It

You don’t have to look back to see those children; part of your mind will see them forever, live with them forever, love with them forever. They are not necessarily the best part of you, but they were once the repository of all you could become.
Children I love you. I love you so much.
So drive away quick, drive away while the last of the light slips away, drive away from Derry, from memory . . . but not from desire. That stays, the bright cameo of all we were and all we believed as children, all that shone in our eyes even when we were lost and the wind blew in the night.
Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand.
All the rest is darkness.
7
‘Hey!’
‘Hey mister, you — ‘
‘ — lookout!’
‘Damn fool’s gonna — ‘
Words whipped by in the slipstream, as meaningless as pennants in a breeze or untethered balloons. Here came the crash barriers; he could smell the sooty aroma of kerosene from the smudgepots. He saw the yawning darkness where the street had been, heard sullen water rushing down there in the tangled darkness, and laughed at the sound.
He dragged Silver hard left, so close to the crash barriers now that the leg of his jeans actually whispered along one of them. Silver’s wheels were less than three inches from the place where the tar ended in empty space, and he was running out of maneuvering room. Up ahead the water had eroded all of the street and half the sidewalk in front of Cash’s Jewelry Store. Barriers closed off what was left of the sidewalk; it had been severely undercut.
‘Bill?’ It was Audra’s voice, dazed and a little thick. She sounded as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep. ‘Bill, where are we? What are we doing? ‘
‘Hi yo, Silver!’ Bill shouted, pointing the rushing gantry that was Silver directly at the crash barrier jutting out at right angles to the empty Cash show window. ‘HI YO SILVER AWAYYYYY!’
Silver struck the barrier at better than forty miles an hour and it went flying, the centerboard in one direction, the A-shaped supports in two others. Audra cried out and squeezed Bill so tightly that he lost his breath. Up and down Main Street, Canal Street, and Kansas Street, people stood in doorways and on sidewalks, watching.
Silver shot out onto the bridge of undercut sidewalk. Bill felt his left hip and knee chip the side of the jewelry store. He felt Silver’s rear wheel sag suddenly and understood that the sidewalk was falling in behind them —
— and then Silver’s forward motion carried them back onto solid roadway. Bill swerved to avoid an overturned trashcan and barrelled out into the street again. Brakes squealed. He saw
the grille of a big truck approaching and still couldn’t seem to stop laughing. He ran through the space the heavy truck wound up occupying a full second before it got there. Shit, time to spare!
Yelling, tears squirting from his eyes, Bill blew Silver’s oogah-horn, listening to each hoarse bray embed itself in the day’s bright light.
‘Bill, you’re going to kill us both!’ Audra cried out, and although there was terror in her voice, she was also laughing.
Bill heeled Silver over, and this time he felt Audra leaning with him, making die bike easier to control, helping to make the two of them exist with it, at least for this small compact moment of time, as three living things.
‘Do you think so?’ he shouted back.
‘I know so!’ she cried, and then grabbed his crotch, where there was a huge and cheerful erection. ‘But don’t stop!’
He had nothing to say about it, however. Silver’s speed was bleeding away