Farewell Summer Part 6

Here the lion and the hartebeest lay together, here the jacka.s.s became unicorn, here on Sat.u.r.day 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 fi nd 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 gra.s.s. 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, Gram pa?"

"h.e.l.l." 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 chuffi ng breath, deep in an ice-floe summer hibernation, that Doug lifted his arms and wiggled his fi ngers, 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 n.o.body 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 fl oundered.

Eight. Nine.

His flesh turned to snow.

Ten. Eleven.

A shower of dark leaves fell from a thousand trees.

Twelve ! Oh my G.o.d, 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 cur tain 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 machin ery'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 fi recracker 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.