Thats all there was to it. Todd, Ed said, his eyes widening. He took a step backwards. Todd, you dont want to ... please, Todd. We can talk this over. We can disc You and the fucking kraut can discuss it down in hell, Todd said, and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot rolled away in the hot and windless quiet of the afternoon. Ed French was flung back against his Saab. His hand groped behind him and tore off a windshield wiper. He stared at it foolishly as blood spread on his blue turtleneck, and then he dropped it and looked at Todd. Norma, he whispered. Okay, Todd said. Whatever you say, champ. He shot Rubber Ed again and roughly half of his head disappeared in a spray of blood and bone. Ed turned drunkenly and began to grope toward the driversside door, speaking his daughters name over and over again in a choked and failing voice. Todd shot him again, aiming for the base of the spine, and Ed fell down. His feet drummed briefly on the gravel and then were still. Sure did die hard for a guidance counsellor, Todd thought, and brief laughter escaped him. At the same moment a burst of pain as sharp as an icepick drove into his brain and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he felt better than he had in monthsmaybe better than he had felt in years. Everything was fine. Everything was together. The blankness left his face and a kind of wild beauty filled it. He went back into the garage and got all the shells he had, better than four hundred rounds. He put them in his old knapsack and shouldered it. When he came back out into the sunshine he was smiling excitedly, his eyes dancingit was the way boys smile on their birthdays, on Christmas, on the Fourth of July. It was a smile that betokened skyrockets, treehouses, secret signs and secret meetingplaces, the aftermath of the triumphal big game when the players are carried out of the stadium and into town on the shoulders of the exultant fans. The ecstatic smile of towheaded boys going off to war in coalscuttle helmets. Im king of the world! he shouted mightily at the high blue sky, and raised the rifle twohanded over his head for a moment. Then, switching it to his right hand, he started toward that place above the freeway where the land fell away and where the dead tree would give him shelter. It was five hours later and almost dark before they took him down. FALL FROM INNOCENCE For George McLeod The Body 1 The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish themwords shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when theyre brought out. But its more than that, isnt it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what youve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. Thats the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear. I was twelve going on thirteen when I first saw a dead human being. It happened in 1960, a long time ago . . . although sometimes it doesnt seem that long to me. Especially on the nights I wake up from dreams where the hail falls into his open eyes. 2 We had a treehouse in a big elm which overhung a vacant lot in Castle Rock. Theres a moving company on that lot today, and the elm is gone. Progress. It was a sort of social club, although it had no name. There were five, maybe six steady guys and some other wet ends who just hung around. Wed let them come up when there was a card game and we needed some fresh blood. The game was usually blackjack and we played for pennies, nickel limit. But you got double money on blackjack and fivecardunder ... triple money on sixcardunder, although Teddy was the only guy crazy enough to go for that. The sides of the treehouse were planks scavenged from the shitpile behind Mackey Lumber  Building Supply on Carbine Roadthey were splintery and full of knotholes we plugged with either toilet paper or paper towels. The roof was a corrugated tin sheet we hawked from the dump, looking over our shoulders all the time we were hustling it out of there, because the dump custodians dog was supposed to be a real kideating monster. We found a screen door out there on the same day. It was flyproof but really rustyI mean, that rust was extreme. No matter what time of day you looked out that screen door, it looked like sunset. Besides playing cards, the club was a good place to go and smoke cigarettes and look at girly books. There were half a dozen battered tin ashtrays that said CAMELS on the bottom, a lot of centerfolds tacked to the splintery walls, twenty or thirty dogeared packs of Bike cards (Teddy got them from his uncle, who ran the Castle Rock Stationery Shoppewhen Teddys unc asked him one day what kind of cards we played, Teddy said we had cribbage tournaments and Teddys unc thought that was just fine), a set of plastic poker chips, and a pile of ancient Master Detective murder magazines to leaf through if there was nothing else shaking. We also built a 12 x 10 secret compartment under the floor to hide most of this stuff in on the rare occasions when some kids father decided it was time to do the werereallygoodpals routine. When it rained, being in the club was like being inside a Jamaican steel drum ... but that summer there had been no rain. It had been the driest and hottest since 1907or so the newspapers said, and on that Friday preceding the Labor Day weekend and the start of another school year, even the goldenrod in the fields and the ditches beside the backroads looked parched and poorly. Nobodys garden had done doodlysquat that year, and the big displays of canning stuff in the Castle Rock Red  White were still there, gathering dust. No one had anything to put up that summer, except maybe dandelion wine. Teddy and Chris and I were up in the club on that Friday morning, glooming to each other about school being so near and playing cards and swapping the same old traveling salesman jokes and frenchman jokes. How do you know when a frenchmans been in your back yard? Well, your garbage cans are empty and your dog is pregnant. Teddy would try to look offended, but he was the first one to bring in a joke as soon as he heard it, only switching frenchman to polack. The elm gave good shade, but we already had our shirts off so we wouldnt sweat them up too bad. We were playing threepennyscat, the dullest cardgame ever invented, but it was too hot to think about anything more complicated. Wed had a pretty fair scratch ballteam until the middle of August and then a lot of kids just drifted away. Too hot. I was down to my ride and building spades. Id started with thirteen, gotten an eight to make twentyone, and nothing had happened since then. Chris knocked. I took my last draw and got nothing helpful. Twentynine, Chris said, laying down diamonds. Twentytwo, Teddy said, looking disgusted. Piss up a rope, I said, and tossed my cards onto the table face down. Gordies out, ole Gordie just bit the bag and stepped out the door, Teddy bugled, and then gave out with his patented Teddy Duchamp laughEeeeeeeeee, like a rusty nail being slowly hauled out of a rotten board. Well, he was weird; we all knew it. He was close to being thirteen like the rest of us, but the thick glasses and the hearing aid he wore sometimes made him look like an old man. Kids were always trying to cadge smokes off him on the street, but the bugle in his shirt was just his hearingaid battery. In spite of the glasses and the fleshcolored button always screwed into his ear, Teddy couldnt see very well and often misunderstood the things people said to him. In baseball you had to have him play the fences, way beyond Chris in left field and Billy Greer in right. You just hoped no one would hit one that far because Teddy would go grimly after it, see it or not. Every now and then he got bonked a good one, and once he went out cold when he ran fulltiltboogie into the fence by the treehouse. He lay there on his back with his eyes showing whites for almost five minutes, and I got scared. Then he woke up and walked around with a bloody nose and a huge purple lump rising on his forehead, trying to claim that the ball was foul. His eyesight was just naturally bad, but there was nothing natural about what had happened to his ears. Back in those days, when it was cool to get your hair cut so that your ears stuck out like a couple of jughandles, Teddy had Castle Rocks first Beatle haircutfour years before anyone in America had ever heard of the Beatles. He kept his ears covered because they looked like two lumps of warm wax. One day when he was eight, Teddys father got pissed at him for breaking a plate. His mother was working at the shoe factory in South Paris when it happened and by the time she found out about it, it was all over. Teddys dad took Teddy over to the big woodstove at the back of the kitchen and shoved the side of Teddys head down against one of the castiron burner plates. He held it down there for about ten seconds. Then he yanked Teddy up by the hair of the head and did the other side. Then he called the Central Main General Emergency unit and told them to come get his boy. Then he hung up the phone, went into the closet, got his .410, and sat down to watch the daytime stories on TV with the shotgun laid across his knees. When Mrs. Burroughs from next door came over to ask if Teddy was all rightshed heard the screamingTeddys dad pointed the shotgun at her. Mrs. Burroughs went out of the Duchamp house at roughly the speed of light, locked herself into her own house, and called the police. When the ambulance came, Mr. Duchamp let the orderlies in and then went out on the back porch to stand guard while they wheeled Teddy to the old portholed Buick ambulance on a stretcher. Teddys dad explained to the orderlies that while the fucking brass hats said the area was clear, there were still kraut snipers everywhere. One of the orderlies asked Teddys dad if he thought he could hold on. Teddys dad smiled tightly and told the orderly hed hold until hell was a Frigidaire dealership, if thats what it took. The orderly saluted, and Teddys dad snapped it right back at him. A few minutes after the ambulance left, the state police arrived and relieved Norman Duchamp of duty. Hed been doing odd things like shooting cats and lighting fires in mailboxes for over a year, and after the atrocity he had visited upon his son, they had a quick hearing and sent him to Togus, which is a VA hospital. Togus is where you have to go if youre a section eight. Teddys dad had stormed the beach at Normandy, and thats just the way Teddy always put it. Teddy was proud of his old man in spite of what his old man had done to him, and Teddy went with his mom to visit him every week. He was the dumbest guy we hung around with, I guess, and he was crazy. Hed take the craziest chances you can imagine, and get away with them. His big thing was what he called truckdodging. Hed run out in front of them on 196 and sometimes theyd miss him by bare inches. God knew how many heart attacks hed caused, and hed be laughing while the windblast from the passing truck rippled his clothes. It scared us because his vision was so lousy, Cokebottle glasses or not. It seemed like only a matter of time before he misjudged one of those trucks. And you had to be careful what you dared him, because Teddy would do anything on a dare. Gordies out, eeeeeeeeeeee! Screw, I said, and picked up a Master Detective to read while they played it out. I turned to He Stomped the Pretty CoEd to Death in a Stalled Elevator and got right into it. Teddy picked up his cards, gave them one brief look, and said I knock. You foureyed pile of shit! Chris cried. The pile of shit has a thousand eyes, Teddy said gravely, and both Chris and I cracked up. Teddy stared at us with a slight frown, as if wondering what had gotten us. laughing. That was another thing about the cathe was always coming out with weird stuff like The pile of shit has a thousand eyes, and