The tornado rose, dipped behind trees and fields far to the east, touched down somewhere beyond the town, and whipped away into the darkness toward the north. The wind suddenly rose as the storm front passed, pelting the boys with leaves and branches and threatening to pry them loose from their perch on the eave of the roof.
"Give me that," Mike said to Harlen. He took the rope, retied the knot, looped it over the four-foot chimney, and slid down to the edge to link the two lengths of rope together with quick, sure knots. He finished, tugged to test the rope, tossed the end over the eaves, and said, "You first," to Dale.
They could hear the dark figure scrabbling across shingles on the other side of the gable behind them.
Dale did not argue or hesitate. He swung onto the edge of the gutter, saw nothing but air beneath him, got his legs around the rope, and lowered himself over. He swung slightly at the overhang, feeling how flimsy the rope was.
Harlen helped lower Lawrence onto the rope and the two brothers started shinnying down, Dale acting as a brake for the smaller boy. He felt his hands beginning to tear and chafe.
"Go," said Mike. He was looking up the steep roof toward the gable, but Roon had not yet appeared.
"My arm," Harlen said softly.
Mike nodded and stepped to the edge. Dale and his brother were twenty feet down and still descending slowly. The rope did not go all the way to the ground but Mike couldn't tell how close it came.
"We'll go together," said Mike. He stood and pulled Har-len's arms around him from behind. "Hang on to me. I'll worry about the rope."
Dr. Roon came over the smoldering gable, moving on all fours like a spider with missing legs. A piece of shattered railing still protruded from his chest. He was gasping and growling, mouth open very wide.
"Hang on," said Mike, swinging Harlen and himself over the edge. The entire rooftop was smoldering and smoking; the fire had reached the attic. The chimney itself must be very hot against the rope, Mike knew.
"We'll never make it," Harlen gasped in his ear.
"We'll make it," said Mike, knowing that they wouldn't have time to lower themselves far before Roon reached the overhang above them. All he has to do is cut the rope.
Below them, Dale and Lawrence reached the end. They were still at the top level of the first-story window, at least fifteen feet from the ground.
"It's nothing," whispered Lawrence. "Do it." They both let go at the same second, hitting and rolling in the loose sand of the playground near the slide. It was nothing. They stood on shaky legs and ran back from the flames erupting from windows and the> south door. Dale shielded his eyes and looked up at the outline of the two boys against the bright brick. They were halfway down, still thirty feet from the ground, with Harlen clinging to Mike's shoulders for all he was worth.
"Go! Go!" the brothers screamed at Mike as a dark figure appeared at the edge of the roof.
Mike glanced up, wrapped his arms and legs around the rope so that it wound around the inside of his arm and between his ankles, whispered "Hang on" again to Harlen, and let himself slide, the rope whining between his palms. '
Dale and Lawrence watched in horror as Roon seemed to hesitate at the edge of the roof, glanced back up at the flame rising from the gable itself now, and then quickly looped a coil of rope around his wrist. Moving like a black spider, Roon lowered himself over the eaves above Mike and Harlen. He began to descend quickly.
"Oh, shit," whispered Lawrence.
Dale pointed and began to scream at Mike. Above the overhang, where neither Mike nor the rapidly descending Roon could see, the roof suddenly burst into a thousand discrete points of flame-like a piece of film acetate suddenly browning, melting, and burning through, Dale thought-and the long south gable collapsed inward with a shower of sparks that filled the sky. The old chimney stood by itself for a second, a brick tower in a geyser of fire, but then toppled inward.
"Jump!" screamed Dale and Lawrence in unison. Mike and Harlen fell free the last six or eight yards, landing hard and rolling in the deep sand.
Above them, the descending form of Dr. Roon was suddenly tugged upward as the rope jerked tight around its wrist. He threw his free arm out in the last second before he struck the overhang of the burning eave, was dragged above it, and disappeared into the firestorm, looking for an instant like a thrashing insect on a string being tossed into the flames of a campfire.
Dale and Lawrence rushed forward, arms raised against the heat, and dragged Mike and Harlen out past the playground equipment, into the ditch on the edge of School Street. The four of them watched as Kevin and Cordie made a wide circle of the burning, collapsing school to join them there.
Without warning, the streetlights and houselights of Elm Haven snapped on. The children huddled together, Cordie ripping the last of her dress into strips and wrapping them around Mike's bleeding hands. None of them thought it odd that she stood there in her gray slip, nor that Kevin was barefoot and bleeding, nor that the other four boys looked like chimney sweeps in sooty rags. Suddenly Lawrence started giggling and they all laughed until they cried, holding each other and pounding each other on the back.
Then, as the laughter died away before it turned to tears, Mike was whispering something, tugging Kevin close. "You heard somebody stealing your dad's truck," he gasped between coughs. He had inhaled too much smoke. "You called us on our toy walkie-talkies, we tried to catch up to it. We thought we saw Dr. Roon driving. Then it hit the school and the fire started."
"No," said Kevin dully, rubbing his temple, "that's not the way it happened ..."
"Kevin!" said Mike, grabbing the boy's sooty t-shirt with a bloody hand and shaking him.
Kevin's eyes cleared. "Yesss," he said slowly. "Someone was stealing dad's truck. I went out to chase him."
"We couldn't catch up," said Dale.
"Then the fire started," said Lawrence. He squinted at the blaze. The roof had fallen in completely now, the belfry was gone, the windows had burned away and the walls were falling in. "And boy did it start."
"We don't know who or why," coughed Mike, sagging back onto the grass. "We tried to get the guy out of the truck and we got all messed up like this. But we don't know anything else."
Two distinct sirens began to wail-the civil defense siren on the bank warning of a tornado that had already passed, and the higher, shriller siren on the volunteer fire department half a block south. Headlights appeared on Second Avenue and Depot Street and they heard the sound of heavy trucks approaching. People appeared on the sidewalks and street-corners.
Supporting one another in clusters of twos and threes, their shadows thrown far across the playing fields by the rising flames of the burning building, the six children walked back toward the welcoming lights of the houses where some of their parents waited.
FORTY-TWO
On Friday, August 12, 1960, the Echo communications satellite balloon was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral.
That afternoon, Dale and Lawrence and Kevin and Harlen and Mike rode their bikes out to Uncle Henry's and Aunt Lena's where they hiked the back pastures and spent hours digging for the lost Bootleggers' Cave back along the creek. It was very hot.
Cordie Cooke appeared shortly before dinner and watched them dig. Her family had moved back to their home along the Dump Road, and kids in town had commented on how much time she spent with Mike and the others these days.
The digging was slow. Harlen's new cast had come off almost two weeks earlier, Kevin's smaller cast a week after that, but both boys favored those arms and all of the boys except Harlen had healing scabs on their palms. They handled the shovels and spades carefully.