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seconds, maybe. It was the sort of long gaze that lovers indulge in, but these tweenagers couldn’t be
lovers. Friends, though, for sure. Close friends who’d been through something together.
“Tugga and his family live on Cossut Street,” Richie said finally. That’s what it sounded like,
anyway.
“Cossut?”
“That’s how people around here say it,” Beverly told me. “K-O-S-S-U-T-H. Cossut.”
“Got it.” Now the only question was how much these kids were going to blab about our weird
conversation on the edge of the Barrens.
Beverly was looking at me with earnest, troubled eyes. “But Mr. Amberson, I’ve met Tugga’s dad.
He works at the Center Street Market. He’s a nice man. Always smiling. He—”
“The nice man doesn’t live at home anymore,” Richie interrupted. “His wife kicked im out.”
She turned to him, eyes wide. “Tug told you that?”
“Nope. Ben Hanscom. Tug told him.”
“He’s still a nice man,” Beverly said in a small voice. “Always joking around and stuff but never
touchy-grabby.”
“Clowns joke around a lot, too,” I said. They both jumped, as if I had pinched that vulnerable
bundle of nerves again. “That doesn’t make them nice.”
“We know,” Beverly whispered. She was looking at her hands. Then she raised her eyes to me. “Do
you know about the Turtle?” She said turtle in a way that made it sound like a proper noun.
I thought of saying I know about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and didn’t. It was decades too
early for Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo. So I just shook my head.
She looked doubtfully at Richie. He looked at me, then back at her. “But he’s good. I’m pretty sure
he’s good.” She touched my wrist. Her fingers were cold. “Mr. Dunning’s a nice man. And just because
he doesn’t live at home anymore doesn’t mean he isn’t.”
That hit home. My wife had left me, but not because I wasn’t nice. “I know that.” I stood up. “I’m
going to be around Derry for a little while, and it would be good not to attract too much attention.
Can you two keep quiet about this? I know it’s a lot to ask, but—”
They looked at each other and burst into laughter.
When she could speak, Beverly said: “We can keep a secret.”
I nodded. “I’m sure you can. Kept a few this summer, I bet.”
They didn’t reply to this.
I cocked a thumb at the Barrens. “Ever play down there?”
“Once,” Richie said. “Not anymore.” He stood up and brushed off the seat of his blue jeans. “It’s
been nice talking to you, Mr. Amberson. Don’t take any wooden Indians.” He hesitated. “And be
careful in Derry. It’s better now, but I don’t think it’s ever gonna be, you know, completely right.”
“Thanks. Thank you both. Maybe someday the Dunning family will have something to thank you
for, too, but if things go the way I hope they will—”
“—they’ll never know a thing,” Beverly finished for me.
“Exactly.” Then, remembering something Fred Toomey had said: “Right with Eversharp. You two
take care of yourselves.”
“We will,” Beverly said, then began to giggle again. “Keep washing those clothes in your Norgie,
Georgie.”
I skimmed a salute off the brim of my new summer straw and started to walk away. Then I had an
idea and turned back to them. “Does that phonograph play at thirty-three and a third?”
“Like for LPs?” Richie asked. “Naw. Our hi-fi at home does, but Bevvie’s is just a baby one that
runs on batteries.”
“Watch what you call my record player, Tozier,” Beverly said. “I saved up for it.” Then, to me: “It