Mink didn't seem to mind, as long as he got the drink. No one in town seemed to know how old Mink Harper was, but he had served as an object lesson for mothers to hold up to their sons for at least three generations. Mike guessed that Mink was in his early seventies, at least, which would make him just the right age. And while Mink's status as town drunk and occasional handyman made him invisible to much of the population for much of the time, it was that very invisibility that Mike hoped to cash in on now.

Mike's problem was that he didn't have a bottle as currency: not even a can of beer. Despite the fact that Mike's father worked at the Pabst brewery and liked nothing better than bending an occasional elbow with the boys, Mrs. O'Rourke allowed no alcoholic beverages in the house. Ever.

Mike stopped in front of the barbershop between Fifth Avenue and the railroad tracks, looking down the heat-mi-raged Hard Road at the cool shade of the park and thinking hard. If he'd had any brains at all, Mike knew, he could have had Harlen cadge some booze for him before he left with Dale. Harlen's mom kept gallons of the stuff around and, according to Jim, never seemed to notice when some of it disappeared. But now Harlen was off somewhere with Dale, trying to complete the mission that Mike had sent them on, and Mike-the fearless leader himself-was left literally high and dry. Even if he found Mink, he couldn't get the agreeable old wino to talk without a bribe.

Mike let a truck roar past, not even slowing for Elm Haven's electrically timed speed limit, and then he pedaled across the Hard Road, cutting through the back of the tractor dealership, going south around the small park, and cutting back into the narrow alley behind the Parkside Cafe and Carl's.

Mike parked his bike against the brick wall and stepped to the open back door. He could hear the laughter of the half dozen or so guys in the dark front room and the slow turning of the big fan there. Most of the men in town had once signed a petition demanding that Carl's be provided with an air conditioner-it would have been the only public building in town to have one except the new post office-but according to the rumors Mike had heard, Dom Steagle had just laughed and said who the fuck did they think he was, some politician or something? He'd keep the goddamned beer cold and anybody who didn't want to drink there was welcome to go to the Black Tree.

' Mike ducked back as a toilet flushed, a door opened a few feet down the back hallway, and someone walked heavily into the front room shouting something that caused the permanent residents there to laugh loudly. Mike peered in again: two restrooms-one saying stags and the other one does-and a third door that said stay out. Mike knew that this last and closest door was the way to the cellar: he'd helped carry crates down to earn some money.

Mike slipped in, opened the door, stepped onto the top of the cellar stairs, and closed the door softly behind him. He expected to hear shouts, footsteps, but the front-room noise barely made it back here and its tone and timbre did not change. He moved down the dark stairs carefully, blinking in the darkness. There were windows along the high stone ledge, but they'd been sealed with boards decades ago and the only light was the slight amount filtering through splintered wood and the layers of dust on the outside glass.

Mike paused at the bottom of the stairs, seeing the stacks of cardboard cartons and the large metal kegs farther into the long cellar. Beyond a partial brick wall, there appeared to be tall shelves and Mike vaguely remembered that this was where Dom kept the wine. He tiptoed across the wide space.

It wasn't a wine cellar-not like the ones he'd heard Dale describe from books where the dusty old bottles were lying in their own little cradles in the shelves-this was just a bunch of shelves where Dom had dumped his cartons of wine. Mike felt his way to the right, finding the cartons as much by touch as sight, listening for the first sound of the door opening and breathing in the rich malt and hops smell of beer. A cobweb caught in his face and he batted it away. No wonder Dale hates basements.

Mike found an open carton on a back shelf, felt around until he had his hand around a bottle, and then paused. If he took this, it would be-quite simply-the first time in his life that he had ever knowingly stolen anything. Somehow, of all the sins that he knew of, thievery had always struck him as the worst. He'd never spoken about it, not even to his parents, but someone who stole was below Mike's contempt-the time Barry Fussner had been caught stealing other kids' crayons in second grade had meant only a few minutes in the principal's office for Barry, but Mike had never spoken to the fat kid again. Looking at him made Mike sick.

Mike thought about having to confess the theft. The back of his neck burned with embarrassment until he saw the whole scene: kneeling in the darkened confessional, the small screen having slid aside so that he could see just Father C.'s profile through the mesh, then Mike whispering, "Bless me Father, for I have sinned," telling how long it had been since his last confession and then launching into it ... But suddenly the bent and sensitive head of Father Cavanaugh would lurch against the mesh, Mike would see the dead eyes and funneled mouth pressed against the wood, and then the maggots would begin streaming out, tumbling out, falling over Mike's prayer-cupped hands and raised arms and waiting lap, covering him with writhing brown slugs. . . .

Mike took the damn bottle and got the hell out of there.

Bandstand Park was shady but not cool. The heat and humidity lay lurking in the shadows as surely as in the sunnier patches, but at least the sun wasn't burning through Mike's crew cut into his skull here. There was someone-or something-under the large gazebo bandstand. Mike crouched at the broken opening in the trellis and peered in: the wooden support ran down only three feet or so from the raised floor to the concrete foundation rim, but the "basement" under the bandstand was dirt and for some reason it had been scooped out at least a foot below the level of the surrounding soil. It smelled of wet dirt and loam and the soft perfume of decay. Mike thought, Dale hates basements, I hate these darn crawlspaces.

It wasn't really a crawlspace. Mike could have stood up in there if he had hunkered over with his head lower than his shoulders usually were. He didn't; he crouched in the opening and tried to make out the slightly moving lump of darkness on the far side of the low space.

Cordie says there are other things that helped to kill Duane-things that burrow.

Mike blinked and resisted the urge to get on his bike and go. The lump on the far side of the bandstand crawlspace looked like an old man in a raggedy trench coat-Mink had worn that coat in winter and summer for at least six years-and, perhaps more importantly, it smelted like Mink. Along with the strong scent of cheap wine and urine, there came a peculiarly musky scent that was the old panhandler's alone, and may well have been the cause of his nickname so many decades earlier.

"Who's there?" came the cracked and phlegmy voice.

"It's me, Mink . . . Mike."

"Mike?" The old man's tone was that of a sleepwalker being awakened in a strange place. "Mike Gernold? I thought you was killed at Bataan ..."

"No, Mink, Mike O'Rourke. Remember, you and I did some lawn work together up at Mrs. Duggan's place last summer? I mowed and you trimmed the bushes?" Mike slipped through the hole in the latticework. It was dark in here, but nothing like Carl's basement. Little diamonds of sunlight touched the ruffled soil on the west side of the circular pit, and Mike could see Mink's face now: the rheumy eyes and stubbled cheeks, the reddened nose and peculiarly pale neck, the old man's mouth-Mike thought of the description Dale had given of Mr. McBride the day before.