Hearts In Atlantis

“Let him go,” Cam said. The low men holding Ted released his arms. Then, for the last time, Cam’s finger touched the back of Bobby’s neck. Bobby uttered a choked wail. He thought, If he does it again I’ll go crazy, I won’t be able to help it. I’ll start to scream and I won’t be able to stop. Even if my head bursts open I’ll go on scream-ing. “Get inside there, little boy. Do it before I change my mind and take you anyway.”

Bobby stumbled toward The Corner Pocket. The door stood open but empty. He climbed the single step, then turned back. Three of the low men were clustered around Ted, but Ted was walking toward the blood-clot DeSoto on his own.

“Ted!”

Ted turned, smiled, started to wave. T hen the one called Cam leaped forward, seized him, whirled him, and thrust him into the car. As Cam swung the DeSoto’s back door shut Bobby saw, for just an instant, an incredibly tall, incredibly scrawny being standing inside a long yellow coat, a thing with flesh as white as new snow and lips as red as fresh blood. Deep in its eyesockets were savage points of light and dancing flecks of darkness in pupils which swelled and contracted as Ted’s had done. T he red lips peeled back, revealing needly teeth that put the alleycat’s to shame. A black tongue lolled out from between those teeth and wagged an obscene goodbye. Then the crea-ture in the yellow coat sprinted around the hood of the purple DeSoto, thin legs gnashing, thin knees pumping, and plunged in behind the wheel. Across the street the Olds started up, its engine sounding like the roar of an awakening dragon. Perhaps it was a dragon. From its place skewed halfway across the sidewalk, the Cadillac’s engine did the same. Living headlights flooded this part of Narragansett Avenue in a pulsing glare. The DeSoto skidded in a U-turn, one fenderskirt scraping up a brief train of sparks from the street, and for a moment Bobby saw Ted’s face in the DeSoto’s back window. Bobby raised his hand and waved. He thought Ted raised his own in return but could not be sure. Once more his head filled with a sound like hoofbeats. He never saw Ted Brautigan again.

“Bug out, kid,” Len Files said. His face was cheesy-white, seeming to hang off his skull the way the flesh hung off his sister’s upper arms. Behind him the lights of the Gottlieb machines in the little arcade flashed and flickered with no one to watch them; the cool cats who made an evening specialty of Corner Pocket pinball were clustered behind Len Files like children. To Len’s right were the pool and bil-liard players, many of them clutching cues like clubs. Old Gee stood off to one side by the cigarette machine. He didn’t have a pool-cue; from one gnarled old hand there hung a small automatic pistol. It didn’t scare Bobby. After Cam and his yellowcoat friends, he didn’t think anything would have the power to scare him right now. For the time being he was all scared out.

“Put an egg in your shoe and beat it, kid. Now.”

“Better do it, kiddo.” That was Alanna, standing behind the desk. Bobby glanced at her and thought, If I was older I bet I’d give you something. I bet I would. She saw his glance—the quality of his glance—and looked away, flushed and frightened and confused.

Bobby looked back at her brother. “You want those guys back here?”

Len’s hanging face grew even longer. “You kidding?”

“Okay then,” Bobby said. “Give me what I want and I’ll go away. You’ll never see me again.” He paused. “Or them.”

“Whatchu want, kid?” Old Gee asked in his wavering voice. Bobby was going to get whatever he asked for; it was flashing in Old Gee’s mind like a big bright sign. That mind was as clear now as it had been when it had belonged to Young Gee, cold and calculating and unpleasant, but it seemed innocent after Cam and his regulators. Innocent as ice cream.

“A ride home,” Bobby said. “That’s number one.” Then—speak-ing to Old Gee rather than Len—he gave them number two.

Len’s car was a Buick: big, long, and new. Vulgar but not low. Just a car. The two of them rode to the sound of danceband music from the forties. Len spoke only once during the trip to Harwich. “Don’t you go tuning that to no rock and roll. I have to listen to enough of that shit at work.”

They drove past the Asher Empire, and Bobby saw there was a life-sized cardboard cutout of Brigitte Bardot standing to the left of the ticket booth. He glanced at it without very much interest. He felt too old for B.B. now.

They turned off Asher; the Buick slipped down Broad Street Hill like a whisper behind a cupped hand. Bobby pointed out his build-ing. Now the apartment was lit up, all right; every light was blazing. Bobby looked at the clock on the Buick’s dashboard and saw it was almost eleven P.M.

As the Buick pulled to the curb Len Files found his tongue again. “Who were they, kid? Who were those gonifs?”

Bobby almost grinned. It reminded him of how, at the end of almost every Lone Ranger episode, someone said Who was that masked man?

“Low men,” he told Len. “Low men in yellow coats.”

“I wouldn’t want to be your pal right now.”

“No,” Bobby said. A shudder shook through him like a gust of wind. “Me neither. Thanks for the ride.”

“Don’t mention it. Just stay the fuck clear of my felts and greens from now on. You’re banned for life.”

The Buick—a boat, a Detroit cabin-cruiser, but not low—drew away. Bobby watched as it turned in a driveway across the street and then headed back up the hill past Carol’s building. When it had dis-appeared around the corner, Bobby looked up at the stars—stacked billions, a spilled bridge of light. Stars and more stars beyond them, spinning in the black.

There is a Tower, he thought. It holds everything together. There are Beams that protect it somehow. There is a Crimson King, and Breakers working to destroy the Beams . . . not because the Breakers want to but because it wants them to. The Crimson King.

Was Ted back among the rest of the Breakers yet? Bobby wondered. Back and pulling his oar?

I’m sorry, he thought, starting up the walk to the porch. He remembered sitting there with Ted, reading to him from the newspa-per. Just a couple of guys. I wanted to go with you but I couldn’t. In the end I couldn’t.