C H A P T E R 9 2 страница

'Well? I'm waiting. ' He tossed the bloody towel back over the rod.

There was blood. . . blood everywhere. . . and her father didn't see it.

'Daddy — ' She had no idea what might have come next, but her father interrupted her.

'I worry about you, ' Al Marsh said. 'I don't think you're ever going to grow up, Beverly. You go out running around, you don't do hardly any of the housework around here, you can't cook, you can't sew. Half the time you're off on a cloud someplace with your nose stuck in a book and the other half you've got vapors and megrims. I worry. '

His hand suddenly swung and spatted painfully against her buttocks. She uttered a cry, her eyes fixed on his. There was a tiny stipple of blood caught in his bushy right eyebrow. If I look at that long enough I'll just go crazy and none of this will matter, she thought dimly.

'I worry a lot, ' he said, and hit her again, harder, on the arm above the elbow. That arm cried out and then seemed to go to sleep. She would have a spreading yellowish-purple bruise there the next day.

'An awful lot, ' he said, and punched her in the stomach. He pulled the punch at the last second, and Beverly lost only half of her air. She doubled over, gasping, tears starting in her eyes. Her father looked at her impassively. He shoved his bloody hands in the pockets of his trousers.

'You got to grow up, Beverly, ' he said, and now his voice was kind and forgiving. 'Isn't that so? '

She nodded. Her head throbbed. She cried, but silently. If she sobbed aloud — started what her father called 'that baby whining ' — he might go to work on her in earnest. Al Marsh had lived his entire life in Derry and told people who asked (and sometimes those who did not) that he intended to be buried here — hopefully at the age of one hundred and ten. 'No reason why I shouldn't live forever, ' he sometimes told Roger Aurlette, who cut his hair once each month. 'I have no vices. '

'Now explain yourself, ' he said, 'and make it quick. '

'There was — ' She swallowed and it hurt because there was no moisture in her throat, none at all. 'There was a spider. A big fat black spider. It. . . it crawled out of the drain and I.

. . I guess it crawled back down. '

'Oh\' He smiled a little at her now, as if pleased by this explanation. 'Was that it? Damn! If you'd told me, Beverly, I never would have hit you. All girls are scared of spiders. Sam Hill!

Why didn't you speak up? '

He bent over the drain and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out a warning. . . and some other voice spoke deep inside her, some terrible voice which could not have been a part of her; surely it was the voice of the devil himself: Let it get him, if it wants him. Let it pull him down. Good-fucking-riddance.

She turned away from that voice in horror. To allow such a thought to stay for even a moment in her head would surely damn her to hell.

He peered into the eye of the drain. His hands squelched in the blood on the rim of the basin. Beverly fought grimly with her gorge. Her belly ached where her dad had hit her.

'Don't see a thing, ' he said. 'All these buildings are old, Bev. Got drains the size of freeways, you know it? When I was janitorin down in the old high school, we used to get drowned rats in the toilet bowls once in awhile. It drove the girls crazy. ' He laughed fondly at the thought of such female vapors and megrims. 'Mostly when the Kenduskeag was high.

Less wildlife in the pipes since they put in the new drain system, though. ' He put an arm around her and hugged her.

'Look. You go to bed and don't think about it anymore. Okay? '

She felt her love for him. I never hit you when you didn't deserve it, Beverly, he told her once when she had cried out that some punishment had been unfair. And surely that had to be true, because he was capable of love. Sometimes he would spend a whole day with her, showing her how to do things or just telling her stuff or walking around town with her, and when he was kind like that she thought her heart would swell with happiness until it killed her. She loved him, and tried to understand that he had to correct her often because it was (as he said) his God-given job. Daughters, Al Marsh said, need more correction than sons. He had no sons, and she felt vaguely as if that might be partly her fault as well.

'Okay, Daddy, ' she said. 'I won't. '

They walked into her small bedroom together. Her right arm now ached fiercely from the blow it had taken. She looked back over her shoulder and saw the bloody sink, bloody mirror, bloody wall, bloody floor. The bloody towel her father had used and then hung casually over the rod. She thought: How can I ever go in there to wash up again? Please God, dear God, I'm sorry if I had a bad thought about my dad and You can punish me for it if You want, I deserve to be punished, make me fall down and hurt myself or make me have the flu like last winter when I coughed so hard once I threw up but please God make the blood be gone in the morning, pretty please, God, okay? Okay?

