The Body

27

His face sagged, and I saw sudden terror on it. It was Chris’s tone rather than his actual words, I think; the real regret that things were going to go from bad to worse. If it was a bluff, it’s still the best I’ve ever seen. The other big kids were totally convinced; their faces were squinched up as if someone had just touched a match to a cherry-bomb with a short fuse.

Ace slowly got control of himself. The muscles in his face tightened again, his lips pressed together, and he looked at Chris the way you’d look at a man who has made a serious business proposition—to merge with your company, or handle your line of credit, or shoot your balls off. It was a waiting, almost curious expression, one that made you know that the terror was either gone or tightly lidded. Ace had recomputed the odds on not getting shot and had decided that they weren’t as much in his favor as he had thought. But he was still dangerous—maybe more than before. Since then I’ve thought it was the rawest piece of brinkmanship I’ve ever seen. Neither of them was bluffing, they both meant business.

“All right,” Ace said softly, speaking to Chris. “But I know how you’re going to come out of this, motherfuck.”

“No you don’t,” Chris said.

“You little prick!” Eyeball said loudly. “You’re gonna wind up in traction for this!”

“Bite my bag,” Chris told him.

With an inarticulate sound of rage Eyeball started forward and Chris put a bullet into the water about ten feet in front of him. It kicked up a splash. Eyeball jumped back, cursing.

“Okay, now what?” Ace asked.

“Now you guys get into your cars and bomb on back to Castle Rock. After that I don’t care. But you ain’t getting him.” He touched Ray Brower lightly, almost reverently, with the toe of one sopping sneaker. “You dig me?”

“But we’ll get you,” Ace said. He was starting to smile again. “Don’t you know that?”

“You might. You might not.”

“We’ll get you hard,” Ace said, smiling. “We’ll hurt you. I can’t believe you don’t know that. We’ll put you all in the fuckin hospital with fuckin ruptures. Sincerely.”

“Oh, why don’t you go home and fuck your mother some more? I hear she loves the way you do it.”

Ace’s smile froze. “I’ll kill you for that. Nobody ranks my mother.”

“I heard your mother fucks for bucks,” Chris informed him, and as Ace began to pale, as his complexion began to approach Chris’s own ghastly whiteness, he added: “In fact, I heard she throws blowjobs for jukebox nickels. I heard—”

Then the storm came back, viciously, all at once. Only this time it was hail instead of rain. Instead of whispering or talking, the woods now seemed alive with hokey B-movie jungle drums—it was the sound of big icy hailstones honking off treetrunks. Stinging pebbles began to hit my shoulders—it felt as if some sentient, malevolent force were throwing them. Worse than that, they began to strike Ray Brower’s upturned face with an awful splatting sound that reminded us of him again, of his terrible and unending patience.

Vern caved in first, with a wailing scream. He fled up the embankment in huge, gangling strides. Teddy held out a minute longer, then ran after Vern, his hands held up over his head. On their side, Vince Desjardins floundered back under some nearby trees and Fuzzy Bracowicz joined him. But the others stood pat, and Ace began to grin again.

“Stick with me, Gordie,” Chris said in a low, shaky voice. “Stick with me, man.”

“I’m right here.”

“Go on, now,” Chris said to Ace, and he was able, by some magic, to get the shakiness out of his voice. He sounded as if he were instructing a stupid infant.

“We’ll get you,” Ace said. “We’re not going to forget it, if that’s what you’re thinking. This is big time, baby.”

“That’s fine. You just go on and do your getting another day.”

“We’ll fuckin ambush you, Chambers. We’ll—”

“Get out!” Chris screamed, and levelled the gun. Ace stepped back.

He looked at Chris a moment longer, nodded, then turned around. “Come on,” he said to the others. He looked back over his shoulder at Chris and me once more. “Be seeing you.”

