Last Summer Boys(24)

“She’s searching for someone,” Pete says. “But I ain’t got any idea who.”

Mrs. Madliner drifts to another grave.

I shiver.

All I’ve ever known of Mrs. Madliner are the things I heard from Ma. They were friends when they were little and growing up together. Elmira was the town beauty when she was younger. Pale skin and large, dark eyes that seemed to hold captive just about every boy in New Shiloh. Then one day Arthur Madliner came to town. Where he came from, nobody knew. The marriage was quick—some thought too quick. Then Mr. and Mrs. Madliner moved out of town to the old house across the meadow from Stairways. Elmira was seen less and less. It wasn’t long after Caleb was born that word got around she’d taken ill.

I strain for a glimpse of her face, but it’s covered by a tangle of black hair.

“How come she didn’t say nothing when we saw her?” Will asks suddenly. He’s done being afraid. He’s angry now.

Pete’s shakes his head. “She’s sick. Sick in the mind. Maybe she saw us. Maybe she didn’t.”

In the cemetery below, Mrs. Madliner drops before one of the stones. A sound rises through the fog: weeping.

She stays that way a long time. None of us say anything. We just watch. Then at last Mrs. Madliner rises. She crosses the graveyard once more and passes through the iron gate. We lose sight of her when she walks into the meadow and its wafting mist.

Finally, Pete stands up. Wordlessly, we follow him back down the hill toward the trail.

It’s a while before I have the heart to talk again. “Why is she that way?”

Pete answers. “Nobody knows for sure. Ma says she was the same as everybody else when they were girls together. No one knows what happened after she married Arthur Madliner.”

“Well, we know he’s a damn liar,” Will says. “His wife can walk just fine.”

Pete is quiet for a time, then replies, “I get the feeling he doesn’t know.”

We walk through trees dark as the thoughts crowding our minds: If Mrs. Madliner can walk, why bother pretending that she can’t?

We go slow, each of us listening to the Pennsylvania night around us—snapping sticks and rustling leaves. It’s only when I feel firmer earth under us and realize that we’ve reached the trail home that I begin to relax any. Pete leads us along it, back to Apple Creek, where a fine mist is rising off the water and drifting toward the stars. We go for a time under their twinkling cold fires, but then our bank lifts and lets us see another light in the dark, that same orange ember burning far across the valley: Madliner House.

Nobody says anything, but somehow each one of us comes to a stop.

“Pete,” I say then, “why on earth would anybody pretend to be paralyzed?”

“People pretend all the time, Jack. Usually to get away from something they’re afraid of.” Without turning from the house, Pete goes on, “I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Madliner’s illness was her protection.”

“Against what?”

“Against Mr. Madliner. Her sickness came along a short while after he did. Lots of people in town like to talk and say he caused it, and maybe that’s so. But I think it became a way to keep him away from her. He hits a lot.”

Will begins to nod. “Yes . . . I could see that. Just like that book I, Claudius.”

I got no idea what Will’s saying, but Frankie does. “I read that one. It’s about the Roman emperor who pretended to be a harmless idiot so nobody would find out how smart he was.”

“Exactly,” Will says. “His uncle was emperor and his family were a pack of murderers who’d kill anyone they saw as a threat to their power. So Claudius pretended to be crazy from the time he was a kid so they wouldn’t hurt him.”

“Did it work?” I ask.

Will shrugs. “Sure, for a little while. Claudius became emperor, as I remember.”

“Then what happened?”

Frankie looks at me. “He spent all those years pretending to be something he wasn’t, so he could survive his family. And in the end, his wife killed him.”





Hours later I’m lying in bed again, staring at that same crack in the ceiling. Nothing moves in the attic now. Not the mouse I heard before. Not the snake that was after him.

Three o’clock. Soul’s midnight, so Will says. Time of night you’re closest to being dead. Pete and Will are snoring in their bunks. God knows how. A few hours ago, us boys were running for our lives through a cemetery.

I roll over and see Frankie on his mattress. Milky moonlight splashes down on him, and he looks like a castaway on a raft.

Ever wake up to gunshots?

“Frankie?”

I know he’s awake, deciding if he wants to answer me or pretend he’s asleep.

“Yeah?”

“Did you really hear that ticking at the tomb?”

Silence.

“Does it matter? I passed the test. Pete said we can go with him and Will to find the airplane wreck. And that’s good material for story writing.”

“That’s true,” I agree. “You passed, all right. I could never have done that, and I’m grateful. But—”

“But you want to know if I heard ticking from Hiltch’s grave.”