John ‘Ace’ Merrill

“Won’t need me to tell him. Or you either.” They sat in silence and watched Ace stroll up Main Street until he had passed from their view. 7 No one would have guessed, watching Ace Merrill strut indolently up Main Street, that he was a man with a desperate problem.

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… worst Buster’s creditors could do was put him in jail. If Ace didn’t have the money soon, say by the first of November, his creditors were apt to put him in the ground. The boys Ace Merrill had once terrorized—boys like Teddy Duchamp, Chris Chambers, and Vern Tessio—would have recognized him at once in spite of his graying hair. During the years when Ace had worked at the local textile mill (it had been closed for the last …

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… that he thought, for just a second, that the voice had come from the dead boy. On the far side of the boggy patch, where the woods took up again, masking the butt end of the road, Ace Merrill and Eyeball Chambers stood together, half-obscured by a pouring gray curtain of rain. They were both wearing red nylon high school jackets, the kind you can buy in the office if you’re a regular student, the same kind they give away …

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