"J.P. and Barney and everybody's over at Old Central. Cordie's there and her weird-looking mom. Roon's out there. Everybody. They're looking for Cordie's stupid brother."
"Tubby?" said Gerry Daysinger. He rubbed his runny nose with his hand and wiped it on his gray t-shirt. "I thought he ran away on Wednesday."
"Yeah," panted Sandy, talking to Donna Lou now, "but Cordie thinks he's still in the school! Weird, huh?"
"Let's go," said Harlen, running for the row of bikes near first base. The others followed, pulling handlebar grips away. from the fence, tucking baseball gloves on their handlebars or onto bats thrown over their shoulders.
"Hey!" called Mike from the other side of the backstop. "What about Van Syke?"
"Give him a kiss for us," yelled Harlen and started pedaling down the dirt road.
Dale followed, Lawrence and Kevin right behind him. Dale pedaled hard, pretending to be excited about Sandy's news. Anything to get away from the stench of Death and the silent Rendering Truck.
Mike waited a minute while the others fled, dust rising behind them. Day singer didn't have a bike but he rode on the front of Grumbacher's, Kevin's long legs rising and falling as he pedaled hard. Donna Lou glanced toward Mike and then got on her aqua and white bike, threw her mitt in the basket, and rode off with Sandy.
For a moment Mike was all alone on the ballfield. Just him and the terrible stench of dead things and the silent truck. Mike stood there, just behind the backstop, and glared at the truck. It was at least ninety degrees out today-the sun so fierce that it made the sweat run in rivulets down his dusty neck and cheeks. How could Van Syke stand it if he was in that cab with the windows closed?
Mike stood there as the gang of kids reached First Avenue and swung right onto the asphalt street. Sandy and Donna Lou were the last to turn out of sight behind the row of elms there.
Flies buzzed. Something in the back of the Rendering Truck shifted with a soft, liquid sound and the stench grew worse, became almost visible in the thickening air. Mike felt panic begin to rise in him the way it did late at night when he heard a scrabbling in his grandmother's room below him and thought it was her soul scratching to get free ... or when he knelt too long at High Mass, half-hypnotized by the incense and litany and his own sleepiness, thinking of his sins and the terrible fires of hell and the slimy things waiting for him there. . . .
Mike took another five steps closer to the truck. Grasshoppers jumped away in the dry grass. There was a shadow just visible through the windshield glare.
Mike stopped and gave the truck and its occupants-living and dead-the finger. Then he turned slowly and walked back through the gap in the wood-and-wire backstop, willing himself not to run but waiting for the slam of the cab door and the rush of heavy footsteps.
There was only the sound of flies. Then, softly, unmistakably, there rose from the truckbed a soft mewling which grew to an infant's wail. Mike froze in the act of sliding his mitt onto his handlebars.
No mistake. A baby was crying back there in that crib of death filled with roadkill scraped off asphalt, dead dogs with their guts spilling out, bloated cattle and white-eyed horses, flattened piglets and the rotting offal of a dozen farms.
The crying rose in pitch and intensity, shifted to a wail which perfectly matched Mike's sudden stab of terror, and then fell off to a gurgling ... as if whatever was there was feeding. Nursing.
Mike pushed his bike away from the fence with legs gone soft. He pedaled out past first base, turned onto the dirt road, and headed for First Avenue.
He did not stop.
He did not look back.
They saw the cars and commotion a block away. J. P. Cong-den's matte-black Chevy was parked in the school lot next to the constable's car and an old blue panel truck that Dale guessed belonged to Cordie Cooke's mom. Cordie was there, wearing the same shapeless dress she'd worn the entire last month of school, and the overweight, moonfaced woman next to her had to be her mother. Dr. Roon and Mrs. Doubbet stood at the base of the stairs at the north entrance as if blocking the way. The justice of the peace and the town constable-Barney-stood between the two groups like referees.
Dale and the others slid to a stop on the grassy field about twenty-five feet from the group of adults: not so close so they'd be shooed away, not so far away they couldn't hear. Dale looked up as Mike pedaled up and slid to a stop. His friend's face was pale.
"And I say that Terence never came home Wednesday!" shouted Mrs. Cooke. The woman's fat face was browned and wrinkled into folds which made Dale think of Mike's catcher's mitt. Her eyes had the same gray, washed-out, hopeless look that he recognized from his classmate Cordie.
"Terence?" whispered Jim Harlen and made a face.
"Yes, ma'am," said Barney, still standing between the fat woman and the principal and teacher. "Dr. Roon understands that. But they're sure he left the school. We need to find out where he went after school."
"Bullshit!" cried Mrs. Cooke. "My Cordelia says that she didn't see him crossin' the schoolyard . . . and my Terence wouldna left school without permission nohow. He's a good boy. And I woulda tanned his behind to the bone if he hadda."
Kevin turned toward Dale and raised an eyebrow. Dale didn't look away from the group of intense adults.
"Now, Mrs. Cooke," began the short, bald, mean little justice of the peace, "we all know that Tubby ... uh ... Terence had his mis-chevious ways about him and ..."
Mrs. Cooke rounded on the little man. "Shut your face, J.P. Congden. Everybody knows your boy C.J. is the meanest little asshole who ever carried a switchblade. Don't you be tellin' me about my Terence's ways." She looked back at the skinny constable everyone in town called Barney and thrust a blunt finger toward Dr. Roon and Old Double-Butt. "Constable, these people is hidin' something."
Barney made a gesture with both hands, palms out. "Now, now, Mrs. Cooke. You know they looked everywhere. Mrs. Doubbet saw Terence leaving school that afternoon before the children were dismissed ..."
"An' I say bullshit to that!" shouted Cordie's mother. Cordie herself looked over her shoulder, saw the group of kids, and gave them a blank stare.
Mrs. Doubbet seemed to come out of her daze. "No one speaks to me like that. I have been an educator in this district for almost four decades and I ..."
"I don't give a pig's ass how long you been teachin' ..." began Mrs. Cooke.
"Ma, she's lyin'!" cried Cordie, tugging on her mother's shapeless dress. "I was lookin' out the window and I didn't see Tubby nowhere. Old Double-Butt wasn't even lookin'."
"Just a minute, young lady," began Dr. Roon. His long fingers played with the watch chain across his vest. "We understand you are upset by your brother's ... ah ... temporary absence, but we cannot allow such ..."
"You tell me where my boy is!" cried Mrs. Cooke, pressing forward against the justice of the peace as if trying to get her small, fat hands on the principal.
"Hey! Hey!" cried J. P. Congden, taking a step back.
Barney stepped between the two again, spoke quickly and earnestly to Cordie's mother in tones the kids could not hear, and then said something softly to Dr. Roon.
"I agree that we should continue the discussion out of the . . .ah. . . public glare," came Dr. Roon's sepulchral tones.
Barney nodded, said something else, and the group went into Old Central. Cordie looked back over her shoulder once at Dale and the others but there was no hostility in her face now . . . only sadness and something which might have been fear.
"It would be better if ... ah ... Mr. Cooke could join us," Dr. Roon was saying as they went inside.
"He's been feelin' poorly all this week," Cordie's mother said in a tired monotone.
"He's been drunk as a junkyard skunk all this week," said Jim Harlen in a passable imitation of Mrs. Cooke's Okie twang. Harlen squinted at the sun and the now-empty parking lot. "Shit, it's getting late and I promised Mom I'd get the yard mowed. I think the fun's over here."