you could never be sure if he meant it to be funny or if it just happened that way. Hed look at the people who were laughing with that slight frown on his face, as if to say O Lord what is it this time? Teddy had a natural thirtyjack, queen, and king of clubs. Chris had only sixteen and went down to his ride. Teddy was shuffling the cards in his clumsy way and I was just getting to the gooshy part of the murder story, where this deranged sailor from New Orleans was doing the Bristol Stomp all over this college girl from Bryn Mawr because he couldnt stand being in closedin places, when we heard someone coming fast up the ladder nailed to the side of the elm. A fist rapped on the underside of the trapdoor. Who goes? Chris yelled. Vern! He sounded excited and out of breath. I went to the trapdoor and pulled the bolt. The trapdoor banged up and Vern Tessio, one of the other regulars, pulled himself into the clubhouse. He was sweating buckets and his hair, which he usually kept combed in a perfect imitation of his rock and roll idol, Bobby Rydell, was plastered to his bullet head in chunks and strings. Wow, man, he panted. Waitll you hear this. Hear what? I asked. Lemme get my breath. I ran all the way from my house. I ran all the way home,  Teddy wavered in a dreadful Little Anthony falsetto, just to say Im sohree Fuck your hand, man, Vern said. Drop dead in a shed, Fred, Teddy returned smartly. You ran all the way from your place? Chris asked unbelievingly. Man, youre crazy. Verns house was two miles down Grand Street. It must be ninety out there. This is worth it, Vem said. Holy Jeezum. You wont believe this. Sincerely. He slapped his sweaty forehead to show us how sincere he was. Okay, what? Chris asked. Can you guys camp out tonight? Vern was looking at us earnestly, excitedly. His eyes looked like raisins pushed into dark circles of sweat. I mean, if you tell your folks were gonna tent out in my back field? Yeah, I guess so, Chris said, picking up his new hand and looking at it. But my dads on a mean streak. Drinkin, yknow. You got to, man, Vern said. Sincerely. You wont believe this. Can you, Gordie? Probably. I was able to do most stuff like thatin fact, Id been like the Invisible Boy that whole summer. In April my older brother, Dennis, had been killed in a Jeep accident. That was at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he was in Basic. He and another guy were on their way to the PX and an Army truck hit them broadside. Dennis was killed instantly and his passenger had been in a coma ever since. Dennis would have been twentytwo later that week. Id already picked out a birthday card for him at Dahlies over in Castle Green. I cried when I heard, and I cried more at the funeral, and I couldnt believe that Dennis was gone, that anyone that used to knuckle my head or scare me with a rubber spider until I cried or give me a kiss when I fell down and scraped both knees bloody and whisper in my ear, Now stop cryin, ya baby!that a person who had touched me could be dead. It hurt me and it scared me that he could be dead . . . but it seemed to have taken all the heart out of my parents. For me, Dennis was hardly more than an acquaintance. He was ten years older than me if you can dig it, and he had his own friends and classmates. We ate at the same table for a lot of years, and sometimes he was my friend and sometimes my tormentor, but mostly he was, you know, just a guy. When he died hed been gone for a year except for a couple of furloughs. We didnt even look alike. It took me a long time after that summer to realize that most of the tears I cried were for my mom and dad. Fat lot of good it did them, or me. So what are you pissing and moaning about, VernO? Teddy asked. I knock, Chris said. What? Teddy screamed, immediately forgetting all about Vern. You friggin liar! You aint got no pat hand. I didnt deal you no pat hand. Chris smirked. Make your draw, shitheap. Teddy reached for the top card on the pile of Bikes. Chris reached for the Winstons on the ledge behind him. I bent over to pick up my detective magazine. Vern Tessio said You guys want to go see a dead body? Everybody stopped. 3 Wed all heard about it on the radio, of course. The radio, a Philco with a cracked case which had also been scavenged from the dump, played all the time. We kept it tuned to WALM in Lewiston, which churned out the superhits and the boss oldies What in the Worlds Come Over You by Jack Scott and This Time by Troy Shondell and King Creole by Elvis and Only the Lonely by Roy Orbison. When the news came on we usually switched some mental dial over to Mute. The news was a lot of happy horseshit about Kennedy and Nixon and Quemoy and Matsu and the missile gap and what a shit that Castro was turning out to be after all. But we had all listened to the Ray Brower story a little more closely, because he was a kid our age. He was from Chamberlain, a town forty miles or so east of Castle Rock. Three days before Vern came busting into the clubhouse after a twomile run up Grand Street, Ray Brower had gone out with one of his mothers pots to pick blueberries. When dark came and he still wasnt back, the Browers called the county sheriff and a search startedfirst just around the kids house and then spreading to the surrounding towns of Motton and Durham and Pownal. Everybody got into the actcops, deputies, game wardens, volunteers. But three days later the kid was still missing. You could tell, hearing about it on the radio, that they were never going to find that poor sucker alive; eventually the search would just peter away into nothing. He might have gotten smothered in a gravel pit slide or drowned in a brook, and ten years from now some hunter would find his bones. They were already dragging the ponds in Chamberlain, and the Motton Reservoir. Nothing like that could happen in southwestern Maine today; most of the area has become suburbanized, and the bedroom communities surrounding Portland and Lewiston have spread out like the tentacles of a giant squid. The woods are still there, and they get heavier as you work your way west toward the White Mountains, but these days if you can keep your head long enough to walk five miles in one consistent direction, youre certain to cross twolane blacktop. But in 1960 the whole area between Chamberlain and Castle Rock was undeveloped, and there were places that hadnt even been logged since before World War II. In those days it was still possible to walk into the woods and lose your direction there and die there. 4 Vern Tessio had been under his porch that morning, digging. We all understood that right away, but maybe I should take just a minute to explain it to you. Teddy Duchamp was only about halfbright, but Vern Tessio would never be spending any of his spare time on College Bowl either. Still his brother Billy was even dumber, as you will see. But first I have to tell you why Vern was digging under the porch. Four years ago, when he was eight, Vern buried a quart jar of pennies under the long Tessio front porch. Vern called the dark space under the porch his cave. He was playing a pirate sort of game, and the pennies were buried treasureonly if you were playing pirate with Vern, you couldnt call it buried treasure, you had to call it booty. So he buried the jar of pennies deep, filled in the hole, and covered the fresh dirt with some of the old leaves that had drifted under there over the years. He drew a treasure map which he put up in his room with the rest of his junk. He forgot all about it for a month or so. Then, being low on cash for a movie or something, he remembered the pennies and went to get his map. But his mom had been in to clean two or three times since then, and had collected all the old homework papers and candy wrappers and comic magazines and joke books. She burned them in the stove to start the cookfire one morning, and Verns treasure map went right up the kitchen chimney. Or so he figured it. He tried to find the spot from memory and dug there. No luck. To the right and the left of that spot. Still no luck. He gave up for the day but had tried off and on ever since. Four years, man. Four years. Isnt that a pisser? You didnt know whether to laugh or cry. It had gotten to be sort of an obsession with him. The Tessio front porch ran the length of the house, probably forty feet long and seven feet wide. He had dug through damn near every inch of that area two, maybe three times and no pennies. The number of pennies began to grow in his mind. When it first happened he told Chris and me that there had been maybe three dollars worth. A year later he was up to five and just lately it was running around ten, more or less, depending on how broke he was. Every so often we tried to tell him what was so clear to usthat Billy had known about the jar and dug it up himself. Vern refused to believe it, although he hated Billy like the Arabs hate the Jews and probably would have cheerfully voted the deathpenalty on his brother for shoplifting, if the opportunity had ever presented itself. He also refused to ask Billy point blank. Probably he was afraid Billy would laugh and say Course I got them, you stupid pussy, and there was twenty bucks worth of pennies in that jar and I spent every fuckin cent of it. Instead, Vern went out and dug for the pennies whenever the spirit moved him (and whenever Billy wasnt around). He always crawled out from under the porch with his jeans dirty and his hair leafy and his hands empty. We ragged him about it something wicked, and his nickname was PennyPenny Tessio. I think he came up to the club with his news as quick as he did not just to get it out but to show us that some good had finally come of his pennyhunt. He had been up that morning before anybody, ate his comflakes, and was out in the driveway shooting baskets through the old hoop nailed up on the garage, nothing much to do, no one to play Ghost with or anything, and he decided to have another dig for his pennies. He was under the porch when the screen door slammed up above. He froze, not making a sound. If it was his dad, he would crawl out; if it was Billy, hed stay put until Billy and his j.d. friend Charlie Hogan had taken off. Two pair of footsteps crossed the porch, and then Charlie Hogan himself said in a trembling, crybaby voice Jesus Christ, Billy, what are we gonna do? Vern said that just hearing Charlie Hogan talk like thatCharlie, who was one of the toughest kids in townmade him prick up his ears. Charlie, after all, hung out with Ace Merrill and Eyeball Chambers, and if you hung out with cats like that, you had to be tough. Nuthin, Billy said. Thats all were gonna do. Nuthin. We gotta do somethin, Charlie said, and they sat down on the porch close to where Vern was hunkered down. Didnt you see him? Vern took a chance and crept a little closer to the steps, practically slavering. At that point he thought that maybe Billy and Charlie had been really drunked up and had run somebody down. Vern was careful not to crackle any of the old leaves as he moved. If the two of them found out he was under the porch and had overheard them, you could have put what was left of him in a KenL Ration dogfood can. Its nuthin to us, Billy Tessio said. The kids dead so its nuthin to him, neither. Who gives a fuck if they ever find him? I dont. It was that kid they been talkin about on the radio, Charlie said. It was, sure as shit. Brocker, Brower, Flowers, whatever his name is. Fuckin train must have hit him. Yeah, Billy said. Sound of a scratched match. Vern saw it flicked into the gravel driveway and then smelled cigarette smoke. It sure did. And you puked. No words, but Vern sensed emotional waves of shame radiating off Charlie Hogan. Well, the girls didnt see it, Billy said after awhile. Lucky break. From the sound, he clapped Charlie on the back to buck him up. Theyd blab it from here to