It

had been no such things in 1958, however; Zack Denbrough had a tank-job, and it made Beverly nervous. Ben could tell she was nervous, wanted to tell her not to worry, but was afraid his voice would tremble.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said to Stan, who was standing next to her.
‘Huh?’ Stan said, looking at him and bunking.
‘Don’t worry,’
‘I’m not. ‘
‘Oh. I thought you were. And I just wanted you to know this is perfectly safe. If you were. Worrying, I mean.’
‘Are you okay, Ben?’
‘Fine,’ Ben muttered. ‘Gimme the matches, Richie.’
Richie gave him a book of matches. Ben twisted the valve on the tank and lit a match under the nozzle of the torch. There was a flump! and a bright blue-orange glare. Ben tuned the flame to a blue edge and began to heat the base of the mortar shell.
‘You got the funnel?’ he asked Bill.
‘R-R-Right here.’ Bill handed over a homemade fu n n e l t h a t B e n h a d m a d e e a r l i e r . T h e t i n y hole at its base fit the hole in the bearing molds almost exactly. Ben had done this without
taking a single measurement. Bill had been amazed — almost flabbergasted — but did not know how to say so without embarrassing Ben.
Absorbed in what he was doing, Ben could talk to Beverly — he spoke with the dry precision of a surgeon addressing a nurse.
‘Bev, you got the steadiest hands. Suck the funnel in the hole. Use one of those gloves so you don’t get burned.’
Bill handed her one of his father’s work gloves. Beverly put the tin funnel in the mold. No one spoke. The hissing of the blowtorch flame seemed very loud. They watched it, eyes squinted almost shut.
‘Wuh-wuh-wait,’ Bill said suddenly, and dashed into the house. He came back a minute later with a pair of cheap Turtle wraparound sunglasses that had been languishing in a kitchen drawer for a year or more. ‘Better p-put these uh-on, H-H-Haystack.’
Ben took them, grinned, and slipped them on.
‘Shit, it’s Fabian!’ Richie said. ‘Or Frankie Avalon, or one of those Bandstand wops.’
‘Fuck you, Trashmouth,’ Ben said, but he started giggling in spite of himself. The idea of him being Fabian or someone like that was just too weird. The flame wavered and he stopped laughing; his concentration narrowed to a point again.
Two minutes later he handed the torch to Eddie, who held it gingerly in his good hand. ‘It’s ready,’ he said to Bill. ‘Gimme that other glove. Fast! Fast!’
Bill gave it to him. Ben put it on and held the mortar shell with the gloved hand while he turned the vise lever with the other.
‘Hold it steady, Bev.’
‘I’m ready, don’t wait for me,’ she rapped back at him.
Ben tilted the shell over the funnel. The others watched as a rivulet of molten silver flowed between the two receptacles. Ben poured precisely; not a drop was spilled. And for a moment, he felt galvanized. He seemed to see everything magnified through a strong white glow. For that one moment he did not feel like plain fat old Ben Hanscom, who wore sweatshirts to disguise his gut and his tits; he felt like Thor, working thunder and lightning at the smithy of the gods.
Then the feeling was gone.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna have to reheat the silver. Someone shove a nail or something up the spout of the funnel before the goop hardens in there.’
Stan did it.
Ben clamped the mortar shell in the vise again and took the torch from Eddie.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘number two.’
And went back to work.
4
Ten minutes later it was done.
‘Now what?’ Mike asked.
‘Now we play Monopoly for an hour,’ Ben said, ‘while they harden in the molds. Then I clip em open with a chisel along the cut-lines and we’re done.’
Richie looked uneasily at the cracked face of his Timex, which had taken a great many lickings and kept on ticking. ‘When will your folks be back, Bill?’
‘N-N-Not until tuh –ten or ten-thuh-thuh-hirty,’ Bill said. ‘It’s a double f-f-f-feature at the Uh-Uh-Uh — ‘
‘Aladdin,’ Stan said.
‘Yeah. And they’ll stop in for a slice of p-p-pizza after. They a-almost always d-do.’
‘So we have plenty of time,’ Ben said.
Bill nodded.
‘Then let’s go in,’ Bev said. ‘I want to call home. I promised I would. And don’t any of you talk. He thinks I’m at Community House and that I’m getting a ride home from there.’
‘What if he wants to come down and pick you up early?’ Mike asked.
‘Then,’ Beverly said, ‘I’m going to be in a lot of trouble.’
Ben thought: I’d protect you, Beverly. In his mind’s eye, an instant daydream unfolded, one with an ending so sweet he shivered. Bev’s father started to give her a hard time; to bawl her out and all that (even in his daydream he