Farewell Summer (4 page)

In the green park below the marble shadow of the courthouse, under the great clock tower's bulk, the chess tables waited.

Now under a gray sky and a faint promise of rain, a dozen chessboards were busy with old men's hands. Above the red and black battlefields, two dozen gray heads were suspended. The pawns and castles and horses and kings and queens trembled and drifted as monarchies fell in ruin.

With the leaf shadows freckling their moves, the old men chewed their insunk mouths and looked at each other with squints and coldnesses and sometimes twinkles. They talked in rustles and scrapings a few feet beyond the monument to the Civil War dead.

Doug Spaulding snuck up, leaned around the monument, and watched the moving chess pieces with apprehension. His chums crept up behind him. Their eyes lolled over the moving chess pieces and one by
one they moved back and drowsed on the grass. Doug spied on the old men panting like dogs over the boards. They twitched. They twitched again.

Douglas hissed back at his army. ‘Look!' he whispered. ‘That knight's
you
, Charlie! That king's me!' Doug jerked. ‘Mr Weeble's moving me
now
, ah! Someone
save
me!' He reached out with stiff arms and froze in place.

The boys' eyes snapped open. They tried to seize his arms. ‘We'll help you, Doug!'

‘Someone's
moving
me. Mr Weeble!'

‘Darn Weeble!'

At which moment there was a strike of lightning and a following of thunder and a drench of rain.

‘My gosh!' said Doug. ‘Look.'

The rain poured over the courthouse square and the old men jumped up, momentarily forgetting the chess pieces, which tumbled in the deluge.

‘Quick, guys, now. Each of you grab as many as you can!' cried Doug.

They all moved forward in a pack, to fall upon the chess pieces.

There was another strike of lightning, another burst of thunder.

‘Now!' cried Doug.

There was a third strike of lightning and the boys scrambled, they seized.

The chessboards were empty.

The boys stood laughing at the old men hiding under the trees.

Then, like crazed bats, they rushed off to find shelter.

‘Bleak!' Quartermain barked into his telephone.

‘Cal?'

‘By God, they got the chess pieces that were sent from Italy the year Lincoln was shot. Shrewd damn idiots! Come here tonight. We must plan our counterattack. I'll call Gray.'

‘Gray's busy dying.'

‘Christ, he's always dying! We'll have to do it ourselves.'

‘Steady now, Cal. They're just chess pieces.'

‘It's what they
signify
, Bleak! This is a full rebellion.'

‘We'll buy new chess pieces.'

‘Hell, I might as well be speaking to the dead. Just be here. I'll call Gray and make him put off dying for one more day.'

Bleak laughed quietly.

‘Why don't we just chuck all those Bolshevik boys into a pot, boil them down to essence of kid?'

‘So long, Bleak!'

He rang off and called Gray. The line was busy. He slammed the receiver down, picked it up, and tried again. Listening to the signal, he heard the tapping of tree branches on the window, faintly, far away.

My God
, Quartermain thought,
I can hear what he's up to. That's dying all right.

There was this old haunted house on the far edge of the ravine.

How did they know it was haunted?

Because
they
said so. Everyone knew it.

It had been there for close on to one hundred years and everybody said that while it wasn't haunted during the day, at nighttime strange things happened there.

It seemed a perfectly logical place for the boys to run, Doug leading them and Tom bringing up the rear, carrying their wild treasure, the chess pieces.

It was a grand place to hide because no one – except for a pack of wild boys – would dare come to a haunted house, even if it was full daytime.

The storm still raged and if anyone had looked close at the haunted house, chanced walking through the creaky old doors, down the musty old hallways, up even creakier old stairs, they would have found an attic full of old chairs, smelling of ancient bamboo furniture polish and full of boys with fresh faces who had climbed up in
the downfall sounds of the storm, accompanied by intermittent cracks of lightning and thunderclaps of applause, the storm taking delight in its ability to make them climb faster and laugh louder as they leapt and settled, one by one, Indian style, in a circle on the floor.

Douglas pulled a candle stub, lit it, and stuffed it in an old glass candlestick holder. At last, from a burlap gunnysack, he pulled forth and set down, one by one, all the captured chess pieces, naming them for Charlie and Will and Tom and Bo and all the rest. He tossed them forth to settle, like dogs called to war.

‘Here's
you
, Charlie.' Lightning cracked.

‘Yeah!'

‘Here's
you
, Willie.' Thunder boomed.

‘Yeah!'

‘And you, Tom.'

‘That's too small and plain,' Tom protested. ‘Can't I be king?'

‘Shut up or you're the queen.'

‘I'm shut,' said Tom.

Douglas finished the list and the boys clustered round, their faces shining with sweat, eager for the next lightning bolt to let loose its electric shower. Distant thunder cleared its throat.

‘Listen!' cried Doug. ‘We've almost got it made. The town's almost ours. We got all the chess pieces, so the old men can't shove us around. Can anyone do better?'

Nobody could and admitted it, happily.

‘Just one thing,' said Tom. ‘How'd you work that lightning, Doug?'

‘Shut up and listen,' said Douglas, aggrieved that central intelligence had almost been wormed away from him.

‘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.

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
!'

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, awaiting 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
!