It

porches. Chief Borton’ll laugh his bum off . . . and then stick us in the loonybin.’
‘If we all went to him,’ Ben said, troubled. ‘If we all went together . . . ‘
‘Sure,’ Stan said. ‘Right. Tell me more, Haystack. Write me a book.’ He got up and went to the window, hands in pockets, looking angry and upset and scared. He stared out for a moment, shoulders stiff and rejecting beneath his neat shirt. Without turning back to them he repeated: ‘Write me a frigging book! ‘
‘No,’ Ben said quietly, ‘Bill’s going to write the books.’
Stan wheeled back, surprised, and the others looked at him. There was a shocked look on Ben Hanscom’s face, as if he had suddenly and unexpectedly slapped himself.
Bev folded the last of the rags.
‘Birds,’ Eddie said.
‘What?’ Bev and Ben said together.
Eddie was looking at Stan. ‘You got out by yelling birds’ names at them?’
‘Maybe,’ Stan said reluctantly. ‘Or maybe the door was just stuck and finally popped open.’
‘Without you leaning on it?’ Bev asked.
Stan shrugged. It was not a sullen shrug; it only said he didn’t know.
‘I think it was the birds you shouted at them,’ Eddie said. ‘But why? In the movies you hold up a cross . . . ‘
‘ . . . or say the Lord’s Prayer . . . ‘ Ben added.
‘ . . . or the Twenty-third Psalm,’ Beverly put in.
‘I know the Twenty-third Psalm,’ Stan said angrily, ‘but I wouldn’t do so good with the old crucifix business. I’m Jewish, remember?’
They looked away from him, embarrassed, either for his having been born that way or for their having forgotten it.
‘Birds,’ Eddie said again. ‘Jesus!’ Then he glanced guiltily at Stan again, but Stan was looking moodily across the street at the Bangor Hydro office.
‘Bill will know what to do,’ Ben said suddenly, as if finally agreeing with Bev and Eddie. ‘Betcha anything. Betcha any amount of money.’
‘Look,’ Stan said, looking at all of them earnestly. ‘That’s okay. We can talk to Bill about it if you want. But that’s where things stop for me. You can call me a chicken, or yellow, I don’t care. I’m not a chicken, I don’t think. It’s just that those things in the Standpipe . . . ‘
‘If you weren’t afraid of something like that, you’d have to be crazy, Stan,’ Beverly said softly.
‘Yeah, I was scared, but that’s not the problem,’ Stan said hotly. ‘It’s not even what I’m talking about. Don’t you see —
They were looking at him expectantly, their eyes both troubled and faintly hopeful, but Stan found he could not explain how he felt. The words had run out. There was a brick of feeling inside him, almost choking him, and he could not get it out of his throat. Neat as he was, sure as he was, he was still only an eleven-year-old boy who had that year finished the fourth grade.
He wanted to tell them that there were worse things than being frightened. You could be frightened by things like almost having a car hit you while yo u were riding your bike or, before the Salk vaccine, getting polio. You could be frightened of that crazyman Khrushchev
or of drowning if you went out over your head. You could be frightened of all those things and still function.
But those things in the Standpipe . . .
He wanted to tell them that those dead boys who had lurched and shambled their way down the spiral staircase had done something worse than frighten him: they had offended him.
Offended, yes. It was the only word he could think of, and if he used it they would laugh — they liked him, he knew that, and they had accepted him as one of them, but they would still laugh. All the same, there were things that were not supposed to be. They offended any sane person’s sense of order, they offended the central idea that God had given the earth a final tilt on its axis so that twilight would only last about twelve minutes at the equator and linger for an hour or more up where the Eskimos built their ice-cube houses, that He had done that and He then had said, in effect: ‘Okay, if you can figure out the tilt, you can figure out any damn thing you choose. Because even light has weight, and when the note of a trainwhistle suddenly drops it’s the Doppler effect and when an airplane breaks the sound barrier that bang isn’t the applause of the angels or the flatulence of demons but only air collapsing back into place. I gave you the tilt and then I sat back about halfway up the auditorium to watch the show. I got nothing else to say, except that two and two makes four, the lights in the sky are stars, if there’s blood grownups can see it as well as kids, and dead boys stay dead.’ You can live with fear, I think, Stan would have said if he could. Maybe not forever, but for a long, long time. It’s offense you maybe can’t live with,