But he couldn't say that.
So he drank, eyes shut, listening to hear if that thing inside turned over again, rustling in the deep bons that were stacked for burning but never burned.
Chapter 4
WILL STOPPED. Will looked at the Friday night town.
It seemed when the first stroke of nine banged from the big courthouse clock all the lights were on and business humming in the shops. But by the time the last stroke of nine shook everyone's fillings in his teeth, the barbers had yanked off the sheets, powdered the customers, trotted them forth; the druggist's fount had stopped fizzing like a nest of snakes, the insect neons everywhere had ceased buzzing, and the vast guttering acreage of the dime store with its ten billion metal, glass and paper oddments waiting to be fished over, suddenly blacked out. Shades slithered, doors boomed, keys rattled their bones in locks, people fled with hordes of torn newspaper mice nibbling their heels.
Bang! they were gone!
"Boy!" yelled Will. "Folks run like they thought the storm was here!"
"It is!" shouted Jim. "Us!"
They stomp-pound-thundered over iron grates, steel trapdoors, past a dozen unlit shops, a dozen half-lit, a dozen dying dark. The city was dead as they rounded the United Cigar Store corner to see a wooden Cherokee glide in darkness, by himself.
"Hey!"
Mr. Tetley, the proprietor, peered over the Indian's shoulder.
"Scare you, boys?"
"Naw!"
But Will shivered, feeling cold tidal waves of strange rain moving down the prairie as on a deserted shore. When the lightning nailed the town, he wanted to be layered under sixteen blankets and a pillow.
"Mr. Tetley?" said Will, quietly.
For now there were two wooden Indians upright in ripe tobacco darkness. Mr. Tetley, amidst his jest, had frozen, mouth open, listening.
"Mr. Tetley?"
He heard something far away on the wind, but couldn't say what it was.
The boys backed off.
He did not see them. He did not move. He only listened.
They left him. They ran.
In the fourth empty block from the library, the boys came upon a third wooden Indian.
Mr. Crosetti, in front of his barber shop, his door key in his trembling fingers, did not see them stop.
What had stopped them?
A teardrop.
It moved shining down Mr. Crosetti's left cheek. He breathed heavily.
"Crosetti, you fool! Something happens, nothing happens, you cry like a baby!"
Mr. Crosetti took a trembling breath, snuffing. "Don't you smell it?"
Jim and Will sniffed.
"Licorice!"