Her father tucked her in as he always did, and kissed her forehead. Then he only stood there for a moment in what she would always think of as 'his' way of standing, perhaps of being: bent slightly forward, hands plunged deep _ to above the wrist — in his pockets, the bright blue eyes in his mournful basset-hound's face looking down at her from above. In later years, long after she stopped thinking about Derry at all, she would see a man sitting on the bus or maybe standing on a comer with his dinnerbucket in his hand, shapes, oh shapes of men, sometimes seen as day closed down, sometimes seen across Watertower Square in the noonlight of a clear windy autumn day, shapes of men, rules of men, desires of men: or Tom, so like her father when he took off his shirt and stood slightly slumped in front of the bathroom mirror to shave. Shapes of men.

'Sometimes I worry about you, Bev, ' he said, but there was no trouble or anger in his voice now. He touched her hair gently, smoothing it back from her forehead.

The bathroom is full of blood, Daddy! she almost screamed then. Didn't you see it? It's everywhere! Cooking onto the light over the sink, even! Didn't you SEE it?

But she kept her silence as he went out and closed the door behind him, filling her room with darkness. She was still awake, still staring into the darkness, when her mother came in at eleven-thirty and the TV went off. She heard her parents go into their room and she heard the bedsprings creaking steadily as they did their sex-act thing. Beverly had overheard Greta Bowie telling Sally Mueller that the sex-act thing hurt like fire and no nice girl ever wanted to do it ('At the end of it the man pees all over your bug, ' Greta said, and Sally had cried: 'Oh yuck, I'd never let a boy do that to me! '). If it hurt as badly as Greta said, then Bev's mother kept the hurt to herself; Bev had heard her mom cry out once or twice in a low voice, but it hadn't sounded at all like a pain-cry.

The slow creak of the springs speeded up to a beat so rapid it was just short of frantic, and then stopped. There was a period of silence, then some low talk, then the sound of her mother's footsteps as she went into the bathroom. Beverly held her breath, waiting for her mother to scream or not.

There was no scream — only the sound of water running into the basin. That was followed by some low splashing. Then the water ran out of the basin with its familiar gurgling sound. Her mother was brushing her teeth now. Moments later the bedsprings in her parents' room creaked again as her mom got back into bed.

Five minutes or so after that her father began to snore.

A black fear stole over her heart and closed her throat. She found herself afraid to turn over on her right side — her favorite sleeping position — because she might see something looking in the window at her. So she just lay on her back, stiff as a poker, looking up at the pressed-tin ceiling. Some time later — minutes or hours, there was no way of telling — she fell into a thin troubled sleep.

Beverly always woke up when the alarm went off in her parents' bedroom. You had to be fast, because the alarm no more than got started before her father banged it off. She dressed quickly while her father used the bathroom. She paused (as she now almost always did) to look at her chest in the mirror, trying to decide if her breasts had gotten any bigger in the night. She had started getting them late last year. There had been some faint pain at first, but that was gone now. They were extremely small — not much more than spring apples, really — but they were there. It was true; childhood would end; she would be a woman.

She smiled at her reflection and put a hand behind her head, pushing her hair up and sticking her chest out. She giggled a little girl's unaffected giggle. . . and suddenly remembered the blood spewing out of the bathroom drain the night before. The giggles stopped abruptly.

She looked at her arm and saw the bruise that had formed there in the night — an ugly stain between her shoulder and elbow, a stain with many discolored fingers. The toilet went with a bang and a flush.

Moving quickly, not wanting him to be mad with her this morning (not wanting him to even notice her this morning), Beverly pulled on a pair of jeans and her Derry High School sweatshirt. And then, because it could no longer be put off, she left her room for the bathroom. Her father passed her in the living room on his way back to his room to get dressed. His blue pyjama suit flapped loosely around him. He grunted something at her she didn't understand.

'Okay, Daddy, ' she replied nevertheless.

She stood in front of the closed bathroom door for a moment, trying to get her mind ready for what she might see inside. At least it's daytime, she thought, and that brought some comfort. Not much, but some. She grasped the doorknob, turned it, and stepped inside.

