together. Chris claimed he was so full of shit he squeaked. They didn’t have to try; Vern
got the small pile of twigs and dry moss to catch from the second match. The day was
perfectly still and there was no wind to puff out the light. We all took turns feeding the
thin flames until they began to grow stouter on wrist-thick chunks of wood fetched from
an old deadfall some thirty yards into the forest
When the flames began to die back a little bit, I stuck the sticks holding the Pioneer
Drumsticks firmly into the ground at an angle over the fire. We sat around watching them
as they shimmered and dripped and finally began to brown. Our stomachs made pre-
dinner conversation.
Unable to wait until they were really cooked, we each took one of them, stuck it in a
roll, and yanked the hot stick out of the centre. They were charred outside, raw inside, and
totally delicious. We wolfed them down and wiped the grease from our mouths with our
bare arms. Chris opened his pack and took out a tin Band-Aids box (the pistol was way at
the bottom of his pack, and because he hadn’t told Vern and Teddy, I guessed it was to be
our secret). He opened it and gave each of us a battered Winston. We lit them with
flaming twigs from the fire and then leaned back, men of the world, watching the
cigarette smoke drift away into the soft twilight. None of us inhaled because we might
cough and that would mean a day or two of ragging from the others. And it was pleasant
enough just to drag and blow, hawking into the fire to hear the sizzle (that was the
summer I learned how you can pick out someone who is just learning to smoke: if you’re
new at it you spit a lot). We were feeling good. We smoked the Winstons down to the
filters, then tossed them into the fire.
‘Nothin’ like a smoke after a meal,’ Teddy said.
Tucking-A,’ Vern agreed.
Crickets had started to hum in the green gloom. I looked .p at the lane of sky visible
through the railroad cut and saw that the blue was now bruising towards purple. Seeing
that outrider of twilight made me feel sad and calm at the same :me, brave but not really
brave, comfortably lonely.
We tramped down a flat place in the underbrush beside the embankment and laid out
our bedrolls. Then, for an hour or so, we fed the fire and talked, the kind of talk you can
never quite remember once you get past fifteen and discover girls. We talked about who
was the best dragger in Castle Rock, if Boston could maybe stay out of the cellar this
year, and about the summer just past. Teddy told about the time he had been at White’s
Beach in Brunswick and some kid had hit his head while diving off the float and almost
drowned. We discussed at some length the relative merits of the teachers we had had. We
agreed that Mr Brooks was the biggest pussy in Castle Rock Elementary – he would just
about cry if you sassed him back. On the other hand, there was Mrs Cote (pronounced
Cody) – she was just about the meanest bitch God had ever set down on the earth. Vern
said he’d heard she hit a kid so hard two years ago that the kid almost went blind. I looked
at Chris, wondering if he would say anything about Miss Simons, but he didn’t say
anything at all, and he didn’t see me looking at him – he was looking at Vern and nodding
soberly at Vern’s story.
We didn’t talk about Ray Brower as the dark drew down, but I was thinking about him.
There’s something horrible and fascinating about the way dark comes to the woods, its
coming unsoftened by headlights or streetlights or houselights or neon. It conies with no
mothers’ voices, calling for their kids to leave off and come on in now, to herald it If
you’re used to the town, the coming of the dark in the woods seems more like a natural
disaster than a natural phenomenon; it rises like the Castle River rises in the spring.
And as I thought about the body of Ray Brower in this light – or lack of it – what I felt
was not queasiness or fear that he would suddenly appear before us, a green and gibbering
banshee whose purpose was to drive us back the way we had come before we could
disturb his – its – peace, but a sudden and unexpected wash of pity that he should be so alone and so defenceless in the dark that was now coming over our side of the earth. If
something wanted to eat or him, it would. His mother wasn’t here to stop that from
happening, and neither was his father, nor Jesus Christ in the company of all the saints.
He was dead and he was all alone, flung off the railroad tracks and into the ditch, and I
realized that if I didn’t stop thinking about it I was going to cry.
So I told a Le Dio story, made up on the spot and not very good, and when it ended as
most of my Le Dio stories did, with one lone American dogface coughing out a dying
declaration of patriotism and love for the girl back home into the sad and wise face of the
platoon sergeant, it was not the white, scared face of some pfc from Castle Rock or White
River Junction I saw in my mind’s eye but the face of a much younger boy, already dead,
his eyes closed, his features troubled, a rill of blood running from the left corner of his
mouth to his jawline. And in back of him, instead of the shattered shops and churches of
my Le Dio dreamscape, I saw only dark forest and the cindered railway bed bulking
against the starry sky like a prehistoric burial mound.
19
I came awake in the middle of the night, disorientated, wondering why it was so chilly
in my bedroom and who had left the windows open. Denny, maybe. I had been dreaming
of Denny, something about body-surfing at Harrison State Park. But it had been four
years ago that we had done that.
This wasn’t my room: this was someplace else. Somebody was holding me in a mighty
bearhug. Somebody else was pressed against my back, and a shadowy third was crouched
beside me, head cocked in a listening attitude.
‘What the fuck?’ I asked in honest puzzlement.
A long drawn-out groan in answer. It sounded like Vern.
That brought things into focus, and I remembered where I was … but what was
everybody doing awake in the middle of the night? Or had I only been asleep for seconds?
No, that couldn’t be, because a thin sliver of moon was floating dead centre in an inky
sky.
‘Don’t let it get me,’ Vern gibbered. ‘I swear I’ll1 be a good boy, I won’t do nothin’ bad,
I’ll put the ring up before I take a piss, I’l1 … I’ll …’ With some astonishment I realized
that I was listening to a prayer – or at least the Vern Tessio equivalent of a prayer.
I sat bolt upright, scared. ‘Chris?’
‘Shut up, Vern,’ Chris said. He was the one crouching and listening. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Oh yes it is,’ Teddy said ominously. ‘It’s something.’
‘What is?’ I asked. I was still sleepy and disorientated, unstrung from my place in space and time. It scared me that I had come in late on whatever had developed – too late to
defend myself properly, maybe.
Then, as if to answer my question, a long and hollow scream rose languidly from the
woods – it was the sort of scream you might expect from a woman dying in extreme
agony and extreme fear.
‘Oh-dear-to-Jesus!’ Vern whimpered, his voice high and filled with tears. He reapplied
the bearhug that had wakened me, making it hard for me to breathe and adding to my own
terror. I threw him loose with an effort but he scrambled right back beside me like a
puppy which can’t think of anyplace else to go.
‘It’s that Brower kid,’ Teddy whispered hoarsely. ‘His ghost’s out walkin’ in the woods.
‘Oh God!’ Vern screamed, apparently not crazy about that idea at all. ‘I promise I won’t
hawk no more dirty books out of Dahlie’s Market! I promise I won’t give my carrots to the
dog no more I … I … I…’ He floundered there, wanting to bribe God with everything but
unable to think of anything really good in the extremity of his fear. I won’t smoke no more unfiltered cigarettes! I won’t say no bad swears! I won’t put my Bazooka in the qfferin