Hearts In Atlantis

That made Bobby feel mean-spirited. He looked down at Lord of the Flies again and knew he would be rereading it soon. Perhaps as early as August, if things got boring (by August they usually did, as hard as that was to believe in May). Then he looked up at Sully-John, smiled, and put his arm around S-J’s shoulders. “Well, you’re a lucky duck,” he said.

“Just call me Donald,” Sully-John agreed.

They sat on the bench that way for a little while, arms around each other’s shoulders in those intermittent showers of apple-blossoms, watching the little kids play. Then Sully said he was going to the Sat-urday matinee at the Empire, and he’d better get moving if he didn’t want to miss the previews.

“Why don’t you come, Bobborino? The Black Scorpion’s playing. Monsters galore throughout the store.”

“Can’t, I’m broke,” Bobby said. This was the truth (if you excluded the seven dollars in the Bike Fund jar, that was) and he didn’t want to go to the movies today anyhow, even though he’d heard a kid at school say The Black Scorpion was really great, the scorpions poked their stingers right through people when they killed them and also mashed Mexico City flat.

What Bobby wanted to do was go back to the house and talk to Ted about Lord of the Flies.

“Broke,” Sully said sadly. “That’s a sad fact, Jack. I’d pay your way, but I’ve only got thirty-five cents myself.”

“Don’t sweat it. Hey—where’s your Bo-lo Bouncer?”

Sully looked sadder than ever. “Rubber band snapped. Gone to Bo-lo Heaven, I guess.”

Bobby snickered. Bo-lo Heaven, that was a pretty funny idea. “Gonna buy a new one?”

“I doubt it. There’s a magic kit in Woolworth’s that I want. Sixty different tricks, it says on the box. I wouldn’t mind being a magician when I grow up, Bobby, you know it? Travel around with a carnival or a circus, wear a black suit and a top hat. I’d pull rabbits and shit out of the hat.”

“The rabbits would probably shit in your hat,” Bobby said.

Sully grinned. “But I’d be a cool bastard! Wouldn’t I love to be! At anything!” He got up. “Sure you don’t want to come along? You could probably sneak in past Godzilla.”

Hundreds of kids showed up for the Saturday shows at the Empire, which usually consisted of a creature feature, eight or nine cartoons, Prevues of Coming Attractions, and the MovieTone News. Mrs. God-low went nuts trying to get them to stand in line and shut up, not understanding that on Saturday afternoon you couldn’t get even basi-cally well-behaved kids to act like they were in school. She was also obsessed by the conviction that dozens of kids over twelve were trying to enter at the under-twelve rate; Mrs. G. would have demanded a birth certificate for the Saturday matinees as well as the Brigitte Bardot double features, had she been allowed. Lacking the authority to do that, she settled for barking “WHATYEARYABORN?” to any kid over five and a half feet tall. With all that going on you could some-times sneak past her quite easily, and there was no ticket-ripper on Saturday afternoons. But Bobby didn’t want giant scorpions today; he had spent the last week with more realistic monsters, many of whom had probably looked pretty much like him.

“Nah, I think I’ll just hang around,” Bobby said.

“Okay.” Sully-John scrummed a few apple-blossoms out of his black hair, then looked solemnly at Bobby. “Call me a cool bastard, Big Bob.”

“Sully, you’re one cool bastard.”

“Yes!” Sully-John leaped skyward, punching at the air and laugh-ing. “Yes I am! A cool bastard today! A great big cool bastard of a magician tomorrow! Pow!”

Bobby collapsed against the back of the bench, legs outstretched, sneakers toed in, laughing hard. S-J was just so funny when he got going.

Sully started away, then turned back. “Man, you know what? I saw a couple of weird guys when I came into the park.”

“What was weird about them?”

Sully-John shook his head, looking puzzled. “Don’t know,” he said. “Don’t really know.” Then he headed off, singing “At the Hop.” It was one of his favorites. Bobby liked it, too. Danny and the Juniors were great.

Bobby opened the paperback Ted had given him (it was now look-ing exceedingly well thumbed) and read the last couple of pages again, the part where the adults finally showed up. He began to pon-der it again—happy or sad?—and Sully-John slipped from his mind. It occurred to him later that if S-J had happened to mention that the weird guys he’d seen were wearing yellow coats, some things might have been quite different later on.

“William Golding wrote an interesting thing about that book, one which I think speaks to your concern about the ending . . . want another pop, Bobby?”

Bobby shook his head and said no thanks. He didn’t like rootbeer all that much; he mostly drank it out of politeness when he was with Ted. T hey were sitting at Ted’s kitchen table again, Mrs. O’Hara’s dog was still barking (so far as Bobby could tell, Bowser never stopped barking), and Ted was still smoking Chesterfields. Bobby had peeked in at his mother when he came back from the park, saw she was napping on her bed, and then had hastened up to the third floor to ask Ted about the ending of Lord of the Flies.

Ted crossed to the refrigerator . . . and then stopped, standing there with his hand on the fridge door, staring off into space. Bobby would realize later that this was his first clear glimpse of something about Ted that wasn’t right; that was in fact wrong and going wronger all the time.

“One feels them first in the back of one’s eyes,” he said in a con-versational tone. He spoke clearly; Bobby heard every word.

“Feels what?”

“One feels them first in the back of one’s eyes.” Still staring into space with one hand curled around the handle of the refrigerator, and Bobby began to feel frightened. There seemed to be something in the air, something almost like pollen—it made the hairs inside his nose tingle, made the backs of his hands itch.