The spell was broken. The boys could do anything they wanted to.
Hours later, after dinner, in the long, painfully sweet twilight of a summer's evening, Dale, Lawrence, Kevin, and Harlen slid their bikes to a stop at the corner near Mike's house. "Ee-aw-kee!" shouted Lawrence.
"Kee-aw-ee!" came the shouted response from the shadows under the elms and Mike rode out to meet them, sliding his rear tire in the loose gravel, spinning to face the same direction the others were facing.
This was the Bike Patrol, formed two years earlier by these five boys when the oldest were in fourth grade and the youngest still believed in Santa Claus. They didn't call it the Bike Patrol now because they were self-conscious about the name, too grown up to pretend they patrolled Elm Haven in order to help people in distress and to protect the innocent from evildoers, but they still believed in the Bike Patrol. Believed with the simple acquiescence to the reality of now which once left them lying awake on Christmas Eve with pulses racing and mouths dry.
They paused there a moment on the quiet street. First Avenue continued past Mike's house out into countryside, north to the water tower a quarter of a mile, and then turning east until it disappeared in the evening haze above the fields near the horizon where the woods and Gypsy Lane and the Black Tree Tavern waited out of sight.
The sky was a softly burnished shield of gray, fading now in the hour between sunset and dark, and the corn in the fields was low, not yet up to an eleven-year-old's knees. Dale looked out over the fields that stretched east past distance-softened horizons of trees and imagined Peoria there-thirty-eight miles away beyond the hills and valleys and stretches of timber, lying in its own river valley and glowing with a thousand lights-but there was no glow there, only a quickly darkening horizon, and he could not really imagine the city. Instead he heard the soft rustle and whisper of the corn. There was no breeze. Perhaps it was the sound of the corn growing, thrusting its way up to become the wall that would soon surround Elm Haven and seal it off from the world.
"Come on," Mike said softly and stood on the pedals, leaning far forward over his handlebars and taking off in a shower of gravel.
Dale and Lawrence and Kevin and Harlen followed.
They rode south down First Avenue in the soft gray light, moving under elm shadow and emerging quickly into open twilight. The low fields lay open to their left, the dark houses to their right. Past School Street and the hint of Donna Lou Perry's house glowing a block to the west. Past Church Street and its long corridor of elms and oaks. And then they were at the Hard Road, Highway 151 A, and slowing out of habit before swinging right onto the empty but still-warm pavement of the two-lane main street.
They pedaled furiously, swinging up onto the sidewalk after the first block to let an old Buick roar past. They were riding west now, toward the glow in the sky, and the building fronts on the two blocks of Main Street gleamed in the fading light. A pickup truck pulled out of the diagonal parking in front of Carl's Tavern on the south side of the street and weaved toward them down the Hard Road. Dale recognized the driver of the old GM truck as Duane McBride's dad. The driver was drunk.
"Lights!" shouted all five boys as they pedaled past. The pickup continued on without headlights or taillights, making a wide turn up First Avenue behind them.
They jumped from the raised sidewalk to the empty Hard Road and continued west past Second Avenue and Third, past the bank and the A&P on their right, past the Parkside Cafe and Bandstand Park all dark and quiet under the elms to their left. It felt like Saturday night but it was only Thursday. No Free Show illuminated the night with its light and noise in the park. Not yet. But soon enough.
Mike hollered and swung left down Broad Avenue along the north end of the small park, past the tractor dealership and the small houses clustered there. It was getting dark in earnest now. Behind them, the tall streetlight flicked on along Main Street, illuminating the two blocks of downtown. Broad Avenue was a quickly darkening tunnel under the elms at their backs, an even darker tunnel in front of them.
"Touch the stairway!" shouted Mike.
"No!" yelled Kevin.
Mike always proposed it; Kevin always opposed it. They always did it.
Another block south, in a part of town the boys visited only during these twilight patrols. Past the long, dead-end street of new houses where Digger Taylor and Chuck Sperling lived. Past the official end of Broad Avenue. Up the private lane to the Ashley Mansion.
Weeds choked the rutted drive. Untended limbs hung low and thrust from the thickets on either side to slash at the unwary biker. It was full dark in this tunnel of a driveway.
As always, Dale put his head down and pedaled furiously to stay close to Mike. Lawrence was gasping to keep pace on his smaller bike but he kept up ... just as he always did. Harlen and Kevin were nothing but the sound of wheels on gravel behind them.
They emerged into the open area near the ruins of the old house. A pillar caught gray light above the brambles and thickets. The stones of the charred foundation were black. Mike wheeled around the circular drive, swung right as if he were going to climb the weed-littered stone stairs to leap into the collapsed foundation, and then slapped the flat slab of porch stone as he continued on.
Dale did likewise. Lawrence swung and missed but did not go back. Kevin and Harlen pedaled past in a flurry of gravel.
Around the wide circle of overgrown drive, wheels crunching and slipping on ruts and gravel. Dale noticed how much darker it was with the summer growth shutting out the light. Behind him the Ashley Mansion became a dark jumble, a secret place of burned timbers and collapsed floors. He liked it best that way-mysterious and slightly ominous as it was now rather than merely sad and abandoned as it was in the light of day.
They emerged from the night-black lane, formed up five abreast on Broad Street, and coasted downhill past the new section and Bandstand Park. They caught their breath and pedaled quickly to cross the Hard Road between a semi headed west and a semi headed east. The westbound truck's headlights caught Harlen and Kevin in their glare and Dale looked back in time to see Jim give the trucker the finger.
An airhorn blasted behind them as they pedaled up Broad Avenue, bikes almost silent on the asphalt under the overarching elms, breathing in the scent of new-mown grass on the broad lawns which swept back away from the street to the big house. Gliding north past the post office and the small white library and the larger white building which was the Presbyterian Church where Dale and Lawrence went, farther north, another long block past tall houses where leaf shadow moved above and below streetlamps and where Mrs. Doub-bet's old house showed a single light on the second floor and Mrs. Duggan's house showed no light at all.
They reached Depot Street and slid to a stop in the gravelly intersection, breathing softly. It was full night now. Bats darted above their heads. The sky cut pale patterns from the dark foliage above them. Dale squinted and saw the first star to the east.
"See you guys tomorrow," said Harlen and swung his bike west up Depot Street.
The others waited and watched until he was out of sight under the lower oaks and cottonwoods which darkened the street, until the sound of his pedaling was gone.
"Let's go," whispered Kevin. "My mom's going to be furious."
Mike grinned at Dale in the dim light and Dale could feel a lightness and energy in his arms and legs, an almost electrical charge of potential in his body. Summer. Dale punched his brother affectionately on the shoulder.