He can hear his footfalls echoing back as they rap along the concrete. The only other sound is water rushing hollowly through the stormdrains
3
He rolled Silver out into the driveway, put him on the kickstand, and checked the tires again. The front one was okay but the back one felt a little mushy. He got the bike pump that Mike had bought and firmed it up. When he put the pump back, he checked the playing cards and the clothespins. The bike's wheels still made those exciting machine-gun sounds Bill remembered from his boyhood. Good deal.
You've gone crazy.
Maybe. We'll see.
He went back into Mike's garage again, got the 3-in –l, and oiled the chain and sprocket. Then he stood up, looked at Silver, and gave the bulb of the oogah-horn a light, experimental squeeze. It sounded good. He nodded and went into the house.
4
and he sees all those places again, intact, as they were then: the hulking brick fort of Derry Elementary, the Kissing Bridge with its complex intaglio of initials, high-school sweethearts ready to crack the world open with their passion who had grown up to become insurance agents and car salesmen and waitresses and beauticians; he sees the statue of Paul Bunyan against that bleeding sunset sky and the leaning white fence which ran along the Kansas Street sidewalk at the edge of the Barrens. He sees them as they were, as they always will be in some part of his mind . . . and his heart breaks with love and honor.
Leaving, leaving Derry, he thinks. We are leaving Derry, and if this was a story it would be the last half-dozen pages or so; get ready to put this one up on the shelf and forget it. The sun's going down and there's no sound but my footfalls and the water in the drains. This is the time of
5
Dialing for Dollars had given way to Wheel of Fortune. Audra sat passively in front of it, her eyes never leaving the set. Her demeanor did not change when Bill snapped the TV off.
'Audra,' he said, going to her and taking her hand. 'Come on.'
She didn't move. Her hand lay in his, warm wax. Bill took her other hand from the arm of Mike's chair and pulled her to her feet. He had dressed her that morning much as he had dressed himself — she was wearing Levis and a blue shell top. She would have looked quite lovely if not for her wide-eyed vacant stare.
'Cuh-come on,' he said again, and led her through the door, into Mike's kitchen and, eventually, outside. She came willingly enough . . . although she would have plunged off the back porch stoop and gone sprawling in the dirt if Bill had not put an arm around her waist and guided her down the steps.
He led her over to where Silver stood heeled over on his kick-stand in th e bright summer noonlight. Audra stood beside the bike, looking serenely at the side of Mike's garage.
'Get on, Audra.'
She didn't move. Patiently, Bill worked at getting her to swing one of her long legs over the carrier mounted on Silver's back fender. At last she stood there with the package carrier between her legs, not quite touching her crotch. Bill pressed his hand lightly to the top of her head and Audra sat down.
He swung onto Silver's saddle and put up the kickstand with his heel. He prepared to reach behind him for Audra's hands and draw them around his middle, but before he could do it they crept around him of their own accord, like small dazed mice.
He looked down at them, his heart beating faster, seeming to pump in his throat as much as in his chest. It was the first independent action Audra had taken all week, so far as he knew . . . the first independent action she had taken since It happened . . . whatever It had been.
'Audra?'
There was no answer. He tried to crane his neck around and see her but couldn't quite make it. There were only her hands around his waist, the nails showing the last chips of a red polish that had been put on by a bright, lively, talented young woman in a small English town.
'We're going for a ride,' Bill said, and he began to roll Silver forward toward Palmer Lane, listening to the gravel crunch under the tires. 'I want you to hold on, Audra. I think . . . I think I may go sort of f-f-fast.'
If I don't lose my guts.
He thought of the kid he had met earlier during his stay in Derry, when It had still been happening. You can't be careful on a skateboard, the kid had said.
Truer words were never spoken, kid.
'Audra? You ready?'
No answer. Had her hands tightened the tiniest bit across his middle? Probably just wishful thinking.
He reached the end of the driveway and looked right. Palmer Lane ran straight to Upper Main Street, where a left turn would take him onto the hill running downtown. Downhill. Picking up speed. He felt a tremor of fear at the image, and a disquieting thought
(old bones break easy, Billy-boy)
ran through his mind almost too quickly to read and was gone. But . . .
But it wasn't all disquiet, was it? No. It was desire as well . . . the feeling he'd had when he saw the kid walking along with the skateboard under his arm. The desire to go fast, to feel the wind race past you without knowing if you were racing toward or running away from, to just go. To fly.
Disquiet and desire. All the difference between world and want — the difference between being an adult who counted the cost and a child who just got on it and went, for instance. All the world between. Yet not that much difference at all. Bedfellows, really. The way you felt when the roller –coaster car approached the top of the first steep grade, where the ride really begins.
Disquiet and desire. What you want and what you're scared to try for. Where you've been and where you want to go. Something in a rock-and –roll song about wanting the girl, the car, the place to stand and be. Oh please God can you dig it.
Bill closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the soft dead weight of his wife behind him, feeling the hill somewhere ahead of him, feeling his own heart inside him.
Be brave, be true, stand.
He began to push Silver forward again. 'You want to rock and roll a little, Audra?'
No answer. But that was all right. He was ready.
'Hold on, then.'
He began to pedal. It was hard going at first. Silver wobbled alarmingly back and forth, Audra's weight adding to the imbalance . . . yet she must be doing some balancing, even unconsciously, or they would have crashed right away. Bill stood on the pedals, hands squeezing the handlegrips with maniacal tightness, his head turned skyward, his eyes slits, the cords on his neck standing out.
Gonna fall splat right here in the street, split her skull and mine —
(no you ain't go for it Bill go for it go for the son of a bitch)
He stood on the pedals, revolving them, feeling every cigarette he'd smoked over the last twenty years in his elevated blood-pressure and the race of his heart. Fuck that, too! he thought, and the rush of crazy exhilaration made him grin.
The playing cards, which had been firing isolated shots, now began to click-clock faster. They were new, nice new Bikes, and they made a good loud sound. Bill felt the first touch of breeze on his bald pate, and his grin widened. I made that breeze, he thought. I made it bypumping these damn pedals.
The STOP sign at the end of the lane was coming up. Bill began to brake . . . and then (his grin still widening, showing more and more of his teeth) he began to pump again.