Something Wicked This Way Comes

Will stood by the door. The telephone was locked away outside. And even if he called, Miss Foley wouldn’t answer. By now she’d be gone beyond town. . .good grief? Anyway, what could he say? Miss Foley, that nephew’s no nephew? That boy’s no boy? Wouldn’t she laugh? She would. For the nephew was a nephew, the boy was a boy, or seemed such.

He turned to the window. Jim, across the way, stood facing the same dilemma, in his room. Both struggled. It was too early to raise the windows and stage-whisper to each other. Parents below were busy growing crystal-radio peach-fuzz in their ears, alert.

The boys threw themselves on their separate beds in their separate houses, probed mattresses for chocolate chunks put away against the lean years, and ate moodily.

Clocks ticked.

Nine. Nine-thirty. Ten.

The knob rattled, softly, as Dad unlocked the door.

Dad! thought Will. Come in! We got to talk!

But Dad chewed his breath in the hall. Only his confusion, his always puzzled, half-bewildered face could be felt beyond the door.

He won’t come in, thought Will. Walk around, talk around, back off from a thing, yes. But come sit, listen? When had he, when would he, ever?

‘Will. . .?

Will quickened.

‘Will. . .’ said Dad, ‘be careful.’

‘Careful?’ cried mother, coming along the hall. ‘Is that all you’re going to say?’

‘What else?’ Dad was going downstairs now. ‘He jumps, I creep. How can you get two people together like that? He’s too young, I’m too old. God, sometimes I wish we’d never. . .’

The door shut. Dad was walking away on the sidewalk.

Will wanted to fling up the window and call. Suddenly, Dad was so lost in the night. Not me, don’t worry about me, Dad, he thought, you, Dad, stay in! It’s not safe! Don’t go!

But he didn’t shout. And when he softly raised the window at last, the street was empty, and he knew it would be just a matter of time before that light went on in the library across town. When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!—when you were off to Tanganyika in ‘98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?

‘. . .careful. . .’

What did Dad mean? Did he smell the panic, had he heard the music, had he prowled near the tents? No. Not Dad ever.

Will tossed a marble over at Jim’s window.

Tap. Silence.

He imagined Jim seated alone in the dark, his breath like phosphorous on the air, ticking away to himself.

Tap. Silence.

This wasn’t like Jim. Always before, the window slid up, Jim’s head popped out, ripe with yells, secret hissings, giggles, riots and rebel charges.

‘Jim, I know you’re there!’

Tap.

Silence.

Dad’s out in the town. Miss Foley’s with you-know-who! he thought. Good gosh, Jim, we got to do something! Tonight!

He threw a last marble.

. . .tap. . .

It fell to the hushed grass below.

Jim did not come to the window.

Tonight, thought Will. He bit his knuckles. He lay back cold straight stiff on his bed.

21

In the alley behind the house was a huge old-fashioned pine-plank boardwalk. It had been there ever since Will remembered, since civilization unthinkingly poured forth the dull hard unresisting cement sidewalks. His grandfather, a man of strong sentiment and wild impulse, who let nothing go without a roar, had flexed his muscles in favour of this vanishing landmark, and with a dozen handymen had toted a good forty feet of the walk into the alley where it had lain like the skeleton of some indefinable monster through the years, baked by sun, lushly rotted by rains.

The town clock struck ten.

Lying abed, Will realized he had been thinking about Grandfather’s vast gift from another time. He was waiting to hear the boardwalk speak. In what language? Well. . .

Boys have never been known to go straight up to houses to ring bells to summon forth friends. They prefer to chunk dirt at clapboards, hurl acorns down roof shingles, or leave mysterious notes flapping from kites stranded on attic window sills.

So it was with Jim and Will.

Late nights, if there were gravestones to be leapfrogged or dead cats to be hurled down sour people’s chimneys, one or the other of the boys would prowl out under the moon and xylophone-dance on that old hollow-echoing musical boardwalk.

Over the years, they had tuned the walk, prising up an A board and nailing it here, lifting up an F board and pounding it back down there until the walk was as near onto being melodious as weather and two entrepreneurs could fashion it.

By the tune treaded out, you could tell the night’s venture. If Will heard Jim tramping hard on seven or eight notes of ‘Way Down Upon the Swanee River,’ he scrambled out knowing it was moon-trail time on the creek leading to the river caves. If Jim heard Will out leaping about like a scalded airedale on the timbers and the tune remotely suggested ‘Marching Through Georgia,’ it meant plums, peaches, or apples were ripe enough to get sick on out beyond town.

So this night Will held his breath waiting for some tune to call him forth.