Summer of Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

clattering down the stairs for a perfunctory breakfast, laughing with their mom over silly things, and then out again… onto their bikes, down the street, away, off into summer.
    Three hours later the brothers were in Mike O'Rourke's chickenhouse, sprawled with their friends on the legless, sprung couch, torn chairs, and littered floor of their unofficial clubhouse. The others were there-Mike, Kevin, Jim Harlen, even Duane McBride in from his farm while his dad shopped at the co-op store-and all seemed stunned into incapacity by the bewildering array of choices facing them.
    "We could ride out to Stone Creek or Hartley's Pond," said Kevin. "Go swimming."
    "Uh-uh," said Mike. He was lying on the sofa with his legs over the back, his back in the sprung cushions, and his head on a catcher's mitt lying on the floor. He was shooting at a daddy longlegs on the ceiling with a rubber band that he would retrieve after each ricochet. So far he had been careful not to hit the insect, but it was shuttling back and forth in some agitation. Each time it got close to a concealing crack or two-by-four rafter, Mike would fire the rubber band and send it scuttling in the opposite direction. "I don't want to go swimming," said Mike. "Water moccasins will be all worked up because of the storm last night."
    Dale and Lawrence exchanged glances. Mike was afraid of snakes; it was the only fear they knew their friend had.
    "Play ball," said Kevin.
    "Nan," said Harlen from where he lay on a sprung armchair reading a Superman comic. "I didn't bring my glove and I'd have to ride all the way home to get it." While the rest of the boys-with the exception of Duane-lived within a short block of each other, Jim Harlen lived on the far end of Depot Street, near the tracks that led out to the dump and the squalid shacks where Cordie Cooke lived. Harlen's house was all right, an old, white farmhouse which had been swallowed up by the town decades before, but a lot of his neighbors were weird. J.P. Congden, the crazy justice of the peace, lived only two houses away from Harlen, and J.P."s son, C.J., was the meanest bully in town. The boys didn't like playing at Harlen's house, or even going up that way if they could help it, and they understood Jim Harlen's reluctance to go back that way to get his stuff.
    "Head out to the woods," suggested Dale. "Maybe check out Gypsy Lane."
    The other boys stirred restlessly. There was no obvious reason to veto the suggestion but lethargy had them firmly in its grip. Mike fired the rubber band and the daddy longlegs scurried away from the impact site.
    "That'd take too long," said Kevin. "I've got to be home for dinner.”
    The other boys smiled but said nothing. They were all familiar with the voice of Kevin's mother when she opened he door and shouted "KeVIIIN!" in a rising falsetto. And they were familiar with the alacrity with which Kevin dropped whatever he was doing and ran for the white ranch house on the low hill next to Dale and Lawrence's older home.
    "What do you want to do, Duane?" asked Mike. O'Rourke was the born leader, always polling everyone before deciding.
    The big farm boy with his goofy haircut, baggy corduroy pants, and placid gaze was chewing on something-not gum-and his expression was almost retarded. Dale knew how misleading that dumb hick appearance was-all the boys sensed it-because Duane McBride was so smart that the others could only guess at his thought patterns. He was so smart that he didn't even have to show how smart he was in school, preferring to let the teachers writhe in frustration at the oversized boy's perfectly correct but terse answers, or scratch their heads at verbal responses tinged with an irony which bordered on impertinence. Duane didn't care about school. He cared about things the other boys didn't understand.
    Duane stopped chewing and nodded toward the old RCA Victor floor-model radio that was in the corner. "I think I'd like to listen to the radio." He took three thumping