Farewell Summer gt-2 Read online

  "Promise."

  "Now, where were we? Life? There's an everything topic. You want to know all about life?"

  Douglas nodded, head ducked.

  "Steel yourself."

  Douglas looked up and fixed Quartermain with a stare like the sky and all of time waiting.

  "Well, to begin…" He paused and held out his hand for Douglas's empty glass. "You're going to need this, son."

  Quartermain poured. Douglas took and drank.

  "Life," said the old man, and murmured, muttered, and murmured again.

  CHAPTER Thirty-Seven

  CALVIN C. QUARTERMAIN WOKE BECAUSE SOME-one had said something or called out in the night air.

  But that was impossible. Nobody or nothing had.

  He looked out the window at the great face of the courthouse clock and could almost hear it clearing its throat, preparing to announce three in the morning.

  "Who's there?" Quartermain said into the cool night air. Me.

  "How's that again?" Quartermain lifted his head and peered left and right.

  Me. Remember?

  And now he looked down along the quilt.

  Without moving his hands to touch and find, he knew his old friend was there. A bare subsistence of friend, but still, friend.

  He did not lift his head to peer down along the sheets to the small mound there below his navel, between his legs. It was hardly more than a heartbeat, a pulse, a lost member, a ghost of flesh. But it was there.

  "So you're back?" he said to the ceiling, and snorted a chopped-off laugh. "It's been a long while."

  In reply, a soft pulse of recognition.

  "How long will you stay?"

  The slender mound beat its own private heart twice, three times, but showed no signs of going anywhere; it seemed it would stay awhile.

  "Is this your very last visit?" asked Quartermain.

  Who can say? was the silent reply of his old friend revisiting, nested in a wirework of ancient hair.

  I do not so much mind my scalp turning gray, Quartermain had once said, but when you find whiteness sprouting down there, to hell with it. Let the rest of me age, but not that!

  But age he did and age it did. He was all of a dead winter grayness now. Still, there was this heartbeat, this tender and incredible pulse saluting him, a promise of spring, a seedbed of memory, a touch of… what was the word out there in the town in this strange weather when everyone's juices roused again?

  Farewell summer.

  Dear God, yes.

  Don't go yet. Stay. I need a friend.

  His friend stayed. And they talked. At three in the morning.

  "Why do I feel so happy?" said Quartermain. "What's been going on? Was I mad? Am I cured? Is this the cure?" Quartermain's teeth chattered with an outrageous laugh.

  I just came to say goodbye, the voice whispered.

  "Goodbye?" Quarterman's laughter caught in his throat. "Does that mean-"

  It does, came the whisper. It's been a lot of years. It's time to move on.

  "Time, yes," said Quartermain, his eyes watering. "Where are you going?"

  Can't say. You'll know when the time comes.

  "How will I know?"

  You'll see me. I'll be there.

  "How will I know it's you?"

  You'll know. You've always known everything, but me above all.

  "You're not leaving town?"

  No, no. I'll be around. But when you see me, don't embarrass anyone, all right?

  "Of course."

  The quilt and the sheets under the quilt were lowering, melting to rest. The whisper grew fainter.

  "Wherever you go … " began Quartermain.

  Yes?

  "I wish you a long life, a good life, a happy one."

  Thank you.

  A pause. Silence. Quartermain found he didn't know what to say next.

  Goodbye then?

  The old man nodded, his eyes misted with tears.

  His bed, the coverlet, his body was flat as a table-top. What had been there for seventy years was now totally and completely gone.

  "Goodbye," said Mr. Quartermain into the still night air.

  I wonder, he thought, where, oh just where in hell he has gone?

  The great courthouse clock struck three. And Mr. Quartermain slept.

  Douglas opened his eyes in the dark. The town clock finished the last stroke of three.

  He looked at the ceiling. Nothing. He looked at the windows. Nothing. Only the night breeze fluttered the pale curtains.

  "Who's there?" he whispered.

  Nothing.

  "Someone's here," he whispered.

  And at last he asked again, "Who," he said, "is there?"

  Here, something murmured.

  "What?"

  Me, something spoke in the night.

  "Who's me?"

  Here, was the quiet answer.

  "Where?"

  Here, quietly.

  "Where?"

  And Douglas looked all around and then down.

  "There?" Yes, oh, yes.

  Down along his body, below his chest, below his navel, between his two hipbones, where his legs joined. There it was.

  "Who are you?" he whispered. You'll find out.

  "Where did you come from?"

  A billion years past. A billion years yet to come.

  "That's no answer."

  It's the only one.

  "Were you…"

  What?

  "Were you down in that tent today?" What?

  "Inside. In those glass jars. Were you?" In a way, yes.

  "What do you mean, 'in a way'?" Yes.

  "I don't understand."

  You will, when we get to know each other. "What's your name?"

  Give me one. We always have names. Every boy names us. Every man says that name ten thousand times in his life.

  "I don't…"

  Understand? Just lie there. You have two hearts now. Feel the pulse. One in your chest. And one below. Yes? "Yes."

  Do you actually feel the two hearts? "Yes. Oh, yes!" Go to sleep then.

  "Will you be here when I wake up?"

