(post)

'POLE,' Bill almost screamed, and the proprietor recoiled a little. 'Not the pole I'm interested in.'

'Are you okay, mister?' the proprietor asked. His solicitous tone belied the expression of hard wariness in his eyes, and Bill saw his left hand leave the desk. He knew, with a flash of something that was really more inductive reasoning than intuition that there was an open drawer below Bill's own sight-line, and that the proprietor had almost surely put his hand on a pistol of some type. He was maybe worried about robbery; more likely he was just worried. He was, after all, cle arly gay, and this was the town where the local juveniles had given Adrian Mellon a terminal bath.

(he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts)

It drove out all thought; it was like being insane. Where had it come from?

(he thrusts)

Repeating and repeating.

With a sudden titanic effort, Bill attacked it. He did this by forcing his mind to translate the alien sentence into French. It was the same way he had beaten the stutter as a teenager. As the words marched across his field of thought, he changed them . . . and suddenly he felt the grip of the stutter loosen.

He realized that the proprietor had been saying something.

'P-P-Pardon me?'

'I said if you're going to have a fit, take it out on the street. I don't need shit like that in here.'

Bill drew in a deep breath.

'Let's start o-over,' he said. 'Pretend I just came i-in.'

'Okay,' the proprietor said, agreeably enough. 'You just came in. Now what?'

'The b-bike in the window,' Bill said. 'How much do you want for the bike?'

'Take twenty bucks.' He sounded easier now, but his left hand still hadn't come back into view. 'I think it was a Schwinn at one time, but it's a mongrel now.' His eye measured Bill. 'Big bike. You could ride it yourself.'

Thinking of the kid's green skateboard, Bill said, 'I think my bike-riding days are o-o-over.'

The proprietor shrugged. His left hand finally came up again. 'Got a boy?'

'Y-Yes.'

'How old is he?'

'Eh-Eh –Eleven.'

'Big bike for an eleven-year-old.'

'Will you take a traveller's check?'

'Long as it's no more than ten bucks over the amount of the purchase.'

'I can give you a twenty,' Bill said. 'Mind if I make a phone call?'

'Not if it's local.'

'It is.'

'Be my guest.'

Bill called the Derry Public Library. Mike was there. 'Where are you, Bill?' he asked, and then immediately: 'Are you all right?'

'I'm fine. Have you seen any of the others?'

'No. We'll see them tonight.' There was a brief pause. That is, I presume. What can I do you for, Big Bill?'

'I'm buying a bike,' Bill said calmly. 'I wondered if I could wheel it up to your house. Do you have a garage or something I could store it in?'

There was silence.

'Mike? Are you — '

'I'm here,' Mike said. 'Is it Silver?'

Bill looked at the proprietor. He was reading his book again . . . or maybe just looking at it and listening carefully.

'Yes,' he said.

'Where are you?'

'It's called Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes.'

'All right,' Mike said. 'My place is 61 Palmer Lane. You'd want to go up MainStreet — '

'I can find it.'

'All right, I'll meet you there. Want some supper?'

'That would be nice. Can you get off work?'

'No problem. Carole will cover for me.' Mike hesitated again. 'She said that a fellow was in about an hour before I got back here. Said he left looking like a ghost. I got her to describe him. It was Ben.'

'You sure?'

'Yeah. And the bike. That's part of it, too, isn't it?'

'Shouldn't wonder,' Bill said, keeping an eye on the proprietor, who still appeared to be absorbed in his book.

'I'll see you at my place,' Mike said. 'Number 61. Don't forget.'

'I won't. Thank you, Mike.'

'God bless, Big Bill.'

Bill hung up. The proprietor promptly closed his book again. 'Got you some storage space, my friend?'

'Yeah.' Bill took out his traveller's checks and signed his name to a twenty. The proprietor examined the two signatures with a care that, in less distracted mental circumstances, Bill would have found rather insulting.

At last the proprietor scribbled a bill of sale and popped the traveller's check into his old cash register. He got up, put his hands on the small of his back and stretched, then walked to the front of the store. He picked his way around the heaps of junk and almost-junk merchandise with an absent delicacy Bill found fascinating.

He lifted the bike, swung it around, and rolled it to the edge of the display space. Bill laid hold of the handlebars to help him, and as he did another shudder whipped through him. Silver. Again. It was Silver in his hands and

(he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts)

he had to force the thought away because it made h im feel faint and strange.

'That back tire's a little soft,' the proprietor said (it was, in fact, as flat as a pancake). The front tire was up, but so bald the cord was showing through in places.

'No problem,' Bill said.

'You can handle it from here?'

(I used to be able to handle it just fine; now I don't know)

'I guess so,' Bill said. 'Thanks.'

'Sure. And if you want to talk about that barber pole, come back.'

The proprietor held the door for him. Bill walked the bike out, turned left, and started toward Main Street. People glanced with amusement and curiosity at the man with the bald head pushing the huge bike with the flat rear tire and the oogah-horn protruding over the rusty bike-basket, but Bill hardly noticed them. He was marvelling at how well his grownup hands still fitted the rubber handgrips, was remembering how he had always meant to knot some thin strips of plastic, different colors, into the holes in each grip so they would flutter in the wind. He had never gotten around to that.

He stopped at the corner of Center and Main, outside of Mr Paperback. He leaned the bike against the building long enough to strip off his sportcoat. Pushing a bike with a flat tire was hard work, and the afternoon had come off hot. He tossed the coat into the basket and went on.

Chain's rusty, he thought. Whoever had it didn't take very good care of

(him)

it.

He stopped for a moment, frowning, trying to remember just what had happened to Silver. Had he sold it? Given it away? Lost it, perhaps? He couldn't remember. Instead, that idiotic sentence

(his fists against the posts and still insists)

resurfaced, as strange and out of place as an easy chair on a battlefield, a record-player in a fireplace, a row of pencils protruding from a cement sidewalk.

Bill shook his head. The sentence broke up and dispersed like smoke. He pushed Silver on to Mike's place.

6

Mike Hanlon Makes a Connection

But first he made supper — hamburgers with sauteed mushrooms and onions and a spinach salad. They had finished working on Silver by then and were more than ready to eat.

The house was a neat little Cape Cod, white with green trim. Mike had just been arriving when Bill pushed Silver up Palmer Lane. He was behind the wheel of an old Ford with rusty rocker panels and a cracked rear window, and Bill remembered the fact Mike had so quietly pointed out: the six members of the Losers' Club who left Derry had quit being losers. Mike had stayed behind and was still behind.

Bill rolle d Silver into Mike's garage, which was floored with oiled dirt and was every bit as neat as the house proved to be. Tools hung from pegs, and the lights, shielded with tin cones, looked like the lights which hang over pool tables. Bill leaned the bike against the wall. The two of them looked at it without speaking for a bit, hands in pockets.