6
The Barrens / 12:40 P.M.
over her shoulder for any sign of them as she slipped and scrambled her way down the embankment. No sign, at least not yet. She had 'really fetched it to him,' as her father sometimes said . . . and just thinking of her father brought another wave of guilt and despondency washing over her.
She looked under the rickety bridge, hoping to see Silver heeled over on his side, but Silver was gone. There was a cache of toy guns which they no longer bothered to take home, and that was all. She started down the path, looked back . . . and there they were, Belch and Victor supporting Henry between them, standing on the edge of the embankment like Indian sentries in a Randolph Scott movie. Henry was horribly pale. He pointed at her. Victor and Belch began to help him down the slope. Dirt and gravel spilled from beneath their heels.
Beverly looked at them for a long moment, almost hypnotized. Then she turned and sprinted through the trickle of brook-water that ran out from under the bridge, ignoring Ben's stepping-stones, her sneakers spraying out flat sheets of water. She ran down the path, the breath hot in her throat. She could feel the muscles in her legs trembling. She didn't have much left now. The clubhouse. If she could get there, she might still be safe.
She ran along the path, branches whipping even more color into her cheeks, one striking her eye and making it water. She cut to the right, blundered through tangles of underbrush, and came out into the clearing. Both the camouflaged trapdoor and the slit window stood open; rock n roll drifted up. At the sound of her approach, Ben Hanscom popped up. He had a box of Junior Mints in one hand and an Archie comic book in the other.
He got a good look at Bev and his mouth fell open. Under other circumstances it would have been almost funny. 'Bev, what the hell -
She didn't bother replying. Behind her, and not too far behind, either, she could hear branches snapping and whipping; there was a muffled shouted curse. It sounded as if Henry was getting livelier. So she just ran at the square trapdoor opening, her hair, tangled now with green leaves and twigs as well as the crud from her scramble under the garbage truck, streaming out behind her.
Ben saw she was coming in like the 101st Airborne and disappeared as quickly as he had come out. Beverly jumped and he caught her clumsily.
'Shut everything,' she panted. 'Hurry up, Ben, for heaven's sake! They're coming!'
'Who?'
'Henry and his friends! Henry's gone crazy, he's got a knife - '
That was enough for Ben. He dropped his Junior Mints and his funny book. He pulled the trapdoor shut with a grunt. The top was covered with sods; Tangle-Track was still holding them remarkably well. A few blocks of sod had gotten a little loose, but that was all. Beverly stood on tiptoe and closed the window. They were in darkness.
She groped for Ben, found him, and hugged him with panicky tightness. After a moment he hugged her back. They were both on their knees. With sudden horror Beverly realized that Richie's transistor radio was still playing somewhere in the blackness: Little Richard singing 'The Girl Can't Help It.'
'Ben . . . the radio . . . they'll hear . . . '
'Oh God!'
He bunted her with one meaty hip and almost knocked her sprawling in the dark. She heard the radio fall to the floor. 'The girl can't help it if the menfolks stop and stare,' Little Richard informed them with his customary hoarse enthusiasm. 'Can't help it!' the back-up group testified, 'the girl can't help it!' Ben was panting now, too. They sounded like a couple of steam-engines. Suddenly there was a crunch . . . and silence.
'Oh shit,' Ben said. 'I just squashed it. Richie's gonna have a bird.' He reached for her in the dark. She felt his hand touch one of her breasts, then jerk away, as if burned. She groped for him, got hold of his shirt, and drew him close.
'Beverly, what - '
'Shhh!'
He quieted. They sat together, arms around each other, looking up. The darkness was not quite perfect; there was a narrow line of light down one side of the trapdoor, and three others outlined the slit window. One of these three was wide enought to let a slanted ray of sunlight fall into the clubhouse. She could only pray they wouldn't see it.
She could hear them approaching. At first she couldn't make out the words . . . and then she could. Her grip on Ben tightened.
'If she went into the bamboo, we can pick up her trail easy,' Victor was saying.
'They play around here,' Henry replied. His voice was strained, his words emerging in little puffs, as if with great effort. 'Boogers Taliendo said so. And the day we had that rockfight, they were coming from here.'
'Yeah, they play guns and stuff,' Belch said.
Suddenly there were thudding footfalls right above them; the sod-covered cap vibrated up and down. Dirt sifted onto Beverly's upturned face. One, two, maybe even all three of them were standing on top of the clubhouse. A cramp laced her belly; she had to bite down against a cry. Ben put one big hand on the side of her face and pressed it against his arm as he looked up, waiting to see if they would guess . . . or if they knew already and were just playing games.
'They got a place,' Henry was saying. 'That's what Boogers told me. Some kind of a treehouse or something. They call it their club.'
'I'll club em, if they want a club,' Victor said. Belch uttered a thunderous heehawing of laughter at this.
Thump, thump, thump, overhead. The cap moved up and down a little more this time. Surely they would notice it; ordinary ground just didn't have that kind of give.
'Let's look down by the river,' Henry said. 'I bet she's down there.'
'Okay,' Victor said.
Thump, thump. They were moving off. Bev let a little sigh of relief trickle through her clamped teeth . . . and then Henry said: 'You stay here and guard the path, Belch.'
'Okay,' Belch said, and he began to march back and forth, sometimes leaving the cap, sometimes coming back across it. More dirt sifted down. Ben and Beverly looked at each other with strained, dirty faces. Bev became aware that there was more than the smell of smoke in the clubhouse - a sweaty, garbag stink was rising as well. That's me, she thought dismally. In spite of the smell she hugged Ben even tighter. His bulk seemed suddenly very welcome, very comforting, and she was glad there was a lot of him to hug. He might have been nothing but a frightened fat-boy when school let out for the summer, but he was more than that now; like all of them, he had changed. If Belch discovered them down here, Ben just might give him a surprise.
'I'll club em if they want a club,' Belch said, and chuckled. A Belch Huggins chuckle was a low, troll-like sound. 'Club em if they want a club. That's good. That's pretty much okey-dokey.'
She became aware that Ben's upper body was heaving up and down in short, sharp movements; he was pulling air into his lungs and letting it out in sharp little bursts. For one alarmed moment she thought he was starting to cry, and then she got a closer look at his face and realized he was struggling against laughter. His eyes, leaking tears, caught hers, rolled madly, and looked away. In the faint light which leaked in through the cracks around the closed trapdoor and the window, she could see his face was nearly purple with the strain of holding it in.
'Club em if they want an ole clubby-dubby,' Belch said, and sat down heavily right in the center of the cap. This time the roof trembled more alarmingly, and Bev heard a low but ominous crrrack from one of the supports. The cap had been meant to support the chunks of camouflaging sod laid on top of it . . . but not the added one hundred and sixty pounds of Belch Huggins's weight.