‘Oh, for gosh sakes!’ cried Douglas. ‘Stop!’
Douglas and Tom and Charlie climbed out of the ravine, and walked through the boxed and packaged town, through the avenues and streets and alleys, among the thousand–celled houses, the bright prisons, down the definite sidewalks and the positive lanes, and the country seemed far away and it was as if a sea had moved away from the shore of their life in one day. Suddenly there was the town and their lives to be lived in that town in the next forty years, opening and shutting doors and raising and lowering shades, and the green meadow was distant and alien.
Douglas looked over at Tom getting taller every minute, it seemed. He felt the hunger in his stomach and he thought of the miraculous foods at home and he thought of Lisabell blowing out the candles and sitting there with fourteen years burnt behind her and not caring, very pretty and solemn and beautiful. He thought of the Lonely One, very lonely indeed, wanting love, and now gone.
Douglas stopped at Charlie’s house, feeling the season change about them.
‘Here’s where I leave you guys,’ said Charlie. ‘See you later, at the haunted house with those dumb girls.’
‘Yeah, see you later, Charlie.’
‘So long, Charlie,’ said Tom.
‘You know something,’ said Charlie, turning back toward his friends, as if he’d suddenly remembered something important. ‘I been thinkin’. I got an uncle, twenty–five years old. Came by earlier today in a big Buick, with his wife. A really nice, pretty lady. I was thinkin’ all morning: Maybe I’ll let them make me twenty–five. Twenty–five strikes me as a nice medium age. If they’ll let me ride in a Buick with a pretty lady like that, I’ll go along with them. But that’s it, mind! No kids. It stops at squalling kids. Just a nice car and a pretty lady with me, ridin’ along out toward the lake. Boy! I’ll take about thirty years of that. I’m puttin’ in my order for thi
rty years of being twenty-five. Fill ’er up and I’m on my way.’
‘It’s something to think about,’ said Douglas.
‘I’m goin’ in the house to think about it right now,’ said Charlie.
‘So, when do we start the war again?’ said Tom.
Charlie and Douglas looked at each other.
‘Heck, I dunno,’ said Doug, a little uncomfortably.
‘Tomorrow, next week, next month?’
‘I guess.’
‘We can’t give up the war!’ said Tom.
‘Heck, we’re not giving it up,’ said Charlie. ‘Every once in a while we’ll do it again, huh, Doug?’
‘Oh, sure, sure!’
‘Shift the strategy, identify new objectives, you know,’ said Charlie. ‘Oh, we’ll have wars okay, Tom, don’t you worry.’
‘Promise?’ cried Tom, tears in his eyes.
‘Cross our hearts, mother’s honor.’
‘Okay,’ said Tom, lower lip trembling.
The wind whistled, was cool: it was an early autumn evening, no longer a late summer one.
‘Well,’ said Charlie, standing there, smiling shyly, looking up from under his eyebrows at Doug. ‘It sure was a farewell summer, huh?’
‘Sure was.’
‘Sure kept us busy.’
‘Sure did.’
‘Only thing is,’ said Tom, ‘it didn’t come out in the papers: Who won?’
Charlie and Douglas stared at the younger boy.