That was a busy morning for Beverly. She got her father his breakfast — orange juice, scrambled eggs, Al Marsh's version of toast (the bread hot but not really toasted at all). He sat at the table, barricaded behind the News, and ate it all.

'Where's the bacon? '

'Gone, Daddy. We finished it yesterday. '

'Cook me a hamburger. '

'There's only a little bit of that left, t — '

The paper rustled, then dropped. His blue stare fell on her like weight.

'What did you say? ' he asked softly.

'I said right away, Daddy. '

He looked at her a moment longer. Then the paper went back up and Beverly hurried to the refrigerator to get the meat.

She cooked him a hamburger, mashing the little bit of ground meat that was left in the icebox as hard as she could to make it look bigger. He ate it reading the Sports page and Beverly made his lunch — a couple of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, a big piece of cake her mother had brought back from Green's Farm last night, a Thermos of hot coffee heavily laced with sugar.

'You tell your mother I said to get this place cleaned up today, ' he said, taking his dinnerbucket. 'It looks like a damn old pigsty. Sam Hill! I spend the whole day cleaning up messes over to the hospital. I don't need to come home to a pigsty. You mind me, Beverly. '

'Okay, Daddy. I will. '

He kissed her cheek, gave her a rough hug, and left. As she always did, Beverly went to the window of her room and watched him walk down the street. And as she always did, she felt a sneaking sense of relief when he turned the corner. . . and hated herself for it.

She did the dishes and then took the book she was reading out on the back steps for awhile.

Lars Theramenius, his long blonde hair glowing with its own serene inner light, toddled over from the next building to show Beverly his new Tonka truck and the new scrapes on his knees. Beverly exclaimed over both. Then her mother was calling her.

They changed both beds, washed the floors and waxed the kitchen linoleum. Her mother did the bathroom floor, for which Beverly was profoundly grateful. Elfrida Marsh was a small woman with graying hair and a grim look. Her lined face told the world that she had been around for awhile and intended to stay around awhile longer. . . It also told the world that none of it had been easy and she did not look for an early change in that state of affairs. 'Will you do the living-room windows, Bevvie? ' she asked, coming back into the kitchen. She had changed into her waitress uniform. 'I have to go up to Saint Joe's in Bangor to see Cheryl Tarrent. She broke her leg last night. '

'Yeah, I'll do them, ' Beverly said. 'What happened to Mrs Tarrent? Did she fall down or something? ' Cheryl Tarrent was a woman Elfrida worked with at the restaurant.

'She and that no-good she's married to were in a car wreck, ' Beverly's mother said grimly. 'He was drinking. You want to thank God in your prayers every night that your father doesn't drink, Bevvie. '

'I do, ' Beverly said. She did.

'She's going to lose her job, I guess, and he can't hold one. ' Now tones of grim horror crept into Elfrida's voice. 'They'll have to go on the county, I guess. '

It was the worst thing Elfrida Marsh could think of. Losing a child or finding out you had cancer didn't hold a candle to it. You could be poor; you could spend your life doing what she called 'scratchin. ' But at the bottom of everything, below even the gutter, was a time when you might have to go on the county and drink the worksweat from the brows of others as a gift. This, she knew, was the prospect that now faced Cheryl Tarrent.

'Once you got the windows washed and take the trash out, you can go and play awhile, if you want. It's your father's bowling night so you won't have to fix his supper, but I want you in before dark. You know why. '

'Okay, Mom. '

'My God, you're growing up fast, ' Elfrida said. She looked for a moment at the nubs in Beverly's sweatshirt. Her glance was loving but pitiless. 'I don't know what I'm going to do around here once you're married and have a place of your own. '

'I'll be around for just about ever, ' Beverly said, smiling. . Her mother hugged her briefly and kissed the corner of her mouth with her warm dry lips. 'I know better, ' she said. 'But I love you, Bevvie. ' 'I love you too, Momma. '

'You make sure there aren't any streaks on those windows when you're done, ' she said, picking up her purse and going to the door. 'If there are, you'll catch the blue devil from your father. '

