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It sounds like relief. “Yeah. I kind of socked it to him. He took off like his ass was on fire.”
    â€œThat doesn’t make you responsible for his coronary.”
    â€œMaybe you’re right. But that’s not the way it feels.” A pause. And then, with a shade of amusement: “Isn’t that a line from a Jim Croce song? Are you all right, Jonesy?”
    â€œMe? Yeah. Why do you ask?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Henry says. “Only . . . I’ve been thinking about you ever since I opened the paper and saw Barry’s picture on the obituary page. I want you to be careful.”
    Around his bones (many of which will soon be broken), Jonesy feels a slight coldness. “What exactly are you talking about?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Henry says. “Maybe nothing. But . . .”
    â€œIs it the line now?” Jonesy is alarmed. He swings around in his chair and looks out the window at the chancy spring sunlight. It crosses his mind that maybe the Defuniak kid is disturbed, maybe he’s carrying a gun ( packing heat, as they say in the mystery and suspense novels Jonesy likes to read in his spare time) and Henry has somehow picked this up.
    â€œI don’t know. The most likely thing is that I’mjust having a displaced reaction from seeing Barry’s picture on the all-done page. But watch yourself the next little while, would you?”
    â€œWell . . . yeah. I can do that.”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œAnd you’re okay?”
    â€œI’m fine.”
    But Jonesy doesn’t think Henry is fine at all. He’s about to say something else when someone clears his throat behind him and he realizes that Defuniak has probably arrived.
    â€œWell, that’s good,” he says, and swivels around in his chair. Yep, there’s his eleven-o’clock in the doorway, not looking dangerous at all: just a kid bundled into a big old duffel coat that’s too heavy for the day, looking thin and underfed, wearing one earring and a punky haircut that spikes over his worried eyes. “Henry, I’ve got an appointment. I’ll call you back—”
    â€œNo, that’s not necessary. Really.”
    â€œYou’re sure?”
    â€œI am. But there’s one other thing. Got thirty more seconds?”
    â€œSure, you bet.” He holds up a finger to Defuniak and Defuniak nods. But he just goes on standing there until Jonesy points to the one chair in the little office besides his own that isn’t stacked with books. Defuniak goes to it reluctantly. Into the phone, Jonesy says, “Shoot.”
    â€œI think we ought to go back to Derry. Just a quick trip, just you and me. See our old friend.”
    â€œYou mean—?” But he doesn’t want to say thatname, that baby-sounding name, with a stranger in the room.
    He doesn’t have to; Henry says it for him. Once they were a quartet, then for a little while they were five, and then they were four again. But the fifth one has never exactly left them. Henry says that name, the name of a boy who is magically still a boy. About him, Henry’s worries are more clear, more easily expressed. It isn’t anything he knows, he tells Jonesy, just a feeling that their old pal might need a visit.
    â€œHave you talked to his mother?” Jonesy asked.
    â€œI think,” Henry says, “it might be better if we just . . . you know, orbited on in there. How’s your calendar look for this weekend? Or the one after?”
    Jonesy doesn’t need to check. The weekend starts day after tomorrow. There’s a faculty thing Saturday afternoon, but he can easily get clear of that.
    â€œI’m fine both days this weekend,” he says. “If I was to come by Saturday? At ten?”
    â€œThat’d be fine.” Henry sounds relieved, more like himself. Jonesy relaxes a little. “You’re sure?”
    â€œIf you