stand by me

chapter three

^^^listen to the song while you read^^^

"Do you guys wanna go see a dead body?" Vern asked.
"Well I was under the porch, digging you know..." We all knew exactly what Vern meant. At the beginning of the school year he had buried a quart jar of pennies and buried it under his porch. He had made a map so he could find them again. A week later his mom cleaned out his room and threw away the map. Vern had been trying to find those pennies for nine months. Nine months man! He didn't know whether to laugh or cry!
Vern started to tell us what his older brother, Billy, and Charlie Hogan said.

"Jesus christ Billy! We gotta do something!" Charlie pleaded. "Why? Who cares?" Billy said as he walked out of the door with Charlie. "We saw him" "It ain't nothing to us. The kids dead so it ain't nothin to him neither. I mean, who gives a shit if they ever find him? I don't!," Billy persuaded as he lit a cigarette and walked down the porch. "It was that kid they were talking about on the radio! Brocker, Brower, Flowers or whatever his name was!" Charlie sounded concerned. "The train must've hit him!" "Big fucking deal," Charlie shrugged.

We had all followed the Ray Brower story very closely because he was a kid our age. Three days before, he had gone out to pick blueberries and nobody had seen him since.

"I think we should tell the cops," Charlie said, trying to convince Billy to tell someone. "Hey! You don't go squawking to the cops after you boosted a car, you idiot! They're gonna wanna know how the hell we got all the way on a back Harlow road! They know we ain't got no car. It's best if we just keep our mouths shut so they can't touch us," Billy said, still not budging. "We can make an anonymous call!" Charlie said, pronouncing the word 'anonymous' quite wrong.
"They trace those calls stupid! I seen that on Highway Patrol and on Dragnet!" Billy said. "Ugh I just wished we never boosted that goddamn dodge! I wish Ace had been with us. We could've told the cops we was in his car," Charlie groaned. "Well he wasn't!" Billy shouted getting annoyed. "Are we gonna tell him?" Charlie asked referring to Ace. "No! We're not telling nobody never! You dig me?" Billy said in a somewhat threatening tone and then they walked off.

"I know the back Harlow road! It comes to a dead end by the Royal River! The train tracks are right there! Me and my dad used to fish for Cossies out there!" Teddy said enthusiasticly. Chris sounded more concerned than anything. "Jesus Christ man! If they would've known you were under there they would've killed you!" Vern was making his usual worried face. "Could he have gotten all the way from Chamberlain to Harlow? That's really far," Gordie implied. "Sure! He must've just started walking on the train tracks and followed them the whole way," Chris told him. "Yeah, yeah! And then a train must've came along after dark and- el smacko!" Teddy said in a dazed look as he punched his fist into his hand. "Yeah," I said.
It was silent for a moment and then Chris started talking again, "Hey! Hey guys, I bet you anything that if we find him, we'll get our pictures in the paper!" The only reason Chris said that is because he wanted to prove himself to the town that he wasn't just a lowlife Chambers kid. He was more, and we all knew it.
"Yeah! We could even be on TV!" Teddy shouted hopefully. "We could be hero's!!" Teddy shouted again. "Yeah!" Chris assured.
"I don't know. Billy will know where I found out," Vern said worried. "They're not gonna care because it's gonna be us that find him, not Billy and Charlie Hogan and the boosted car. They'll probably pin a medal on ya Vern!" I reassured him. "Yeah, you think so?" Vern said smiling. "Yeah!" Chris told him. "What will we tell our folks?" Vern asked discouraged again. "Exactly what you said. We'll all tell our folks we're camping out in your backfield. You tell your folks your sleeping over at Teddy's, then we say we're going out to the drag races the next day! We're rock solid till dinner tomorrow night," Gordie explained to us. "Man that is a plan and a half!" Chris exclaimed as he slid his palm on Gordie's. It was our version of a handshake, we called it 'skinning it.'
"But if we do find that body, they'll know we didn't go to the drag races, we'll get hided!" Vern kept on trying to find reasons for us not to go. "Nobody's gonna care because everyone is gonna be so jazzed about what we found, it's not gonna make a difference!" Teddy tried to persuade him. "Yeah! Well my dad will hide me anyway but hell it's worth the hiding!" Chris shouted. "Shit yeah" I said.
" What do you say?" Chris asked us. Of course Teddy said yes. He was always up for an adventure. "Y/N?" He asked me thoughtfully. "Hell yeah!" I said enthusiastically. "Gordie?" Chris asked. "Sure" Gordie said calmly. "Vern?" "I don't know" Vern stalled. We tried to persuade him and before he knew it, Chris and Teddy were up, squeezing his cheeks trying to make him say yes.
"Okay, okay" Vern finally said. "Yess!" I yelled. "Very cool! Very very cool!" Teddy shouted too. I could tell that Gordie wasn't sharing the same enthusiasm as us.