Farewell Summer Read Online Free PDF

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 fi nd shelter.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    “Bleak!” Quartermain barked into his tele phone.
    “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.
----

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    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