Portland. We tore out of there fast, though. You think they knew there was something wrong? No, Charlie said. Marie dont like to go down that Back Harlow Road past the cemetery, anyway. Shes afraid of ghosts. Then again in that scared crybaby voice Jesus, I wish wed never boosted no car last night! Just gone to the show like we was gonna! Charlie and Billy went with a couple of scags named Marie Dougherty and Beverly Thomas; you never saw such grosslooking broads outside of a carnival showpimples, moustaches, the whole works. Sometimes the four of themor maybe six or eight if Fuzzy Bracowicz or Ace Merrill were along with their girlswould boost a car from a Lewiston parking lot and go joyriding out into the country with two or three bottles of Wild Irish Rose wine and a sixpack of ginger ale. Theyd take the girls parking somewhere in Castle View or Harlow or Shiloh, drink Purple Jesuses, and make out. Then theyd dump the car somewhere near home. Cheap thrills in the monkeyhouse, as Chris sometimes said. Theyd never been caught at it, but Vern kept hoping. He really dug the idea of visiting Billy on Sundays at the reformatory. If we told the cops, theyd want to know how we got way the hell out in Harlow, Billy said. We aint got no car, neither of us. Its better if we just keep our mouths shut. Then they cant touch us. We could make a nonnamus call, Charlie said. They trace those fuckin calls, Billy said ominously. I seen it on Highway Patrol. And Dragnet. Yeah, right, Charlie said miserably. Jesus. I wish Aced been with us. We could have told the cops we was in his car. Well, he wasnt. Yeah, Charlie said. He sighed. I guess youre right. A cigarette butt flicked into the driveway. We hadda walk up and take a piss by the tracks, didnt we? Couldnt walk the other way, could we? And I got puke on my new P.F. Fliers. His voice sank a little. Fuckin kid was laid right out, you know it? Didja see that sonofawhore, Billy? I seen him, Billy said, and a second cigarette butt joined the first in the driveway. Lets go see if Ace is up. I want some juice. We gonna tell him? Charlie, we aint gonna tell nobody. Nobody never. You dig me? I dig you, Charlie said. Christ Jesus, I wish we never boosted that fucking Dodge. Aw, shut the fuck up and come on. Two pairs of legs clad in tight, washfaded pegged jeans, two pairs of feet in black engineer boots with sidebuckles, came down the steps. Vern froze on his hands and knees (My balls crawled up so high I thought they was trine to get back home, he told us), sure his brother would sense him beneath the porch and drag him out and kill himhe and Charlie Hogan would kick the few brains the good Lord had seen fit to give him right out his jug ears and then stomp him with their engineer boots. But they just kept going and when Vem was sure they were really gone, he had crawled out from under the porch and ran here. 5 Youre really lucky, I said. They would have killed you. Teddy said, I know the Back Harlow Road. It comes to a dead end by the river. We used to fish for cossies out there. Chris nodded. There used to be a bridge, but there was a flood. A long time ago. Now theres just the traintracks. Could a kid really have gotten all the way from Chamberlain to Harlow? I asked Chris. Thats twenty or thirty miles. I think so. He probably happened on the traintracks and followed them the whole way. Maybe he thought theyd take him out, or maybe he thought he could flag down a train if he had to. But thats just a freight run nowGSWM up to Derry and Brownsvilleand not many of those anymore. Hed have tove walked all the way to Castle Rock to get out. After dark a train must have finally come along . . . and el smacko. Chris drove his right fist down against his left palm, making a flat noise. Teddy, a veteran of many close calls dodging the pulptrucks on 196, looked vaguely pleased. I felt a little sick, imagining that kid so far away from home, scared to death but doggedly following the GSWM tracks, probably walking on the ties because of the nightnoises from the overhanging trees and bushes . . . maybe even from the culverts underneath the railroad bed. And here comes the train, and maybe the big headlight on the front hypnotized him until it was too late to jump. Or maybe he was just lying there on the tracks in a hungerfaint when the train came along. Either way, any way, Chris had the straight of it el smacko had been the final result. The kid was dead. So anyway, you want to go see it? Vern asked. He was squirming around like he had to go to the bathroom he was so excited. We all looked at him for a long second, no one saying anything. Then Chris tossed his cards down and said Sure! And I bet you anything we get our pictures in the paper! Huh? Vem said. Yeah? Teddy said, and grinning his crazy truckdodging grin. Look, Chris said, leaning across the ratty cardtable. We can find the body and report it! Well be on the news! I dunno, Vern said, obviously taken aback. Billy will know where I found out. Hell beat the living shit outta me. No he wont, I said, because itll be us guys that find that kid, not Billy and Charlie Hogan in a boosted car. Then they wont have to worry about it anymore. Theyll probably pin a medal on you, Penny. Yeah? Vern grinned, showing his bad teeth. It was a dazed sort of grin, as if the thought of Billy being pleased with anything he did had acted on him like a hard shot to the chin. Yeah, you think so? Teddy was grinning, too. Then he frowned and said Ohoh. What? Vern asked. He was squirming again, afraid that some really basic objection to the idea had just cropped up in Teddys mind . . . or what passed for Teddys mind. Our folks, Teddy said. If we find that kids body over in South Harlow tomorrow, theyre gonna know we didnt spend the night campin out in Verns back field. Yeah, Chris said. Theyll know we went lookin for that kid. No they wont, I said. I felt funnyboth excited and scared because I knew we could do it and get away with it. The mixture of emotions made me feel heatsick and headachy. I picked up the Bikes to have something to do with my hands and started boxshuffling them. That and how to play cribbage was about all I got for older brother stuff from Dennis. The other kids envied that shuffle, and I guess everyone I knew had asked me to show them how it went . . . everyone except Chris. I guess only Chris knew that showing someone would be like giving away a piece of Dennis, and I just didnt have so much of him that I could afford to pass pieces around. I said Well just tell em we got bored tenting in Verns field because weve done it so many times before. So we decided to hike up the tracks and have a campout in the woods. I bet we dont even get hided for it because everybodyll be so excited about what we found. My dadll hide me anyway, Chris said. Hes on a really mean streak this time. He shook his head sullenly. To hell, its worth a hiding. Okay, Teddy said, getting up. He was still grinning like crazy, ready to break into his highpitched, cackling laugh at any second. Lets all get together at Verns house after lunch. What can we tell em about supper? Chris said, You and me and Gordie can say were eating at Verns. And I ll tell my mom Im eating over at Chriss, Vern said. That would work unless there was some emergency we couldnt control or unless any of the parents got together. And neither Verns folks or Chriss had a phone. Back then there were a lot of families which still considered a telephone a luxury, especially families of the shirttail variety. And none of us came from the upper crust. My dad was retired. Verns dad worked in the mill and was still driving a 1952 DeSoto.


Teddys mom had a house on Danberry Street and she took in a boarder whenever she could get one. She didnt have one that summer; the FURNISHED ROOM TO LET sign had been up in the parlor window since June. And Chriss dad was always on a mean streak, more or less; he was a drunk who got welfare off and onmostly onand spent most of his time hanging out in Sukeys Tavern with Junior Merrill, Ace Merrills old man, and a couple of other local rumpots. Chris didnt talk much about his dad, but we all knew he hated him like poison. Chris was marked up every two weeks or so, bruises on his cheeks and neck or one eye swelled up and as colorful as a sunset, and once he came into school with a big clumsy bandage on the back of his head. Other times he never got to school at all. His mom would call him in sick because he was too lamed up to come in. Chris was smart, really smart, but he played truant a lot, and Mr. Halliburton, the town truant officer, was always showing up at Chriss house, driving his old black Chevrolet with the NO RIDERS sticker in the comer of the windshield. If Chris was being truant and Bertie (as we called himalways behind his back, of course) caught him, he would haul him back to school and see that Chris got detention for a week. But if Bertie found out that Chris was home because his father had beaten the shit out of him, Bertie just went away and didnt say boo to a cuckoobird. It never occurred to me to question this set of priorities until about twenty years later. The year before, Chris had been suspended from school for three days. A bunch of milkmoney disappeared when it was Chriss turn to be roommonitor and collect it, and because he was a Chambers from those noaccount Chamberses, he had to take a hike even though he always swore he never hawked that money. That was the time Mr. Chambers put Chris in the hospital for an overnight stay; when his dad heard Chris was suspended, he broke Chriss nose and his right wrist. Chris came from a bad family, all right, and everybody thought he would turn out bad . . . including Chris. His brothers had lived up to the towns expectations admirably. Frank, the eldest, ran away from home when he was seventeen, joined the Navy, and ended up doing a long stretch in Portsmouth for rape and criminal assault. The nexteldest, Richard (his right eye was all funny and jittery, which was why everybody called him Eyeball), had dropped out of high school in the tenth grade, and chummed around with Charlie and Billy Tessio and their j.d. buddies. I think all thatll work, I told Chris. What about John and Marty? John and Marty DeSpain were two other members of our regular gang. Theyre still away, Chris said. They wont be back until Monday. Oh. Thats too bad. So are we set? Vern asked, still squirming. He didnt want the conversation sidetracked even for a minute. I guess we are, Chris said. Who wants to play some more scat? No one did. We were too excited to play cards. We climbed down from the treehouse, climbed the fence into the vacant lot, and played threefliessixgrounders for awhile with Verns old frictiontaped baseball, but that was no fun, either. All we could think about was that kid Brower, hit by a train, and how we were going to see him, or what was left of him. Around ten oclock we all drifted away home to fix it with our parents. 