'I'll be careful. ' As her mother opened the door to go out, Beverly asked in a tone she hoped was casual: 'Did you see anything funny in the bathroom, Mom? '

Elfrida looked back at her, frowning a little. 'Funny? '

'Well. . . I saw a spider in there last night. It crawled out of the drain. Didn't Daddy tell you? '

'Did you get your dad angry at you last night, Bevvie? '

'No! Huh-uh! I told him a spider crawled out of the drain and scared me and he said sometimes they used to find drowned rats in the toilets at the old high school. Because of the drains. He didn't tell you about the spider I saw? '

'No. '

'Oh. Well, it doesn't matter. I just wondered if you saw it. '

'I didn't see any spider. I wish we could afford a little new linoleum for that bathroom floor. ' She glanced at the sky, which was blue and cloudless. 'They say if you kill a spider, it brings rain. You didn't kill it, did you? '

'No, ' Beverly said. 'I didn't kill it. '

Her mother looked back at her, her lips pressed together so tightly they almost weren't there. 'You sure your dad wasn't angry with you last night? '

'Bevvie, does he ever touch you? '

'What? ' Beverly looked at her mother, totally perplexed. God, her father touched her every day. 'I don't get what you — '

'Never mind, ' Elfrida said shortly. 'Don't forget the trash. And if those windows are streaked, you won't need your father to give you blue devil. '

'I won't

(does he ever touch you)

'forget. '

'And be in before dark. '

'I will. '

(does he)

(worry an awful lot)

Elfrida left. Beverly went into her room again and watched her around the corner and out of view, as she had her father. Then, when she was sure her mother was well on her way to the bus stop, Beverly got the floorbucket, the Windex, and some rags from under the sink. She went into the living room and began on the windows. The apartment seemed too quiet. Each time the floor creaked or a door slammed, she jumped a little. When the Boltons' toilet flushed above her, she uttered a gasp that was nearly a scream.

And she kept looking toward the closed bathroom door.

At last she walked down there and drew it open again and looked inside. Her mother had cleaned in here this morning, and most of the blood which had pooled under the sink was gone. So was the blood on the sink's rim. But there were still maroon streaks drying in the sink itself, spots and splashes of it on the mirror and on the wallpaper.

Beverly looked at her pale reflection and realized with sudden, superstitious dread that the blood on the mirror made it seem as if her face was bleeding. She thought again: What am I going to do about this? Have I gone crazy? Am I imagining it?

The drain suddenly gave a burping chuckle.

Beverly screamed and slammed the door and five minutes later her hands were still trembling so badly that she almost dropped the bottle of Windex as she washed the windows in the living room.

It was around three o'clock that afternoon, the apartment locked up and the extra key tucked snugly away in the pocket of her jeans, when Beverly Marsh happened to turn up Richard's Alley, a narrow walk-through which connected Main and Center Streets, and came upon Ben Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak, and a boy named Bradley Donovan pitching pennies.

'Hi, Bev! ' Eddie said. 'You get any nightmares from those movies? '

'Nope, ' Beverly said, squatting down to watch the game. 'How'd you know about that? ' 'Haystack told me, ' Eddie said, jerking a thumb at Ben, who was blushing wildly for no good reason Beverly could see.

'What movieth? ' Bradley asked, and now Beverly recognized him: he had come down to the Barrens a week ago with Bill Denbrough. They had a speech class together in Bangor.

Beverly more or less dismissed him from her mind. If asked, she might have said he seemed somehow less important than Ben and Eddie — less there.

'Couple of creature features, ' she said to him, and duck-walked closer until she was between Ben and Eddie. 'You pitchin? '

'Yes, ' Ben said. He looked at her quickly, then looked away.

'Who's winning? '

'Eddie, ' Ben said. 'Eddie's real good. '

She looked at Eddie, who polished his nails solemnly on the front of his shirt and then giggled. 'Can I play? '

'Okay with me, ' Eddie said. 'You got pence? ' She felt in her pocket and brought out three.

'Jeez, how do you dare to go out of the house with such a wad? ' Eddie asked. 'I'd be scared. ' Ben and Bradley Donovan laughed.

'Girls can be brave, too, ' Beverly said gravely, and a moment later they were all laughing.

