Farewell Summer

Above the green ravine, in a dry room at the top of an ancient house, old Braling leaned from a window like a thing from the attic, trembling. Below, the boys ran.

‘God,’ he cried. ‘Make them stop their damned laughing!’

He clutched faintly at his chest as if he were a Swiss watchmaker concerned with keeping something running with that peculiar self–hypnosis he called prayer.

‘Beat, now; one, two!’

Nights when he feared his heart might stop, he set a metronome ticking by his bed, so that his blood would continue to travel on toward dawn.

Footsteps scraped, a cane tip tapped, on the downstairs porch. That would be old Calvin C. Quartermain come to argue school board policy in the husking wicker chairs. Braling half fell down the stairs, emerging onto the porch.

‘Quartermain!’

Calvin C. Quartermain sat like a wild mechanical toy, oversized, rusty, in a reed easy chair.

Braling laughed. ‘I made it!’

‘Not forever,’ Quartermain observed.

‘Hell,’ said Braling. ‘Some day they’ll bury you in a California dried–fruit tin. Christ, what’re those idiot boys up to?’

‘Horsing around. Listen!’

‘Bang!’

Douglas ran by the porch.

‘Get off the lawn!’ cried Braling.

Doug spun and aimed his cap–pistol.

‘Bang!’

Braling, with a pale, wild look, cried, ‘Missed!’

‘Bang!’ Douglas jumped up the porch steps.

He saw two panicked moons in Braling’s eyes.

‘Bang! Your arm!’

‘Who wants an arm?’ Braling snorted.

‘Bang! Your heart!’

‘What?’

‘Heart – bang!’

‘Steady … One, two!’ whispered the old man.

‘Bang!’

‘One, two!’ Braling called to his hands clutching his ribs. ‘Christ! Metronome!’

‘What?’

‘Metronome!’

‘Bang! You’re dead!’

‘One, two!’ Braling gasped.

And dropped dead.

Douglas, cap–gun in hand, slipped and fell back down the steps onto the dry grass.

CHAPTER SIX (#ub400fd8f-08b5-5bf1-a6d3-28eb256f00b1)

The hours burned in cold white wintry flashes, as people scuttled in and out of Braling’s mansion, hoping against hope that he was Lazarus.

Calvin C. Quartermain careened about Braling’s porch like the captain of a wrecked ship.

‘Damn! I saw the boy’s gun!’

‘There’s no bullet–hole,’ said Dr. Lieber, who’d been called.

‘Shot dead, he was! Dead!’

The house grew silent as the people left, bearing away the husk that had been poor Braling. Calvin C. Quartermain abandoned the porch, mouth salivating.

‘I’ll find the killer, by God!’

Propelling himself with his cane, he turned a corner.

A cry, a concussion! ‘No, by God, no!’ He flailed at the air and fell.

Some ladies rocking on the nearest porch leaned out. ‘Is that old Quartermain?’

‘Oh, he can’t be dead, too – can he?’

Quartermain’s eyelids twitched.

Far off, he saw a bike, and a boy racing away.

Assassin, he thought. Assassin!

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ub400fd8f-08b5-5bf1-a6d3-28eb256f00b1)