Friday morning. Teddy and Vern were carpooling with the DeSpain twins again, and Gordie, Chris, and I were forced to hoof it. It wasn't a big deal, but I still kind of missed 'em.
"I'm staying over at Gordo's tonight. Are we still on?" Chris asked me. I had begged Pop for a free Friday and nothing was going to stop me from going over to the Royal River and seeing things for myself.
"You bet." I said. Chris held his hand out and that was when I learned how to "skin" someone. I rubbed my palm across his and we smiled at each other.
"You sure your mom's okay with it?" Gordie asked.
"Of course. It's perfect." I said. I wished I hadn't been so cocky.
In US History I was sitting in front of Mr. Carter's desk once again. It's not that I was afraid of Ace and Eyeball. Lord knows I'd done enough stuff to them to deserve a stout beating, but they'd never touched me. Not unless you count Eyeball tripping me in class. It was nowhere near the stuff they usually did.
I sneaked a few peeks at Ace when the occasion allowed for it, and he always managed to catch my eye every single time. He didn't smile at me like he used to. That smile where he thought he was better than me.
If I was seeing things clearly, I would have sworn that what I saw in his eyes was compassion. Could that be right? Ace didn't seem the type to empathize with anyone.
When the lunch bell rang, I headed straight for the tree. It had become my tree now, because I'd spent enough time against its trunk and shielded by its foliage for us to be on personal terms. That, and the fact that we'd faced a few Cobras together.
As if summoned by my private thoughts, Ace sat down next to me against the tree, taking a drag of smoke.
"Don't you ever eat?" He asked. I wondered what he wanted. I didn't have any more money to spare, and I was pretty sure he wasn't going to hurt me by now. What, were we friends, or something?
"Don't you ever let up?" I replied. My thoughts, when they weren't betraying me by showing images of Ace, were often on Ray Brower and his missing bucket. And the 30 miles he'd traveled.
Ace didn't say anything, and we somehow shared a few relatively peaceful moments under the shade of that tree. Since I wasn't really afraid of him anymore, and since I wasn't as hellishly mad at him as I had been, I didn't really mind his company. At least he was closer to my age than Gordie.
"Thanks." I said. I didn't know why Ace was beside me, and I doubted he even knew. But at some point I'd realized that telling him my shameful secret had suddenly freed me. Ace knew my secret, and I was pretty sure he'd kept it to himself. No one had treated me any differently thus far.
He was my confessor, and for that reason I began to feel comfortable in his presence.
"For what?" He asked, skeptically. I could tell that was his natural response and I didn't push it by explaining my gratitude. I'm pretty sure he knew at least that.
"Forget it. But don't think this means I'm not still pissed about my cousin. Ray Brower, or no Ray Brower." I said. I should have kept my mouth shut but Ray Brower's very name was like saying 'open sesame' to a magic cave of fury.
"They fuckin' told you about that?" He said.
"Yeah, they fucking did. Did you ever stop and think that maybe once that Ray Brower kid was alive? That he skinned his knees and said his prayers and had a mother back home who missed him like crazy?" I said. I was on the verge of becoming hysterical, but Ace was as calm and cool as iced tea.
"People die all the time." Ace told me. I felt a chill go down my spine. Did nothing rattle him? Was nothing ever sacred or beautiful? I remembered the other night when he'd told me my parents' getting a divorce wasn't my fault. The kindness in his voice...maybe I had imagined it. Maybe I'd imagined the compassion in his eyes during class today, too.
I swallowed a fierce lump in my throat and I couldn't even try to stop my eyes welling up with tears. I slowly turned away, because I'd be damned before I let cold-as-ice Merrill see me cry.
"It's not like you knew the kid." Ace said. He looked visibly annoyed that I was crying.
"What if I had known him? That kid was somebody's best friend. Somebody's son." I said, brushing a few tears away.
"Will you get off your high horse? You don't give a shit about that kid any more than I do." Ace said.
I didn't respond, even though I wanted to scream that I did care. But a part of me wondered if he was right. That maybe I only really cared because there was a mysterious element to this Ray Brower thing. Like a case to be solved straight out of a Nancy Drew novel.
I cared because I wanted to be a hero, too.
And that didn't make me any better than Ace or the rest of his gang.
"Maybe you're right." I said.
We were supposed to meet right after school so we could head on to Harlow as soon as possible, but my conversation with Ace Merrill had dampened my spirits, and my resolve to go.
Funny how I'd barely spoken to the guy, but he was on to my bullshit like flies to a dungheap.
We stopped off at my house to gather a few provisions together, since I was the type of person to bring everything but the kitchen sink. In the midst of filling my backpack with a first-aid kit, my mother started sniffing around for details.
"Where are you guys headed?" Mom asked us.
Gordie and Chris were helping me by making sandwiches at the kitchen table for us to take on our little field trip to Back Harlow Road. But we hadn't exactly thought of a game plan for what to tell our parents.
"The guys are gonna show me around Castle Rock. You know, the stuff where you hike and sweat and see nature's beauty and junk." I said. My mother wrinkled her nose at my choice of words.
"Brenda Marlene, I really wish you wouldn't use such vulgar phrases like that. Especially around these impressionable young men." Mom said. I rolled my eyes and Gordie hid a smile.
"Excuse me. We're seeing nature's beauty and...stuff?" I tried again. Mom sighed and kissed me on the cheek right before she headed out of the kitchen.
"Be home for dinner. I've invited the Carmodys." I heard her say from the hall.
"Shit." I muttered. Chris and Gordie erupted with laughter until I threatened to backhand them with a frozen game hen from the freeze box.
"That probably means we'll have to hitch." Chris said.
