Summer of Night [Дэн Симмонс] (fb2) читать постранично, страница - 3

create one well-rounded individual.

Then, in this final year of Old Central's domination, Mrs. Duggan had taken ill just before Thanksgiving. Cancer, Mrs. O'Rourke had told Dale's mother in a soft voice she thought the boys would not overhear. Mrs. Duggan had not returned to class after Christmas vacation but rather than have some interloper fill the afternoon hours, confirming the seriousness of Mrs. Duggan's illness, Mrs. Doubbet had taught the courses she despised, “just until Cora returns, “ while nursing her friend-first in the tall pink house along Broad, then in the hospital-until one morning even Old Double-Butt had not appeared, there was a sixth-grade substitute teacher for the first time in four decades, and word was whispered around the playground that Mrs. Duggan had died. It was the day before Valentine's Day.

The funeral was in Davenport and none of the students attended it. None would have attended if it had been held right here in Elm Haven. Mrs. Doubbet returned two days later.

Dale looked at the old lady and felt a stirring of something like pity. Mrs. Doubbet was still fat, but the weight hung on her now like an oversized coat. When she moved, the undersides of her fat arms wiggled and shook like crepe paper hanging from bone. Her eyes had darkened and sunk in their sockets until they looked bruised. Now the teacher sat staring at the window, her expression as hopeless and empty as Cordie Cooke's. Her blue hair looked tousled and yellowed at the roots, and her dress hung oddly as if she had misbuttoned something somewhere. There was a bad smell around her which reminded Dale of the smell around Mrs. Duggan right before Christmas.

Dale sighed and shifted in his seat. 2:52 p.m.

There was the slightest movement in the dark hall, a furtive shifting and pale glow there, and Dale recognized Tubby Cooke, Cordie's fat and idiot brother, moving across the landing. Tubby was staring in, trying to catch his sister's attention without being noticed by Old Double-Butt. It was no use. Cordie was hypnotized by the sky outside the window and wouldn't have noticed her brother if he had thrown a brick at her.

Dale nodded slightly at Tubby. The big fourth grader in bib overalls flipped him the bird, held up something that might have been a bathroom pass, and disappeared in the shadows.

Dale shifted. Tubby occasionally played with him and his friends despite the fact that the Cookes lived in one of the tarpaper shacks up on cinderblocks out along the railroad tracks near the grain elevator. Tubby was fat and ugly and stupid and dirty and used more profanity than any fourth grader Dale had ever known, but that didn't necessarily disqualify him from being part of the group of city kids who called themselves the Bike Patrol. But usually Tubby didn't want any part of Dale or his friends.

Dale wondered fleetingly what the dope was up to and then looked back at the clock. It was still 2:52.

Bugs in amber.

Tubby Cooke gave up trying to wave at his sister and headed for the stairway before Old Double-Butt or one of the other teachers noticed him out on the landing. Tubby had a bathroom pass from Mrs. Grossaint, but that didn't mean that one of the old bags wouldn't order him back to his classroom if they caught him loitering in the halls.

Tubby shuffled down the wide stairs, noticing where the wood was actually worn into ruts where generations of kids' feet had passed, and hurried down to the landing beneath the circular window. The light coming through was red and sickly from the storm building up outside. Tubby moved under rows of empty shelves where the city library used to be on the landing and the narrow mezzanine surrounding this in-between floor, but he did not really see them. The shelves had been empty for as long as Tubby had gone to school there. He was in a hurry. There was less than a half hour of school remaining and he wanted to get downstairs to the boys' bathroom before the day ended and they shut up this damn old place forever.

There was more light on the first floor and the hum of activity from the primary grades, one through three, made the space here seem more human, even with the dark stairwell opening overhead into the darkness of the upper floors. Tubby hurried across the center of the open space before a teacher saw him, passed through a door, and hurried down the stairs into the basement.

It was weird that the stupid school had no restrooms on the first or second floor. Only the basement had Johns and there were too many down there… the primary and intermediate restrooms, the locked John off the hole-in-the-wall room labeled teachers' lounge, the little toilet off the boiler room where Van Syke took a leak when he had to, even rooms that may have been other bathrooms down the unused corridors that led away into darkness.

Tubby knew what other kids knew-that there were steps leading down from the basement-but, like the other kids, Tubby had never gone down there and had no plans to. There weren't even lights, for Godssake! No one but Van Syke and maybe Principal Roon knew what was down there.

Probably more bathrooms, thought Tubby.

He went to the intermediate boys' restroom, the one marked boy's. That sign had been like that for as long as anyone could remember-Tubby's old man told him it was that way when he went to school in Old Central-and the only reason either Tubby or his old man knew that the whatchamacallit, the apostrophe, was in the wrong place was that Old Lady Duggan in sixth grade bitched and moaned about the stupidity of it. She'd whined about it when Tubby's Old Man was a kid. Well, Old Lady Duggan was dead now-dead and rotting in the Calvary Cemetery out past the Black Tree Tavern where Tubby's Old Man hung out most days-and Tubby wondered why the old lady hadn't changed the goddamn word if it bugged her so much. She'd had about a hundred years to go down and repaint the sign. Tubby guessed that she liked bitching and moaning about it… that it made her feel smart and made other people, like Tubby and his old man, feel stupid.

Tubby hurried down the dark and winding hallway to the restroom marked boy's. The brick walls had been painted green and brown here decades ago, the low ceiling was festooned with pipes and sprinklers and cobwebs, and the feeling was like you were wandering through this long, narrow tunnel in some tomb or something. Sort of like the mummy movie Tubby'd seen when his older sister's boyfriend had sneaked him and Cordie into the Peoria drive-in last summer by hiding them in the trunk. It'd been a good movie, but Tubby would've liked it more if he hadn't had to listen to all the slurping, sucking, gasping sounds from the back seat as his older sister Maureen made out with that pimply guy named Berk. Maureen was pregnant now, and living with Berk out beyond the dump near where Tubby lived, but he didn't think she and the Berk dope were married.

Cordie had stayed turned around in the front seat all through the double feature, watching homy Maureen and Berk rather than the neat movies.

Tubby paused now at the entrance to the Boy's restroom, listening to see if he could hear anyone else down here. Sometimes Old Van Syke sort of sneaked up on kids down here, and if they were messing around like Tubby planned to do… or sometimes doing nothing at all… Van Syke would give them a slap on the side of the head or a mean pinch on the arm. He wouldn't hurt just any kids… not some rich snot like Dr. Staffney's daughter, whatshername,. Michelle… just the kids like Tubby or Gerry Daysinger or somebody. Kids of parents who didn't give a shit or who were afraid of Van Syke.

Lots of kids were afraid of Van Syke. Tubby wondered if lots of the kids' parents were afraid of him too. Tubby listened, heard nothing, and almost tiptoed into the restroom.

The room was long, low-ceilinged, and dim. There were no windows and only one light bulb worked. The urinals were ancient and looked like they were made out of some smooth stone or something. Water trickled in them all the time. The seven toilet stalls were battered and heavily carved upon… Tubby's name could be found cut into two of them and his Old Man's initials were in the end one… and all but one had lost their doors. But it was beyond the sinks and urinals, beyond the stalls, in the darkest area near the rear, stone wall, where Tubby had business.

The outside wall was stone. The opposite wall, the one which held the urinals, was scabby brick. But the inside wall… the one beyond the stalls… this