The Sound of Midnight - An Oxrun Station Novel

by Charles L. Grant

  "Did not," another girl said. "The ducks got him, silly."

  "Shut up, all of you!" Dale yelled, and they stepped back. Eight of them. Shivering in the hot sun. Clustered like goslings, only a few without tears. Dale carefully wiped the mud from Willy's face, brushed back his hair and with a prayer she really didn't feel, pinched his nose and bent over to blow into his mouth, push his chest, blow, push, blow, push, looking up once to see a man kneel and lift a small scratched wrist. Blow, push, realization growing despite the fight she waged to keep it back.

  Footfalls, and someone ordering the children to be taken away, the children protesting meekly and going, an order for the police unnecessary as a siren shattered the dreamlike fuzziness that had settled over the pond. Blow, push, and a hand on her shoulder.

  "It's no good, Dale." Softly. Masculine. "It's no good, Dale. The boy's dead."

  Blow, push, tears acid but not falling, the taste of mud and pond water.

  The hand firmer, forcing her back onto her heels. She reached up and slapped it away. Willy, eyes closed, mud streaks already caking, seemed to pale perceptively. A fly lighted on his chin, and Dale spun around and vomited.

  She heard nothing but her own gagging, felt nothing but the pains in her chest and stomach until a hand, the same hand, pressed a handkerchief into her palm and she wiped her face, scooped cold water into her eyes and forehead. Slowly, then, she lifted her head and stared unseeing at the opposite shore.

  "Willy," she said flatly.

  The sound of a heavy shoe in mud, and hands cupped beneath her arms and lifted her, unprotesting, led her several yards to the shade of a willow. She saw faces turn away, sorrowful and pitying, torn between concern for her welfare and the spectacle of the boy dead in the mud. There were whispers, but she made no sense of any of them. The hands had released her, and one was slowly rubbing her lower back while the other carefully dried her face with a soft piece of cloth. She wanted to smile her gratitude, but when she worked to position her lips they only tensed, quivered, and her teeth clamped down hard to keep them from screaming.

  "It's okay, Dale, it's okay."

  She looked up, blinking. To dark hair curled loosely, a tanned, lean face with squinting black eyes and a thick-lipped mouth, a mustache and dose-cropped beard hiding the jaw.

  "Bella told me you were out here," he said quietly.

  "My God, Vic," she said finally. "Vic, I heard him screaming." She hugged herself tightly but shook her head when he took a step forward. He nodded, fingered a cigarette from his breast pocket and lighted it, handed it to her and waited until she'd choked on the first intake of acrid smoke before lighting one for himself.

  "I saw him just this morning, you know. He came into the shop for one of his models. A big one again, a ship this time. His father must think he can do anything." She laughed quickly. A policeman she recognized as Fred Borg was kneeling by the boy's body. He ran a hand carefully over the boy's head, looked at his palm and wiped it on a handkerchief. Then, with some difficulty, he pried open the fingers of the left hand and took something from it. Dale stared, thinking it a stone before realizing it was a tiny figurine. A gift from his father's workshop, she thought as Fred looked it over and dropped it into his shirt pocket before arranging a sheet over the face while ambulance attendants set up a stretcher. The crowd had grown, and was strangely silent. The children were gone.

  "The poor things," she said. "They had to see it, to see such a terrible thing."

  Borg stood and stared in her direction until Vic pointed at his watch, then over his shoulder. The policeman nodded and returned to his grim business.

  "Come on, Dale," Vic said, taking her shoulder. "Let's go. There's nothing more you can do here."

  "But—"

  "We'll meet Fred at the station. He can take your statement there. Come on, there's no sense in sticking around here."

  "But the children, Vic . . ." Her last protest, weak and arguable. She reached down automatically for her purse before remembering she'd left it in the clearing.

  "What would you do without that thing?" Vic said, sensing her loss and guiding her through the trees. "Better you should be a kangaroo, then you wouldn't lose it all the time."

