"And where's that?" asked Dale.

"The cemetery."

Kevin had meant it as a joke, but it was too dark and the death of Duane's dog had been too recent. No one spoke for a while.

Mike broke the silence. "Anybody hear anything about Harlen?"

"Yeah," said Kevin. "Ma was up in Oak Hill this afternoon and saw his ma there. She was eating dinner in the drugstore just across the square from the hospital, and she told Ma that Harlen's still unconscious. His arm's all busted up. Multiple compound fractures."

"Is that bad?" asked Dale, realizing as he spoke how stupid the question sounded.

Mike nodded. He had more Scout badges in First Aid than anybody else Dale knew. "Compound fractures mean it's broken more than once. Bone probably came through the skin, too."

"Oh, yech," said Kevin. Dale felt a little sick at the thought.

"The concussion's probably the most serious thing," continued Mike. "If Harlen's still out, it's probably pretty bad."

There was another silence. A mouse or shrew made scurrying sounds beneath the floorboards. The room was dark enough now that Dale could see only the other boys' outlines-Kevin's shirt glowing the brightest, Duane's dark flannel only a shadow amidst shadows-and now there were more fireflies visible beyond the door and windows, glowing like embers in the dark. Like eyes.

"I'm going up to Oak Hill tomorrow," Duane said at last. "I'll check in on Jim and let you guys know how he is."

Kevin's t-shirt moved in the gloom. "Maybe we could all go."

"Uh-uh," came Duane's voice. "You guys have stuff to do around here, remember? Have you followed Roon yet?" The question was directed at Kev in the darkness.

Grumbacher grunted. "I've been busy."

"Yes," said Duane. "We all have. But I think we'd better do the things we agreed to do at the cave on Saturday. Something weird's going on."

"Maybe Harlen saw something," said Dale. "They found him in the garbage bin behind Old Central. Maybe he was following Old Double-Butt or something."

"Maybe," agreed Duane. "I'll try to find out tomorrow. In the meantime, it would help if someone else checked out Mrs. Doubbet until Jim's back."

"I will," said Dale, surprised to hear himself volunteer. Mike's shadow at the doorway said, "I didn't find Van Syke at the cemetery, but I'll get him tomorrow."

"Be careful," said Duane. "I didn't see him for sure in that truck, but I somehow was sure that it was him driving." The boys clamored for more details of the near disaster. Duane summarized it as briefly as he could. "I've got to get going," he said finally. "I don't want the Old Man drinking too much at Carl's."

The other three shifted in embarrassment, glad for the darkness. "Can I tell Lawrence this stuff?" Dale asked. "Yeah," said Mike. "But don't scare him to death." Dale nodded. The meeting was over, everybody was expected somewhere else, but nobody seemed to want to leave. One of the O'Rourke cats came in, leaped onto Dale's lap, and curled up, purring.

Kevin signed. "None of this shit makes sense." Kevin almost never swore.

The others said nothing, just staying there another moment, together in the darkness. Silence was their agreement.

That night, Mike O'Rourke lay awake counting fireflies out his window. Sleep was like a tunnel, and he had no intention of going in.

Something moved on the front lawn, under the linden tree. Mike leaned forward, set his nose against the screen, and tried to see between the leaves and the eaves of the small front porch.

Someone had moved out of the deep shadows under the tree near Memo's window and stepped out onto the road. Mike listened for footsteps on asphalt or the crunch of the gravel on the roadside, but there was no sound except for the silken rub of corn tassels.

He had only caught a glimpse, but Mike had seen the round shadow of the top of a hat. Too perfectly round to be a cowboy hat. More like a Boy Scout hat.

Or the campaign hat Duane had described on the soldier he'd called a doughboy.

Mike lay by the window, heart still pounding, holding sleep off like an enemy that had to be kept at bay.

ELEVEN

Duane McBride left for the library as soon as morning chores were done on Tuesday. The Old Man was awake and sober and in the foul mood which that combination usually brought. Duane went into the Old Man's workshop to tell him he was leaving.

"Chores done?" grunted his father. He was tinkering with the newest model of his "learning machine." The Old Man's workroom had once been the family dining room, but since Duane and his father ate only in the kitchen-when they ate together at all, which was rarely-the Old Man had turned the dining room into his workshop. Half a dozen doors on sawhorses served as massive tables, and most of these were littered with variations on the learning machine or other prototypes.

The Old Man was a real inventor; he had five patents approved, although only one of these-the automatic mailbox alarm-had ever made any money for him. Most of his devices were as impractical as the learning machine over which he now fussed: a massive metal box with cranks, viewing panel, buttons, punch-card slots, and assorted lights. The thing was supposed to revolutionize education. When properly programmed with scrolls of the appropriate reading/questioning material and the required student-response punch cards, the machine could provide hours of instructional choices and private tutoring. The problem-as Duane had pointed out repeatedly-was that each learning machine would cost almost a thousand dollars with the necessary printed stuff, and it was mechanical.

Duane had long argued that computers would someday do this stuff, but his father disliked electronics as much as Duane loved it. You know how big a computer would have to be to carry out the simplest autonomous teaching task? his father would demand. As Big as Texas, Duane would respond. With the hourly total flow of Niagara Falls required to cool it. But then he would add, But that's with vacuum tubes, Pop. They're doing exciting things with transistors and resistors now.

The Old Man would grunt and go back to work on a new learning-machine prototype. Duane had to admit they were fun-he'd run through an entire high-school political science course on one when he was eight-but they were clunky and forbidding. Only one had been sold-almost four years earlier, to the Brimfield School District, and Uncle Art knew a purchasing guy there. Meanwhile, prototypes continued to clutter the workshop tables and end up taking space in the hallways and empty bedrooms upstairs.

Duane figured that as a hobby, the perpetual-motion learning-machine project wasn't as harmful as the full-serve twen-ty-four-hour-a-day rural shopping center the Old Man had tried to run back in the mid-fifties. There had been two stores in the "shopping center," a hardware store and the Old Man's multipurpose OmniMart, which sold mainly bread and milk, but the Old Man had been the entire delivery force, taking calls at home in the middle of the night and driving down gravel and dirt backroads at all hours, delivering a loaf of bread at four a.m. to some old lady over in Knox County only to discover that she wanted it put on the OmniMart Instant Credit Plan. Uncle Art-who'd run the hardware store-was as glad as Duane to see that vision die. To this day, the Old Man insisted that he'd been right about "shopping centers"-just look at Sherwood Center now growing up in Peoria, nine stores!-but that he'd been ahead of his time. The Old Man predicted that someday shopping centers would be huge, indoor affairs-dozens of specialty stores under a single glassed roof like the gallerias he'd seen in Ital) after the war. Most people would listen and ask Whyl with a puzzled expression, but Duane and Uncle Art had learned to nod and keep quiet.