Farewell Summer Read Free Page B

how our folks make us grow, teach us to lie, cheat, steal. War? Great! Murder? Swell! We’ll never be so well off as we are right
now
! Grow up and you turn into burglars and get shot, or worse,
they
make you wear a coat and tie and stash you in the First National Bank behind brass bars! We gotta stand still! Stay the age we are. Grow up? Hah! All you do then is marry someone who
screams
at you! Well, do we fight back? Will you let me tell you how to run?’
    â€˜Gosh,’ said Charlie. ‘Yeah!’
    â€˜Then,’ said Doug, ‘talk to your body: Bones, not one more inch! Statues! Don’t forget, Quartermain
owns
this graveyard. He makes money if we lie here, you and you and
you
! But we’ll show him. And all those old men who own the town! Halloween’s almost here and before then we got to sour their grapes! You wanna look likethem? You know how they got that way? Well, they were all young once, but somewhere along the way, oh gosh, when they were thirty or forty or fifty, they chewed tobacco and phlegm–hocked up on themselves and that phlegm–hock turned all gummy and sticky and then the next thing you know there was spittle all over them and they began to look like, you know, you’ve seen, caterpillars turned into chrysalis, their darned skin hardened, and the young guys turned old, got trapped inside their shells, by God. Then they began to look like all those old guys. So, what you have is old men with young guys trapped inside them. Some year soon, maybe, their skin will crack and the old men will let the old young men out. But they won’t be young anymore, they’ll be a bunch of death’s–head moths or, come to think of it, I think the old men are going to keep the young men inside them forever, so they’re trapped in all that glue, always hoping to get free. It’s pretty bad, isn’t it? Pretty bad.’
    â€˜Is that it, Doug?’ said Tom.
    â€˜Yeah,’ said Pete. ‘You sure you know what you’re talking about?’
    â€˜What Pete is trying to say is that we gotta know with precision, we gotta know what’s accurate,’ said Bo.
    â€˜I’ll say it again,’ said Doug. ‘You listen close. Tom, you taking this down?’
    â€˜Yup,’ said Tom, his pencil poised over his notepad. ‘Shoot.’
    They stood in the darkening shadows, in the smell of grass and leaves and old roses and cold stone and raised their heads, sniffling, and wiped their cheeks on their shirtsleeves.
    â€˜Okay, then,’ said Doug. ‘Let’s go over it again. It’s not enough just seeing these graves. We’ve got to sneak under open windows, listen, discover what those old geezers are sick with. Tom, go get the pumpkins out of Grandma’s pantry. We’re gonna have a contest, see which of us can carve the scariest pumpkin. One to look like old man Quartermain, one like Bleak, one like Gray. Light them up and put them out. Later tonight we start our first attack with the carved pumpkins. Okay?’
    â€˜Okay!’ everyone shouted.
    They leapt over WHYTE, WILLIAMS, and NEBB, jumped and vaulted SAMUELS and KELLER, screamed the iron gate wide, leaving the cold land behind them, lost sunlight, and the creek running forever below the hill. A host of gray moths followed them as far as the gate where Tom braked and stared at his brother accusingly.
    â€˜Doug, about those pumpkins. Gosh almighty, you’re nuts!’
    â€˜What?’ Doug stopped and turned back as the other boys ran on.
    â€˜It ain’t enough. I mean, look what you’ve done. You’ve pushed the fellas too far, got ’em scared. Keep on with this sort of talk you’re going to lose your army.You’ve got to do something that will put everything back together again. Find something for us to do or else everyone will go home and stay there, or go lie down with the dogs and sleep it off. Think of something, Doug.