  She smiled and touched his arm gratefully. When he covered her hand with his, however, she disengaged gently. This was hardly the time for a show of encouragement; and as soon as she thought it, she became angry because she knew that Vic, no matter how hard he pursued her otherwise, would not take advantage. Though reared during the turmoil of a shift in morality, priorities, the new awareness of the world, Vic Blake had remained somehow steadfastly conservative when it came to his treatment of women and his elders. There was almost a continental flair of the gallant in his actions, and though Dale liked to believe she was part of the emerging new woman image, she nevertheless admitted to herself that she enjoyed his quiet, unpretentious attention to small things like doors and chairs and lighting of cigarettes.

  "Here," she said, pointing to the elm where she'd taken her lunch.

  He motioned her to stay, then loped around the bank and fetching the purse, hefting it as he returned and grinning. "How many guns, Dale? Or is it a howitzer?"

  "Just the usual addition to a woman's vanity," she said.

  "Dale Bartlett is not vain," he said loudly as they moved off toward the field. "She is sometimes headstrong, too self-confident, a damned good businesswoman—for a woman—but she is definitely not vain!"

  Willy. His legs floating. Fist clenched. Faint tinge of red on the back of his head. She couldn't bring herself to contribute to the banter and, when he saw her distress, Vic shoved his suit jacket out of the way and pushed his hands into his trouser pockets.

  "He was a nice kid," he said. "When school was over, he and his gang would come over to hang around the freshmen." A hand scratched at his curls, drifted to a habitual stroking of his beard. "They didn't mind him, you know. They didn't mind those little kids. They were a lot smaller, but they acted older, if you know what I mean. We used to have practically classroom sessions right there in the yard."

  The field was deserted. At the park's wrought-iron-gate entrance, a policeman stood in front of a small milling crowd, trying without touching to dissuade them from entering. Several people drifted off as Dale and Vic passed, but the more stubborn ones silently remained. At the curb, Vic waited patiently. Directly opposite them was the beginning of High Street, and on the block to their right the grade school the Oxrun children attended. It was an old brick two-story giant that had been there, it was said, since the Civil War; there was a playground behind it, then a small pocket park, and the Station's new library that fronted Williamston Pike. Bookends, Dale thought as they crossed the street and began walking west along High. New library, old school, and both had now lost a strayed, enthusiastic friend.

  "Hey," Vic said quietly, and took her shoulder, pulled her close while the tears, released at last, coursed and her breath gasped out in silent sobs. They had crossed Centre Street and had walked another block to Fox Road before she had cried out her remorse and mopped her face with the handkerchief she hadn't yet returned. Away from the businesses, now, the streets were quiet, fronted with homes Victorian and colonial in large and antique freshly painted splendor. Between here and Mainland Road were the homes of the village's middle class and those whose traditions of wealth didn't lend themselves to the small estates ranging on the far side of the park. They wandered, then, under the comforting whispering of elm and maple, the occasional willow, the clumps of birch, no talk. Wondered in bitter silence why children had to die.

  Finally they were standing at the corner of Northland and Steuben in front of the gray marble bulk of the Station's high school. Vic glanced up at the tall shaded windows and pulled her to the broad steps that led to the triple-door entrance. There were six, and at the top he sat, dusted a place beside him, and waited until she joined him.

  "Fountain of knowledge here," he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder whi
le his eyes never left the light traffic. "Great brains that will someday lead us all singing into the streets of a grand Utopia."

  "You've had a bad week?" she said.

  He grunted, shook his head as though the weight of the past five days had still not left him. "Not just that, Dale. It's everything. I've lost the old zing, the old enthusiasm for creating our future geniuses."

  She smiled and watched a milk truck head ponderously for the highway two blocks to her right. "What you've lost, you see, is that fresh-from-college idealism that told you in dreams that you were going to change the world with your Mr. Chips brilliance."

  "God, how true." He yanked his tie away from his throat, snatched it off, and stuffed it into a jacket pocket. "Saturday, right? I was here all morning with a class of numbskulls who want prep school so badly their fathers can taste it. Freshmen, my dear lady, are the scourge of the universe. And despite Oxrun's high academic prowess, these monsters are no different. They aren't human, you know. None of them are. Willy . . . well, Willy and Jaimie and Melody and all the rest of those little kids put these dolts to shame with their questions and persistence."