Bradley pitched first, then Ben, then Beverly. Because he was winning, Eddie had lasties. They tossed the pennies toward the back wall of the Center Street Drug Store. Sometimes they landed short, sometimes they struck and bounced back. At the end of each round the shooter with the penny closest to the wall collected all four pennies. Five minutes later, Beverly had twenty-four cents. She had lost only a single round.

'Girlth cheat! ' Bradley said, disgusted, and got up to go. His good humor was gone, and he looked at Beverly with both anger and humiliation. 'Girlth thouldn't be allowed to — '

Ben bounced to his feet. It was awesome to watch Ben Hanscom bounce.

Take that back! '

Bradley looked at Ben, his mouth open. 'What? '

Take it back! She didn't cheat! '

Bradley looked from Ben to Eddie to Beverly, who was still on her knees. Then he looked back at Ben again. 'You want a fat lip to math the reth of you, athhole? '

'Sure, ' Ben said, and a grin suddenly crossed his face. Something in its quality caused Bradley to take a surprised, uneasy step backward. Perhaps what he saw in that grin was the simple fact that after tangling with Henry Bowers and coming out ahead not once but twice, Ben Hanscom was not about to be terrorized by skinny old Bradley Donovan (who had warts all over his hands as well as that cataclysmic lisp).

'Yeah, and then you all gang up on me, ' Bradley said, taking another step backward. His voice had picked up an uncertain waver, and tears stood out in his eyes. 'All a bunth of cheaterth! '

'You just take back what you said about her, ' Ben said.

'Never mind, Ben, ' Beverly said. She held out a handful of coppers to Bradley. Take what's yours. I wasn't playing for keepsies anyway. '

Tears of humiliation spilled over Bradley's lower lashes. He struck the pennies from Beverly's hand and ran for the Center Street end of Richard's Alley. The others stood looking at him, open-mouthed. With safety within reach, Bradley turned around and shouted: 'You're jutht a little bith, that'th all! Cheater! Cheater! Your mother'th a whorel'

Beverly gasped. Ben ran up the alley toward Bradley and succeeded in doing no more than tripping over an empty crate and falling down. Bradley was gone, and Ben knew better than to believe he could ever catch him. He turned toward Beverly instead to see if she was all right. That word had shocked him as much as it had her.

She saw the concern in his face. She opened her mouth to say she was okay, not to worry, sticks-and-stones-will-break-my-bones-but-names-will-never-hurt-me. . . and that odd question her mother had asked

(does he ever touch you)

recurred. Odd question, yes — simple yet nonsensical, full of somehow ominous undertones, murky as old coffee. Instead of saying that names would never hurt her, she burst into tears.

Eddie looked at her uncomfortably, took his aspirator from his pants pocket, and sucked on it. Then he bent down and began picking up the scattered pennies. There was a fussy, careful expression on his face as he did this.

Ben moved toward her instinctively, wanting to hug and give comfort, and then stopped. She was too pretty. In the face of that prettiness he felt helpless.

'Cheer up, ' he said, knowing it must sound idiotic but unable to think of anything more useful. He touched her shoulders lightly (she had put her hands over her face to hide her wet eyes and blotchy cheeks) and then took them away as if she were too hot to touch. He was now blushing so hard he looked apoplectic. 'Cheer up, Beverly. '

She lowered her hands and cried out in a shrill, furious voice: 'My mother is not a whore!

She. . . she's a waitress! '

This was greeted by absolute silence. Ben stared at her with his lower jaw sprung ajar. Eddie looked up at her from the cobbled surface of the alley, his hands full of pennies. And suddenly all three of them were laughing hysterically.

'A waitress! ' Eddie cackled. He had only the faintest idea of what a whore was, but something about this comparison struck him as delicious just the same. 'Is that what she is! ' 'Yes! Yes, she is! ' Beverly gasped, laughing and crying at the same time.

Ben was laughing so hard he couldn't stand up. He sat heavily on a trashcan. His bulk drove the lid into the can and spilled him into the alley on his side. Eddie pointed at him and howled with laughter. Beverly helped him to his feet.

A window went up above them and a woman yelled, 'You kids get out of there! There's people that have to work the night shift, you know! Get lost! '

Without thinking, the three of them linked hands, Beverly in the middle, and ran for Center Street. They were still laughing.

