‘Just like in the fuckin’ Scouts. A litter -poles and shuts. Like in the handbook. Right, Gordie?’
‘Yeah. If you want But what if those guys -‘
‘Fuck those guys!’ he screamed. ‘You’re all a bunch of chickens! Fuck off,
creeps!’
‘Chris, they could call the sheriff. To get back at us.’
“He’s ours and we’re gonna take him OUT!’
Those guys would say anything to get us in dutch,’ I told him. My words
sounded thin, stupid, sick with the flu. ‘Say anything and then lie each other up. You know how people can get other people in trouble telling lies, man. Like with the milk-mo-‘
‘I DONT CARE!” he screamed, and lunged at me with his fists up. But one of
his feet struck Ray Brower’s ribcage with a soggy thump, making the body rock. He
tripped and fell full-length and I waited for him to get up and maybe punch me in the
mouth but instead he lay where he had fallen, head pointing towards the embankment,
arms stretched out over his head like a diver about to execute, in the exact posture
Ray Brower had been in when we found him. I looked wildly at Chris’s feet to make
sure his sneakers were still on. Then he began to cry and scream, his body bucking in
the muddy-water, splashing it around, fists drumming up and down in it head twisting
from side to side. Teddy and Vem were staring at him, agog, because nobody had ever
seen Chris Chambers cry. After a moment or two I walked back to the embankment,
climbed it, and sat down on one of the rails. Teddy and Vern followed me. And we sat
there in the rain, not talking, looking like those three Monkeys of Virtue they sell in dimestores and those sleazy gift-shops that always look like they are tottering on the edge of bankruptcy.
28
It was twenty minutes before Chris climbed the embankment to sit down beside us.
The clouds had begun to break. Spears of sun came down through the rips. The
bushes seemed to have gone three shades darker green in the last forty-five minutes.
He was mud ail the way up one side and down the other. His hair was standing up in muddy spikes.
The only clean parts of him were the whitewashed circles around his eyes.
‘You’re right, Gordie,’ he said. ‘Nobody gets last dibs. Goocher all around,
huh?’
I nodded. Five minutes passed. No one said anything. And I happened to have
a thought … just in case they did call Bannerman. I went back down the embankment
and over to where Chris had been standing. I got down on my knees and began to
comb carefully through the water and marshgrass with my fingers.
‘What you doing?’ Teddy asked, joining me.
‘It’s to your left, I think,’ Chris said, and pointed.
I looked there and after a minute or two I found both shell casings. They
winked in the fresh sunlight. I gave them to Chris. He nodded and stuffed them into a
pocket of his jeans.
‘Now we go,’ Chris said.
‘Hey, come on!’ Teddy yelled, in real agony. ‘I wanna take ‘im!’
‘Listen, dummy,’ Chris said, ‘if we take him back we could all wind up in the
reformatory. It’s like Gordie says. Those guys could make up any story they wanted to.
What if they said we killed him, huh? How would you like that?’
‘I don’t give a damn,’ Teddy said sulkily. Then he looked at us with absurd
hope. ‘Besides, we might only get a couple of months or so. As excessories. I mean,
we’re only twelve fuckin’ years old, they ain’t gonna put us in Shawshank.’
Chris said softly: ‘You can’t get in the army if you got a record, Teddy.’
I was pretty sure that was nothing but a bald-faced lie -but somehow this didn’t
seem the time to say so. Teddy just looked at Chris for a long time, his mouth
trembling. Finally he managed to squeak out: ‘No shit?’
‘Ask Gordie.’
He looked at me hopefully.
‘He’s right,’ I said, feeling like a great big turd. ‘He’s right, Teddy. First thing
they do when you volunteer is to check your name through R&I.’