NINE

Duane McBride awoke before dawn on Monday morning and thought for a confused second that he had to get his chores done and meet the school bus at the end of the lane. Then he remembered that it was Monday-the first Monday of summer vacation-and that he'd never have to go to Old Central again. A weight lifted from his shoulders, and he went upstairs whistling.

There was a note from the Old Man: he'd left early to meet some friends for breakfast at the Parkside Cafe, but he would be home by early afternoon.

Duane did the morning chores. Finding the eggs in the henhouse reminded him of when he was a tiny little kid and terrified of the militant hens, but it was a good memory because it was one of the few he had of his mother-even if the memory was of little more than a polka-dotted apron and a warm voice.

After breakfast of two of the eggs, five strips of bacon, toast, hash browns, and a chocolate donut, Duane was ready to go outside again-the pump on the water tank in the back pasture needed cleaning and a new pulley-when the phone rang. It was Dale Stewart. Duane listened silently to the news about Jim Harlen. After Dale waited a second for a response that did not come, he went on to tell Duane that Mike O'Rourke wanted a meeting of everybody in his chickenhouse at ten o'clock that morning.

"Why not in my chickenhouse?" was Duane's response.

"Your chickenhouse has chickens in it. Besides, we'd all have to ride our bikes way out to your house."

"I don't have a bike," said Duane. "I'll have to walk all the way in. What about meeting in your secret hideout in the culvert?"

"The Cave?" said Dale. Duane could hear the hesitancy in the other eleven-year-old's voice. Duane didn't especially want to go back to the culvert today either.

"OK," he said. "I'll be there at ten o'clock." After Duane hung up, he sat in the kitchen for a moment, thinking of the chores he'd have to double up on that afternoon. Finally he shrugged, found a candy bar to give him energy on the trip, and went outside. Witt met him in the yard, tail wagging, and this time Duane didn't have it in his heart to leave the old dog behind. There was a high cloud cover that day that cut down on the heat a bit-it was in the low eighties-and he thought Witt might like the exercise.

Duane went back in the house, stuffed his pants pockets with dog biscuits, grabbed a second candy bar for lunch, and the two set off down the lane. Duane never thought about it, but from a distance the two made odd companions-Duane with his ambling, loose-jointed semiwaddle; Wittgenstein limping along arthritically, setting his paws carefully like a barefoot quadruped on hot gravel, and peering myopically at things he could smell but not quite see.

The shade at the bottom of the hills was a relief, but Duane was sweating freely under his plaid flannel shirt by the time he climbed the grade to the Black Tree Tavern. There were a few cars there already. His dad's pickup wasn't one of them, but Duane guessed that the "breakfast" had already moved from the Parkside Cafe to Carl's Tavern in town.

The overcast began to break up by the time the boy and dog had turned west on Jubilee College Road, and the distant water tower shimmered in heat waves. Duane glanced at the fields of corn on either side, comparing their growth to the fields at his own farm-these were a few inches taller-and checking out the yellow signs along the barbed-wire fence to see what the brand and hybrids were. The sunlight was a solid thing now, heavy on his face and shoulders, and Duane cursed himself for forgetting his cap. Witt poked along, occasionally sniffing out an interesting scent trail and careening off blindly into the dust-covered weeds in the ditch alongside the road. The fence would usually stop his investigations and the collie would come limping back to where Duane waited patiently. Duane was less than a quarter of a mile from the water tower and the turn in the road into town when the truck came. He smelled it almost as soon as he heard it; it had to be the Rendering Truck. Witt raised his head, blindly trying to find the source of the scent and noise, and Duane caught him by the collar and pulled him over to the side of the gravel road. Duane hated it when trucks passed while he was walking here; the grit stayed in his eyes and mouth and hair for hours. If too many vehicles passed him, he might even have to take a bath one of these days.

Standing at the edge of the weeds, Duane noticed how fast the truck was coming. It had to be the Rendering Truck-how many trucks were there around here with peeling red paint on the cab and the high slats behind? The windshield was a mirror of sky glare. The thing was not only roaring along at fifty or sixty miles per hour, it wasn't moving to the center or left of the road as most vehicles would. Duane thought of flying gravel and he pulled Witt farther back, onto the verge of the shallow ditch itself.

The truck roared right, whipping weeds under its massive bumper and heading straight for Duane and the dog at fifty miles per hour.

Duane didn't take time to think. He bent, lifted Witt in a single motion, and leaped across the low ditch, almost colliding with the barbed-wire fence. He barely managed to hold on to the panicked and wiggling collie as the truck missed them by three feet, throwing dust, stubble, gravel, and junk from the side of the road into the air around them.

Duane could see the corpses of several cows, a horse, two hogs, and what looked to be a pale dog in the back as the Rendering Truck swerved back onto the gravel road and continued on in a cloud of dust.

"You son of a bitch!" he shouted, stepping out onto the gravel but still holding the terrified old dog in his arms. His hands were occupied, he couldn't shake a fist, so Duane spat after the truck. The gob of saliva was dust-colored.

The truck reached the water tower and turned left, the squealing of tires quite audible as it hit the asphalt there.

"Stupid bastard," muttered Duane. He almost never cursed, but he felt the need now. "Cretinous cowturd motherfucker." Witt was whining and wiggling in his arms, and Duane suddenly realized how heavy the old dog was and how hard Witt's heart was pounding. He could feel the throbs against his forearms. He stepped out onto the packed ruts in the road, set Witt down, and calmed him with long, slow strokes and gentle words.

"It's all right, Witt. It's OK, old friend," he crooned. "That dumb old stupid piss-ant preliterate asshole of a simple-minded custodian didn't hurt us, did he? No." The soothing tones were calming the dog, but his pulse was still visible against his ribs.

Actually, Duane hadn't seen Van Syke at the wheel-he was too busy lifting Witt and backing into barbed wire to check in the cab as the truck roared by-but he had no doubt that the crazy custodian-cum-dead-varmint collector was at the wheel. Well, everybody would know about this soon enough. It was one thing to scare a bunch of kids by dropping a dead monkey in the creek; it was something else to try to kill one of those kids.

Duane suddenly realized that Van Syke-or whoever it was-had tried to kill him. It hadn't been a prank. It hadn't been some sort of insane warning. The truck had aimed at them, and only the vehicle's speed and the certainty of turning over after hitting the low ditch at that speed had kept the driver from moving over the required thirty-six inches to get them. Somebody would've come along and found my body in the weeds, thought Duane. And Witt's. They'd never have known who did it. Just some careless kid and a hit-and-run driver. Duane remembered the barbed wire and felt his back. His hand came away red with blood. Worse than that, there were two large rips in his shirt that he would have to sew up.