  "Why do you do it, then?" It was an old question they'd argued a hundred times, and she liked to think that perhaps it was her answers that kept him in teaching. But in her more sober moments she knew that wasn't the case. What kept him in teaching was the desire to stay in Oxrun Station. In addition to the lavish monies expended on contemporary equipment, books, experimental programs such as the one he ran each weekend morning, there was the town itself that affected him as much as it did her. It was more than home—a world unto itself, and though Vic wasn't village born, he was just as adamant of its qualities as any fifteenth-generation family.

  "Why do I do it," he repeated solemnly. "How should I know? Stupid, I guess." He turned to her, and she was struck by the uncharacteristic lack of mischief that had always lurked beneath the surface of his expression. "Dale, would you like a partner in that joint of yours? Or a clerk? Or a push-the-broom-on-a-Saturday-afternoon boy? How about a shelf duster? Someone to keep Bella from attacking the kids and scaring them off? Maybe a sandwich man. You know the guys I mean—they walk up and down the street with these boards publicizing the store and calling out the day's bargains. How about—"

  "Hey, slow down," she said, and would have said more, but a patrol car cruised up to the curb and stopped. A voice called out and Vic slapped at his knees, touched her arm before descending to the sidewalk to talk with the driver.

  It was time for her statement, she knew, and felt more guilty now because the shock of the boy's violent death had been successfully blunted by Vic's trying; and worse, she was more excited by the unusual inner change in her friend. They'd often joked about his work, her work, and somehow linking them in a purely professional way. But today she realized that Vic was serious—he wanted out, and into something less frantic, less awesomely responsible than the care and educational feeding of village youth. And what if she said no, what would he do? Leave the Station for the lure of the golden West, the metropolitan glamour of New York or Chicago, or the gambling dens of Las Vegas? What does an ex-teacher do, anyway, she wondered, and immediately pinched her wrist to distract herself. On top of what had happened less than two hours ago, this was too much and it wasn't true in the bargain. They were, these reflections and speculations, merely parts of a reaction, a grasping for something to take her mind off the tragedy, to dull her memory of the boy who only that morning had purchased a clipper ship he claimed he was going to complete on his own.

  Like Jaimie McPherson and his mechanical monsters, Carl Booth and his intricate model cars; like Melody Forrester and her sewing, Carolyn and Debbie Newcastle and their homemade dolls—all those children were like poor Willy: steady customers less than twelve years old who reached for the complex and somehow managed to achieve it. Questions that sometimes drove her mad, probing that once in a while frightened her. She wondered if they were all in the same class at school—that, she thought, would be a challenge for any teacher.

  Little old men and women dressed up like children.

  And yet, at the pond, they were frightened, crying, no pretense there of worldliness and false cynicism.

  Kids, she thought, are interesting if you don't let them scare you half to death.

  Vic straightened.

  One of these days, she thought as he approached her, maybe I’ll have a few of my own. One and one, and they'll be millionaires before I'm forty and will support me in the style to which I shall promptly become accustomed.

  "What are you thinking so hard about?" he asked, reaching out a hand for her to take.

  "Kids," she said without thinking. "And what mine will be like."

  He held her hand a second longer as she stood. "Is that a proposal?"

  Suddenly she realized what she'd been saying and fussed in her purse, her face down to hide a damning flush. "Of course not," she snapped. "Idle speculation."

  "Oh well," he said, sighing loudly and searching the sky. "I guess there's always good old Liz Provence."

  "Witch," she muttered.

  "Nasty," he said.

  "Sorry." She followed him to the sidewalk. "I guess, if she's a friend of yours, she can't be all that bad. I'm sorry, Vic. It's . . . it's the day."

  "I know, don't worry about it. Hey," and he bent down suddenly and scooped a piece of paper from the concrete. "You dropped this."

  She looked at the crumpled paper, blinked, and took it. "It's not mine." She unfolded it, read it, then looked at the patrol car speeding away. "Well," she said "I've got a secret admirer."

