The collie's cataract-clouded eyes managed to look both hurt and imploring. Duane patted him, led him back to the barn, and made sure his water bowl was full. "Keep the burglars and corn monsters at bay, Witt."
The collie surrendered with a canine sigh and settled onto the blanket on straw that served as his bed.
The day was hot as Duane ambled down the lane toward County Six. He rolled up the sleeves of his plaid flannel shirt and thought about Old Central and about Henry James. Duane had just read The Turn of the Screw and now he thought about the estate called Bly, about James's subtle suggestion that a place could resonate with such evil that it provided "ghosts" to haunt the children Miles and Flora.
The Old Man was an alcoholic and a failure, but he was also a thoughtful atheist and dedicated rationalist, and he had raised his son that way. As early as Duane could remember, he had viewed the universe as a complex mechanism following sensible laws: laws that were only partially and poorly understood by the feeble intellects of humankind, but laws nonetheless.
He flipped his notebook open and found the passage about Old Central. "... a sense of ... foreboding? Evil? Too melodramatic. A sense of awareness. ..." Duane sighed, ripped the page out, and stuck it in the pocket of his corduroy pants.
He reached County Six and turned south. Sunlight blazed off the white gravel of the road and burned against Duane's exposed forearms. Behind him, in the fields on either side of the lane to his home, insects rustled and stirred in the growing corn.
Dale, Lawrence, Kevin, and Jim Harlen rode to the Cave together. "Why do we have to meet so damn far away?" grumbled Harlen. His bike was smaller than the others', a seventeen-incher, and he had to pedal twice as hard to keep up.
They rode past O'Rourke's house under its large shade trees, north toward the water tower, then east on the wide gravel road, Kevin and Dale and Lawrence in the hard-packed left rut, Harlen on the right. There was no traffic, no wind, and no sound except for their breathing and the crunch of gravel under their tires. It was almost a mile to County Six. In the fields beyond and to the northeast of the junction, hills and heavy timber began. If they had stayed on the road from the water tower, they would have run into the hilly country between Elm Haven and the almost abandoned town called Jubilee College. County Six continued south for a mile and a half, connecting to Highway 151 A, the Hard Road that ran through Elm Haven, but that shortcut was little more than dirt ruts through fields and was impassable during most of the winter and spring.
They turned north, passed the Black Tree Tavern, and roared down the first steep hill, almost standing on their brake pedals. The trees arched over the narrow road here, dappling it in deep shadow. The first time Dale had heard "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" when Mrs. Grossaint, their fourth-grade teacher, had read it to the class, he had pictured this place with a covered bridge at the bottom.
There was no covered bridge, only rotting wooden railings on either side of the gravel road. The kids slid to a stop at the bottom and walked their bikes down a narrow trail through the weeds on the west side of the road. The weeds were waist-high or taller here, and covered with dust from cars that had passed. Barbed-wire fences separated the dark woods from the thick foliage along the roadside. They stowed their bikes under shrubs, making sure they were invisible from the road, and then followed the trail farther down, into the coolness of the creekside.
At the bottom, the trail was almost invisible as it led under the tall weeds and short trees, winding along the narrow stream. Dale led the others into the Cave.
It wasn't a cave. Not exactly. For some reason the county had laid a precast-cement culvert under the road here, rather than use the thirty-inch corrugated steel pipes found everywhere else. Perhaps they had expected spring floods; perhaps they had a cement culvert they hadn't known what to do with. For whatever reason, the thing was huge-six feet across-and there was a fourteen-inch groove in the base of it that let the stream trickle through so that the kids could recline on the curved base of the culvert and stretch their legs out without getting wet. It was cool in the Cave on the hottest of days, the entrances were almost covered over with vines and weeds, and the sound of cars passing on the roadbed ten feet above them just made the hiding place seem that much more concealed.
Beyond the far end of the Cave, a small drainage pond had formed. It was only seven or eight feet wide and perhaps half that deep in summer, but it had a certain surprising beauty about it, with the water dripping from the culvert like a miniature waterfall and the surface of the pond made almost black by deep shade from the trees.
Mike had named the stream that fed it Corpse Creek because the small pool so frequently held roadkill tossed from the road above. Dale could remember finding the bodies of possum, raccoon, cats, porcupine, and once the corpse of a large German shepherd in the pool. He recalled lying there at the edge of the Cave, elbows on cool cement, and staring at the dog through four feet of perfectly clear water: the German shepherd's black eyes had been open, staring back at Dale, and the only hint that the animal was dead-other than the fact it was lying on the bottom of a pond-was a small trail of what looked like white gravel coming from its open muzzle, as if it had vomited stones.
Mike was waiting for them in the Cave. A minute later, Duane McBride joined them, huffing and panting as he came down the trail, his face red under his cap. He blinked in the sudden darkness of the culvert. "Ah, the Thanatopsis Clam and Chowder Society convening," he said, still wheezing a bit.
"Huh?" said Jim Harlen.
"Never mind," said Duane. He sat down and mopped his face with the tail of his flannel shirt.
Lawrence was poking at a large spiderweb with a stick he'd found. He turned around as Mike began to speak. "I've got an idea."
"Whoa, stop the presses," said Harlen. "New headline for tomorrow's paper."
"Shut up," said Mike with no anger in his voice. "You guys were all there yesterday at the school when Cordie and her mom came looking for Tubby." "I wasn't there," said Duane.
"Yeah." Mike nodded. "Dale, tell him what happened." Dale described the confrontation between Mrs. Cooke and Dr. Roon and J. P. Congden. "Old Double-Butt was there, too," he concluded. "She said she saw Tubby leave. Cordie's ma said that was bullshit." Duane raised an eyebrow.
"So what's your idea, O'Rourke?" asked Harlen. He was using twigs and leaves to build a small dam in the groove in the bottom of the culvert. Water was already backing up and pooling on the cement.
Lawrence moved his sneakers before they got wet. "You want us to go give Cordie a smooch so she's not unhappy anymore?" asked Harlen.
"Uh-uh," said Mike. "I want to find Tubby."
Kevin had been tossing pebbles into the pond. Now he stopped. His freshly laundered t-shirt looked very white in the gloom. "How are we supposed to do that if Congden and Barney can't? And why should we?"
"The Bike Patrol should," said Mike. "That's the kind of thing we wanted to do when we made up the club. And we can because we can go places and see things that Barney and Congden can't."
"I don't get it," said Lawrence. "How do we find Tubby if he ran away?''
Harlen leaned over and pretended to grab Lawrence's nose. "We use you as a bloodhound, punk. We give you an old pair of Tubby's stinky socks and you sniff him out. OK?"
"Shut up, Harlen," said Dale.
"Make me," said Jim Harlen, flicking some water toward Dale's face.
"Shut up both of you," said Mike. He went on as if he hadn't been interrupted. "What we do is, we follow Roon and Old Double-Butt and Van Syke and the others, find out if they did anything to Tubby."
Duane was playing cat's cradle with a string he'd found in his pocket. "Why would they do anything to Tubby Cooke?"