6 I got to my house at quarter of eleven, after stopping at the drugstore to check out the paperbacks. I did that every couple of days to see if there were any new John D. MacDonalds. I had a quarter and I figured if there was, Id take it along. But there were only the old ones, and Id read most of those half a dozen times. When I got home the car was gone and I remembered that my mom and some of her henparty friends had gone to Boston to see a concert. A great old concertgoer, my mother. And why not? Her only kid was dead and she had to do something to take her mind off it. I guess that sounds pretty bitter. And I guess if youd been there, youd understand why I felt that way. Dad was out back, passing a fine spray from the hose over his ruined garden. If you couldnt tell it was a lost cause from his glum face, you sure could by looking at the garden itself. The soil was a light, powdery gray. Everything in it was dead except for the corn, which had never grown so much as a single edible ear. Dad said hed never known how to water a garden; it had to be mother nature or nobody. Hed water too long in one spot and drown the plants. In the next row, plants were dying of thirst. He could never hit a happy medium. But he didnt talk about it often. Hed lost a son in April and a garden in August. And if he didnt want to talk about either one, I guess that was his privilege. It just bugged me that hed given up talking about everything else, too. That was taking democracy too fucking far. Hi, Daddy, I said, standing beside him. I offered him the Rollos Id bought at the drugstore. Want one? Hello, Gordon. No thanks. He kept on flicking the fine spray over the hopeless gray earth. Be okay if I camp out in Vern Tessios back field tonight with some of the guys? What guys? Vern. Teddy Duchamp. Maybe Chris. I expected him to start right in on Chrishow Chris was bad company, a rotten apple from the bottom of the barrel, a thief, and an apprentice juvenile delinquent. But he just sighed and said, I suppose its okay. Great! Thanks! I turned to go into the house and check out what was on the boob tube when he stopped me with Those are the only people you want to be with, arent they, Gordon? I looked back at him, braced for an argument, but there was no argument in him that morning. It would have been better if there had been, I think. His shoulders were slumped. His face, pointed toward the dead garden and not toward me, sagged. There was a certain unnatural sparkle in his eyes that might have been tears. Aw, Dad, theyre okay Of course they are. A thief and two feebs. Fine company for my son. Vern Tessio isnt feeble, I said. Teddy was a harder case to argue. Twelve years old and still in the fifth grade, my dad said. And that time he slept over. When the Sunday paper came the next morning, he took an hour and a half to read the funnypages. That made me mad, because I didnt think he was being fair. He was judging Vem the way he judged all my friends, from having seen them off and on, mostly going in and out of the house. He was wrong about them. And when he called Chris a thief I always saw red, because he didnt know anything about Chris. I wanted to tell him that, but if I pissed him off hed keep me home. And he wasnt really mad anyway, not like he got at the suppertable sometimes, ranting so loud that nobody wanted to eat. Now he just looked sad and tired and used. He was sixtythree years old, old enough to be my grandfather. My mom was fiftyfiveno spring chicken, either. When she and dad got married they tried to start a family right away and my mom got pregnant and had a miscarriage. She miscarried two more and the doctor told her shed never be able to carry a baby to term. I got all of this stuff, chapter and verse, whenever one of them was lecturing me, you understand. They wanted me to think I was a special delivery from God and I wasnt appreciating my great good fortune in being conceived when my mother was fortytwo and starting to gray. I wasnt appreciating my great good fortune and I wasnt appreciating her tremendous pain and sacrifices, either. Five years after the doctor said Mom would never have a baby she got pregnant with Dennis. She carried him for eight months and then he just sort of fell out, all eight pounds of himmy father used to say that if she had carried Dennis to term, the kid would have weighed fifteen pounds. The doctor said Well, sometimes nature fools us, but hell be the only one youll ever have. Thank God for him and be content. Ten years later she got pregnant with me. She not only carried me to term, the doctor had to use forceps to yank me out. Did you ever hear of such a fuckedup family? I came into the world the child of two Geritolchuggers, not to go on and on about it, and my only brother was playing league baseball in the big kids park before I even got out of diapers. In the case of my mom and dad, one gift from God had been enough. I wont say they treated me badly, and they sure never beat me, but I was a hell of a big surprise and I guess when you get into your forties youre not as partial to surprises as you were in your twenties. After I was born, Mom got the operation her henparty friends referred to as The BandAid. I guess she wanted to make a hundred percent sure that there wouldnt be any more gifts from God. When I got to college I found out Id beaten long odds just by not being born retarded ... although I think my dad had his doubts when he saw my friend Vern taking ten minutes to puzzle out the dialogue in Beetle Baily. This business about being ignored I could never really pin it down until I did a book report in high school on this novel called The Invisible Man. When I agreed to do the book for Miss Hardy I thought it was going to be the science fiction story about the guy in bandages and Foster GrantsClaude Rains played him in the movies. When I found out this was a different story I tried to give the book back but Miss Hardy wouldnt let me off the hook. I ended up being real glad. This Invisible Man is about a Negro. Nobody ever notices him at all unless he fucks up. People look right through him. When he talks, nobody answers. Hes like a black ghost. Once I got into it, I ate that book up like it was a John D. MacDonald, because that cat Ralph Ellison was writing about me. At the suppertable it was Denny how many did you strike out and Denny who asked you to the Sadie Hawkins dance and Denny I want to talk to you man to man about that car we were looking at. Id say Pass the butter, and Dad would say Denny, are you sure the Army is what you want? Id say Pass the butter someone, okay? and Mom would ask Denny if he wanted her to pick him up one of the Pendleton shirts on sale downtown, and Id end up getting the butter myself. One night when I was nine, just to see what would happen I said, Please pass those goddam spuds. And my mom said Denny, Auntie Grace called today and she asked after you and Gordon. The night Dennis graduated with honors from Castle Rock High School I played sick and stayed home. I got Stevie Darabonts oldest brother Royce to buy me a bottle of Wild Irish Rose and I drank half of it and puked in my bed in the middle of the night. In a family situation like that, youre supposed to either hate the older brother or idolize him hopelesslyat least thats what they teach you in college psychology. Bullshit, right? But so far as I can tell, I didnt feel either way about Dennis. We rarely argued and never had a fistfight. That would have been ridiculous. Can you see a fourteenyearold boy finding something to beat up his fouryearold brother about? And our folks were always a little too impressed with him to burden him with the care of his kid brother, so he never resented me the way some older kids come to resent their sibs. When Denny took me with him somewhere, it was of his own free will, and those were some of the happiest times I can remember. Hey Lachance, who the fuck is that? My kid brother and you better watch your mouth, Davis. Hell beat the crap out of you. Gordies tough. They gather around me for a moment, huge, impossibly tall, just a moment of interest like a patch of sun. They are so big, they are so old. Hey kid! This wet end really your big brother? I nod shyly. Hes a real asshole, aint he, kid? I nod again and everybody, Dennis included, roars with laughter. Then Dennis claps his hands together twice, briskly, and says Come on, we gonna have a practice or stand around here like a bunch of pussies? They run to their positions, already peppering the ball around the infield. Go sit over there on the bench, Gordie. Be quiet. Dont bother anybody.  I go sit over there on the bench. I am good. I feel impossibly small under the sweet summer clouds. I watch my brother pitch. I dont bother anybody. But there werent many times like that. Sometimes he read me bedtime stories that were better than Moms; Moms stories were about The Gingerbread Man and The Three Little Pigs, okay stuff, but Denniss were about stuff like Bluebeard and Jack the Ripper. He also had a version of Billy Goats Gruff where the troll under the bridge ended up the winner. And, as I have already said, he taught me the game of cribbage and how to do a boxshuffle. Not that much, but hey! in this world you take what you can get, am I right? As I grew older, my feelings of love for Dennis were replaced with an almost clinical awe, the kind of awe soso Christians feel for God, I guess. And when he died, I was mildly shocked and mildly sad, the way I imagine those same soso Christians must have felt when Time magazine said God was dead. Let me put it this way I was as sad for Dennys dying as I was when I heard on the radio that Dan Blocker had died. Id seen them both about as frequently, and Denny never even got any reruns. He was buried in a closed coffin with the American flag on top (they took the flag off the box before they finally stuck it in the ground and folded itthe flag, not the boxinto a cocked hat and gave it to my mom). My parents just fell to pieces. Four months hadnt been long enough to put them back together again; I didnt know if theyd ever be whole again. Mr. and Mrs. Dumpty. Dennys room was in suspended animation just one door down from my room, suspended animation or maybe in a timewarp. The Ivy League college pennants were still on the walls, and the senior pictures of the girls he had dated were still tucked into the mirror where he had stood for what seemed like hours at a stretch, combing his hair back into a ducktail like Elviss. The stack of Trues and Sports Illustrateds remained on his desk, their dates looking more and more antique as time passed. Its the kind of thing you see in stickysentimental movies. But it wasnt sentimental to me; it was terrible. I didnt go into Denniss room unless I had to because I kept expecting that he would be behind the door, or under the bed, or in the closet. Mostly it was the closet that preyed on my mind, and if my mother sent me in to get Dennys postcard album or his shoebox of photographs so she could look at them, I would imagine that door swinging slowly open while I stood rooted to the spot with horror. I would imagine him pallid and bloody in the darkness, the side of his head walloped in, a grayveined cake of blood and brains drying on his shirt. I would imagine his arms coming up, his bloody hands hooking into claws, and he would be croaking It should have been you, Gordon. It should have been you. 7 Stud City, by Gordon Lachance. Originally published in Greenspun Quarterly, Issue 45, Fall, 1970. Used by permission. March. Chico stands at the window, arms crossed, elbows on the ledge that divides upper and lower panes, naked, looking out, breath fogging the glass. A draft against his belly. Bottom right pane is gone. Blocked by a piece of cardboard. Chico. He doesnt turn. She doesnt speak again. He can see a ghost of her in the glass, in his bed, sitting, blankets pulled up in apparent defiance of gravity. Her eye makeup has smeared into deep hollows under her eyes. Chico shifts his gaze beyond her ghost, out beyond the house. Raining. Patches of snow sloughed away to reveal the bald ground underneath. He sees last years dead grass, a plastic toyBillysa rusty rake. His brother Johnnys Dodge is up on blocks, the detired wheels sticking out like stumps. He remembers times he and Johnny worked on it, listening to the superhits and boss oldies from WLAM in Lewiston pour out of Johnnys old transistor radioa couple of times Johnny would give him a beer. She gonna run fast, Chico, Johnny would say. She gonna eat up everything on this road from Gates Falls to Castle Rock. Wait till we get that Hearst shifter in her! But that had been then, and this was now. Beyond Johnnys Dodge was the highway. Route 14, goes to