  Waiting for you. Awake long before you. Good night, friend.

  "Are we? Friends?"

  The best you ever had. For life.

  There was a soft rabbit running. Something hit the bed, something burrowed beneath the blankets.

  "Tom?"

  "Yeah," said the voice from under the covers. "Can I sleep here tonight? Please!" "Why, Tom?"

  "I dunno. I just had this awful feeling tomorrow morning we'd find you gone or dead or both." "I'm not going to die, Tom." "Someday you will."

  "Well…"

  "Can I stay?"

  "Okay."

  "Hold my hand, Doug. Hold on tight."

  "Why?"

  "You ever think the Earth's spinning at twenty-five thousand miles per hour or something? It could throw you right off if you shut your eyes and forget to hold on."

  "Give me your hand. There. Is that better?"

  "Yeah. I can sleep now. You had me scared there for a while."

  A moment of silence, breath going in and out.

  "Tom?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You see? I didn't ditch you, after all."

  "Thank gosh, Doug, oh, thank gosh."

  A wind came up outside and shook all the trees and every leaf, every last one fell off and blew across the lawn.

  "Summer's over, Tom."

  Tom listened.

  "Summer's done. Here comes autumn."

  "Halloween."

  "Boy, think of that!" "I'm thinking." They thought, they slept. The town clock struck four.

  And Grandma sat up in the dark and named the season just now over and done and past.

  AFTERWORD

  THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING STARTLED

  The way I write my novels can best be described as imagining that I'm going into the kitchen to fry a couple of eggs and then find myself cooking up a banquet. Starting with very simp
le things, they then word-associate themselves with further things until I'm up and running and eager to find out the next surprise, the next hour, the next day or the next week.

  Farewell Summer began roughly fifty-five years ago when I was very young and had no knowledge of novels and no hope of creating a novel that was sensible. I had to wait for years for material to accumulate and take me, unaware, so that as I sat at my typewriter quite suddenly there would be bursts of surprise, resulting in short stories or longer narratives that I then connected together.

  The main action of the novel takes place in a ravine that cut across my life. I lived on a short street in Waukegan, Illinois, and the ravine was immediately east of my home and ran on for several miles in two directions and then circled around to the north and to the south, and finally to the west. So, in effect, I lived on an island where I could, at any time, plunge into the ravine and have adventures.

  There I imagined myself in Africa or on the planet Mars. That being so, and my going through the ravine every day on my way to school, and skating and sledding there in winter, this ravine remained central to my life and so it was natural that it would become the center of this novel, with all of my friends on both sides of the ravine and the old people who were curious time-pieces in my life.

  I've always been fascinated by elderly people. They came and went in my life and I followed them and questioned them and learned from them, and that is primarily true in this novel because it is a novel about children and old people who are peculiar Time Machines.

  Many of the greatest friendships in my lifetime have been with men or women who were in their eighties or nineties and I welcomed the chance to ask them questions and then to sit, very quietly, saying nothing and learning from their responses.

  In a way, Farewell Summer is a novel about learning by encountering old people and daring to ask them certain questions and then sitting back and listening to their answers. The questions posed by Doug, and the answers given by Mr. Quartermain, provide the organization of the action of the chapters and the final resolution of the book.

  The bottom line here is that I am not the one in control. I do not try to steer my characters; I let them live their lives and speak their truths as quickly as possible. I listen, and write them down.

  Farewell Summer is actually an extension of my book Dandelion Wine, which I completed fifty-five years ago. When I delivered it to my publishers they said, "My

  God, this is much too long. Why don't we publish the first 90,000 words as a novel and keep the second part for some future year when you feel it is ready to be published." At the time, I called the full, primitive version The Blue Remembered Hills. The original title for what would become Dandelion Wine was Summer Morning, Summer Night. Even all those years ago, I had a title ready for this unborn book: Farewell Summer.

  So, it has taken all these years for the second part of Dandelion Wine to evolve to a point where I felt it was correct to send it out into the world. During the ensuing years, I waited for those parts of the novel to attract further ideas and further metaphors to add richness to the text.

  Surprise is everything with me. When I go to bed at night I give myself instructions to startle myself when I wake in the morning. That was one of the great adventures in letting this novel evolve: my instructions at night and my being startled in the morning by revelations.

  The influence of my grandparents and my aunt, Neva Bradbury, is in evidence all through the narrative. My grandfather was a very wise and patient man, who knew the importance of showing, not simply telling. My grandmother was a wonderful woman who had an innate understanding of what made boys tick. And my aunt Neva was the guardian and gardener of the metaphors that became me. She saw to it that I was fed all the best fairy tales, poetry, cinema, and theater, so that I was continually in a fever about life and eager to write it all down. Today, all these years later, I still feel in the writing process that she is looking over my shoulder and beaming with pride.

  Beyond that there is very little to add except that I'm glad that the long haul of writing this novel is finished and I hope that there is pleasure in it for everyone. It has been a great pleasure for me, to revisit my beloved Green Town-to gaze up at the haunted house, to hear the deep gongs of the courthouse clock, to run through the ravine, to be kissed by a girl for the first time, and to listen to and learn from the wisdom of those who have gone before.

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