Hearts In Atlantis

“You flatter yourself . . . and you overestimate your importance to the King.”

“Do I? I wonder. Until the Beams break, the Dark Tower stands— surely I don’t need to remind you of that. Is one boy worth the risk?”

Bobby hadn’t the slightest idea what Ted was talking about and didn’t care. All he knew was that the course of his life was being decided on the sidewalk outside a Bridgeport billiard parlor. He could hear the rustle of the low men’s coats; he could smell them; now that Ted had touched him again he could feel them even more clearly. That horrible itching behind his eyes had begun again, too. In a weird way it harmonized with the buzzing in his head. The black specks drifted across his vision and he was suddenly sure what they meant, what they were for. In Clifford Simak’s book Ring Around the Sun, it was a top that took you off into other worlds; you fol-lowed the rising spirals. In truth, Bobby suspected, it was the specks that did it. The black specks. They were alive . . .

And they were hungry.

“Let the boy decide,” the leader of the low men said at last. His liv-ing branch of a finger caressed the back of Bobby’s neck again. “He loves you so much, Teddy. You’re his te-ka. Aren’t you? That means destiny’s friend, Bobby-O. Isn’t that what this old smoky-smelling Teddy-bear is to you? Your destiny’s friend?”

Bobby said nothing, only pressed his cold throbbing face against Ted’s shirt. He now repented coming here with all his heart—would have stayed home hiding under his bed if he had known the truth of the low men—but yes, he supposed Ted was his te-ka. He didn’t know about stuff like destiny, he was only a kid, but Ted was his friend. Guys like us, Bobby thought miserably. Guys like us.

“So how do you feel now that you see us?” the low man asked. “Would you like to come with us so you can be close to good old Ted? Perhaps see him on the odd weekend? Discuss literature with your dear old te-ka? Learn to eat what we eat and drink what we drink?” The awful fingers again, caressing. The buzzing in Bobby’s head increased. The black specks fattened and now they looked like fin-gers—beckoning fingers. “We eat it hot, Bobby,” the low man whis- pered. “And drink it hot as well. Hot . . . and sweet. Hot . . . and sweet.”

“Stop it,” Ted snapped.

“Or would you rather stay with your mother?” the crooning voice went on, ignoring Ted. “Surely not. Not a boy of your principles. Not a boy who has discovered the joys of friendship and literature. Surely you’ll come with this wheezy old ka-mai, won’t you? Or will you? Decide, Bobby. Do it now, and knowing that what you decide is what will bide. Now and forever.”

Bobby had a delirious memory of the lobsterback cards blurring beneath McQuown’s long white fingers: Now they go, now they slow, now they rest, here’s the test.

I fail, Bobby thought. I fail the test.

“Let me go, mister,” he said miserably. “Please don’t take me with you.”

“Even if it means your te-ka has to go on without your wonderful and revivifying company?” The voice was smiling, but Bobby could almost taste the knowing contempt under its cheery surface, and he shivered. With relief, because he understood he was probably going to be let free after all, with shame because he knew what he was doing—crawling, chintzing, chickening out. All the things the good guys in the movies and books he loved never did. But the good guys in the movies and books never had to face anything like the low men in the yellow coats or the horror of the black specks. And what Bobby saw of those things here, outside The Corner Pocket, was not the worst of it either. What if he saw the rest? What if the black specks drew him into a world where he saw the men in the yellow coats as they really were? What if he saw the shapes inside the ones they wore in this world?

“Yes,” he said, and began to cry.

“Yes what?”

“Even if he has to go without me.”

“Ah. And even if it means going back to your mother?”

“Yes.”

“You perhaps understand your bitch of a mother a little better now, do you?”

“Yes,” Bobby said for the third time. By now he was nearly moan-ing. “I guess I do.”

“That’s enough,” Ted said. “Stop it.”

But the voice wouldn’t. Not yet. “You’ve learned how to be a cow-ard, Bobby . . . haven’t you?”

“Yes!” he cried, still with his face against Ted’s shirt. “A baby, a little chickenshit baby, yes yes yes! I don’t care! Just let me go home!” He drew in a great long unsteady breath and let it out in a scream. “I WANT MYMOTHER!” It was the howl of a terrified littlun who has finally glimpsed the beast from the water, the beast from the air.

“All right,” the low man said. “Since you put it that way. Assum-ing your Teddy-bear confirms that he’ll go to work with a will and not have to be chained to his oar as previously.”

“I promise.” Ted let go of Bobby. Bobby remained as he was, clutching Ted with panicky tightness and pushing his face against Ted’s chest, until Ted pushed him gently away.

“Go inside the poolhall, Bobby. Tell Files to give you a ride home. Tell him if he does that, my friends will leave him alone.”

“I’m sorry, Ted. I wanted to come with you. I meant to come with you. But I can’t. I’m so sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be hard on yourself.” But Ted’s look was heavy, as if he knew that from tonight on Bobby would be able to be nothing else.

Two of the yellowcoats grasped Ted’s arms. Ted looked at the one standing behind Bobby—the one who had been caressing the nape of Bobby’s neck with that horrible sticklike finger. “They don’t need to do that, Cam. I’ll walk.”