Portland and New Hampshire south, all the way to Canada north, if you turned left on U.S. 1 at Thomaston. Stud City, Chico says to the glass. He smokes his cigarette. What? Nothing, babe. Chico? Her voice is puzzled. He will have to change the sheets before Dad gets back. She bled. What? I love you, Chico. Thats right. Dirty March. Youre some old whore, Chico thinks. Dirty, staggering old baggytits March with rain in her face. This room used to be Johnnys, he says suddenly. Who? My brother. Oh. Where is he? In the Army, Chico says, but Johnny isnt in the Army. He had been working the summer before at Oxford Plains Speedway and a car went out of control and skidded across the infield toward the pit area, where Johnny had been changing the back tires on a Chevy Chargerclass stocker. Some guys shouted at him to look out, but Johnny never heard them. One of the guys who shouted was Johnnys brother Chico. Arent you cold? she asks. No. Well, my feet. A little. And he thinks suddenly Well, my God. Nothing happened to Johnny that isnt going to happen to you, too, sooner or later. He sees it again, though the skidding, skating Ford Mustang, the knobs of his brothers spine picked out in a series of dimpled shadows against the white of his Hanes teeshirt; he had been hunkered down, pulling one of the Chevys back tires. There had been time to see rubber flaying off the tires of the runaway Mustang, to see its hanging muffler scraping up sparks from the infield. It had struck Johnny even as Johnny tried to get to his feet. Then the yellow shout of flame. Well, Chico thinks, it could have been slow, and he thinks of his grandfather. Hospital smells. Pretty young nurses bearing bedpans. A last papery breath. Were there any good ways? He shivers and wonders about God. He touches the small silver St. Christophers medal that hangs on a chain around his neck. He is not a Catholic and hes surely not a Mexican his real name is Edward May and his friends all call him Chico because his hair is black and he greases it back with Brylcreem and he wears boots with pointed toes and Cuban heels. Not Catholic, but he wears this medallion. Maybe if Johnny had been wearing one, the runaway Mustang would have missed him. You never knew. He smokes and stares out the window and behind him the girl gets out of bed and comes to him quickly, almost mincing, maybe afraid he will turn around and look at her. She puts a warm hand on his back. Her breasts push against his side. Her belly touches his buttock. Oh. It is cold. Its this place. Do you love me, Chico? You bet! he says offhandedly, and then, more seriously You were cherry. What does that You were a virgin. The hand reaches higher. One finger traces the skin on the nape of his neck. I said, didnt I? Was it hard? Did it hurt? She laughs. No. But I was scared. They watch the rain. A new Oldsmobile goes by on 14, spraying up water. Stud City, Chico says. What? That guy. Hes going Stud City. In his new stud car. She kisses the place her finger has been touching gently and he brushes at her as if she were a fly. Whats the matter? He turns to her. Her eyes flick down to his penis and then up again hastily. Her arms twitch to cover herself, and then she remembers that they never do stuff like that in the movies and she drops them to her sides again. Her hair is black and her skin is winter white, the color of cream. Her breasts are firm, her belly perhaps a little too soft. One flaw to remind, Chico thinks, that this isnt the movies. Jane? What? He can feel himself getting ready. Not beginning, but getting ready. Its all right, he says. Were friends. He eyes her deliberately, letting himself reach at her in all sorts of ways. When he looks at her face again, it is flushed. Do you mind me looking at you? I . . . no. No, Chico. She steps back, closes her eyes, sits on the bed, and leans back, legs spread. He sees all of her. The muscles, the little muscles on the insides of her thighs ... theyre jumping, uncontrolled, and this suddenly excites him more than the taut cones of her breasts or the mild pink pearl of her cunt. Excitement trembles in him, some stupid Bozo on a spring. Love may be as divine as the poets say, he thinks, but sex is Bozo the Clown bouncing around on a spring. How could a woman look at an erect penis without going off into mad gales of laughter? The rain beats against the roof, against the window, against the sodden cardboard patch blocking the glassless lower pane. He presses his hand against his chest, looking for a moment like a stage Roman about to orate. His hand is cold. He drops it to his side. Open your eyes. Were friends, I said. Obediently, she opens them. She looks at him. Her eyes appear violet now. The rainwater running down the window makes rippling patterns on her face, her neck, her breasts. Stretched across the bed, her belly has been pulled tight. She is perfect in her moment. Oh, she says. Oh Chico, it feels so funny. A shiver goes through her. She has curled her toes involuntarily. He can see the insteps of her feet. Her insteps are pink. Chico. Chico. He steps toward her. His body is shivering and her eyes widen. She says something, one word, but he cant tell what it is. This isnt the time to ask. He halfkneels before her for just a second, looking at the floor with frowning concentration, touching her legs just above the knees. He measures the tide within himself. Its pull is thoughtless, fantastic. He pauses a little longer. The only sound is the tinny tick of the alarm clock on the bedtable, standing brassylegged atop a pile of Spiderman comic books. Her breathing flutters faster and faster. His muscles slide smoothly as he dives upward and forward. They begin. Its better this time. Outside, the rain goes on washing away the snow. A halfhour later Chico shakes her out of a light doze. We gotta move, he says. Dad and Virginia will be home pretty quick. She looks at her wristwatch and sits up. This time she makes no attempt to shield herself. Her whole toneher body Engtishhas changed. She has not matured (although she probably believes she has) or learned anything more complex than tying a shoe, but her tone has changed just the same. He nods and she smiles tentatively at him. He reaches for the cigarettes on the bedtable. As she draws on her panties, he thinks of a line from an old novelty song Keep playin till I shoot through, Blue . . . play your digeree, do. Tie Me Kangaroo Down, by Rolf Harris. He grins. That was a song Johnny used to sing. It ended So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and thats it hanging on the shed. She hooks her bra and begins buttoning her blouse. What are you smiling about, Chico? Nothing, he says. Zip me up? He goes to her, still naked, and zips her up. He kisses her cheek. Go on in the bathroom and do your face if you want, he says. Just dont take too long, okay? She goes up the hall gracefully, and Chico watches her, smoking. She is a tall girttatter than heand she has to duck her head a little going through the bathroom door. Chico finds his underpants under the bed. He puts them in the dirty clothes bag hanging just inside the closet door, and gets another pair from the bureau. He puts them on, and then, while walking back to the bed, he slips and almost falls in a patch of wetness the square of cardboard has let in. Goddam, he whispers resentfully. He looks around at the room, which had been Johnnys until Johnny died (why did I tell her he was in the Army, for Christs sake? he wonders ... a little uneasily). Fiberboard walls, so thin he can hear Dad and Virginia going at it at night, that dont quite make it all the way to the ceiling. The floor has a slightly crazy hipshot angle so that the rooms door will only stay open if you block it openif you forget, it swings stealthily closed as soon as your back is turned. On the far wall is a movie poster from Easy RiderTwoMen Went Looking for America and Couldnt Find It Anywhere. The room had more life when Johnny lived here. Chico doesnt know how or why; only that its true. And he knows something else, as well. He knows that sometimes the room spooks him at night. Sometimes he thinks that the closet door will swing open and Johnny will be standing there, his body charred and twisted and blackened, his teeth yellow dentures poking out of wax that has partially melted and rehardened; and Johnny will be whispering Get out of my room, Chico. And if you lay a hand on my Dodge, Ill fuckin kill you. Got it? Got it, bro, Chico thinks. For a moment he stands still, looking at the rumpled sheet spotted with the girls blood, and then he spreads the blankets up in one quick gesture. Here. Right here. How do you like that, Virginia? How does that grab your snatch? He puts on his pants, his engineer boots, finds a sweater. Hes drycombing his hair in front of the mirror when she comes out of the john. She looks classy. Her toosoft stomach doesnt show in the jumper. She looks at the bed, does a couple of things to it, and it comes out looking made instead of just spread up. Good, Chico says. She laughs a little selfconsciously and pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. It is an evocative, poignant gesture. Lets go, he says. They go out through the hall and the living room. Jane pauses in front of the tinted studio photograph on top of the TV. It shows his father and Virginia, a highschoolage Johnny, a grammarschoolage Chico, and an infant Bittyin the picture, Johnny is holding Billy. All of them have fixed, stone grins . . . all except Virginia, whose face is its sleepy, indecipherable self. That picture, Chico remembers, was taken less than a month after his dad married the bitch. That your mother and father? Its my father, Chico says. Shes my stepmother, Virginia. Come on. Is she still that pretty? Jane asks, picking up her coat and handing Chico his windbreaker. I guess my old man thinks so, Chico says. They step out into the shed. Its a damp and drafty placethe wind hoots through the cracks in its slapstick walls. There is a pile of old bald tires, Johnnys old bike that Chico inherited when he was ten and which he promptly wrecked, a pile of detective magazines, returnable Pepsi bottles, a greasy monolithic engine block, an orange crate full of paperback books, an old paintbynumbers of a horse standing on dusty green grass. Chico helps her pick her way outside. The rain is falling with disheartening steadiness. Chicos old sedan stands in a driveway puddle, looking downhearted. Even up on blocks and with a piece of plastic covering the place where the windshield should go, Johnnys Dodge has more class. Chicos car is a Buick. The paint is dull and flowered with spots of rust. The front seat upholstery has been covered with a brown Army blanket. A large button pinned to the sun visor on the passenger side says I WANT IT EVERY DAY. There is a rusty starter assembly on the back seat; if it ever stops raining he will clean it, he thinks, and maybe put it into the Dodge. Or maybe not. The Buick smells musty and his own starter grinds a long time before the Buick starts up. Is it your battery? she asks. Just the goddam rain, I guess. He backs out onto the road, flicking on the windshield wipers and pausing for a moment to look at the house. It is a completely unappetizing aqua color. The shed sticks off from it at a ragtag, doublejointed angle, tarpaper and peeledlooking shingles. The radio comes on with a blare and Chico shuts it off at once. There is the beginning of a Sunday afternoon headache behind his forehead. They ride past the Grange hall and the Volunteer Fire Department and Brownies Store. Sally Morrisons TBird is parked by Brownies hitest pump, and Chico raises a hand to her as he turns off onto the old Lewiston road. Whos that? Sally Morrison. Pretty lady. Very neutral. He feels for his cigarettes. Shes been married twice and divorced twice. Now shes the town pump, if you believe half the talk that goes on in this shitass little town. She looks young. She is. Have you ever He slides his hand up her leg and smiles. No, he says. My brother, maybe, but not me. I like Sally, though. Shes got her alimony and her big white Bird, she doesnt care what people say about her. It starts to seem like a long drive. The Androscoggin, off to the right, is slaty and sullen. The ice is all out of it now. Jane has grown quiet and thoughtful. The only sound is the steady snap of the windshield wipers. When the car rolls through the dips in the road there is groundfog, waiting for evening when it will creep out of these pockets and take over the whole River Road. They cross into Auburn and Chico drives the cutoff and swings onto Minot Avenue. The four lanes are nearly deserted, and all the suburban homes look packaged. They see one little boy in a yellow plastic raincoat walking up the sidewalk, carefully stepping in all the puddles. Go, man, Chico says softly. What? Jane asks. Nothing, babe. Go back to sleep. She laughs a little doubtfully. Chico turns up Keston Street and into the driveway of one of the packaged houses. He doesnt turn off the ignition. Come in and Ill give you cookies, she says. He shakes his head. I have to get back. I know. She puts her arms around him and kisses him. Thank you for the most wonderful time of my life. He smiles suddenly. His face shines. It is nearly magical. Ill see you Monday, JaneyJane. Still friends, right? You know we are, she says, and kisses him again ... but when he cups a breast through her jumper, she pulls away. Dont. My father might see. He lets her go, only a little of the smile left. She gets out of the car quickly and runs through the rain to the back door. A second later shes gone. Chico pauses for a moment to light a cigarette and then he backs out of the driveway. The Buick stalls and the starter seems to grind forever before the engine manages to catch. It is a long ride home. When he gets there, Dads station wagon is parked in the driveway. He pulls in beside it and lets the engine die. For a moment he sits inside silently, listening to the rain. It is like being inside a steel drum. Inside, Billy is watching Carl Stormer and His Country Buckaroos on the TV set. When Chico comes in, Billy jumps up, excited. Eddie, hey Eddie, you know what Uncle Pete said? He said him and a whole mess of other guys sank a kraut sub in the war! Will you take me to the show next Saturday? I dont know, Chico says, grinning. Maybe if you kiss my shoes every night before supper all week. He pulls Billys hair. Billy hollers and laughs and kicks him in the shins. Cut it out, now, Sam May says, coming into the room. Cut it out, you two. You know how your mother feels about the roughhousing. He has pulled his tie down and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Hes got a couplethree red hotdogs on a plate. The hotdogs are wrapped in white bread, and Sam May has put the old mustard right to them. Where you been, Eddie? At Janes. The toilet flushes in the bathroom. Virginia. Chico wonders briefly if Jane has left any hairs in the sink, or a lipstick, or a bobby pin. You should have come with us to see your Uncle Pete and Aunt Ann, his father says. He eats a frank in three quick bites. Youre getting to be like a stranger around here, Eddie. I dont like that. Not while we provide the bed and board. Some bed, Chico says. Some board. Sam looks up quickly, hurt at first, then angry. When he speaks, Chico sees that his teeth are yellow with Frenchs mustard. He feels vaguely nauseated. Your lip. Your goddam lip. You arent too big yet, snotnose. Chico shrugs, peels a slice of Wonder Bread off the loaf standing on the TV tray by his fathers chair, and spreads it with ketchup. In three months Im going to be gone anyway.


What the hell are you talking about? Im gonna fix up Johnnys car and go out to Califor . nia. Look for work. Oh, yeah. Right. He is a big man, big in a shambling way, but Chico thinks now that he got smaller after he married Virginia, and smaller again after Johnny died. And in his mind he hears himself saying to Jane My brother, maybe, but not me. And on the heels of that Play your digeree, do, Blue. You aint never going to get that car as far as Castle Rock, let alone California. You dont think so? Just watch my fucking dust. For a moment his father only looks at him and then he throws the frank he has been holding. It hits Chico in the chest, spraying mustard on his sweater and on the chair. Say that word again and Ill break your nose for you, smartass. Chico picks up the frank and looks at it. Cheap red frank, smeared with Frenchs mustard. Spread a little sunshine. He throws it back at his father. Sam gets up, his face the color of an old brick, the vein in the middle of his forehead pulsing. His thigh connects with the TV tray and it overturns. Billy stands in the kitchen doorway watching them. Hes gotten himself a plate of franks and beans and the plate has tipped and beanjuice runs onto the floor. Billys eyes are wide, his mouth trembling. On the TV, Carl Stormer and His Country Buckaroos are tearing through Long Black Veil at a breakneck pace. You raise them up best you can and they spit on you, his father says thickly. Ayuh. Thafs how it goes. He gropes blindly on the seat of his chair and comes up with the halfeaten hotdog. He holds it in his fist like a severed phallus. Incredibly, he begins to eat it ... at the same time, Chico sees that he has begun to cry. Ayuh, they spit on you, thats just how it goes. Well, why in the hell did you have to marry her? he bursts out, and then has to bite down on the rest of it If you hadnt married her, Johnny would still be alive. Thats none of your goddam business! Sam May roars through his tears. Thats my business! Oh? Chico shouts back. Is that so? I only have to live with her! Me and Billy, we have to live with her! Watch her grind you down! And you dont even know What? his father says, and his voice is suddenly low and ominous. The chunk of hotdog left in his closed fist is like a bloody chunk of bone. What dont I know? You dont know shit from Shinola, he says, appalled at what has almost come out of his mouth. You want to stop it now, his father says. Or Ill beat the hell out of you, Chico. He only calls him this when he is very angry indeed. Chico turns and sees that Virginia is standing at the other side of the room, adjusting her skirt minutely, looking at him with her large, calm, brown eyes. Her eyes are beautiful; the rest of her is not so beautiful, so selfrenewing, but those eyes will carry her for years yet, Chico thinks, and he feels the sick hate come backSo we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and thats it hanging on the shed. Shes got you pussywhipped and you dont have the guts to do anything about it! All of this shouting has finally become too much for Billyhe gives a great wail of terror, drops his plate of franks and beans, and covers his face with his hands. Beanjuice splatters his Sunday shoes and sprays across the rug. Sam takes a single step forward and then stops when Chico makes a curt beckoning gesture, as if to say Yeah, come on, lets get down to it, what took you so fuckin long? They stand like statues until Virginia speaksher voice is low, as calm as her brown eyes. Have you had a girl in your room, Ed? You know how your father and I feel about that. Almost as an afterthought She left a handkerchief. He stares at her, savagely unable to express the way he feels, the way she is dirty, the way she shoots unerringly at the back, the way she clips in behind you and cuts your hamstrings. You could hurt me if you wanted to, the calm brown eyes say. I know you know what was going on before he died. But thats the only way you can hurt me, isnt it, Chico? And only then if your father believed you. And if he believed you, it would kill him. His father lunges at the new gambit like a bear. Have you been screwing in my house, you little bastard? Watch your language, please, Sam, Virginia says calmly. Is that why you didnt want to come with us? So you could scrso you could Say it! Chico weeps. Dont let her do it to you! Say it! Say what you mean! Get out, he says dully. Dont you come back until you can apologize to your mother and me. Dont you dare! he cries. Dont you dare call that bitch my mother! Ill kill you! Stop it, Eddie! Billy screams. The words are muffled, blurred through his hands, which still cover his face. Stop yelling at Daddy! Stop it, please! Virginia doesnt move from the doorway. Her calm eyes remain on Chico. Sam blunders back a step and the backs of his knees strike the edge of his easy chair. He sits down in it heavily and averts his face against a hairy forearm. I cant even look at you when you got words like that in your mouth, Eddie. You are making me feel so bad. She makes you feel bad! Why dont you admit it? He does not reply. Still not looking at Chico, he fumbles another frank wrapped in bread from the plate on the TV tray. He fumbles for the mustard. Billy goes on crying. Carl Stormer and His Country Buckaroos are singing a truckdriving song. My rig is old, but that dont mean shes slow, Carl tells all his western Maine viewers. The boy doesnt know what hes saying, Sam, Virginia says gently. Its hard, at his age. Its hard to grow up. Shes whipped him. Thats the end, all right. He turns and heads for the door which leads first into the shed and then outdoors. As he opens it he looks back at Virginia, and she gazes at him tranquilly when he speaks her name. What is it, Ed? The sheets are bloody. He pauses. I broke her in. He thinks something has stirred in her eyes, but that is probably only his wish. Please go now, Ed. Youre scaring Billy. He leaves. The Buick doesnt want to start and he has almost resigned himself to walking in the rain when the engine finally catches. He lights a cigarette and backs out onto 14, slamming the clutch back in and racing the mill when it starts to jerk and splutter. The generator light blinks balefully at him twice, and then the car settles into a ragged idle. At last he is on his way, creeping up the road toward Gates Falls. He spares Johnnys Dodge one last look. Johnny could have had steady work at Gates Mills  Weaving, but only on the night shift. Nightwork didnt bother him, he had told Chico, and the pay was better than at the Plains, but their father worked days, and working nights at the mill would have meant Johnny would have been home with her, home alone or with Chico in the next room . . . and the walls were thin. I cant stop and she wont let me try, Johnny said. Yeah, I know what it would do to him. But shes . . . she just wont stop and its like I cant stop . . . shes always at me, you know what I mean, youve seen her, Billys too young to understand, but youve seen her ... Yes. He had seen her. And Johnny had gone to work at the Plains, telling their father it was because he could get parts for the Dodge on the cheap. And thats how it happened that he had been changing a tire when the Mustang came skidding and skating across the infield with its muffler draggin up sparks; that was how his stepmother had killed his brother, so just keep playing until I shoot through, Blue, cause we goin Stud City right here in this shitheap Buick, and he remembers how the rubber smelled, and how the knobs of Johnnys spine cast small crescent shadows on the bright white of his teeshirt, he remembers seeing Johnny get halfway up from the squat he had been working in when the Mustang hit him, squashing him between it and the Chevy, and there had been a hollow bang as the Chevy came down off its jacks, and then the bright yellow flare of flame, the rich smell of gasoiine Chico strikes the brakes with both feet, bringing the sedan to a crunching, juddering halt on the sodden shoulder. He leans wildly across the seat, throws open the passenger door, and sprays yellow puke onto the mud and snow. The sight of it makes him puke again, and the thought of it makes him dryheave one more time. The car almost stalls, but he catches it in time. The generator light winks out reluctantly when he guns the engine. He sits, letting the shakes work their way out of him. A car goes by him fast, a new Ford, white, throwing up great dirty fans of water and slush. Stud City, Chico says. In his new stud car. Funky. He tastes puke on his lips and in his throat and coating his sinuses. He doesnt want a cigarette. Danny Carter will let him sleep over. Tomorrow will be time enough for further decisions. He pulls back onto Route 14 and gets rolling. 