the floor of this same sea. His mother, when he was sixteen. Tootie Vicelli, shot through the teeth in Sicily, smiling curiously at Teddy as if he'd swallowed something whose taste surprised him, the blood trickling out of the corners of his mouth. Martin Phelan, Jason Hill, that big Polish machine gunner from Pittsburgh - what was his name?--Yardak. That was it. Yardak Gilibiowski. The blond kid who'd made them laugh in Belgium. Shot in the leg, seemed like nothing until it wouldn't stop bleeding.',And Frankie Gordon, of course, who he'd left in the Cocoanut Grove at night. Two years later, Teddy'd flicked a cigarette off Frankie's helmet and called him a shitbird Iowan asshole and Frankie said, "You curse better than any man I've - " and stepped on a mine. Teddy still had a piece of the shrapnel in his left calf.
And now Chuck.
Would Teddy ever know if he should have trusted him? If he should've given him that last benefit of the doubt? Chuck, who'd made him laugh and made the whole cranial assault of the last three days so much easier to bear. Chuck, who just this morning had said they'd be serving eggs Benedict for breakfast and a thinly sliced Reuben for lunch.
Teddy looked back up at the promontory lip. By hisestimation, he was now about halfway down and the sky was the dark blue of the sea and getting darker every second.
What could have pitched Chuck off that ledge?
Nothing natural.
Unless he'd dropped something. Unless he'd followed something down. Unless, like Teddy now, he'd tried to work his way down the cliff, grasping and toeing stones that might not hold.
Teddy paused for breath, the sweat dripping off his face. He removed one hand gingerly from the cliff and wiped it on his pants until it was dry. He returned it, got a grip, and did the same thing with the other hand, and as he placed that hand back over a pointed shard of rock, he saw the piece of paper beside him.
It was wedged between a rock and a brown tendril of roots and it flapped lightly in the sea air. Teddy took his hand from the black shard and pinched it between his fingers and he didn't have to unfold it to know what it was.
Laeddis's intake form.
He slid it into his back pocket, remembering the way it had nestled unsteadily in Chuck's back 15ocket, and he knew now why Chuck had come down here.
For this piece of paper.
For Teddy.
THE LAST TWENTY feet of cliff face was comprised of boulders, giant black eggs covered in kelp, and Teddy turned when he reached them, turned so that his arms were behind him and the heels of his hands supported his weight, and worked his way across to them and down them and saw rats hiding in their crevices.
When he reached the last of them, he was at the shore, and he spied Chuck's body and walked over to it and realized it wasn't a body at all. Just another rock, bleached white by the sun, and covered in thick black ropes of seaweed.
Thank ... something. Chuck was not dead. He was not this long narrow rock covered in seaweed.
Teddy cupped his hands around his mouth and called Chuck's name back up the cliff. Called and called it and heard it ride out to sea and bounce off the rocks and carry on the breeze, and he waited to see Chuck's head peek over the promontory.
Maybe he'd been preparing to come down to look for Teddy.
Maybe he was up there right now, getting ready.
Teddy shouted his name until his throat scratched with it. Then he stopped and waited to hear Chuck call back to him. It was growing too dark to see up to the top of that cliff. Teddy heard the breeze. He heard the rats in the crevices of the boulders. He heard a gull caw. The ocean lap. A few minutes later, he heard the foghorn from Boston Light again.
His vision adjusted to the dark and he saw eyes watching Rim. Dozens of them. The rats lounged on the boulders and stared at him, unafraid. This was their beach at night, not his.
Teddy was afraid of water, though. Not rats. Fuck the little slimy bastards. He could shoot them. See how many of them hung tough once a few of their friends exploded.
Except that he didn't have a gun and they'd doubled in number while he watched. Long tails