Summer of Night Read Free Page B

a fort's.
    Van Syke haunted these basement rooms like he lived here… maybe he does live here, thought Tubby, nobody's ever seen him live anywhere… else… but the weird custodian with his dirty hands and yellow teeth had not been seen by the kids for days, and it was obvious that he didn't give a shit if some of the boys (Boy's, thought Tubby) kicked in a wall in the intermediate John. Why would Van Syke care? In a day or two, they'd be boarding up this big old shithouse of a school. Then they'd be tearing it down. Why would Van Syke care?
    Tubby kicked away with a fury he seldom showed, putting all the frustration of five years of suffering, even in kindergarten, and being called a 'slow student' in this rotten heap of a school. Five years as a 'behavior problem' having to sit there, tucked up close to old bags like Mrs. Grossaint and Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Farris, his desk rammed up right next to theirs so they could 'keep an eye on him' so that he had to smell their old-lady stink and listen to their old-lady voices and put up with their old-lady rules…
    Tubby kicked at the wall, feeling it give quickly now as the hole enlarged, until suddenly plaster tumbled across his sneakers, a two-by-four collapsed, and he was staring into a real hole. A big hole. A fucking cave!
    Tubby was fat for a fourth grader, but this hole was so big that he could almost fit in there. He could fit! A whole section of wall had come down so the hole was like a hatch in a submarine or something. Tubby turned sideways, forced his left arm and shoulder into the opening, his head still out of the hole, a big grin beginning to form on his face. He moved his left leg into the gap between the fake wall and the old one behind. It was a goddamn secret passage in here!
    Tubby crouched and stepped into the hole, pulling his right leg in until only his head and part of his shoulders protruded.
    He crouched lower, grunting a bit as he settled back into the cool darkness.
    Wouldn't Cordie or my old man shit if they came in and saw me now! Of course, Cordie wouldn't be coming into the boy's restroom. Or would she? Tubby knew that his older sister was pretty weird. A couple of years earlier, when she was in fourth grade herself, Cordie'd followed Chuck Sperling, the hotshot Little League baseball player,. track star, and all-around-asshole, out to Spoon River when he was fishing alone, tracked him for half a morning, and then jumped him, knocked him down, sat on his stomach, and threatened to pound his head in with a rock if he didn't show her his dick.
    According to Cordie, he'd pulled it out, crying and spitting blood, and showed her. Tubby was pretty sure that she hadn't told anybody else, and it was damn sure that Sperling wasn't going to tell anybody.
    Tubby leaned back in his little cave, feeling the plaster dust in his crew cut, and grinned at the dimly lit restroom. He'd jump out and scare the shit out of the next kid who came in to take a leak.
    Tubby waited a full two or three minutes but no one came. Once there was a scuffle or rattle way down the main basement corridor, but the sound of approaching sneakers didn't come and nobody showed. The only other noise was the constant trickle of water in the urinals and a soft gurgling in the overhead pipes, like the damned school was talking to itself.
    It's like a secret passage in here, Tubby thought again, turning his head to the left to look down the narrow passageway between the two walls. It was dark and smelled like the ground under the front porch of his house where he'd hid from his ma and his Old Man and played when he was smaller. The same musty, rich, rotten smell.
    Then, just as he was feeling a bit cramped and weird in the little space, Tubby saw a light at the far end of the passage. It was about where the end of the restroom and the outer wall might be… maybe a little farther. It wasn't really a light, he realized, but a kind of glow. Sort of like the soft, green light Tubby'd seen coming