8 Pretty fucking melodramatic, right? The world has seen one or two better stories, I know thatone or two hundred thousand better ones, more like it. It ought to have THIS IS A PRODUCT OF AN UNDERGRADUATE CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP stamped on every page . . . because thats just what it was, at least up to a certain point. It seems both painfully derivative and painfully sophomoric to me now; style by Hemingway (except weve got the whole thing in the present tense for some reasonhow too fucking trendy), theme by Faulkner. Could anything be more serious? More litry? But even its pretensions cant hide the fact that its an extremely sexual story written by an extremely inexperienced young man (at the time I wrote Stud City, I had been to bed with two girls and had ejaculated prematurely all over one of themnot much like Chico in the foregoing tale, I guess). Its attitude toward women goes beyond hostility and to a point which verges on actual uglinesstwo of the women in Stud City are sluts, and the third is a simple receptacle who says things like I love you, Chico and Come in, Ill give you cookies. Chico, on the other hand, is a macho cigarettesmoking workingclass hero who could have stepped whole and breathing from the grooves of a Bruce Springsteen recordalthough Springsteen was yet to be heard from when I published the story in the college literary magazine (where it ran between a poem called Images of Me and an essay on student parietals written entirely in lower case). It is the work of a young man every bit as insecure as he was inexperienced. And yet it was the first story I ever wrote that felt like my storythe first one that really felt whole, after five years of trying. The first one that might still be able to stand up, even with its props taken away. Ugly but alive. Even now when I read it, stifling a smile at its pseudotoughness and its pretensions, I can see the true face of Gordon Lachance lurking just behind the lines of print, a Gordon Lachance younger than the one living and writing now, one certainly more idealistic than the bestselling novelist who is more apt to have his paperback contracts reviewed than his books, but not so young as the one who went with his friends that day to see the body of a dead kid named Ray Brower. A Gordon Lachance halfway along in the process of losing the shine. No, its not a very good storyits author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside. But it was the first time I had ever really used the place I knew and the things I felt in a piece of fiction, and there was a kind of dreadful exhilaration in seeing things that had troubled me for years come out in a new form, a form over which I had imposed control. It had been years since that childhood idea of Denny being in the closet of his spookily preserved room had occurred to me; I would have honestly believed I had forgotten it. Yet there it is in Stud City, only slightly changed . . . but controlled. Ive resisted the urge to change it a lot more, to rewrite it, to juice it upand that urge was fairly strong, because I find the story quite embarrassing now. But there are still things in it I like, things that would be cheapened by changes made by this later Lachance, who has the first threads of gray in his hair. Things, like that image of the shadows on Johnnys white teeshirt or that of the rainripples on Janes naked body, that seem better than they have any right to be. Also, it was the first story I never showed to my mother and father. There was too much Denny in it. Too much Castle Rock. And most of all, too much 1960. You always know the truth, because when you cut yourself or someone else with it, theres always a bloody show. 9 My room was on the second floor, and it must have been at least ninety degrees up there. It would be a hundred and ten by afternoon, even with all the windows open. I was really glad I wasnt sleeping there that night, and the thought of where we were going made me excited all over again. I made two blankets into a bedroll and tied it with my old belt. I collected all my money, which was sixtyeight cents. Then I was ready to go. I went down the back stairs to avoid meeting my dad in front of the house, but I hadnt needed to worry; he was still out in the garden with the hose, making useless rainbows in the air and looking through them. I walked down Summer Street and cut through a vacant lot to Carbinewhere the offices of the Castle Rock Call stand today. I was headed up Carbine toward the clubhouse when a car pulled over to the curb and Chris got out. He had his old Boy Scout pack in one hand and two blankets rolled up and tied with clothesrope in the other. Thanks, mister, he said, and trotted over to join me as the car pulled away. His Boy Scout canteen was slung around his neck and under one arm so that it finally ended up banging on his hip. His eyes were sparkling. Gordie! You wanna see something? Sure, I guess so. What? Come on down here first. He pointed at the narrow space between the Blue Point Diner and the Castle Rock Drugstore. What is it, Chris? Come on, I said! He ran down the alley and after a brief moment (thats all it took me to cast aside my better judgment) I ran after him. The two buildings were set slightly toward each other rather than running parallel, and so the alley narrowed as it went back. We waded through trashy drifts of old newspapers and stepped over cruel, sparkly nests of broken beer and soda bottles. Chris cut behind the Blue Point and put his bedroll down. There were eight or nine garbage cans lined up here and the stench was incredible. Phew! Chris! Come on, gimme a break! Gimme your arm, Chris said, by rote. No, sincerely, Im gonna throw u The words broke off in my mouth and I forgot all about the smelly garbage cans. Chris had unslung his pack and opened it and reached inside. Now he was holding out a huge pistol with dark wood grips. You wanna be the Lone Ranger or the Cisco Kid? Chris asked, grinning. Walking, talking Jesus! Whered you get that? Hawked it out of my dads bureau. Its a fortyfive. Yeah, I can see that, I said, although it could have been a .38 or a .357 for all I knewin spite of all the John D. MacDonalds and Ed McBains Id read, the only pistol Id ever seen up close was the one Constable Bannerman carried ... and although all the kids asked him to take it out of its holster, Bannerman never would. Man, your dads gonna hide you when he finds out. You said he was on a mean streak anyway. His eyes just went on dancing. Thats it, man. He aint gonna find out nothing. Him and these other rummies are all laid up down in Harrison with six or eight bottles of wine. They wont be back for a week. Fucking rummies. His lip curled. He was the only guy in our gang who would never take a drink, even to show he had, you know, big balls. He said he wasnt going to grow up to be a fucking tosspot like his old man. And he told me once privatelythis was after the DeSpain twins showed up with a sixpack theyd hawked from their old man and everybody teased Chris because he wouldnt take a beer or even a swallowthat he was scared to drink. He said his father never got his nose all the way out of the bottle anymore, that his older brother had been drunk out of his tits when he raped that girl, and that Eyeball was always guzzling Purple Jesuses with Ace Merrill and Charlie Hogan and Billy Tessio. What, he asked me, did I think his chances of letting go of the bottle would be once he picked it up? Maybe you think thats funny, a twelveyearold worrying that he might be an incipient alcoholic, but it wasnt funny to Chris. Not at all. Hed thought about the possibility a lot. Hed had occasion to. You got shells for it? Nine of themall that was left in the box. Hell think he used em himself, shooting at cans while he was drunk. Is it loaded? No! Chrissake, what do you think I am? I finally took the gun. I liked the heavy way it sat there in my hand. I could see myself as Steve Carella of the 87th Squad, going after that guy The Heckler or maybe covering Meyer Meyer or Kling while they broke into a desperate junkies sleazy apartment. I sighted on one of the smelly trashcans and squeezed the trigger. KABLAM! The gun bucked in my hand. Fire licked from the end. It felt as if my wrist had just been broken. My heart vaulted nimbly into the back of my mouth and crouched there, trembling. A big hole appeared in the corrugated metal surface of the trashcanit was the work of an evil conjuror. Jesus! I screamed. Chris was cackling wildlyin real amusement or hysterical terror I couldnt tell. You did it, you did it! Gordie did it! he bugled. Hey, Gordon Lachance is shooting up Castle Rock! Shut up! Lets get out of here! I screamed, and grabbed him by the shirt. As we ran, the back door of the Blue Point jerked open and Francine Tupper stepped out in her white rayon waitresss uniform. Who did that? Whos letting off cherrybombs back here? We ran like hell, cutting behind the drugstore and the hardware store and the Emporium Galorium, which sold antiques and junk and dime books. We climbed a fence, spiking our palms with splinters, and finally came out on Curran Street. I threw the .45 at Chris as we ran; he was killing himself laughing but caught it and somehow managed to stuff it back into his knapsack and close one of the snaps. Once around the comer of Curran and back on Carbine Street, we slowed to a walk so we wouldnt look suspicious, running in the heat. Chris was still giggling. Man, you shoulda seen your face. Oh man, that was priceless. That was really fine. My fuckingA. He shook his head and slapped his leg and howled. You knew it was loaded, didnt you? You wet! Im gonna be in trouble. That Tupper babe saw me. Shit, she thought it was a firecracker. Besides, ole Thunderjugs Tupper cant see past the end of her own nose, you know that. Thinks wearing glasses would spoil her pretty face. He put one palm against the small of his back and bumped his hips and got laughing again. Well, I dont care. That was a mean trick, Chris. Really. Come on, Gordie. He put a hand on my shoulder. I didnt know it was loaded, honest to God, I swear on my mothers name I just took it out of my dads bureau. He always unloads it. He must have been really drunk when he put it away the last time. You really didnt load it? No sir. You swear it on your mothers name even if she goes to hell for you telling a lie? I swear. He crossed himself and spit, his face as open and repentant as any choirboys. But when we turned into the vacant lot where our treehouse was and saw Vern and Teddy sitting on their bedrolls waiting for us, he started to laugh again. He told them the whole story, and after everybody had had their yucks, Teddy asked him what Chris thought they needed a pistol for. Nothin, Chris said. Except we might see a bear. Something like that. Besides, its spooky sleeping out at night in the woods. Everybody nodded at that. Chris was the biggest, toughest guy in our gang, and he could always get away with saying things like that. Teddy, on the other hand, would have gotten his ass ragged off if he even hinted he was