The Body

by Stephen King

“Talk is cheap.”

“I wish to fuck I was your father!” he said angrily. “You wouldn’t go around talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was! It’s like God gave you something, all those stories you can make up, and He said: This is what we got for you, kid. Try not to lose it. But kids lose everything unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks are too fucked up to do it then maybe I ought to.”

“Those stories you tell, they’re no good to anybody but you, Gordie. If you go along with us just because you don’t want the gang to break up, you’ll wind up just another grunt, makin C’s to get on the teams.

But maybe I’ll try to work myself up. I don’t know if I could do it, but I might try. Because I want to get out of Castle Rock and go to college and never see my old man or any of my brothers again. I want to go someplace where nobody knows me and I don’t have any black marks against me before I start. But I don’t know if I can do it.” “Why not?” “People. People drag you down.”

“Your friends do. They’re like drowning guys that are holding onto your legs. You can’t save them. You can only drown with them.”

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. It’s hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.

The most important things are the hardest things to say.

“What about you?” Chris asked, turning to Vern. “Are you scared of storms, too?” Vern shook his head vacuously, still astounded by Chris’s rage. “Hey, man, I thought we was all runnin.” “You must be a mind-reader then, because you ran first.”

He could have died because he was simply too frightened to go on living.