packaged town, through the ave
nues and streets and alleys, among the thousand-celled houses, the bright prisons, down the definite sidewalks and the positive lanes, and the country seemed far away and it was as if a sea had moved away from the shore of their life in one day. Suddenly there was the town and their lives to be lived in that town in the next forty years, opening and shutting doors and raising and lowering shades, and the green meadow was distant and alien.

  Douglas looked over at Tom getting taller every minute, it seemed. He felt the hunger in his stomach and he thought of the miraculous foods at home and he thought of Lisabell blowing out the candles and sitting there with fourteen years burnt behind her and not caring, very pretty and solemn and beautiful. He thought of the Lonely One, very lonely indeed, wanting love, and now gone.

  Douglas stopped at Charlie's house, feeling the season change about them.

  "Here's where I leave you guys," said Charlie. "See you later, at the haunted house with those dumb girls."

  "Yeah, see you later, Charlie."

  "So long, Charlie," said Tom.

  "You know something," said Charlie, turning back toward his friends, as if he'd suddenly remembered something important. "I been thinkin'. I got an uncle, twenty-five years old. Came by earlier today in a big Buick, with his wife. A really nice, pretty lady. I was thinkin' all morning: Maybe I'll let them make me twenty-five. Twenty-five strikes me as a nice medium age. If they'll let me ride in a Buick with a pretty lady like that, I'll go along with them. But that's it, mind! No kids. It stops at squalling kids. Just a nice car and a pretty lady with me, ridin' along out toward the lake.

  Boy! I'll take about thirty years of that. I'm puttin' in my order for thirty years of being twenty-five. Fill 'er up and I'm on my way."

  "It's something to think about," said Douglas.

  "I'm goin' in the house to think about it right now," said Charlie.

  "So, when do we start the war again?" said Tom.

  Charlie and Douglas looked at each other.

  "Heck, I dunno," said Doug, a little uncomfortably.

  "Tomorrow, next week, next month?"

  "I guess."

  "We can't give up the war!" said Tom.

  "Heck, we're not giving it up," said Charlie. "Every once in a while we'll do it again, huh, Doug?"

  "Oh, sure, sure!"

  "Shift the strategy, identify new objectives, you know," said Charlie. "Oh, we'll have wars okay, Tom, don't you worry."

  "Promise?" cried Tom, tears in his eyes.

  "Cross our hearts, mother's honor."

  "Okay," said Tom, lower lip trembling.

  The wind whistled, was cool: it was an early autumn evening, no longer a late summer one.

  "Well," said Charlie, standing there, smiling shyly,

  looking up from under his eyebrows at Doug. "It sure was a farewell summer, huh?"

  "Sure was."

  "Sure kept us busy."

  "Sure did."

  "Only thing is," said Tom, "it didn't come out in the papers: Who won?"

  Charlie and Douglas stared at the younger boy.

  "Who won? Don't be silly!" Douglas lapsed into silence, staring up into the sky. Then he fixed them with a stare. "I don't know. Us, them."

  Charlie scratched inside his left ear. "Everybody. The first war in history where everybody won. I can't figure it. So long." He went on up the sidewalk, crossed the front yard, opened the door of his house, waved, and was gone.

  "There goes Charlie," said Douglas.

  "Boy, am I sad!" said Tom.

  "About what?"

  "I don't know. I keep playin' 'Taps' inside my head. It's a sad song, that's all."

  "Don't start bawlin' now!"

  "No, I'm just gonna be quiet. You know why? I guess I got it figured."

  "Why?"

  "Ice cream cones don't last."

  "That's a silly thing to say."

  "Ice cream cones are always gettin' done with. Seems I'm no sooner bitin' the top than I'm eatin' the tail. Seems I'm no sooner jumpin' in the lake at the start of vacation than I'm creepin' out the far side, on the way back to school. Boy, no wonder I feel bad."

  "It's all how you look at it," said Doug. "My gosh, think of all the things you haven't even started yet. There's a million ice cream cones up ahead and ten billion apple pies and hundreds of summer vacations. Billions of things waitin' to be bit or swallowed or jumped in."

  "Just once, though," said Tom, "I'd like one thing. An ice cream cone so big you could just keep eatin' and there isn't any end and you just go on bein' happy with it forever. Wow!"

  "There's no such ice cream cone."

  "Just one thing like that is all I ask," said Tom. "One vacation that never has a last day. Or one matinee with Buck Jones, boy, just ridin' along forever, bangin', and Indians fallin' like pop bottles. Gimme just one thing with no tail-end and I'd go crap. Sometimes I just sit in the movie theater and cry when it says 'The End' for Jack Hoxie or Ken Maynard. And there's nothin' so sad as the last piece of popcorn at the bottom of the box."

