Mike considered hiking out the tracks to hang around the old tallow plant, but he felt sure that Van Syke wouldn't be there. For a while, he just lay in the tall grass out by the ball diamond, chewing on a stalk of grass and watching the little bit of traffic that went out First Avenue past the water tower; mostly farmers' dusty pickups and big old cars. No Rendering Truck with Van Syke at the wheel.

Mike sighed and rolled over on his back, squinting at the sky. He knew he should hike out to Calvary Cemetery and check out the shed there, but he couldn't. It was that simple. The memory of the shed, the soldier, and the figure in the yard last night lay across Mike's chest like a heavy weight.

He rolled over and watched Kevin Grumbacher's dad's chrome-silver dairy truck coming in from Jubilee College Road. It wasn't noon yet and Mr. Grumbacher was almost done with his day's work collecting milk from all the county's dairy farms. Mike knew that the truck would head off for the Cahill Dairy twelve miles east, right at the head of the Spoon River Valley, and then Mr. G. would be finished for the day except to come home, rinse the truck, and fill it with fuel again from the gas pump he had on the west side of their house.

By rolling on his left side, Mike could see the Grumbach-ers' new house under the elms next to Dale's big old Victorian house. Mr. G. had bought Mrs. Carmichael's old abandoned place on Depot Street about five years ago, just before Dale's family had moved to Elm Haven, and the Grumbachers had razed the old house and put up the only new ranchhouse-style home in the old section of town. Mr. Grumbacher himself had used a bulldozer to raise the level of the soil so the low home sat higher than the windows on the east side of Dale's house.

Mike always felt funny the few times he'd been in Kev's home. It was air conditioned-the only air-conditioned place Mike had ever been except for Ewaits' movie theater over in Oak Hill-and it smelled funny. Stale, but not really stale. It was as if the cool scent of the concrete-and-pine two-by-fours and fresh carpet still filled the house even after four years of the people living there. Of course, it never really looked to Mike that people actually lived there: the Grumbachers' living room had plastic runners on the floor and a crinkly plastic on the expensive couch and chairs, the kitchen was bright and spotless-it held the first dishwashing machine and eating counter Mike had ever seen in a home-and the dining room looked like Mrs. G. polished the long cherry table every morning.

The few times Mike and the other kids were allowed to play in Kevin's house, they went straight to the basement ... or what Kev called the "wreck room" for some reason. There was a Ping-Pong table there, and a TV-Kev said they had two more television sets upstairs-and an elaborate electric-train layout filling half the back room. Mike would have loved to play with the trains, but Kev wasn't allowed to touch the controls unless his dad was there, and Mr. G. slept most afternoons. There was also a long galvanized steel water trough in the back room-the metal as bright and clean as everything else in the house-which Kevin said his dad had put in so the two of them could play with motorized boats the two made in their spare time. But Mike, Dale, and the other kids were only allowed to watch the boats, not touch them or handle the neat radio-control devices.

The gang didn't spend much time in Kev's house.

Mike got to his feet and started walking toward Dale's back fence. He knew he was thinking of dumb things, trying not to think about the soldier.

Dale and Kevin were lying on the grassy incline between the Grumbachers' and Stewarts' driveways, waiting for Lawrence to fly a balsawood glider. Then both of the older boys would fire away with gravel from Dale's driveway, trying to knock the plane out of the sky. Lawrence had to launch and duck fast before the missiles flew.

Mike grabbed some gravel and flopped down on his back next to the two. The trick seemed to be to hit the thing without raising your head from the grass. Lawrence launched and ducked. Rocks flew. The glider looped once, flew toward the big oak tree that sent branches over Dale's bedroom upstairs, and then landed in the driveway untouched. All three grabbed more ammunition while Lawrence retrieved the plane and straightened the wing and tail.

"Gettin' rocks in your side yard," Mike said to Dale. "Going to be tough when you mow."

"I promised Mom we'd pick them up when we're through," said Dale, cocking his arm in anticipation.

Lawrence launched a high one. They all missed on the first ground-to-air attack, each boy unselfconsciously making gun or missile sounds as he threw. Mike hit it with his second throw, smashing the right wing and sending the glider into a spin into the grass. All three of the others made jet-out-of-control and crashing-and-burning sounds. Lawrence slid out the broken wing and ran to a stack of replacement parts by the old stump.

"I can't find Van Syke," Mike said, feeling as if he were in Confession.

Kev was piling launch-sized stones next to himself in the grass. His parents would never let him throw rocks in his yard. "That's OK," he said. "I found Roon this morning, but he isn't doing anything except supervising the windows getting boarded up."

Mike looked. Old Central looked different with all three levels boarded up-four levels if you counted the basement windows, and Mike could just make out that they had removed the screens, boarded those windows, and set the screens back. The school looked weird . . . blind in a strange way. Now only the tiny dormer windows set in the steep roof had glass panes, and few kids Mike knew could throw that high to hit them. The belfry had always been boarded up.

"Maybe this following people around isn't such a great idea," Mike said. Lawrence was putting masking tape around parts of the next plane . . . "armoring it," he said.

"I know it wasn't a good idea for me this morning," said Dale. The other two boys quit playing with their ammunition while Dale explained most of what had happened out on the tracks this morning.

"Jeez," whistled Kevin. "Criminitly."

"What'd Cordie do next?" asked Mike, trying to imagine having a rifle pointed at him. C. J. Congden had picked on Mike a couple a times in the lower grades, but Mike had always fought back so hard, so fast, and so fiercely that the town's two punks tended to leave him alone. Mike glanced at the school. "Did she come in and shoot Dr. Roon?"

"If she did, we haven't heard it," said Dale.

"Maybe she used a silencer," said Mike.

Kev made a face. "Idiot. Shotguns can't have silencers."

"I was kidding, Grump-backer."

"Groom-bokker," Kevin corrected with automatic sullen-ness. He didn't like it when people fooled with his name. Everyone in town said Grum-backer.

"Whatever," said Mike with a sudden grin. He gently tossed a rock at Dale's knee. "So what happened next?"

"Nothing," said Dale. Something in his voice suggested that he was sorry he'd told the others. "I'm keeping a watch out for C. J."

"You didn't tell your mom?"

"Uh-uh. How'm I supposed to explain why I had Dad's binoculars to spy on Cordie Cooke's house? Huh?"

Mike made a face and nodded. Being a Peeping Tom was one thing; doing it at Cordie Cooke's house was worse than weird. "If he comes after you," he said to Dale, "I'll help. Congden's mean but stupid. Archie Kreck's even stupider. Get on Archie's blind side in a fight and it's no contest."

Dale nodded but looked gloomy. Mike knew that his friend wasn't very good in fights. It was one of the reasons Mike liked him. Dale muttered something.

"What?" said Mike. Lawrence was saying something at the same time from the end of the driveway.

"I said I didn't even go back for my bike," Dale said a second time.