Doug beckoned and they all gathered and followed, orderly, like a good army, into the shop.
Tom came last, smiling at Doug as if he knew something that nobody else knew.
Inside, honey lay sheathed in warm African chocolate. Plunged and captured in the amber treasure lay fresh Brazil nuts, almonds, and glazed clusters of snowy coconut. June butter and August wheat were clothed in dark sugars. All were crinkled in folded tin foil, then wrapped in red and blue papers that told the weight, ingredients, and manufacturer. In bright bouquets the candies lay, caramels to glue the teeth, licorice to blacken the heart, chewy wax bottles filled with sickening mint and strawberry sap, Tootsie Rolls to hold like cigars, red–tipped chalk–mint cigarettes for chill mornings when your breath smoked on the air.
The boys, in the middle of the shop, saw diamonds to crunch, fabulous liquors to swig. Persimmon–colored pop bottles swam, clinking softly, in the Nile waters of the refrigerated box, its water cold enough to cut your skin. Above, on glass shelves, lay cordwood piles of gingersnaps, macaroons, chocolate bits, vanilla wafers shaped like moons, and marshmallow dips, white surprises under black masquerades. All of this to coat the tongue, plaster the palate.
Doug pulled some nickels from his pocket and nodded at the boys.
One by one they chose from the sweet treasure, noses pressed against glass, breath misting the crystal vault.
Moments later, down the middle of the street they ran and soon stood on the edge of the ravine with the pop and candy.
Once they were all assembled, Doug nodded again and they started the trek down into the ravine. Above them, on the other side, stood the looming homes of the old men, casting dark shadows into the bright day. And above those, Doug saw, as he shielded his eyes, was the hulking carapace of the haunted house.
‘I brought you here on purpose,’ said Doug.
Tom winked at him as he flipped the lid off his pop.
‘You must learn to resist, so you can fight the good fight. Now,’ he cried, holding his bottle out. ‘Don’t look so surprised. Pour!’
‘My gosh!’ Charlie Woodman slapped his brow. ‘That’s good root beer, Doug. Mine’s good Orange Crush!’
Doug turned his bottle upside down. The root beer froth hissed out to join the clear stream rushing away to the lake. The others stared, the spectacle mirrored in each pair of eyes.
‘You want to sweat Orange Crush?’ Douglas grabbed Charlie’s drink. ‘You want root beer spit, to be poisoned forever, to never get well? Once you’re tall, you can’t ungrow back, can’t stab yourself with a pin and let the air out.’
Solemnly, the martyrs tilted their bottles.
‘Lucky crawfish.’ Charlie Woodman slung his bottle at a rock. They all threw their bottles, like Germans after a toast, the glass crashing in bright splinters.
They unwrapped the melting chocolate and butter chip and almond frivolities. Their teeth parted, their mouths watered. But their eyes looked to their general.
‘I solemnly pledge from now on: no candy, no pop, no poison.’
Douglas let his chocolate chunk drop like a corpse into the water, like a burial at sea.
Douglas wouldn’t even let them lick their fingers.
Walking out of the ravine, they met a girl eating a vanilla ice cream cone. The boys stared, their tongues lolling. She took a cold dollop with her tongue. The boys blinked. She licked the cone and smiled. Perspiration broke out on a half dozen faces. One more lick, one more jut of that rare pink tongue, one more hint of cool vanilla ice cream and his army would revolt. Sucking in a deep breath, Douglas cried: ‘Git!’
The girl spun around and ran.
Douglas waited for the memory of the ice cream to fade, then said, quietly, ‘There’s ice water at Grandma’s. March!’
Calvin C. Quartermain was an edifice as tall, long, and as arrogant as his name.
He did not move, he stalked.
He did not see, he glared.
He spoke not, but fired his tongue, point–blank, at any target come to hand.
He orated, he pronounced, he praised not, but heaped scorn.
Right now he was busy shoving bacteria under the microscope of his gold–rimmed spectacles. The bacteria were the boys, who deserved destruction. One boy, especially.
‘A bike, sweet Christ, a damn blue bike! That’s all it was!’
Quartermain bellowed, kicking his good leg.
‘Bastards! Killed Braling! Now they’re after me!’
A stout nurse trussed him like a cigar store Indian while Dr. Lieber set the leg.
‘Christ! Damned fool. What was it Braling said about a metronome? Jesus!’
‘Leg’s broke, easy!’
‘He needs more than a bike! A damned hell–fire device won’t kill me, no!’
The nurse shoved a pill in his mouth.
‘Peace, Mr C., peace.’
Night, in Calvin C. Quartermain’s lemon-sour house, and him in bed, discarded long ago, when his youth breeched the carapace, slid between his ribs, and left his shell to flake in the wind.
Quartermain twisted his head and the sounds of the summer night breathed through the air. Listening, he chewed on his hatred.
‘God, strike down those bastard fiends with fire!’
Sweating cold, he thought: Braling lost his brave fight to make them human, but I will prevail. Christ, what’s happening?
He stared at the ceiling where gunpowder blew in a spontaneous combustion, all their lives exploded in one day at the end of an unbelievably late summer, a thing of weather and blind sky and the surprise miracle that he still lived, still breathed, amidst lunatic events. Christ! Who ran this parade and where was it going? God, stand alert! The drummer–boys are killing the captains.
‘There must be others,’ he whispered to the open window. ‘Some who tonight feel as I do about these infidels!’
He could sense the shadows trembling out there, the other old rusted iron men hidden in their high towers, sipping thin gruels and snapping dog – biscuits. He would summon them with cries, his fever like heat–lightning across the sky.
‘Telephone,’ gasped Quartermain. ‘Now, Calvin, line them up!’
There was a rustling in the dark yard. ‘What?’ he whispered.
The boys clustered in the lightless ocean of grass below. Doug and Charlie, Will and Tom, Bo, Henry, Sam, Ralph, and Pete all squinted up at the window of Quartermain’s high bedroom.
In their hands they had three beautifully carved and terrible pumpkins. They carried them along the sidewalk below while their voices rose among the star-lit trees, louder and louder: ‘The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.’