"I think this is breaking a law," whispered Mike.

Dale shrugged.

"Not just trespassing," said Mike. He adjusted the hood of his poncho and water slooshed off. "Messing up a crime scene or something."

"They said it was an accident." Dale found himself whispering even though no one was within a mile of them. "How can there be a crime scene if it was an accident?"

"You know what I mean." Mike pulled his hood off and stared out over the field. There was no sign of a combine. No sign of anything at all. The McBride barn was far away and it looked like any other barn.

"Are we going to do it or not?" asked Dale.

"Yeah." Mike tugged his hood back on and they clambered over the fence.

They moved across the field in a crouch. The road was several hundred yards away, but they felt exposed in the low corn. Dale felt like he was playing soldiers, running forward in a burst of speed, crouching low and gesturing Mike on. In that manner they crossed the field.

They were more than halfway across when they saw the swath of cleared corn. It was like someone had taken a lawn-mower to the field, gouging out a drunken path of stubble through the green shoots. Then they saw the yellow tape.

They crossed the last twenty yards in a low shuffle that got their knees and hands muddy.

"God," whispered Mike.

The yellow tape said police scene-do not cross, the message repeated indefinitely, and the plastic stretched in a rough rectangle at least fifty feet on a side. Within that rectangle, the swath of harvested corn suddenly ended and there was an area that had been trampled by many feet.

Dale paused a second where the tape draped over the cornstalk, and then he crossed it, moving quickly to the cleared area. Mike followed.

"God," Mike whispered again.

Dale didn't know what he expected; the combine still to be there maybe, a human outline chalked on the ground like in the TV shows he watched. There was only the trampled corn ... he could see where the big machine had turned around, where the wheels had left deep gouges in the dirt now turned to mud. It looked like the field where they held the Old Settlers' carnival each August, trampled by thousands of feet. Dale saw cigarettes lying in the wet and trampled cornstalks, a Red Pouch Tobacco bag, scraps of paper, some plastic wrappers. It was hard to tell exactly where the combine had been . . . where the accident had happened.

"Here," called Mike.

Dale moved over, staying low in case Mr. McBride or anyone at the farm was looking this way. He couldn't see the pickup in the barnyard or drive, but the house and barn shielded much of the view.

"What?" he said.

Mike pointed. Some of the trampled corn here looked as if the stalks had been sprayed a deep reddish-brown. Some of the color had faded because of the rain, but the undersides of the corn were still marked.

Dale crouched, touched a plant, brought his fingers up.

There was a faint rusty residue there in the seconds before the rain washed it from his fingers.

Duane's blood? The thought was unsupportable. He got up and began moving around the circle of ravaged plants, seeing the turmoil everywhere, remembering overhearing his father telling his mother that Barney said that the state troopers and the volunteer firemen had stomped up the scene so much that the Oak Hill police hadn't been able to reconstruct much. Reconstruct, mused Dale. Strange word for figuring out the way something or someone is destroyed.

"What are we looking for?" whispered Mike from twenty feet away. "There's just a lot of crap lying around."

"Keep looking," Dale whispered. "We'll know when we find it." He stepped out into the corn, beyond the police line, crouching as he moved down the row.

Another five minutes and he found it, less than ten yards from the ravaged area. It was hard to see beneath the leaves of growing corn, but his sneaker had twisted in something and he'd bent to investigate. Mike ran over when he waved. The two crouched on hands and knees, the rain pattering on cornstalks next to their ears.

"A hole," whispered Dale. He measured it with his two hands. Not quite a foot across, but the earth looked bunched and strange around it. He put his hand into it but Mike quickly grabbed it and pulled it back.

"Don't."

"Why?" said Dale. "I just wanted to see if it was wider on the inside. It is. Feel."

Mike shook his head.

"The sides feel funny too," said Dale. "Sort of stiff. And the hole has ridges along the side.'' He raised his head. There was no movement from the McBride farm, but he had the distinct impression that they were being watched. "Let's see if there are any more."

They found six more. The biggest was more than eighteen inches across, the smallest hardly larger than a gopher hole. There was no pattern to them, although most of them were closer to the farm, on either side of the harvested swath.

Dale wanted to sneak up on the barn and look in to see if the combine was there.

"Why the hell . . . why do you want to do that?" Mike whispered, pulling his friend down lower. They were too close. The boys could read the numbers on the tags in the ears of the few cows behind the barn.

"I just want to ... I need to . . ." Dale took a breath.

The sound of a door slamming sent both boys flopping into the mud between the rows. Lying there, hearing a truck engine starting up, Dale realized that it had almost stopped raining. The air was still bleeding a fine mist, but the downpour had stopped.

"It's gone down the drive," whispered Mike. "But I think somebody's still there. Let's head back to the woods."

"One peek in the barn," Dale whispered back and began to rise.

Mike tugged him down. "I've seen those things before."

Dale crouched and blinked at Mike's ponchoed figure. "What things?"

"The holes. Those tunnels."

"Where?"

Mike turned back and began moving away from the farm. "Come on back with me and I'll tell you." He was gone, moving down the next row in a low crouch.

Dale hesitated. He was only a hundred feet or so from the barn. The feeling that he was being watched-observed -was still strong, but so was the desire to see the machine. There was little or no morbid curiosity in the desire; the thought of seeing the blades or gears or whatever that had actually killed his friend made him sick, but he had to know ... to begin to understand.

The rain had started up again. Dale looked toward the south, caught the slightest glimpse of Mike's poncho moving above the corn, and then he turned and followed.

There'd be time.

It rained on and off for three weeks. Each morning the sky would be a rapidly shifting war between sunlight and clouds, but by ten a.m. the drizzle would begin and by lunchtime the rain would fall from lowering skies.

The Free Show was canceled for June 25 and July 2, although the skies were clear and the evening gentle on that second Saturday. The next morning the rain returned. Around Elm Haven, the hungry Illinois earth seemed to drink the moisture and ask for more. The black earth turned blacker. In most of America, farmers spoke of corn being "knee-high by the Fourth of July"; in central Illinois the rule always had been "waist-high by the Fourth of July," but this summer the corn was closer to shoulder-high by the Fourth.

The Fourth fell on a Monday, and although the adults seemed to enjoy the rare three-day holiday, their pleasure was ruined a bit by the rain that canceled the town parade and the evening's fireworks. Elm Haven had no city budget for a formal fireworks show, but a century of tradition had people bring their own Roman candles, skyrockets, and firecrackers to the school grounds. A few showed up this summer, but the wind had risen that evening, the nightly storm had blown in early, and the would-be revelers abandoned the effort after matches would not light and fuses failed.