He was still late frequently. Mrs. Shrives wouldn't even talk to him anymore as he came in, merely glower and nod toward the principal's office. Mike would wait there for Dr. Roon to find time to scold him or give him a rap with the Enforcer, the paddle Roon kept in his lower lefthand drawer. The whippings didn't bother Mike anymore, but he hated to sit in the office and miss reading class and most of math.
Mike put the thought of school out of his mind as he sat on the high sidewalk in front of the bank and waited for the truck carrying the Peoria morning paper. It was summer.
The thought of summer, the warmth-in-the-face, smell-of-warming-pavement-and-moist-crops reality of it, filled Mike's spirit with energy and seemed to expand his chest with air even as the truck arrived, even as he unbundled the papers and folded them-sticking notes in some and setting those in the extra pocket of his delivery bag, even as he rode the morning streets, tossing papers, shouting good mornings to the women getting their milk bottles and the men getting into their cars for the commute elsewhere, and the reality of it, the lessened-gravity of summer, continued to buoy him up even as he leaned his bike against the wall of St. Malachy's and rushed into the cool shade-and-incense interior of his favorite place in the world.
Dale woke late, after eight, and lay in bed a long moment. Light and leaf-shadow from the giant elm outside filled the window. Warm air came through the screens. Lawrence was gone already; Dale could hear the cartoon sounds from the living room downstairs as his brother watched Heckle and Jeckle and Ruff and Reddy.
Dale got up, made both his and Lawrence's beds, pulled on underwear, jeans, a t-shirt, clean socks and his sneakers, and went downstairs to breakfast.
His mother had his favorite cereal and raisin toast ready.
She was chipper, chatting about what movies might be shown at the Free Show that night. Dale's dad was still gone on a road trip-his sales territory stretched across two states-but he'd be home late that night.
Lawrence called from the living room that Dale should hurry, that he was missing Ruff and Reddy.
"That's a little kids' show!" Dale shouted back. "It doesn't interest me." But he ate more quickly.
"Oh, this was in the paper this morning," said his mom. She set the note next to his bowl.
Dale smiled at the sight of the cheap Big Chief Tablet paper, recognized Mike's careful writing and awful spelling:
EVERYBODY MEAT AT THE CAVE AT NINE THIRTY
-M
Dale scooped up the last of his Wheaties and wondered what was so important that they had to go all the way out there to meet. The Cave was reserved for special events-secrets, emergency powwows, the special Bike Patrol meetings back when they were young enough to care about such things.
"Now it's not really a cave, is it, Dale?" his mother said, a slight undertone of worry in her voice.
"Uh-uh, Mom. You know it's not. It's just that old culvert out beyond the Black Tree."
"All right, just as long as you remember that you promised to mow the yard before Mrs. Sebert come over to visit this afternoon."
Duane McBride's father didn't subscribe to the Peoria paper-he didn't read any newspaper except for The New York Times, and that only rarely-so Duane didn't receive one of Mike's notes. The phone rang around nine a.m. Duane waited: they were on a party line-one ring meant their closest neighbors, the Johnsons; two rings meant Duane's line; and three rings meant a call for Swede Olafson down the road. The phone rang twice, stopped, rang twice again.
"Duane," came Dale Stewart's voice. "I figured you'd be out doing your chores."
"Already did my chores," said Duane. "Your dad home?"
"He went to Peoria to buy some things." There was a silence. Duane knew that Dale knew that Duane's Old Man often didn't return from his Saturday "buying trips" until late Sunday night.
"Hey, we're getting together at the Cave at nine-thirty. Mike's got something to tell us."
"Who's 'we'?" Duane glanced down at his notebook. He'd been working on his character sketch since after breakfast. This particular piece had been in progress since April and the notebook was filled with scratch outs, substitutions, entire passages and pages X'ed out, notations scrawled in tiny margins. He knew that this exercise was going to be as far from perfect as all the rest.
"You know," said Dale, "Mike and Kevin and Harlen and maybe Daysinger. I don't know. I just got the note in the paper a while ago."
"How about Lawrence?" Duane looked out at the ocean of corn rising-almost knee-high now-on either side of the long gravel road to their house. His mother, when she was alive, had forbidden the planting of anything taller than beans in the front twenty acres. "It makes me feel too isolated when the corn gets tall," she'd told Uncle Art. "Too claustrophobic." So the Old Man had humored her and planted beans. But Duane couldn't remember a time when summer did not mean the slow secession of their farm home from the world around them. "Waist-high by the Fourth of July," went the old saying about corn, but usually the corn in this part of Illinois was shoulder-high to Duane by the Fourth of July. And beyond that point of the summer, it wasn't so much that the corn grew as the farmhouse shrank. Duane couldn't even see the county road at the end of the lane unless he went to the second floor to peer over the corn. And neither he nor his Old Man went up on the second floor anymore. "What about Lawrence?" said Dale. "Is he coming?" "Sure he's coming. You know he always hangs around with us."
Duane smiled. "Just didn't want you to forget your little brother," he said.
There was an exasperated noise on the line. "Look, Duane, are you coming or not?"
Duane thought of the work he had to do around the farm that day. He'd be lucky to be finished by dark even if he started at once. "I'm pretty busy, Dale. You say you don't know what Mike has in mind?"
"Well, I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with Old Central. Tubby Cooke missing. You know."
Duane paused. "I'll be there. Nine-thirty, huh? If I start walking now, I should get there about then."
"Jeez," said Dale, his voice tinny over the line, "haven't you got a bike yet?'
"If God had meant for me to have a bike," said Duane, "I would have been born with Schwinn as my last name. See you there." He hung up before Dale could reply.
Duane went downstairs to find his notebook with his word-sketch of Old Central in it, pulled on a cap with the word cat on it, and went out to call his dog. Witt came at once. The name was pronounced "Vit" and was short for Wittgenstein, a philosopher that the Old Man and Uncle Art argued over incessantly. The old collie was almost blind now and moved with the slow-motion painfulness of arthritis, but he sensed that Duane was going somewhere and approached with the hopeful tail-wagging that showed he was ready to join the expedition.
"Uh-uh," said Duane, worried that the walk would be too much for his old friend in this heat. "You stay here today, Witt. Guard the spread. I'll be back by lunchtime."