"That's all we'll have time for." I said, glumly. Having to be back by dinnertime gave us 3 or 4 hours at most. Driving in a car to Harlow and back would be almost 2 hours by itself, or so I was told. I wondered if there was even any good point in going anymore.
"Don't worry about it, Brenda. If you're late, so what? It's not like she's can ground you from seeing Clarence." Gordie said.
"Yeah, 'cause he really is the Invisible Man." Chris said. He and Gordie had another round of laughter at my expense and I made sure to leave the wrapper on their cheese slices inside their sandwiches.
Bon appetit, boys, I thought.
With my satchel across my back, the boys and I held out our thumbs in search of a kind Samaritan who wouldn't mind toting us to the Royal River. We were walking by the side of the road on Route 7 headed out of town, hoping to make it as far as Shiloh Church. In about ten minutes' time we had only encountered 2 cars.
"This blows." I said.
"Now, Brenda..." Gordie began in a perfect imitation of my mother's voice. The three of us nearly bust a gut.
I was having a blast, but at the same time, I felt like we were wasting a golden opportunity. But I didn't want to just mention Ray Brower when we were having such a good time together.
I was finally starting to feel like I belonged here. Like Castle Rock wasn't just a pit stop on the road of my life.
"Man, you should've seen my Aunt's face when my old man cussed out my neighbor's dog." Gordie said. I began to giggle at the memory.
"Spotty had taken a shit on the newspaper again..." Gordie continued. He didn't even have to finish. The image of my mother fainting at the neverending stream of expletives spewing forth from my Uncle was already firmly in my mind. She didn't actually faint, but I bet she wanted to.
Not long after Gordie finished the Spotty story, someone in an old brown pickup came to our rescue and let us hang tight in the back next to a few bales of hay. It was itchy and uncomfortable, but I was so grateful we'd found a ride that I didn't even care.
When the scenery changed and there was a lot more woods than houses and people, Gordie and Chris became very quiet and retrospective. I had no idea how they really felt about coming back so soon, but neither of them looked very calm about it. Chris was chewing on his thumbnail and Gordie kept picking at a scab.
"Are we close?" I asked. Chris nodded, still lost in his own thoughts. A few minutes later I could see part of a set of train tracks through the trees. Chris knocked on the side of the truck and the driver slowed down so we could hop off.
"Thanks, mister." We said as we piled out of the truck, picking the strings of hay from our clothes and hair.
The boys led me further into the woods and we were suddenly overlooking part of the river. Directly underneath us was a solid 4 foot dropoff onto the banks of the Royal River. If they hadn't stopped me, I would've walked right over it and broken an ankle.
"Is this the place?" I said. I was worried that the boys hadn't said anything since we'd arrived, and I had no idea where to start looking for a steel bucket.
As it stood, the boys were pretty much paralyzed near the brushes at the edge of the wood. This had to have been one of the worst ideas I'd ever put to action.
They were staring at a certain spot near the brush that had the slightest impression of weight, as if a few people had walked over that one place to create the dent. It struck me that the spot was probably where the boys had discovered Ray Brower a couple of weeks ago.
There was no blood, no caution tape like you see in movies today, or even a sign that anything major had happened in that place near the brush. I could have sat in the very same area for a picnic and never even known anything was odd. I imagined myself eating the last watermelon of the summer season, spitting seeds where a boy had been thrown after being hit by the GS & WM to Derry. And never knowing a goddamn thing.
I walked around the brush and made wide circles around the area looking for the bucket. The bucket was what I had come there to find, not the temporary resting place of a boy I hadn't known. Ace was right, and that really pissed me off. I was beginning to drift farther and farther away from the boys, and the place they'd found poor Ray.
But the bucket was absolutely nowhere in sight.
Even in the bright sunshine of a mid-September Friday afternoon, nothing was visible to the eye except what one would normally expect to find in a clearing in the forest.
I was beginning to sweat by the time I'd finally made it to the train tracks. The boys were moving around idly, halfheartedly searching for something they probably no longer wanted to find. I glanced over at them and sighed, wishing we had spent the day playing 3-penny scat in the Clubhouse instead. Teddy and Vern were probably there now, trying to earn a few cents off the DeSpain twins in blackjack.
I wiped the sweat from my brow and I noticed just how far it was from the tracks over to where Gordie and Chris were standing. I mean, it wasn't far in terms of walking. Gordie and Chris could probably hear every word from me without my ever having to raise my voice. But it was a pretty damn far piece from the tracks in terms of a thrown dead body.
So many things I wanted to ask, so many things I wanted to talk through with the guys...but I kept my mouth shut. This was one instance where I absolutely hated having a wild imagination. I had just witnessed at least 3 scenarios of Ray Brower's final moments in my head, and none of them were kid-friendly.
"As fun as this is playing bucket, bucket, who's got the bucket...I think we need to get the hell out of here." I said finally.
Gordie and Chris had since stopped looking and they glanced at me with grim compliance. They probably would have stayed out here until I was good and ready to leave, but none of this felt right. And they knew it.
It had gotten late and we hadn't realized it. We were a little too numb to do all the right things, like eat and drink plenty of water, and find a clean person to drive us back to Castle Rock.
We followed the tracks of the GS & WM all the way from Harlow never really saying much of anything. When the moon rose up behind me and began to cast eerie shadows of myself and my companions, I finally grasped what time it was.
"Holy shit. The Carmodys." I said.
Chris and Gordie looked at each other as if coming out of a daze, suddenly snickering as if we hadn't all been silent for the last several hours.
"It'll be all right." Chris said. He smirked at Gordie.
"Yeah, you could just tell your mom we ran into Clarence or something." Gordie said. I rolled my eyes but Chris and Gordie were laughing like they'd just heard their first "your mama" joke or something.
"Abbott and fucking Costello...go piss up a rope." I said.