“You’re gonna be lookin at the world through a oxygen tent!” Scott adds, and Henry comes perilously close to laughing again. He prays that none of his friends will say anything-let done be done-and none of them do. It’s almost a miracle.

One final menacing look from Richie and they are gone around the comer. Henry, Jonesy, Beaver, and Pete are left alone with the kid, who is rocking back and forth on his dirty knees, his dirty bloody tearstreaked uncomprehending face cocked to the white sky like the face of a broken clock, all of them wondering what to do next. Talk to him? Tell him it’s okay, that the bad boys are gone and the danger has passed? He will never understand. And oh that crying is so freaky. How could those kids, mean and stupid as they were, go on in the face of that crying? Henry will understand later-sort of-but at that moment it’s a complete mystery to him.

“I’m gonna try something,” Beaver says abruptly.

“Yeah, sure, anything,” Jonesy says. His voice is shaky.

The Beav starts forward, then looks at his friends. It is an odd look, part shame, part defiance, and-yes, Henry would swear it-part hope.

“If you tell anybody I did this,” he says, “I’ll never chum with you guys again.”

“Never mind that crap,” Pete says, and he also sounds shaky. “If you can shut him up, do it!”

Beaver stands for a moment where Richie was standing while he tried to get the kid to eat the dog-turd, then drops to his knees. Henry sees the kid’s underwear shorts are in fact Underoos, and that they feature the Scooby-Doo characters, plus Shaggy’s Mystery Machine, just like the kid’s lunchbox.

Then Beaver takes the wailing, nearly naked boy into his arms and begins to sing.

Four more miles to Banbury Cross… or maybe only three. Four more miles to Banbury Cross… or maybe only-

Henry’s feet skidded again, and this time he had no chance to get his balance back. He had been in a deep daze of memory, and before he could come out of it, he was flying through the air.

He landed heavily on his back, hitting hard enough to lose his wind in a loud and painful gasp-“Uh!” Snow rose in a dreamy sugarpuff, and he hit the back of his head hard enough to see stars.

He lay where he was for a moment, giving anything broken ample opportunity to announce itself When nothing did, he reached around and prodded the small of his back. Pain, but no agony. When they were ten and eleven and spent what seemed like whole winters sledding in Strawford Park, he had taken worse hits than this and gotten up laughing. Once, with the idiotic Pete Moore piloting his Flexible Flyer and Henry riding behind him, they had gone head-on into the big pine at the foot of the hill, the one all the kids called the Death Tree, and survived with nothing more than a few bruises and a couple of loose teeth each. The trouble was, he hadn’t been ten or eleven for a lot of years.

“Get up, ya baby, you’re okay,” he said, and carefully came to a sitting position. Twinges from his back, but nothing worse. just shaken up. Nothing hurt but your fuckin pride, as they used to say. Still, he’d maybe sit here another minute or two. He was making great time and he deserved a rest. Besides, those memories had shaken him. Richie Grenadeau, fucking Richie Grenadeau, who had, it turned out, flunked off the football team-it hadn’t been the broken nose at all. Gonna see you fellas again, he had told them, and Henry guessed he had meant it, but the threatened confrontation had never happened, no, never happened. Something else had happened instead.

And all that was a long time ago. Right now Banbury Cross awaited-Hole in the Wall, at least-and he had no cock horse to ride there, only that poor man’s steed, shank’s mare. Henry got to his feet, began to brush snow from his ass, and then someone screamed inside his head.

“Ow, ow, ow!” he cried. It was like something played through a Walkman you could turn up to concert-hall levels, like a shotgun blast that had gone off directly behind his eyes. He staggered backward, flailing for balance, and had he not run into the stiffly jutting branches of a pine growing at the left side of the road, he surely would have fallen down again.

He disengaged himself from the tree’s clutch, ears still ringing-hell, his entire head was ringing-and stepped forward, hardly believing he was still alive. He raised one of his hands to his nose, and the palm of his hand came away wet with blood. There was something loose in his mouth, too. He held his hand under it, spat out a tooth, looked at it wonderingly, then tossed it aside, ignoring his first impulse, which had been to put it in his coat pocket. No one, as far as he knew, did surgical implants of teeth, and he strongly doubted that the Tooth Fairy came this far out in the boonies.

He couldn’t say for sure whose scream that had been, but he had an idea Pete Moore had maybe just run into a big load of bad trouble.Henry listened for other voices, other thoughts, and heard none. Excellent. Although he had to admit that, even without voices, this had certainly turned into the hunting trip of a lifetime.

“Go, big boy, on you huskies,” he said, and started running toward Hole in the Wall again. His sense that something had gone wrong there was stronger than ever, and it was all he could do to hold himself to a fast jog.

Go look in the chamber pot.

Why don’t we just knock on the bathroom door and ask him how he is?

Had he actually heard those voices? Yes, they were gone now, but he had heard them, just as he had heard that terrible agonal scream. Pete? Or had it been the woman? Pretty Becky Shue?

“Pete,” he said, the word coming out in a puff of vapor. “It was Pete.” Not entirely sure, even now, but pretty sure.

At first he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find his rhythm again, but then, while he was still worrying about it, it came back-the synchronicity of his hurrying breath and thudding feet, beautiful in its simplicity.

Three more miles to Banbury Cross, he thought. Going home. Just like we took Duddits home that day.

(if you tell anybody I did this I’ll never chum with you guys again)

Henry returned to that October afternoon as to a deep dream. He dropped down the well of memory so far and so fast that at first he didn’t sense the cloud rushing toward him, the cloud that was not words or thoughts or screams but only its redblack self, a thing with places to go and things to do.

Beaver steps forward, hesitates for a moment, then drops to his knees. The retard doesn’t see him; he is still wailing, eyes squeezed shut and narrow chest heaving. Both the Underoos and Beaver’s zipper-studded old motorcycle jacket are comical, but none of the other boys are laughing. Henry only wants the retard to stop crying. That crying is killing him.

Beaver shuffles forward a little bit on his knees, then takes the weeping boy into his arms.

“Baby’s boat’s a silver dream, sailing near and far…”

Henry has never heard Beaver sing before, except maybe along with the radio-the Clarendons are most certainly not churchgoers-and he is astounded by the clear tenor sweetness of his friend’s voice. In another year or so the Beav’s voice will change completely and become unremarkable, but now, in the weedy vacant lot behind the empty building, it pierces them all, astounds them. The retarded boy reacts as well, stops crying and looks at Beaver with wonder.

“It sails from here in Baby’s room and to the nearest star; Sail, Baby, sail, sail on home to me, sail the seas and sail the stars, sail on home to me…”