'Bet your a-a-ass.'

The kid laughed.

'You g-gonna be careful on thuh-hat skateboard?'

'Not really,' the kid said, and this time Bill laughed. He restrained an urge to ruffle the kid's hair — that probably would have been resented — and returned to the others.

'Who was that?' Richie asked.

'A friend,' Bill said. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. 'Do you remember it? When we came out before?'

Beverly nodded. 'Eddie got us back to the Barrens. Only we ended up on the other side of the Kenduskeag somehow. The Old Cape side.'

'You and Haystack pushed the lid off one of those pumping –stations,' Richie said to Bill, 'because you had the most weight.'

'Yeah,' Ben said. 'We did. The sun was out, but it was almost down.'

'Yeah,' Bill said. 'And we were all there.'

'But nothing lasts forever,' Richie said. He looked back down the hill they had just climbed and sighed. 'Look at this, for instance.'

He held his hands out. The tiny scars in the palms were gone. Beverly put her hands out; Ben did the same; Bill added his. All were dirty but unmarked.

'Nothing lasts forever,' Richie repeated. He looked up at Bill, and Bill saw tears cut s l o w l y through the dirt on Richie's cheeks.

'Except maybe for love,' Ben said.

'And desire,' Beverly said.

'How about friends?' Bill asked, and smiled. 'What do you think, Trashmouth?'

'Well,' Richie said, smiling and rubbing his eyes, 'Ah got to thank about it, boy; Ah say, Ah say Ah got to thank about it.'

Bill put his hands out and they joined theirs with his and stood there for a moment, seven who had been reduced to four but who could still make a circle. They looked at each other. Ben was crying now too, the tears spilling from his eyes. But he was smiling.

'I love you guys so much,' he said. He squeezed Bev's and Richie's hands tight-tight-tight for a moment, and then dropped them. 'Now could we see if they've got such a thing as breakfast in this place? And we ought to call Mike. Tell him we're okay.'

'Good thinnin, senhorr,' Richie said. 'Every now an then I theenk you might turn out okay. Watchoo theenk, Beeg Beel?'

'I theenk you ought to go fuck yourself,' Bill said .

They walked into the Town House on a wave of laughter, and as Bill pushed through the glass door, Beverly caught sight of something which she never spoke of but never forgot. For just a moment she saw their reflections in the glass — only there were six, not four, because Eddie was behind Richie and Stan was behind Bill, that little half –smile on his face.

9

Out / Dusk, August 10th, 1958

The sun sits neatly on the horizon, a slightly oblate red ball that throws a flat feverish light over the Barrens. The iron cover on top of one of the pumping-stations rises a little, settles, rises again, and begins to slide.

'P-P –Push it, Buh-Ben, it's bruh-breaking my shoulder —

The cover slides farther, tilts, and falls into the shrubbery that has grown up around the concrete cylinder. Seven children come out one by one and look around, blinking owlishly in silent wonder. They are like children who have never seen daylight before.

'It's so quiet,' Beverly says softly.

The only sounds are the loud rush of water and the somnolent hum of insects. The storm is over but the Kenduskeag is still very high. Closer to town, not far from the place where the river is corseted in concrete and called a canal, it has overflowed its banks, although the flooding is by no means serious — a few wet cellars is the worst of it. This time.

Stan moves away from them, his face blank and thoughtful. Bill looks around and at first he thinks Stan has seen a small fire on the riverbank — fire is his first impression: a red glow almost too bright to look at. But when Stan picks the fire up in his right hand the angle of the light changes, and Bill sees it's nothing but a Coke bottle, one of the new clear ones, which someone has dropped by the river. He watches as Stan reverses it, holds it by the neck, and brings it down on a shelf of rock jutting out of the bank. The bottle breaks, and Bill is aware they are all watching Stan now as he pokes through the shattered remains of the bottle, his face sober and studious and absorbed. At last he picks up a narrow wedge of glass. The westering sun throws red glints from it, and Bill thinks again: Like a fire.

Stan looks up at him and Bill suddenly understands: it is perfectly clear to him, and perfectly right. He steps forward toward Stan with his hands held out, palms up. Stan backs away, into the water. Small black bugs stitch along just above the surface, and Bill can see an iridescent dragonfly go bussing off into the reeds along the far bank like a small flying rainbow. A frog begins a steady bass thud, and as Stan takes his left hand and draws the edge of glass down his palm, peeling skin and bringing thin blood, Bill thinks in a kind of ecstasy: There's so much life down here!

'Bill?'

'Sure. Both.'

Stan cuts his other hand. There is pain, but not much. A whippoorwill has begun to call somewhere, a cool sound, peaceful. Bill thinks: That whippoorwill is raising the moon.

He looks at his hands, both of them bleeding now, and then around him. The others are there — Eddie with his aspirator clutched tightly in one hand; Ben with his big belly pushing palely out through the tattered remains of his shirt; Richie, his face oddly naked without his glasses; Mike, silent and solemn, his normally full lips compressed to a thin line. And Beverly, her head up, her eyes wide and clear, her hair still somehow lovely in spite of the dirt that mats it.

All of us. All of us are here.

And he sees them, really sees them, for the last time, because in some way he understands that they will never all be together again, the seven of them — not this way. No one talks. Beverly holds out her hands, and after a moment Richie and Ben hold out theirs. Mike and Eddie do the same. Stan cuts them one by one as the sun begins to slip behind the horizon, cooling that red furnace-glow to a dusky rose-pink. The whippoorwill cries again, Bill can see the first faint swirls of mist on the water, and he feels as if he has become a part of

everything — this is a brief ecstasy which he will no more talk about than Beverly will later talk about the brief reflection she sees of two dead men who were, as boys, her friends.

A breeze touches the trees and bushes, making them sigh, and he thinks: This is a lovely place, and I'll never forget it. It's lovely, and they are lovely; each one of them is gorgeous. The whippoorwill cries again, sweet and liquid, and for a moment Bill feels at one with it, as if he could sing and then be gone into the dusk — as if he could fly away, brave in the air.

He looks at Beverly and she is smiling at him. She closes her eyes and holds her hands out to either side. Bill takes her left; Ben her right. Bill can feel the warmth of her blood mixing with his own. The others join in and they stand in a circle, all of their hands now sealed in that peculiarly intimate way.

Stan is looking at Bill with a kind of urgency; a kind of fear.

'Swuh-Swear to muh-me that you'll c-c-c-come buh-back,' Bill says. 'Swear to me that if lh –Ih-It isn't d-d-dead, you'll cuh-home back.'

'Swear,' Ben said.

'Swear.' Richie.

'Yes — I swear.' Bev.

'Swear it,' Mike Hanlon mutters.

'Yeah. Swear.' Eddie, his voice a thin and reedy whisper.

'I swear too,' Stan whispers, but his voice falters and he looks down as he speaks.

'I-I swuh-swuh-swear.'

That was it; that was all. But they stand there for awhile longer, feeling the power that is in their circle, the closed body that they make. The light paints their faces in pale fading colors; the sun is now gone and sunset is dying. They stand together in a circle as the darkness creeps down into the Barrens, filling up the paths they have walked this summer, the clearings where they have played tag and guns, the secret places along the riverbanks where they have sat and discussed childhood's long questions or smoked Beverly's cigarettes or where they have merely been silent, watching the passage of the clouds reflected in the water. The eye of the day is closing.