Mike finished up, walked back along the flagstone walk that wound between his mother's flower garden and his father's vegetable garden, glanced up to see starlings whirling among high leaves catching the first light of dawn, went in through the small back porch, and washed his hands at the kitchen sink which his father had just vacated. Then he went to the junk cupboard, got out his writing tablet and school pencil, and sat at the table.
"Gonna be late for the papers," said his dad. He was standing at the counter, drinking coffee and looking out through the kitchen window at the garden. The wall clock said 5:08.
"No, I'm not," said Mike. The papers were dropped off at five-fifteen in front of the bank next to the A&P on Main Street where Mike's mother worked. He had never been late in picking them up.
"What're you writing there?" asked his dad. The coffee had seemed to focus him.
"Just some notes to Dale and the guys."
His father nodded, not really seeming to hear, and looked out at his garden again. "That rain the other day really helped the corn."
"See you, Dad." Mike folded the notes in his jean pockets, pulled on a baseball cap, gave his father a bop on the shoulder, and was out the door and on his ancient bike, pedaling down First at full speed.
As soon as Mike finished his morning paper route, he would pedal to St. Malachy's over on the west side of town near the railroad tracks, where he would serve as altar boy while Father Cavanaugh said Mass. Mike did this every day of the year. He had been an altar boy since he was seven, and although other kids came and went, Father C. said that none were as dependable as Mike . . . nor pronounced the Latin as carefully and reverently. The schedule was hard sometimes, especially in winter when the drifts were deep and he couldn't use his bike to get around town. Sometimes then he'd come running into St. Malachy's, tuck his surplice and cassock on without taking time to shrug out of his coat or get into his brown oxfords, say Mass with snow melting from the soles of his boots, and then, if only the usual seven-thirty congregation was there-Mrs. Moon, Mrs. Shaugh-nessy, Miss Ashbow, and Mr. Kane-Mike would, with Father C. 's permission, take off right after Communion so he could get to school before the last bell rang.
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."