They pooled their money and discovered they had forty cents, enough for two ice-cream frappes from the drugstore. Because old Mr Keene was a grouch and wouldn't let kids under twelve eat their stuff at the soda fountain (he claimed the pinball machines in the back room might corrupt them), they took the frappes in two huge waxed containers up to Bassey Park and sat on the grass to drink them. Ben had coffee, Eddie strawberry. Beverly sat between the two boys with a straw, sampling each in turn like a bee at flowers. She felt okay again for the first time since the drain had coughed up its gout of blood the night before — washed out and emotionally exhausted, but okay, at peace with herself. For the time being, anyway.

'I just don't get what was wrong with Bradley, ' Eddie said at last — it had the tone of awkward apology. 'He never acted like that before. '

'You stood up for me, ' Beverly said, and suddenly kissed Ben on one cheek. 'Thank you. ' Ben went scarlet again. 'You weren't cheating, ' he mumbled, and abruptly gulped down half of his coffee frappe in three monster swallows. This was followed by a burp as loud as a shotgun blast.

'Get any on you, Daddy-o? ' Eddie asked, and Beverly laughed helplessly, holding her stomach.

'No more, ' she giggled. 'My stomach hurts. Please, no more. '

Ben was smiling. That night, before sleep, he would play the moment when she had kissed him over and over again in his mind. 'Are you really okay now? ' he asked.

She nodded. 'It wasn't him. It really wasn't even what he said about my mother. It was something that happened last night. ' She hesitated, looking from Ben to Eddie and back to Ben again. 'I. . . I have to tell somebody. Or show somebody. Or something. I guess I cried because I've been scared I'm going looneytunes. '

'What are you talking about, looneytunes? ' a new voice asked.

It was Stanley Uris. As always he looked small, slim, and preternaturally neat — much too neat for a kid who was just barely eleven. In his white shirt, neatly tucked into his fresh jeans all the way around, his hair combed, the toes of his high-top Keds spotlessly clean, he looked instead like the world's smallest adult. Then he smiled, and the illusion was broken.

She won't say whatever she was going to say, Eddie thought, because he wasn't there when

Bradley called her mother that name.

But after a moment's hesitation, Beverly did tell. Because somehow Stanley was different from Bradley — he was there in a way Bradley had not been.

Stanley's one of us, Beverly thought, and wondered why that should cause her arms to suddenly break out in bumps. I'm not doing any of them any favors by telling, she thought.

Not them, and not me, neither.

But it was too late. She was already speaking. Stan sat down with them, his face still and grave. Eddie offered him the last of the strawberry frappe and Stan only shook his head, his eyes never leaving Beverly's face. None of the boys spoke.

She told them about the voices. About recognizing Ronnie Grogan's voice. She knew Ronnie was dead, but it was her voice all the same. She told them about the blood, and how her father had not seen it or felt it, and how her mother had not seen it this morning.

When she finished, she looked around at their faces, afraid of what she might see there. . . but she saw no disbelief. Terror, but no disbelief. Finally Ben said, 'Let's go look. '

They went in by the back door, not just because that was the lock Bev's key fitted but because she said her father would kill her if Mrs Bolton saw her going into the apartment with three boys while her folks were gone.

'Why? ' Eddie asked.

'You wouldn't understand, numbnuts, ' Stan said. 'Just be quiet. '

Eddie started to reply, looked again at Stan's white, strained face and decided to keep his mouth shut.

The door gave on the kitchen, which was full of late-afternoon sun and summer silence. The breakfast dishes sparkled in the drainer. The four of them stood by the kitchen table, bunched up, and when a door slammed upstairs, they all jumped and then laughed nervously.

'Where is it? ' Ben asked. He was whispering.

Her heart thudding in her temples, Beverly led them down the little hall with her parents' bedroom on one side and the closed bathroom door at the end. She pulled it open, stepped quickly inside, and pulled the chain over the sink. Then she stepped back between Ben and Eddie again. The blood had dried to maroon smears on the mirror and the basin and the wallpaper. She looked at the blood because it was suddenly easier to look at that than at them. In a small voice she could hardly recognize as her own, she asked: 'Do you see it? Do any of you see it? Is it there? '

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