afraid of the dark. Did you set your tent up in the field? Teddy asked Vern. Yeah. And I put two turnedon flashlights in it so itll look like were there after dark. Hot shit! I said, and clapped Vern on the back. For him, that was thinking. He grinned and blushed. So lets go, Teddy said. Come on, its almost twelve already! Chris got up and we gathered around him. Well walk across Beemans field and behind that furniture place by Sonnys Texaco, he said. Then well get on the railroad tracks down by the dump and just walk across the trestle into Harlow. How far do you think its gonna be? Teddy asked. Chris shrugged. Harlows big. Were gonna be walking at least twenty miles. That sound right to you, Gordie? Yeah. It might even be thirty. Even if its thirty we ought to be there by tomorrow afternoon, if no one goes pussy. No pussies here, Teddy said at once. We all looked at each other for a second. Miaoww,  Vern said, and we all laughed. Come on, you guys, Chris said, and shouldered his pack. We walked out of the vacant lot together, Chris slightly in the lead. 10 By the time we got across Beemans field and had struggled up the cindery embankment to the Great Southern and Western Maine tracks, we had all taken our shirts off and tied them around our waists. We were sweating like pigs. At the top of the embankment we looked down the tracks, toward where wed have to go. Ill never forget that moment, no matter how old I get. I was the only one with a watcha cheap Timex Id gotten as a premium for selling Cloverine Brand Salve the year before. Its hands stood at straight up noon, and the sun beat down on the dry, shadeless vista before us with savage heat. You could feel it working to get in under your skull and fry your brains. Behind us was Castle Rock, spread out on the long hill that was known as Castle View, surrounding its green and shady common. Further down Castle River you could see the stacks of the woollen mill spewing smoke into a sky the color of gunmetal and spewing waste into the water. The Jolly Furniture Barn was on our left. And straight ahead of us the railroad tracks, bright and heliographing in the sun. They paralleled the Castle River, which was on our left. To our right was a lot of overgrown scrubland (theres motorcycle track there todaythey have scrambles every Sunday afternoon at 200 P.M.). An old abandoned water tower stood on the horizon, rusty and somehow scary. We stood there for that one noontime moment and then Chris said impatiently, Come on, lets get going. We walked beside the tracks in the cinders, kicking up little puffs of blackish dust at every step. Our socks and sneakers were soon gritty with it. Vern started singing Roll Me Over in the Clover but soon quit it, which was a break for our ears. Only Teddy and Chris had brought canteens, and we were all hitting them pretty hard. We could fill the canteens again at the dump faucet, I said. My dad told me thats a safe well. Its a hundred and ninety feet deep. Okay, Chris said, being the tough platoon leader. Thatll be a good place to take five, anyway. What about food? Teddy asked suddenly. I bet nobody thought to bring something to eat. I know I didnt. Chris stopped. Shit! I didnt, either. Gordie? I shook my head, wondering how I could have been so dumb. Vern? Zip, Vem said. Sorry. Well, lets see how much money we got, I said. I untied my shirt, spread it on the cinders, and dropped my own sixtyeight cents onto it. The coins glittered feverishly in the sunlight. Chris had a tattered dollar and two pennies. Teddy had two quarters and two nickels. Vern had exactly seven cents. Twothirtyseven, I said. Not bad. Theres a store at the end of that little road that goes to the dump. Somebodyll have to walk down there and get some hamburger and some tonics while the others rest. Who? Vern asked. Well match for it when we get to the dump. Come on. I slid all the money into my pants pocket and was just tying my shirt around my waist again when Chris hollered Train! I put my hand out on one of the rails to feel it, even though I could already hear it. The rail was thrumming crazily; for a moment it was like holding the train in my hand. Paratroops over the side! Vern bawled, and leaped halfway down the embankment in one crazy, clownish stride. Vern was nuts for playing paratroops anyplace the ground was softa gravel pit, a haymow, an embankment like this one. Chris jumped after him. The train was really loud now, probably headed straight up our side of the river toward Lewiston. Instead of jumping, Teddy turned in the direction from which it was coming. His thick glasses glittered in the sun. His long hair flopped untidily over his brow in sweatsoaked stringers. Go on, Teddy, I said. No, huhuh, Im gonna dodge it. He looked at me, his magnified eyes frantic with excitement. A traindodge, dig it? Whats trucks after a fuckin traindodge? Youre crazy, man. You want to get killed? Just like the beach at Normandy! Teddy yelled, and strode out into the middle of the tracks. He stood on one of the crossties, lightly balanced. I stood stunned for a moment, unable to believe stupidity of such width and breadth. Then I grabbed him, dragged him fighting and protesting to the embankment, and pushed him over. I jumped after him and Teddy caught me a good one in the guts while I was still in the air. The wind whooshed out of me, but I was still able to hit him in the sternum with my knee and knock him flat on his back before he could get all the way up. I landed, gasping and sprawling, and Teddy grabbed me around the neck. We went rolling all the way to the bottom of the embankment, hitting and clawing at each other while Chris and Vern stared at us, stupidly surprised. You little son of a bitch! Teddy was screaming at me. You fucker! Dont you throw your weight around on me! Ill kill you, you dipshit! I was getting my breath back now, and I made it to my feet. I backed away as Teddy advanced, holding my open hands up to slap away his punches, halflaughing and halfscared. Teddy was no one to fool around with when he went into one of his screaming fits. Hed take on a big kid in that state, and after the big kid broke both of his arms, hed bite. Teddy, you can dodge anything you want after we see what were going to see but whack on the shoulder as one wildly swinging fist got past me until then no ones supposed to see us, you whack on the side of the face, and then we might have had a real fight if Chris and Vern stupid wet end! hadnt grabbed us and kept us apart. Above us, the train roared by in a thunder of diesel exhaust and the great heavy clacking of boxcar wheels. A few cinders bounced down the embankment and the argument was over ... at least until we could hear ourselves talk again. It was only a short freight, and when the caboose had trailed by, Teddy said Im gonna kill him. At least give him a fat lip. He struggled against Chris, but Chris only grabbed him tighter. Calm down, Teddy, Chris said quietly, and he kept saying it until Teddy stopped struggling and just stood there, his glasses hanging askew and his hearingaid cord dangling limply against his chest on its way down to the battery, which he had shoved into the pocket of his jeans. When he was completely still, Chris turned to me and said What the hell are you fighting with him about, Gordon? He wanted to dodge the train. I figured the engineer would see him and report it. They might send a cop out. Ahhh, hed be too busy makin chocolate in his drawers, Teddy said, but he didnt seem angry anymore. The storm had passed. Gordie was just trying to do the right thing, Vern said. Come on, peace. Peace, you guys, Chris agreed. Yeah, okay, I said, and held out my hand, palm up. Peace, Teddy? I coulda dodged it, he said to me. You know that, Gordie? Yeah, I said, although the thought turned me cold inside. I know it. Okay. Peace, then. Skin it, man, Chris ordered, and let go of Teddy. Teddy slapped his hand down on mine hard enough to sting and then turned it over. I slapped his. Fuckin pussy Lachance, Teddy said. Meeiowww, I said. Come on, you guys, Vern said. Lets go, okay? Go anywhere you want, but dont go here, Chris said solemnly, and Vern drew back as if to hit him. 11 We got to the dump around onethirty, and Vern led the way down the embankment with a Paratroops over the side! We went to the bottom in big jumps and leaped over the brackish trickle of water oozing listlessly out of the culvert which poked out of the cinders. Beyond this small boggy area was the sandy, trashlittered verge of the dump. There was a sixfoot security fence surrounding it. Every twenty feet weatherfaded signs were posted. They said CASTLE ROCK DUMP HOURS 48 P.M. CLOSED MONDAYS TRESPASSING STRICTLY FORBIDDEN We climbed to the top of the fence, swung over, and jumped down. Teddy and Vern led the way toward the well, which you tapped with an oldfashioned pumpthe kind from which you had to call the water with elbowgrease. There was a Crisco can filled with water next to the pump handle, and the great sin was to forget to leave it filled for the next guy to come along. The iron handle stuck off at an angle, looking a onewinged bird that was trying to fly. It had once been green, but almost all of the paint had been rubbed off by the thousands of hands that had worked that handle since 1940. The dump is one of my strongest memories of Castle Rock. It always reminds me of the surrealist painters when I think of itthose fellows who were always painting pictures of clockfaces lying limply in the crotches of trees or Victorian living rooms standing in the middle of the Sahara or steam engines coming out of fireplaces. To my childs eye, nothing in the Castle Rock Dump looked as if it really belonged there. We had entered from the back. If you came from the front, a wide dirt road came in through the gate, broadened out into a semicircular area that had been bulldozed as flat as a dirt landingstrip, and then ended abruptly at the edge of the dumpingpit. The pump (Teddy and Vern were currently standing there and squabbling about who was going to prime it) was at the back of this great pit. It was maybe eighty feet deep and filled with all the American things that get empty, wear out, or just dont work anymore. There was so much stuff that my eyes hurt just looking at itor maybe it was your brain that actually hurt, because it could never quite decide what your eye should stop on. Then your eye would stop, or be stopped, by something that seemed as out of place as those limp clockfaces or the living room in the desert. A brass bedstead leaning drunkenly in the sun. A little girls dolly looking amazedly between her thighs as she gave birth to stuffing. An overturned Studebaker automobile with its chrome bullet nose glittering in the sun like some Buck Rogers missile. One of those giant water bottles they have in office buildings, transformed by the summer sun into a hot, blazing sapphire. There was plenty of wildlife there, too, although it wasnt the kind you see in the Walt Disney nature films or at those tame zoos where you can pet the animals. Plump rats, woodchucks grown sleek and lumbering on such rich chow as rotting hamburger and maggoty vegetables, seagulls by the thousands, and stalking among the gulls like thoughtful, introspective ministers, an occasional huge crow. It was also the place where the towns stray dogs came for a meal when they couldnt find any trashcans to knock over or any deer to run. They were a miserable, uglytempered, mongrel lot; slatsided and grinning bitterly, they would attack each other over a flyblown piece of bologna or a pile of chicken guts fuming in the sun. But these dogs never attacked Milo Pressman, the dumpkeeper, because Milo was never without Chopper at his heel. Chopper wasat least until Joe Cambers dog Cujo went rabid twenty years laterthe most feared and least seen dog in Castle Rock.