In the Middle of the Night by Robert Cormier Page B

friendly. “Maybe I ought to sue,” he said, remembering when “This Litigious Society” had been the topic in social studies for an entire week. “For a million dollars.”
    “I’d be a great witness for your side,” Dave said brightly.
    They both laughed at the prospect. Looking at Dave’s pathetic wig, like a black pancake on his head, the false teeth, the eyes begging for forgiveness, Denny could not remain angry.
    “I think you should make it two million,” Dave said.
    “Or three,” Denny added.
    They both started laughing, caught up in the absurdity of it all, and Denny felt drawn to the strange man. He decided to hang out at the store for a while. He had no one else to talk to during the long afternoons after school anyway.

    Denny and his mother went to church every Sunday. His father never went to mass. “Why?” Denny asked as they walked to St. Martin’s Church.
    “Your father is religious in his own way,” she said. “He doesn’t go to mass, but he prays.” She did not say anything for a while and then said: “I think, Denny, he has his own church: the cemetery in Wickburg where most of the children are buried, the children who died at the Globe. He used to disappear every Saturday for a few hours, even when we lived in Bartlett. Finally, he told me where he went. To the cemetery. Where he prayed for the souls of the children. That’s his church, Denny, that cemetery.”
    A sudden memory came clear: “He took me there once when I was a little kid,” Denny said. “I remember we knelt down. I remember that there were tears in his eyes. But he didn’t explain why we were there. I must have been only five or six years old …”
    “He still goes there once in a while, Denny.” She touched his shoulder, as if trying to create a bridge between her and him and, by extension, his father. “He’s such a good man, your father. He …” Her voice trailed off.
    “What?” Denny asked. “He … what?” Sensing that his mother wanted to say more.
    “I was thinking of that terrible day at the Globe. The first time I saw him. He wasn’t like other guys at school, in my neighborhood. He seemed to care. About those children. Even about us, the helpers. Trying to do his best. He was …” She paused, as if searching for the right word: “Nice. I know that doesn’t sound glamorous, Denny.But that’s exactly what your father was, still is—a nice guy.”
    She stopped walking, turned toward him. “I never told him what I saw that day. I saw the balcony crash down. I saw him falling with it, saw him swallowed up in all that debris. I thought he’d been killed, that nice guy I’d just met. Later, when I found out he was alive and heard the accusations people were making, I wrote him a letter …”
    “And the rest is history, right?” he said, keeping his voice light but oddly touched that his mother had shared this memory with him.
    A sudden rising wind hastened them along the street. His mother looked up at the clear blue sky. “Oh, Denny, maybe this year will be different. Maybe it won’t be like other years …”
    Denny didn’t say anything, did not want to spoil this beautiful moment on the way to church.

 
    T
he telephone rang almost every afternoon now but Denny ignored it, using all his old defenses: flushing the toilet in the bathroom, turning up the volume on the radio, or, finally, leaving the apartment.
    On the street, he faced several choices, none of them exciting. Once or twice, he walked the streets of the neighborhood, beginning with the adjacent ones and then branching out, searching for Dawn, his lost friend from the bus. Which was ridiculous, in a way. The odds against spotting her were enormous unless he got lucky and walked by her house at the moment she came out the door or happened to be raking the lawn. Most of the lawns and sidewalks were covered with leaves, some of them beautiful in their hectic colors, but Denny didn’t respond to their beauty.