It

The boy reluctantly shook his head.

'Did you ever hear those voices again?'

'Once when I was taking a bath,' the boy said. 'It was a girl's voice. Just crying. No words. I was ascared to pull the plug when I was done because I thought I might, you know, drownd her.'

Bill nodded again.

The kid was looking at Bill openly now, his eyes shining and fascinated. 'You know about those voices, mister?'

'I heard them,' Bill said. 'A long, long time ago. Did you know any of the k-kids that have been murdered here, son?'

The shine went out of the kid's eyes; it was replaced by caution and disquiet. 'My dad says I'm not supposed to talk to strangers. He says anybody could be that killer.' He took an additional step away from Bill, moving into the dappled shade of an elm tree that Bill had once driven his bike into twenty-seven years ago. He had taken a spill and bent his handlebars.

'Not me, kid,' he said. 'I've been in England for the last four months. I just got into Derry yesterday.'

'I still don't have to talk to you,' the kid replied.

'That's right,' Bill agreed. 'It's a f-f-free country.'

He paused and then said, 'I used to pal around with Johnny Feury some of the time. He was a good kid. I cried,' the boy finished matter-of-factly, and slurped down the rest of his Freeze –Pop. As an afterthought he ran out his tongue, which was temporarily bright orange, and lapped off his arm.

'Keep away from the sewers and drains,' Bill said quietly. 'Keep away from empty places and deserted places. Stay out of trainyards. But most of all, stay away from the sewers and the drains.'

The shine was back in the kid's eyes, and he said nothing for a very long time. Then: 'Mister? You want to hear something funny?'

'Sure.'

'You know that movie where the shark ate all the people up?'

'Everyone does. J-J– Jaws'

'Well, I got this friend, you know? His name's Tommy Vicananza, and he's not that bright. Toys in the attic, you get what I mean?'

'Yeah.'

'He thinks he saw that shark in the Canal. He was up there by himself in Bassey Park a couple of weeks ago, an d he said he seen this fin. He says it was eight or nine feet tall. Just the fin was that tall, you get me? He goes, "That's what killed Johnny and the other kids. It was Jaws, I know because I saw it." So I go, "That Canal's so polluted nothing could live in it, not even a minnow. And you think you saw Jaws in there. You got toys in the attic, Tommy." Tommy says it reared right out of the water like it did at the end of that movie and tried to bite him and he just got back in time. Pretty funny, huh, mister?'

'Pretty funny,' Bill agreed.

'Toys in the attic, right?'

Bill hesitated. 'Stay away from the Canal too, son. You follow?'

'You mean you believe it?'

Bill hesitated. He meant to shrug. Instead he nodded.

The kid let out his breath in a low, hissing rush. He hung his head as if ashamed. 'Yeah. Sometimes I think I must have toys in the attic.'

'I know what you mean.' Bill walked over to the kid, who glanced up at him solemnly but didn't shy away this time. 'You're killing your knees on that board, son.'

The kid glanced down at his scabby knees and grinned. 'Yeah, I guess so. I bail out sometimes.'

'Can I try it?' Bill asked suddenly.

The kid looked at him, gape-mouthed at first, then laughing. 'That'd be funny,' he said. 'I never saw a grownup on a skateboard.'

'I'll give you a quarter,' Bill said.

'My dad said — '

'Never take money or c-candy from strangers. Good advice. I'll still give you a q-quarter. What do you say? Just to the corner of Juh-Jackson Street.'

'Never mind the quarter,' the kid said. He burst into laughter again — a gay and uncomplicated sound. A fresh sound. 'I don't need your quarter. I got two bucks. I'm practically rich. I got to see this, though. Just don't blame me if you break something.'

'Don't worry,' Bill said. 'I'm insured.'

He turned one of the skateboard's scuffed wheels with his finger, liking the speedy ease with which it turned — it sounded like there was about a million ball-bearings in there. It was a good sound. It called up something very old in Bill's chest. Some desire as warm as want, as lovely as love. He smiled.

'What do you think?' the kid asked.

'I think I'm g-gonna kill myself,' Bill said, and the kid laughed.

Bill put the skateboard on th e sidewalk and put one foot on it. He rolled it back and forth experimentally. The kid watched. In his mind Bill saw himself rolling down Witcham Street toward Jackson on the kid's avocado– green skateboard, the tails of his sport– coat ballooning out behind him, his bald head gleaming in the sun, his knees bent in that fragile way snowbunnies bend their knees their first day on the slopes. It was a posture that told you that in their heads they were already falling down. He bet the kid didn't ride the board like that. He bet the kid rode

(to beat the devil)

like there was no tomorrow.

That good feeling died out of his chest. He saw, all too clearly, the board going out from under his feet, shooting unencumbered down the street, an improbable fluorescent green, a color that only a child could love. He saw himself coming down on his ass, maybe on his back. Slow dissolve to a private room at the Derry Home Hospital, like the one they had visited Eddie in after his arm had been broken. Bill Denbrough in a full body-cast, one leg held up by pullies and wires. A doctor comes in, looks at his chart, looks at him, and then says: 'You were guilty of two major lapses, Mr Denbrough. The first was mismanagement of a skateboard. The second was forgetting that yo u are now approaching forty years of age.'

He bent, picked the skateboard back up, and handed it back to the kid. 'I guess not,' he said.

'Chicken,' the kid said, not unkindly.

Bill hooked his thumbs into his armpits and flapped his elbows. 'Buck-buck-buck,' he said.

The kid laughed. 'Listen, I got to get home.'

'Be careful on that,' Bill said.

'You can't be careful on a skateboard,' the kid replied, looking at Bill as if he might be the one with toys in the attic.

'Right,' Bill said. 'Okay. As we say in the movie biz, I hear you. But stay away from drams and sewers. And stay with your friends.'

The kid nodded. 'I'm right near home.'

So was my brother, Bill thought.

'It'll be over soon, anyway,' Bill told the kid.

'Will it?' the kid asked.

'I think so,' Bill said.

'Okay. See you later . . . chicken!'

The kid put one foot on the board and pushed off with the other. Once he was rolling he put the other foot on the board as well and went thundering down the street at what seemed to Bill a suicidal pace. But he rode as Bill had suspected he would: with lazy hipshot grace. Bill felt love for the boy, and exhilaration, and a desire to be the boy, along with an almost suffocating fear. The boy rode as if there were no such things as death or getting older. The boy seemed somehow eternal and ineluctable in his khaki Boy Scout shorts and scuffed sneakers, his ankles sockless and quite dirty, his hair flying back behind him.

Watch out, kid, you're not going to make the comer! Bill thought, alarmed, but the kid shot his hips to the left like a break-dancer, his toes revolved on the green Fiberglas board, and he zoomed effortlessly around the corner and onto Jackson Street, simply assuming no one would be there to get in his way. Kid, Bill thought, it won't always be that way.

He walked up to his old house but did not stop; he only slowed his walk down to an idler's pace. There were people on the lawn — a mother in a lawn chair, a sleeping baby in her arms, watching two kids, maybe ten and eight, play badminton in grass that was still wet from the rain earlier. The younger of the two, a boy, managed to hit the bird back over the net and the woman called, 'Good one, Scan!'