It was what Ralph had thought... although AIDS had crossed his mind, as well. He wondered if that would shock McGovern, and felt a small ripple of amusement at the idea. Then he looked at the man and felt ashamed of his amusement. He knew that when it came to gloom McGovern was at least a semi-pro, but he didn't believe that made his obvious grief over his old friend any less genuine.
"Bob was head of the History Department at Derry High from 1948, when he couldn't have been more than twenty-five, until 1981 or '82. He was a great teacher, one of those fiercely bright people you sometimes find out in the sticks, hiding their lights under bushels. They usually end up heading their departments and running half a dozen extra-curricular activities on the side because they simply don't know how to say no. Bob sure didn't."
The mother was now leading her little boy past them and toward the little snackbar that would be closing up for the season very soon now.
The kid's face had an extraordinary translucence, a beauty that was enhanced by the rose-colored aura Ralph saw revolving about his head and moving across his small, lively face in calm waves.
"Can we go home, Mommy?" he asked. "I want to use my PlayDoh now. I want to make the Clay Family."
"Let's get something to eat first, big boy-'kay? Mommy's hungry.
"
"Okay."
There was a hook-shaped scar across the bridge of the boy's nose, and here the rosy glow of his aura deepened to scarlet.
Fell out of his crib when he was eight months old, Ralph thought.
Reaching for the butterflies on the mobile his Mom hung from the ceiling. It scared her to death when she ran in and saw all the blood,she thought the poor kid was dying. Patrick, that's his name.
She calls him Pat. He's named after his grandfather, and-he closed his eyes tightly for a moment. His stomach was fluttering lightly just below his Adam's apple and he was suddenly sure he was going to vomit.
"Ralph?" McGovern asked. "Are you all right?"
He opened his eyes. No aura, rose-colored or otherwise; just a mother and son heading over to the snackbar for a cold drink, and there was no way, absolutely no way that he could tell she didn't want to take Pat home because Pat's father was drinking again after almost six months on the wagon, and when he drank he got meanStop it, for God's sake stop it.
"I'm okay," he told McGovern. "Got a speck in my eye is all. Go on.
Finish telling me about your friend."
"Not much to tell. He was a genius, but over the years I've become convinced that genius is a vastly overrated commodity. I think this country is full of geniuses, guys and gals so bright they make your average card-carrying MENSA member look like Fucko the Clown. And I think that most of them are teachers, living and working in small-town obscurity because that's the way they like it. It was certainly the way Bob Polhurst liked it.
"He saw into people in a way that seemed scary to me... at first, anyway. After awhile you found out you didn't have to be scared, because Bob was kind, but at first he inspired a sense of dread. You sometimes wondered if it was an ordinary pair of eyes he was using to look at you, or some kind of X-ray machine."
At the snackbar, the woman was bending down with a small paper cup of soda. The kid reached up for it with both hands, grinning, and took it. He drank thirstily. The rosy glow pulsed briefly into existence around him again as he did, and Ralph knew he had been right: the kid's name was Patrick, and his mother didn't want to take him home. There was no way he could know such things, but he did just the same.
"In those days," McGovern said, "if you were from central Maine and not one hundred percent heterosexual, you tried like hell to pass for it. That was the only choice there was, outside of moving to Greenwich Village and wearing a beret and spending Saturday nights in the kind of jazz clubs where they used to applaud by snapping their fingers. Back then, the idea of 'coming out of the closet' was ridiculous. For most of us the closet was all there was. Unless you wanted a pack of liquored-up fraternity boys sitting on you in an alley and