They went back into the screen of trees between the bog and the road. Chris and I stood perfectly still in spite of the hail that was welting us, reddening our skins, and piling up all around us like summer snow. We stood and listened and above the crazy calypso sound of the hail hitting the treetrunks we heard two cars start up.

“Stay right here,” Chris told me, and he started across the bog.

“Chris!” I said, panicky.

“I got to. Stay here.”

It seemed he was gone a very long time. I became convinced that either Ace or Eyeball had lurked behind and grabbed him. I stood my ground with nobody but Ray Brower for company and waited for somebody—anybody—to come back. After a while, Chris did.

“We did it,” he said. “They’re gone.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Both cars.” He held his hands up over his head, locked together with the gun between them, and shook the double fist in a wry championship gesture. Then he dropped them and smiled at me. I think it was the saddest scaredest smile I ever saw. “ ‘Suck my fat one’—whoever told you you had a fat one, Lachance?”

“Biggest one in four counties,” I said. I was shaking all over.

We looked at each other warmly for a second, and then, maybe embarrassed by what we were seeing, looked down together. A nasty thrill of fear shot through me, and the sudden splash/splash as Chris shifted his feet let me know that he had seen, too. Ray Brower’s eyes had gone wide and white, starey and pupilless, like the eyes that look out at you from Grecian statuary. It only took a second to understand what had happened, but understanding didn’t lessen the horror. His eyes had filled up with round white hailstones. Now they were melting and the water ran down his cheeks as if he were weeping for his own grotesque position—a tatty prize to be fought over by two bunches of stupid hick kids. His clothes were also white with hail. He seemed to be lying in his own shroud.

“Oh, Gordie, hey,” Chris said shakily. “Say-hey, man. What a creepshow for him.”

“I don’t think he knows—”

“Maybe that was his ghost we heard. Maybe he knew this was gonna happen. What a fuckin creepshow, I’m sincere.”

Branches crackled behind us. I whirled, sure they had flanked us, but Chris went back to contemplating the body after one short, almost casual glance. It was Vern and Teddy, their jeans soaked black and plastered to their legs, both of them grinning like dogs that have been sucking eggs.

“What are we gonna do, man?” Chris asked, and I felt a weird chill steal through me. Maybe he was talking to me, maybe he was… but he was still looking down at the body.

“We’re gonna take him back, ain’t we?” Teddy asked, puzzled. “We’re gonna be heroes. Ain’t that right?” He looked from Chris to me and back to Chris again.

Chris looked up as if startled out of a dream. His lip curled. He took big steps toward Teddy, planted both hands on Teddy’s chest, and pushed him roughly backwards. Teddy stumbled, pinwheeled his arms for balance, then sat down with a soggy splash. He blinked up at Chris like a surprised muskrat. Vern was looking warily at Chris, as if he feared madness. Perhaps that wasn’t far from the mark.

“You keep your trap shut,” Chris said to Teddy. “Paratroops over the side my ass. You lousy rubber chicken.”

“It was the hail!” Teddy cried out, angry and ashamed. “It wasn’t those guys, Chris! I’m ascared of storms! I can’t help it! I would have taken all of em on at once, I swear on my mother’s name! But I’m ascared of storms! Shit! I can’t help it!” He began to cry again, sitting there in the water.

“What about you?” Chris asked, turning to Vern. “Are you scared of storms, too?”

Vern shook his head vacuously, still astounded by Chris’s rage. “Hey, man, I thought we was all runnin.”

“You must be a mind-reader then, because you ran first.”

Vern swallowed twice and said nothing.

Chris stared at him, his eyes sullen and wild. Then he turned to me. “Going to build him a litter, Gordie.”

“If you say so, Chris.”

“Sure! Like in Scouts.” His voice had begun to climb into strange, reedy levels. “Just like in the fuckin Scouts. A litter—poles and shirts. 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 Constable. 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 DON’T 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 toward 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 Vern 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 dime-stores and those sleazy gift-shops that always look like they are tottering on the edge of bankruptcy.