  CHAPTER II

  "'Dear Miss Bartlett,'" she read as they left the high school behind them, "'I know you like me and I like you so I want to see you today if you will let me. I will see you in the park 'cause that's where you always are and I will see you there because I want to say something to you. Please be in the park today so I can see you and tell you something." She handed the note to Vic and waited while he read it to himself. Silently. His eyebrows raised, his lips stiff to keep them from smiling.

  "Well," he said to her unasked question, "it looks as though you've made a conquest, as they say. You been messing around with some of my boys, Dale?"

  "You're being ridiculous," she said. "Besides, if you can't teach your classes any better English than this, they couldn't read the boxes in the store anyway. I think it looks like a grade-school kid. Look at that printing, for crying out loud."

  "All right, all right, don't get excited. I was only kidding."

  "I'm not excited! Just curious. I wonder how long this was in my purse."

  "With all that garbage in it? Days, for all you know."

  She shook her head as she refolded the note and tucked it absently into her waistband. It couldn't have been there before today. Last night, while she was watching television, she had dumped the purse's contents onto the living room floor and finally separated the essentials from the empty gum wrappers, used tissues, and all the rest of the debris she'd picked up during the week. If the note had been there, she would have noticed it. It must have been while she was at the store. Her purse always sat on the counter next to the cash register. With people moving in and out throughout the morning, anyone could have slipped the paper in while she was in one of the four aisles with a customer.

  "That's what you get for being so kind to them," Vic was saying. "Now that they know you're a sucker for their cute little smiles, they're trying . . . well, one of the little beasts is trying to put his grubby make on you, lady." He laughed at her expression and held up a palm to deflect her anger. "Come on, Dale, I'm only joking. But the printing, and that yellow-lined paper . . . it is one of your little ones, you know. Did you see anyone near you in the park before . . ." He coughed, examined the sidewalk. "Before the accident?"

  "No one but me," she said. "And the only time I left the purse alone . . ." She nodded quickly, once. "It could have been then, too. When I ran to see what all the
commotion was, I left the purse, remember? God, an elephant could have come up without anyone seeing it."

  "No," he said. "Only a lovesick one. Whoever that is," and he tapped her waist, "is mad for you, Miss Bartlett. What are you going to do about it?"

  She didn't know, and for the moment it was inconsequential. They'd reached the Chancellor Avenue police station, another of the village's marble-and-granite imitations of a nonexistent Grecian temple, and she balked before allowing him to take her arm and lead her inside.

  The first thing she saw was the low wooden railing that separated the waiting area from a large desk set up on a platform. The sergeant behind it looked up, recognized her, and immediately picked up one of the several telephones arrayed in front of him. Vic nodded to her and they sat on a smooth wooden bench against the wall, a faded picture of the Supreme Court hanging precariously above them. Dale had been in the station only twice before in her life, the last to speak to Chief Windsor about arranging for the return of her parents' coffins. Now the chief was dead, killed in a tragic fire at the Toal Mansion some time before, and she'd expected the place to be somehow different, changed. But it wasn't.

  Behind the main desk on the rear wall were two frosted glass doors, their lettering indicating the detective and patrolman offices. A corridor interrupted the right-hand wall leading to the detention block, and a corridor off the left to the interrogation rooms and the chief's office. The ceiling was high, plaster, incongruously edged with dusty fat cherubs and unidentifiable flowers. Three hanging lamps encased in flat white globes dispensed a harsh light that added to the fading of the pale green walls. It could not have been anything else but a police station, she thought—it had that certain rushed, sweaty, intense odor about it even though crime in the village was anything but epidemic even in the worst of times.

  Several patrolmen came in from the street, barely looking at her as they passed through the railing's gate, checked in with the sergeant, and vanished through the Detective Section door. Vic whistled softly the theme from "Dragnet," and she couldn't help a giggle before jabbing an elbow into his ribs. The door to the cell block opened, then, and a woman's voice blared obscenities at the back of a policewoman who immediately turned and blared them back. When she saw Dale gaping at her, she brushed lint from her shoulder, pushed at her short hair, and walked briskly outside.