  "You better watch out," said Doug. "You'll be workin' yourself into another fit any minute. Just remember, darn it, there're ten thousand matinees waitin' right on up ahead."

  "Well, here we are, home. Did we do anything today we might get licked for?"

  "Nope."

  "Then let's go in."

  They did, slamming the door as they went.

  CHAPTER Thirty-Three

  THE HOUSE STOOD ON THE EDGE OF THE RAVINE. It looked haunted, just like everyone said it was.

  Tom and Charlie and Bo followed Doug up the side of the ravine and stood in front of the strange house at nine o'clock at night. In the distance, the courthouse clock bonged off the hour.

  "There it is," said Doug. He turned his head right and left, as if he was looking for something.

  "What are we gonna do?" asked Tom.

  "Well," said Bo, "is it haunted, like they said?"

  "From what I've heard, at eight o'clock, no," said

  Doug. "And not at nine. But starting around ten, strange sounds start to come from the house. I think we should hang around and find out. Besides, Lisabell said that she and her friends were going to be here. Let's wait and see."

  They stood by some bushes by the front porch steps and they waited and at last the moon came up.

  There was a sound of footsteps along the path somewhere and from inside the house, the sounds of someone going up some stairs.

  Doug stood alert, craned his neck, but he couldn't quite see what was going on.

  "Heck," said Charlie at last. "What are we doing here? I'm gosh-awful bored. I got homework. I think I better head home."

  "Hold on," said Doug. "Let's wait just a few more minutes."

  They waited as the moon got higher. And then, a little after ten, as the last peals of the courthouse clock faded away on the night air, they heard the noises. From inside the house, faint at first, almost imperceptible, there came a sound of rustling and scraping, as if someone was shifting trunks from one room to another.

  A few minutes later, they heard a sharp cry, and then another cry, and then a sort of whispering and rustling and, finally, a dull thump.

  "Those," said Doug, "were definitely ghost sounds. Like someone getting killed and the bodies being dragged around the rooms. Doesn't it sound like that?"

  "Heck," said Tom, "I don't know."

  "Don't ask me," said Bo.

  "Well," said Charlie, "it's sure a god-awful racket. If there's another scream, I'm getting out of here."

  They stood alert and waited, almost not breathing. Silence. And then, suddenly, more groans and cries and then something that sounded like a weak cry, "Help."

  Then it faded away.

  "That's it," said Charlie. "I've had enough."

  "Me too," said Bo.

  The two boys turned tail and ran.

  There was a great whispering and the hair stood up on the back of Doug's neck.

  "I don't know about you," said Tom, "but I'm get-tin
' out of here. If you want to stay to listen to some darned ghosts, you can, but not me. I'll see you at home, Doug."

  Tom turned and ran.

  Alone, Doug stood for a long while staring at the old house. Then he heard someone coming up the path behind him. He turned, his fists clenched, ready to defend himself against the midnight assailant.

  "Lisabell," he said. "What are you doing here?"

  "I told you I'd be here. But what are you doing here? I thought you were a scaredy-cat. Is it true what they say? Did you find out anything? I mean, it's all darn foolishness, isn't it? There's no such thing as ghosts, is there? That place can't be haunted."

  "We thought," said Doug, "we'd come here and wait and see. But the others got scared and left and now it's only me. So I'm just standing here, waiting, listening."

  They listened. A low cry wafted out of the house into the night air.

  Lisabell said, "Is that a ghost?"

  Doug strained to listen. "Yes, that's one."

  A moment later they heard another great whisper and cry.

  "Is that another?"

  Doug looked at her face and said, "You look like you're enjoying this."

  "I don't know," said Lisabell. "It's kind of strange, but the more I hear, I -" And here she smiled a strange smile. The whispers and the cries and murmurs from the house grew louder and Doug felt his whole body turn hot and then cold and then warm again.

  Finally he reached down and found a large stone by the front of the house, reared his hand back, and flung it through the glass panes of the front door.

  The glass exploded with a loud crash and the door creaked open, slowly. Suddenly, all the ghosts wailed at the same moment.

  "Doug!" cried Lisabell. "Why did you do that?"

  "Because…" said Doug.

  And then it happened.

  There was a rush of feet, a torrent of whispers, and a swirling mob of white shapes burst out of the house and down the stairs and along the path and away into the ravine.

  "Doug," said Lisabell. "Why'd you do that?"

  "Because," said Doug, "I couldn't stand it anymore. Someone had to scare them out. Someone had to act like they knew what they were doing. I bet they won't come back.