him hard enough to toss him but not to kill him? I thought that, under just the right
combination of circumstances, that could have happened. Had the train hit him a hefty,
teeth-rattling sideswipe as he tried to get out of the way? Hit him and knocked him in a
flying, backwards somersault over that eaved-in banking? Had he perhaps lain awake and
trembling in the dark for hours, not just lost now but disorientated as well, cut off from
the world? Maybe he had died of fear. A bird with crushed tailfeathers once died in my
cupped hands in just that way. Its body trembled and vibrated lightly, its beak opened and closed, its dark, bright eyes stared up at me. Then the vibration quit, the beak froze half-open, and the black eyes became lacklustre and uncaring. It could have been that way
with Ray Brower. He could have died because he was simply too frightened to go on
living.
But there was another thing, and that bothered me most of all, I think. He had started
off to go berrying. I seemed to remember the news reports saying he’d been carrying a tin
pail. When we got back I went to the library and looked it up in the newspapers just to be
sure, and I was right He’d been berrying, and he’d had a pail. But we hadn’t found it We
found him, and we found his sneakers. He must have thrown it away somewhere between
Chamberlain and the boggy patch of ground in Harlow where he died. He perhaps
clutched it even tighter at first, as though it linked him to home and safety. But as his fear
grew, and with it that sense of being utterly alone, with no chance of rescue except for
whatever he could do by himself, as the real cold terror set it, he maybe threw it away into
the woods on one side of the tracks or the other, hardily even noticing it was gone.
I’ve thought of going back and looking for it – how does that strike you for morbid?
I’ve thought of driving to the end of the Back Harlow Road in my almost new Ford van
and getting out of it some bright summer morning, all by myself, my wife and children far
off in another world where, if you turn a switch, lights come on in the dark. I’ve thought
about how it would be. Pulling my pack out of the back and resting it on the customized
van’s rear bumper while I carefully remove my shirt and tie it around my waist. Rubbing
my chest and shoulders with Muskol insect repellent and then crashing through the woods
to where that boggy place was, the place where we found him. Would the grass grow up
yellow there, in the shape of his body? Of course not, there would be no sign, but still you
wonder, and you realize what a thin film there is between your rational man costume – the
writer with leather elbow-patches on his corduroy jacket -and the capering, Gorgon myths
of childhood. Then climbing the embankment, now overgrown with weeds, and walking
slowly beside the rusted tracks and rotted ties towards Chamberlain.
Stupid fantasy. An expedition looking for a fourteen-year-old blueberry pail, which
was probably cast deep into the woods or ploughed under by a bulldozer readying a half-
acre plot for a tract house or so deeply overgrown by weeds and brambles it had become invisible. But I feel sure it is still there, somewhere along the old discontinued GS&WM
line, and at times the urge to go and look is almost a frenzy. It usually comes early in the
morning, when my wife is showering and the kids are watching Batman and Scooby-Doo
on channel 38 out of Boston, and I am feeling the most like the pre-adolescent Gordon
Lachance that once strode the earth, walking and talking and occasionally crawling on his
belly like a reptile. That boy was me, I think. And the thought which follows, chilling me like a dash of cold water, is: Which boy do you mean?
Sipping a cup of tea, looking at sun slanting through the kitchen windows, hearing the
TV from one end of the house and the shower from the other, feeling the pulse behind my
eyes that means I got through one beer too many the night before, I feel sure I could find
it. I would see clear metal winking through rust, the bright summer sun reflecting it back
to my eyes. I would go down the side of the embankment, push aside the grasses that had
grown up and twined toughly around its handle, and then I would … what? Why, simply
pull it out of time. I would turn it over and over in my hands, wondering at the feel of it,
marvelling at the knowledge that the last person to touch it had been long years in his
grave. Suppose there was a note in it? Help me, I’m lost. Of course there wouldn’t be –
boys don’t go out to pick blueberries with paper and pencil – but just suppose. I imagine
the awe I’d feel would be as dark as an eclipse. Still, it’s mostly just the idea of holding
that pail in my two hands, I guess – as much a symbol of my living as his dying, proof that
I really do know which boy it was – which boy of the five of us. Holding it. Reading every
year in its cake of rust and the fading of its bright shine. Feeling it, trying to understand
the suns that shone on it the rains that fell on it, and the snows that covered it And to
wonder where I was when each thing happened to it in its lonely place, where I was, what
I was doing, who I was loving, how I was getting along, where I was. I’d hold it, read it,
feel it… and look at my own face in whatever reflection might be left. Can you dig it?
29
We got back to Castle Rock a little past five o’clock on Sunday morning, the day
before Labour Day. We had walked all night Nobody complained, although we all had
blisters and were all ravenously hungry. My head was throbbing with a killer headache,
and my legs felt twisted and burning with fatigue. Twice we had to scramble down the
embankment to get out of the way of freights. One of them was going our way, but
moving far too fast to hop. It was seeping daylight when we got to the trestle spanning the
Castle again. Chris looked at it, looked at the river, looked back at us.
‘Fuck it I’m walkin’ across. If I get hit by a train I won’t have to watch out for fuckin’
Ace Merrill’
We all walked across it – plodded might be the better verb. No train came. When we
got to the dump we climbed the fence (no Milo and no Chopper, not this early, and not on
a Sunday morning) and went directly to the pump. Vert primed it and we all took turns
sticking our heads under the icy flow, slapping the water over our bodies, drinking until
we could hold no more. Then we had to put our shirts on again because the morning
seemed chilly. We walked – limped -back into town and stood for a moment on the
sidewalk in front of the vacant lot We looked at our treehouse so we wouldn’t have to
look at each other.
‘Well,’ Teddy said at last, ‘seeya in school on Wednesday. I think I’m gonna sleep until
then.’
‘Me too,’ Vern said. I’m too pooped to pop.’
Chris whistled tunelessly through his teeth and said nothing.
‘Hey, man,’ Teddy said awkwardly. ‘No hard feelin’s, okay?’
‘No,’ Chris said, and suddenly his sombre, tired face broke into a sweet and sunny grin.
‘We did it, didn’t we? We did the bastard.’
‘Yeah,’ Vern said. ‘Your fuckin’ A. Now Billy’s gonna do me:
‘So what?’ Chris said. ‘Richie’s gonna tool up on me and Ace is probably gonna tool up
on Gordie and somebody else’ll tool up on Teddy. But we did it’
That’s right,’ Vern said. But he still sounded unhappy.
Chris looked at me. ‘We did it, didn’t we?’ he asked softly. It was worth it, wasn’t it?’
‘Sure it was,’ I said.
‘Fuck this,’ Teddy said in his dry I’m-losing-interest way. You guys sound like fuckin’
Meet the Press. Gimme some skin, man. I’m gonna toot home and see if Mom’s got me on
the Ten Most Wanted list.’
We all laughed, Teddy gave us his surprised Oh-Lord-what-now look, and we gave
him skin. Then he and Vern started off in their direction and I should have gone in mine ..
but I hesitated for a second.
‘Walk with you,’ Chris offered.
‘Sure, okay.’
We walked a block or so without talking. Castle Rock was awesomely quiet in the