It

asked.
‘A friend,’ Bill said. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘Do you remember it? When we came out before?’
Beverly nodded. ‘Eddie got us back to the Barrens. Only we ended up on the other side of the Kenduskeag somehow. The Old Cape side.’
‘You and Haystack pushed the lid off one of those pumping –stations,’ Richie said to Bill, ‘because you had the most weight.’
‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘We did. The sun was out, but it was almost down.’
‘Yeah,’ Bill said. ‘And we were all there.’
‘But nothing lasts forever,’ Richie said. He looked back down the hill they had just climbed and sighed. ‘Look at this, for instance.’
He held his hands out. The tiny scars in the palms were gone. Beverly put her hands out; Ben did the same; Bill added his. All were dirty but unmarked.
‘Nothing lasts forever,’ Richie repeated. He looked up at Bill, and Bill saw tears cut s l o w l y through the dirt on Richie’s cheeks.
‘Except maybe for love,’ Ben said.
‘And desire,’ Beverly said.
‘How about friends?’ Bill asked, and smiled. ‘What do you think, Trashmouth?’
‘Well,’ Richie said, smiling and rubbing his eyes, ‘Ah got to thank about it, boy; Ah say, Ah say Ah got to thank about it.’
Bill put his hands out and they joined theirs with his and stood there for a moment, seven who had been reduced to four but who could still make a circle. They looked at each other. Ben was crying now too, the tears spilling from his eyes. But he was smiling.
‘I love you guys so much,’ he said. He squeezed Bev’s and Richie’s hands tight-tight-tight for a moment, and then dropped them. ‘Now could we see if they’ve got such a thing as breakfast in this place? And we ought to call Mike. Tell him we’re okay.’
‘Good thinnin, senhorr,’ Richie said. ‘Every now an then I theenk you might turn out okay. Watchoo theenk, Beeg Beel?’
‘I theenk you ought to go fuck yourself,’ Bill said .
They walked into the Town House on a wave of laughter, and as Bill pushed through the glass door, Beverly caught sight of something which she never spoke of but never forgot. For just a moment she saw their reflections in the glass — only there were six, not four, because Eddie was behind Richie and Stan was behind Bill, that little half –smile on his face.
9
Out / Dusk, August 10th, 1958
The sun sits neatly on the horizon, a slightly oblate red ball that throws a flat feverish light over the Barrens. The iron cover on top of one of the pumping-stations rises a little, settles, rises again, and begins to slide.
‘P-P –Push it, Buh-Ben, it’s bruh-breaking my shoulder —
The cover slides farther, tilts, and falls into the shrubbery that has grown up around the concrete cylinder. Seven children come out one by one and look around, blinking owlishly in silent wonder. They are like children who have never seen daylight before.
‘It’s so quiet,’ Beverly says softly.
The only sounds are the loud rush of water and the somnolent hum of insects. The storm is over but the Kenduskeag is still very high. Closer to town, not far from the place where the river is corseted in concrete and called a canal, it has overflowed its banks, although the flooding is by no means serious — a few wet cellars is the worst of it. This time.
Stan moves away from them, his face blank and thoughtful. Bill looks around and at first he thinks Stan has seen a small fire on the riverbank — fire is his first impression: a red glow almost too bright to look at. But when Stan picks the fire up in his right hand the angle of the light changes, and Bill sees it’s nothing but a Coke bottle, one of the new clear ones, which someone has dropped by the river. He watches as Stan reverses it, holds it by the neck, and brings it down on a shelf of rock jutting out of the bank. The bottle breaks, and Bill is aware they are all watching Stan now as he pokes through the shattered remains of the bottle, his face sober and studious and absorbed. At last he picks up a narrow wedge of glass. The westering sun throws red glints from it, and Bill thinks again: