C H A P T E R 1 3

The Apocalyptic Rockfight

Bill's there first. He sits in one of the wing-back chairs just inside the Reading Room door watching as Mike deals with the library's last few customers of the night — an old lady with a clutch of paperback gothics, a man with a huge historical tome on the Civil War, and a skinny kid waiting to check out a novel with a seven-day-rental sticker in an upper corner of its plastic cover. Bill sees with no sense of surprise or serendipity at all that it is his own latest novel. He feels that surprise is beyond him, serendipity a believed-in reality that has turned out to be only a dream after all.

A pretty girl, her tartan skirt held together with a big gold safety pin (Christ, I haven't seen one of those in years, Bill thinks, are they coming back? ), is feeding quarters into the Xerox machine and copying an off print with one eye on the big pendulum clock behind the checkout desk. The sounds are library-soft and library-comforting: the hush-squeak of soles and heels on the red-and-black linoleum of the floor; the steady lock and tick of the clock dropping off dry seconds; the catlike purr of the copying machine.

The boy takes his William Denbrough novel and goes to the girl at the copier just as she finishes and begins to square up her pages.

'You can just leave that off print on the desk, Mary, ' Mike says. 'I'll put it away. '

She flashes a grateful smile. 'Thanks, Mr Hanlon. '

'Goodnight. Goodnight, Billy. The two of you go right home. '

'The boogeyman will get you if you don't. . . watch. . . out! ' Billy, the skinny kid, chants, and slips a proprietary arm around the girl's slim waist.

'Well, I don't think he'd want a pair as ugly as you two, ' Mike says, 'but be careful, all the same. '

'We will, Mr Hanlon, ' Mary replies, seriously enough, and punches the boy lightly on the shoulder. 'Come on, ugly, ' she says, and giggles. When she does this she is transformed from a pretty mildly desirable high-school junior into the coltish not-quite-gawky eleven-year-old that Beverly Marsh had been. . . and as they pass him Bill is shaken by her beauty. . . and he feels fear; he wants to go to the boy and tell him earnestly that he must go home by welllighted streets and not look around if someone speaks.

You can't be careful on a skateboard, mister, a phantom voice says inside his head, and Bill smiles a rueful grownup's smile.

He watches the boy open the door for his girl. They go into the vestibule, moving closer together, and Bill would have bet the royalties of the book the boy named Billy is holding under his arm that he has stolen a kiss before opening the outer door for the girl. More fool you if you didn't, Billy my man, he thinks. Now see her home safe. For Christ's sake see her home safe!

Mike calls, 'Be right with you, Big Bill. Just let me file this. ' Bill nods and crosses his legs. The paper bag on his lap crackles a little. There's a pint of bourbon inside and he reckons he has never wanted a drink so badly in his life as he does right now. Mike will be able to supply water, if not ice — and the way he feels right now, a very little water will be enough. He thinks of Silver, leaning against the wall of Mike's garage on Palmer Lane. And from that his thoughts progress naturally to the day they had met in the Barrens — all except Mike — and each had told his tale again: lepers under porches; mummies who walked on the ice; blood from drains and dead boys in the Standpipe and pictures that moved and werewolves that chased small boys down deserted streets.

They had gone deeper into the Barrens that day before the Fourth of July, he remembers now. It had been hot in town but cool in the tangled shade on the eastern bank of the Kenduskeag. He remembers one of those concrete cylinders not far away, humming to itself the way the Xerox machine had hummed for the pretty high-school girl just now. Bill remembers that, and how, when all the stories were done, the others had looked at him. They had wanted him to tell them what they should do next, how they should proceed, and he simply didn't know. The not knowing had filled him with a kind of desperation.

Looking at Mike's shadow now, looming large on the darkly paneled wall in the reference room, a sudden sureness comes to him: he hadn't known then because they hadn't been complete when they met that July 3rd afternoon. The completion had come later, at the abandoned gravel-pit beyond the dump, where you could climb out of the Barrens easily on either side — Kansas Street or Merit Street. Right around, in fact, where the Interstate overpass was now. The gravel-pit had no name; it was old, its crumbly sides crabby with weeds and bushes. There had still been plenty of ammunition there — more than enough for an apocalyptic rockfight.

But before that, on the bank of the Kenduskeag, he hadn't been sure what to say — what did they want him to say? What did he want to say? He remembers looking from one face to

the next — Ben's; Bev's; Eddie's; Stan's; Richie's. And he remembers

music. Little Richard. 'Whomp-bomp-a-lomp-bomp. . . ' Music. Low. And darts of light in his eyes. He remembers the darts of light because.

Richie had hung his transistor radio over the lowermost branch of the tree he was leaning against. Although they were in the shade, the sun bounced off the surface of the Kenduskeag, onto the radio's chrome facing, and from there into Bill's eyes.

T-Take that th-hing d-d-d-own, Ruh-Ruh-Richie, ' Bill said. 'It's gonna bun-blind m-m-me. '

'Sure, Big Bill, ' Richie said at once, with no smartmouth at all, and removed the radio from the branch. He also turned it off, and Bill wished he hadn't done that; it made the silence, broken only by the rippling water and the vague hum of the sewage-pumping machinery, seem very loud. Their eyes watched him and he wanted to tell them to look somewhere else, what did they think he was, a freak?

But of course he couldn't do that, because all they were doing was waiting for him to tell them what to do now. They had come by dreadful knowledge, and they needed him to tell them what to do with it. Why me! he wanted to shout at them, but of course he knew that, too. It was because, like it or not, he had been tapped for the position. Because he was the ideaman, because he had lost a brother to whatever it was, but most of all because he had become, in some obscure way he would never completely understand, Big Bill.

He glanced at Beverly and looked away quickly from the calm trust in her eyes. Looking at Beverly made him feel funny in the pit of his stomach. Fluttery.

'We cuh-can't go to the p-p-police, ' he said at last. His voice sounded harsh to his own ears, too loud. 'We c-ca-han't g-go to our puh-huh-harents, either. Unless. . . ' He looked hopefully at Richie. 'What a-a-about your m-mom and d-dad, four-eyes? They suh-heem p-pretty rehreh-regular. '

'My good man, ' Richie said in his Toodles the Butler Voice, 'you obviously have no understahnding whatsoevah of my mater and pater. They — '

'Talk American, Richie, ' Eddie said from his spot by Ben. He was sitting by Ben for the simple reason that Ben provided enough shade for Eddie to sit in. His face looked small and pinched and worried — an old man's face. His aspirator was in his right hand.

'They'd think I was ready for Juniper Hill, ' Richie said. He was wearing an old pair of glasses today. The day before a friend of Henry Bowers's named Card Jagermeyer had come up behind Richie as Richie left the Derry Ice Cream Bar with a pistachio cone. 'Tag, you're it! ' this Jagermeyer, who outweighed Richie by forty pounds or so, screamed, and slammed Richie full in the back with both hands laced together. Richie flew into the gutter, losing his glasses and his ice-cream cone. The left lens of his glasses had shattered, and his mother was furious with him about it, lending very little credence to Richie's explanations.

'All I know is that it was a lot of fooling around, ' she had said. 'Honestly, Richie, do you think there's a glasses-tree somewhere and we can just pull off a new pair of spectacles for you whenever you break the old pair? '

'But Mom, this kid pushed me, he came up behind me, this big kid, and pushed me — ' Richie was by then near tears. This failure to make his mother understand hurt much worse than being slammed into the gutter by Card Jagermeyer, who was so stupid they hadn't even bothered to send him to summer-school.

'I don't want to hear any more about it, ' Maggie Tozier said flatly. 'But the next time you see your father come in looking whipped after working late three nights in a row, you think a little bit, Richie. You think about it. '

'But Mom — '

'No more, I said. ' Her voice was curt and final — worse, it was near tears. She left the room then and the TV went on much too loud. Richie had been left alone sitting miserably at the kitchen table.

It was this memory that caused Richie to shake his head again. 'My folks are okay, but they'd never believe something like this. '

'W-What a-a-about other kih-kids? '

And they looked around, Bill would remember years later, as if for someone who wasn't there.

'Who? ' Stan asked doubtfully. 'I can't think of anyone else I trust. '

'Just the suh-suh-same. . . ' Bill said in a troubled voice, and a little silence fell among them while Bill thought about what to say next.

If asked, Ben Hanscom would have told you that Henry Bowers hated him more than any of the others in the Losers' Club, because of what had happened that day when he and Henry had shot the chutes down into the Barrens from Kansas Street, because of what had happened the day he and Richie and Beverly escaped from the Aladdin, but most of all because, by not allowing Henry to copy during examinations, he had caused Henry to be sent to summerschool and incur the wrath of his father, the reputedly insane Butch Bowers.

If asked, Richie Tozier would have told you Henry hated him more than any of the others, because of the day he had fooled Henry and his two other musketeers in Freese's.

Stan Uris would have told you that Henry hated him most of all because he was a Jew (when Stan had been in the third grade and Henry the fifth, Henry had once washed Stan's face with snow until it bled and he was screaming hysterically with pain and fear).

Bill Denbrough believed that Henry hated him the most because he was skinny, because he stuttered, and because he liked to dress well ('L-L-Look at the f-f-f-fucking puh-puh-PANSY! ' Henry had cried when the Derry School had had Careers Day in April and Bill had come wearing a tie; before the day was over, the tie had been ripped off and flung into a tree halfway down Charter Street).

He did hate all four of them, but the boy in Derry who was number one on Henry's personal Hate Parade was not in the Losers' Club at all on that July 3rd; he was a black boy named Michael Hanlon, who lived a quarter of a mile down the road from the shirttail Bowers farm.

Henry's father, who was every bit as crazy as he was reputed to be, was Oscar 'Butch' Bowers. Butch Bowers associated his financial, physical, and mental decline with the Hanlon family in general and with Mike's father in particular. Will Hanlon, he was fond of telling his few friends and his son, had had him thrown in the county jail when all of his, Hanlon's, chickens died. 'So's he could get the insurance money, don't you know, ' Butch would say, eying his audience with all the baleful interrupt-if-you-dare pugnacity of Captain Billy Bones in the Admiral Benbow. 'He got some of his friends to lie him up, and that's why I had to sell my Merc'ry. '

'Who lied him up, Daddy? ' Henry had asked when he was eight, burning at the injustice that had been done to his father. He thought to himself that when he was a grownup he would find liar-uppers and coat them with honey and stake them out over anthills, like in some of those Western movies they showed at the Bijou Theater on Saturday afternoons.

And because his son was a tireless listener (although, if asked, Butch would have maintained that was only as it should be), Bowers Senior filled his son's ears with a litany of hate and hard luck. He explained to his son that while all niggers were stupid, some were cunning as well — and down deep they all hated white men and wanted to plow a white woman's furrow. Maybe it wasn't just the insurance money after all, Butch said; maybe Hanlon had decided to lay the blame for the dead chickens at his door because Butch had the next produce stand down the road. He done it, anyway, and that was just as sure as shit sticks to a blanket. He done it and then got a bunch of white nigger bleeding hearts from town to lie him up and threaten Butch with state prison if he didn't pay that nigger off. 'And why not? ' Butch would ask his round-eyed dirty-necked silent son. 'Why not? I was just a man who fought the Japs for his country. There was lots of guys like us, but he was the only nigger in the county. '

The chicken business had been followed by one unlucky incident after another — his Deere tractor had blown a rod; his good harrow got busted in the north field; he got a boil on his neck which became infected, had to be lanced, then became infected again and had to be removed surgically; the nigger started using his foully gotten money to undercut Butch's prices so they lost custom.

In Henry's ears, it was a constant litany: the nigger, the nigger, the nigger. Everything was the nigger's fault. The nigger had a nice white house with an upstairs and an oil furnace while Butch and his wife and his son lived in what was not much better than a tarpaper shack. When Butch couldn't make enough money farming and had to go to work in the woods for awhile, it was the nigger's fault. When their well went dry in 1956, it was the nigger's fault. Later that same year Henry, who was then ten years old, started to feed Mike's dog Mr Chips old stewbones and bags of potato-chips. It got so Mr Chips would wag his tail and come running when Henry called. When the dog was well used to Henry and Henry's treats, Henry one day fed him a pound of hamburger laced with insect poison. The bug-killer he found in the back shed; he had saved three weeks to buy the meat at Costello's.

Mr Chips ate half the poisoned meat and then stopped. 'Go on, finish your treat, Niggerdog, ' Henry had said. Mr Chips wagged his tail. Since Henry had called him this from the beginning, he believed it was his other name. When the pains started, Henry produced a piece of clothesline and tied Mr Chips to a birch so he couldn't get away and run home. He then sat on a flat sun-warmed rock, put his chin in his palms, and watched the dog die. It took a good long time, but Henry considered it time well spent. At the end Mr Chips began to convulse and a thin green foam ran from between his jaws.

'How do you like that, Niggerdog? ' Henry asked it, and it rolled its dying eyes up at the sound of Henry's voice and tried to wag its tail. 'Did you like your lunch, you shitty mutt? '

When the dog was dead, Henry removed the clothesline, went home, and told his father what he had done. Oscar Bowers was extremely crazy by that time; a year later his wife would leave him after he beat her nearly to death. Henry was likewise frightened of his father and felt a terrible hate for him sometimes, but he also loved him. And that afternoon, after he had told, he felt he had finally found the key to his father's affections, because his father had clapped him on the back (so hard that Henry almost fell over), taken him in the living room, and given him a beer. It was the first beer Henry had ever had, and for all the rest of his years he would associate that taste with positive emotions: victory and love.

'Here's to a good job well done, ' Henry's crazy father had said. They clicked their brown bottles together and drank them down. So far as Henry knew, the niggers had never found out who killed their dog, but he supposed they had their suspicions. He hoped they did.

The others in the Losers' Club knew Mike by sight — in a town where he was the only Negro child, it would have been strange if they had not — but that was all, because Mike didn't go to Derry Elementary School. His mother was a devout Baptist and Mike was therefore sent to the Neibolt Street Church School. In between geography, reading, and arithuaetic there were Bible drills, lessons on such subjects as The Meaning of the Ten Commandments in a Godless World, and discussion-groups on how to handle everyday moral problems (if you saw a buddy shoplifting, for instance, or heard a teacher taking the name of God in vain).

Mike thought the Church School was okay. There were times when he suspected, in a vague way, that he was missing some things — a wider communication with kids his own age perhaps — but he was willing to wait until high school for these things to happen. The prospect made him a little nervous because his skin was brown, but both his mother and father had been well treated in town as far as Mike could see, and Mike believed he would be treated well if he treated others the same way.

The exception to this rule, of course, was Henry Bowers.

Although he tried to show it as little as possible, Mike went in constant terror of Henry. In

1958 Mike was slim and well built, taller than Stan Uris but not quite as tall as Bill Denbrough. He was fast and agile, and that had saved him from several beatings at Henry's hands. And, of course, he went to a different school. Because of that and the age difference, their paths rarely coincided. Mike took pains to keep things that way. So the irony was this: although Henry hated Mike Hanlon more than any other kid in Derry, Mike had been the least hurt of any of them.

Oh, he had taken his lumps. The spring after he had killed Mike's dog, Henry sprang out of the bushes one day while Mike was walking toward town to go to the library. It was late March, warm enough for bike-riding, but in those days Witcham Road turned to dirt just beyond the Bowers place, which meant that it was a quagmire of mud — no good for bikes. 'Hello, nigger, ' Henry had said, emerging from the bushes, grinning.

Mike backed off, eyes flicking warily right and left, watching for a chance to get away. He knew that if he could buttonhook around Henry, he could outdistance him. Henry was big and Henry was strong, but Henry was also slow.

'Gonna make me a tarbaby, ' Henry said, advancing on the smaller boy. 'You're not black enough, but I'll fix that. '

Mike cut his eyes to the left and twitched his body in that direction. Henry took the bait and broke that way — too fast and too far to pull himself back. Reversing with a sweet and natural speed, Mike took off to the right (in high school he would make the varsity football team as a tailback his sophomore year, and was only kept from breaking the school's all-time scoring record by a broken leg halfway through his senior season). He would have made it easily past Henry but for the mud. It was greasy, and Mike slipped to his knees. Before he could get up, Henry was upon him.

'Niggerniggernigger! ' Henry cried in a kind of religious ecstasy as he rolled Mike over. Mud went up the back of Mike's shirt and down the back of his pants. He could feel it squeezing into his shoes. But he did not begin to cry until Henry slathered mud across his face, plugging up both of his nostrils.

'Now you're black! ' Henry had screamed gleefully, rubbing mud in Mike's hair. 'Now you're REEEELY black! ' He ripped up Mike's poplin jacket and the tee-shirt beneath and slammed a poultice of mud down over the boy's bellybutton. 'Now you're as black as midnight in a MINESHAFT! ' Henry screamed triumphantly, and slammed mudplugs into both of Mike's ears. Then he stood back, muddy hands hooked into his belt, and yelled: 'I killed your dog, black boy! ' But Mike did not hear this because of the mud in his ears and his own terrified sobs.

Henry kicked a final sticky clot of mud onto Mike and then turned and walked home, not looking back. A few moments later, Mike got up and did the same, still weeping.

His mother was of course furious; she wanted Will Hanlon to call Chief Borton and have him out to the Bowers house before the sun went down. 'He's been after Mikey before, ' Mike heard her say. He was sitting in the bathtub and his parents were in the kitchen. This was his second tub of water; the first had turned black almost the moment he had stepped into it and sat down. In her fury, his mother had lapsed into a thick Texas patois Mike could barely understand. 'You put the law on him, Will Hanlon! Both the dog and the pup! You law em, hear me? '

Will heard, but did not do as his wife asked. Eventually, when she cooled down (by then it was that night and Mike two hours asleep), he refreshed her on the facts of life. Chief Borton was not Sheriff Sullivan. If Borton had been sheriff when the incident of the poisoned chickens occurred, Will would never have gotten his two hundred dollars and would have had to be content with that state of affairs. Some men would stand behind you and some men wouldn't; Borton was of the latter type. He was, in fact, a jellyfish.

'Mike has had trouble with that kid before, yes, ' he told Jessica. 'But he hasn't had much because he's careful around Henry Bowers. This will serve to make him more careful. '

'You mean you're just going to let it go? '

'Bowers has told his son stories about his dealings with me, I guess, ' Will said, 'and his son hates the three of us because of them, and because his father has also told him that hating niggers is what men are supposed to do. It all comes back to that. I can't change the fact that our son is a Negro any more than I can sit here and tell you that Henry Bowers is going to be the last one to take after him because his skin's brown. He's going to have to deal with it all the rest of his life, as I have dealt with it, and you have dealt with it. Why, right there in that Christian school you were bound he was going to go to the teacher told them blacks weren't as good as whites because Noah's son Ham looked at his father while he was drunk and naked and Noah's other two boys cast their eyes aside. That's why the sons of Ham were condemned

to always be hewers of wood and drawers of water, she said. And Mikey said she was lookin right at him while she told that story to them. '

Jessica looked at her husband, mute and miserable. Two tears fell, one from each eye, and tracked slowly down her face. 'Isn't there ever any getting away from it? '

His reply was kind but implacable; it was a tune when wives believed their husbands, and Jessica had no reason to doubt her Will.

'No. There is no getting away from the word nigger, not now, not in the world we've been given to live in, you and me. Country niggers from Maine are still niggers. I have thought, times, that the reason I came back to Derry was that there is no better place to remember that.

But I'll have a talk with the boy. '

The next day he called Mike out of the barn. Will sat on the yoke of his harrow and patted a place next to him for Mike.

'You want to stay out of that Henry Bowers's way, ' he said.

Mike nodded.

'His father is crazy. '

Mike nodded again. He had heard as much around town. His few glimpses of Mr Bowers had reinforced the notion.

'I don't mean just a little crazy, ' Will said, lighting a home-rolled Bugler cigarette and looking at his son. 'He's _t about three steps away from the boobyhatch. He came back from the war that way. '

'I think Henry's crazy too, ' Mike said. His voice was low but firm, and that strengthened Will's heart. . . although he was, even after a checkered life whose incidents had included almost being burned alive in a juryrigged speakeasy called the Black Spot, unable to believe a kid like Henry could be crazy.

'Well, he's listened to his father too much, but that is only natural, ' Will said. Yet on this his son was closer to the truth. Henry Bowers, either because of his constant association with his father or because of something else — some interior thing — was indeed slowly but surely going crazy.

'I don't want you ot make a career out of running away, ' his father said, 'but because you're a Negro, you're apt to be put upon a good deal. Do you know what I mean? '

'Yes, Daddy, ' Mike said, thinking of Bob Gautier at school, who had tried to explain to Mike that nigger could not be a bad word, because his father used it all the time. In fact, Bob told Mike earnestly, it was a good word. When a fighter on the Friday Night Fights took a bad beating and managed to stay on his feet, his daddy said, 'His head is as hard as a nigger's, ' and when someone was really putting out at his work (which, for Mr Gautier, was Star Beef in town), his daddy said, 'That man works like a nigger. ' 'And my daddy is just as much a Christian as your daddy, ' Bob had finished. Mike remembered that, looking at Bob Gautier's white earnest pinched face, surrounded by the mangy fur of his hand-me-down snowsuithood, he had felt not anger but a terrible sadness that made him feel like crying. He had seen honesty and good intent in Bob's face, but what he had felt was loneliness, distance, a great whistling emptiness between himself and the other boy.

'I see that you do know what I mean, ' Will said, and ruffled his son's hair. 'And what it all comes down to is that you have to be careful where you take your stand. You have to ask yourself if Henry Bowers is worth the trouble. Is he? '

'No, ' Mike said. 'No, I don't think so. ' It would be yet awhile before he changed his mind; July 3rd, 1958, in fact.

While Henry Bowers, Victor Criss, Belch Huggins, Peter Gordon, and a half-retarded highschool boy named Steve Sadler (known as Moose, after the character in the Archie comics) were chasing a winded Mike Hanlon through the trainyard and toward the Barrens about half a mile away, Bill and the rest of the Losers' Club were still sitting on the bank of the Kenduskeag, pondering their nightmare problem.

'I nun-know w-where ih-ih-it is, I think, ' Bill said, finally breaking the silence.

'The sewers, ' Stan said, and they all jumped at a sudden, harsh rattling noise. Eddie smiled guiltily as he lowered his aspirator back into his lap.

Bill nodded. 'I wuh-wuh-was a-asking my fuh-father about the suh-sewers a f-few nuh-hihights a-a-ago. '

'All of this area was originally marsh, ' Zack told his son, 'and the town fathers managed to put what's downtown these days in the very worst part of it. The section of the Canal that runs under Center and Main and comes out in Bassey Park is really nothing but a drain that happens to hold the Kenduskeag. Most of the year those drains are almost empty, but they're important when the spring runoff comes or when there are floods. . . 'He paused here, perhaps thinking that it had been during the flood of the previous autumn that he had lost his younger son. '. . . because of the pumps, ' he finished.

'Puh-puh-pumps? ' Bill asked, turning his head a little without even thinking about it. When he stuttered over the plosive sounds, spittle flew from his lips.

The drainage pumps, ' his father said. 'They're in the Barrens. Concrete sleeves that stick about three feet out of the ground — '

'Buh-Buh-Ben H-H-H-Hanscom calls them Muh-Morlock h-holes, ' Bill said, grinning.

Zack grinned back. . . but it was a shadow of his old grin. They were in Zack's workshop, where he was turning chair-dowels without much interest. 'Sump-pumps is all they really are, kiddo, ' he said. They sit in cylinders about ten feet deep, and they pump the sewage and the runoff along when the slope of the land levels out or angles up a little. It's old machinery, and the city should have some new pumps, but the Council always pleads poverty when the item comes up on the agenda at budget meetings. If I had a quarter for every time I've been down there, up to my knees in crap, rewiring one of those motors. . . but you don't want to hear all this, Bill. Why don't you go watch TV? I think Sugarfoot's on tonight. '

'I d-d-do wuh-want to h-hear it, ' Bill said, and not only because he had come to the conclusion that there was something terrible under Derry someplace.

'Why do you want to hear about a bunch of sewer-pumps? ' Zack asked.

'Skuh-skuh-hool ruh-report, ' Bill said wildly.

'School's Out. ' 'N-N-Next year. '

'Well, it's a pretty dull subject, ' Zack said. Teacher'll probably give you an F for putting him to sleep. Look, here's the Kenduskeag' — he drew a straight line in the light fall of sawdust on the table in which his handsaw was embedded — 'and here's the Barrens. Now, because downtown's lower than the residential areas — Kansas Street, say, or the Old Cape, or West Broadway — most of the downtown waste has to be pumped into the river. The waste from the houses flows down to the Barrens pretty much on its own. You see? '

'Y-Y-Yes, ' Bill said, drawing a little closer to his father to look at the lines, close enough so that his shoulder was against his father's arm.

'Someday they'll put a stop to pumping raw sewage into the river and that'll be an end to the whole business. But for now, we've got those pumps in hte. . . what did your buddy call em? '

'Morlock holes, ' Bill said, with not a trace of a stutter; neither he nor his father noticed.

'Yeah. That's what the pumps in the Morlock holes are for, anyway, and they work pretty well except when there's too much rain and the streams overflow. Because, although the gravity drains and the sewers with the pumps were meant to be separate systems, they actually crisscross all over the place. See? ' He drew a series of 'X's radiating out from the line which represented the Kenduskeag, and Bill nodded. 'Well, the only thing you need to know about water draining is that it will go wherever it can. When it gets high, it starts to fill up the drains as well as the sewers. When the water in the drains gets high enough to reach those pumps, it shorts them out. Makes trouble for me, because I have to fix them. '

'Dad, h-how big are the suh-sewers and drains? '

'You mean, what's the bore on them? '

Bill nodded.

The main sewers are maybe six feet in diameter. The secondaries, from the residential areas, are three or four, I guess. Some of them might be a little bigger. And believe me when I tell you this, Billy, and you can tell your friends: you never want to go into one of those pipes, not in a game, not on a dare, not for any reason. '

'Why? '

'A dozen different town governments have built on them since 1885 or so. During the

Depression the WPA put in a whole secondary drain system and a tertiary sewer system; there was lots of money for public works back then. But the fellow who bossed those projects got killed in World War II, and about five years later the Water Department found out that the system blueprints were mostly gone. That's about nine pounds of blues that just disappeared sometime between 1937 and 1950. My point is that nobody knows where all the damned sewers and drains go, or why.

'When they work, nobody cares. When they don't, there's three or four sad sacks from Derry Water who have to try and find out which pump went flooey or where the plug-up is. And when they go down there, they damn well pack a lunch. It's dark and it's smelly and there are rats. Those are all good reasons to stay out, but the best reason is that you could get lost. It's happened before. '

Lost under Derry. Lost in the sewers. Lost in the dark. There was something so dismal and chilling about the idea that Bill was momentarily silenced. Then he said, 'But haven't they ever suh-suh-hent people down to map — '

'I ought to finish these dowels, ' Zack said abruptly, turning his back and pulling away. 'Go on in and see what's on TV' 'B-B-But Dah-Dah-Dad — '

'Go on, Bill, ' Zack said, and Bill could feel the coldness again. That coldness made suppers a kind of torture as his father leafed through electrical journals (he hoped for a promotion the following year), as his mother read one of her endless British mysteries: Marsh, Sayers, Innes, Allingham. Eating in that coldness robbed food of its taste; it was like eating frozen dinners that had never seen the inside of an oven. Sometimes, after, he would go up to his room and lie on his bed, holding his griping stomach, and think: He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts. He thought of that more and more since Georgie had died, although his mother had taught him the phrase two years before. It had taken on a talismanic cast in his mind: the day he could walk up to his mother and simply speak that phrase without tripping or stuttering, looking her right in the eye as he spoke it, the coldness would break apart; her eyes would light up and she would hug him and say, 'Wonderful,

Billy! What a good boy! What a good boy! '

He had, of course, told this to no one. Wild horses would not have dragged it from him; neither the rack nor the boot would have induced him to give up this secret fantasy, which lay at the very center of his heart. If he could say this phrase which she had taught him casually one Saturday morning as he and Georgie sat watching Guy Madison and Andy Devine in The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, it would be like the kiss that awakened Sleeping Beauty from her cold dreams to the warmer world of the fairytale prince's love.

He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

Nor did he tell it to his friends on that July 3rd — but he told them what his father had told him about the Derry sewer and drain systems. He was a boy to whom invention came easily and naturally (sometimes more easily than telling the truth), and the scene he painted was quite different from the scene in which the conversation had actually taken place: he and his old man had been watching the tube together, he said, having cups of coffee. 'Your dad lets you have coffee? ' Eddie asked.

'Sh-sh-sure, ' Bill said.

'Wow, ' Eddie said. 'My mother would never let me have a coffee. She says the caffeine in it is dangerous. ' He paused. 'She drinks quite a bit of it herself, though. '

'My dad lets me have coffee if I want it, ' Beverly said, 'but he'd kill me if he knew I smoked. '

'What makes you so sure it's in the sewers? ' Richie asked, looking from Bill to Stan Uris and then back to Bill again.

'E-E-Everything g-goes back t-to th-th-that, ' Bill said. 'The v-voices Beh-he-heverly heard c-came from the d-d-drain. And the bluh-blood. When the c-c-clown ch-chased us, those oorange buh-buh-buttons were by a suh-sewer. And Juh juh-George — '

'It wasn't a clown, Big Bill, ' Richie said. 'I told you that. I know it's crazy, but it was a

werewolf. ' He looked at the others defensively. 'Honest to God. I saw it. '

Bill said: 'It was a werewolf for y-y-you. '

'Huh? '

Bill said, 'D-Don't you s-s-see? It was a wuh-wuh-were wolf for y-you because y-you saw that duh-humb movie at the A-A-A-Aladdin. '

'I don't get it. '

'I think I do, ' Ben said quietly.

'I went to the l-l-library and l-looked it uh-uh-up, ' Bill said. 'I think It's a gluh-gluh' — he paused, throat straining, and spat it out — 'a glamour. ' 'Glammer? ' Eddie asked doubtfully.

'G-G-Glamour, ' Bill said, and spelled it. He told them about an encyclopedia entry on the subject and, a chapter he had read in a book called Night's Truth. Glamour, he said, was the Gaelic name for the creature which was haunting Derry; other races and other cultures at other times had different words for it, but they all meant the same thing. The Plains Indians called it a manitou, which sometimes took the shape of a mountain-lion or an elk or an eagle. These same Indians believed that the spirit of a manitou could sometimes enter them, and at these times it was possible for them to shape the clouds themselves into representations of those animals for which their houses had been named. The Himalayans called it a tallus or taelus, which meant an evil magic being that could read your mind and then assume the shape of the thing you were most afraid of. In Central Europe it had been called eylak, brother of the vurderlak, or vampire. In France it was le loup-garou, or skin-changer, a concept that had been crudely translated as the werewolf, but, Bill told them, le loup-garou (which he pronounced 'le loop-garoo') could be anything, anything at all: a wolf, a hawk, a sheep, even a bug.

'Did any of those articles tell you how to beat a glamour? ' Beverly asked.

Bill nodded, but he didn't look hopeful. 'The H-H-Himalayans had a rih-hi-hitual to g-get rih-rid of i-i-it, but ih-it's pretty gruh-gruh-grue-some. ' They looked at him, not wanting to hear but needing to.

'I-I-It was cuh-called the R-R-Ritual of Chü h-Chü d, ' Bill said, and went on to explain what that was. If you were a Himalayan holy-man, you tracked the taelus. The taelus stuck its tongue out. You stuck yours out. You and it overlapped tongues and then you both bit in all the way so you were sort of stapled together, eye to eye.

'Oh, I think I'm gonna puke, ' Beverly said, rolling over on the dirt. Ben patted her back tentatively, then looked around to see if he had been observed. He hadn't been; the others were looking at Bill, mesmerized.

'What then? ' Eddie asked.

'W-W-Well, ' Bill said, 'this sounds cuh-cuh-crazy, b-but the book s-said that th-then y-you started telling juh- jokes and rih-riddles. ' 'What? Stan asked.

Bill nodded, his face that of a correspondent who wants you to know — without coining right out and saying it — that he doesn't make the news but only reports it. 'R-Right. F-First the t-taelus monster would tell o-o-one, then y-y-you got to t-t-tell o-one, and y-you w-wwent o-on like thuh-that, t-tay-takin t-turns — '

Beverly sat up again, knees against her chest, hands linked around her shins. 'I don't see how people could talk with their tongues, you know, nailed together. '

Richie immediately ran out his tongue, gripped it with his fingers, and intoned: 'My father works in a shit-yard! ' That broke them all up for awhile even though it was a baby joke.

'M-Maybe it was suh-suh-suhpposed to be tuh-telepathy, ' Bill said. 'A-Anyway, i-if the hh-human laughed f-f-first in spi-hite of the p-p-p-p — ' 'Pain? ' Stan asked.

Bill nodded. ' — then the taelus g-got to k-k-kill h-him and e-e-e-eat him. His soul, I think. B-But i-if the muh-man c-c-ould make the t-taelus l-laugh f-f-first, it had to go away for a huh-huh-hundred y-years.

'Did the book say where a thing like that would come from? ' Ben asked.

Bill shook his head.

'Do you believe any of it? ' Stan asked, sounding as if he wanted to scoff but could not quite find the moral or mental force to do so.

Bill shrugged and said, 'I a-a-almost d-do. ' He seemed about to say more, then shook his head and remained silent.

'It explains a lot, ' Eddie said slowly. The clown, the leper, the werewolf. . . ' He looked. over at Stan. 'The dead boys, too, I guess. '

'This sounds like a job for Richard Tozier, ' Richie said, in the MovieTone Newsreel

Announcer's Voice. 'Man of a thousand jokes and six thousand riddles. '

'If we sent you to do it, we'd all get killed, ' Ben said. 'Slowly. In great pain. ' At this they all laughed again.

'So what do we do about it? ' Stan demanded, and once again Bill could only shake his head. . . and feel he almost knew. Stan stood up. 'Let's go somewhere else, ' he said. 'I'm getting fanny fatigue. '

'I like it here, ' Beverly said. 'It's shady and nice. ' She glanced at Stan. 'I suppose you want to do something babyish like going down to the dump and breaking bottles with rocks. '

'I like breaking bottles with rocks, ' Richie said, standing up beside Stan. 'It's the j. d. in me, baby. ' He flipped up his collar and began to stalk around like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. 'They hurt me, ' he said, looking moody and scratching his chest. 'You know, like wow. My parents. School. So-SY-ety. Everyone. It's pressure, baby. It's — ' 'It's shit, ' Beverly said, and sighed.

'I've got some firecrackers, ' Stan said, and they forgot all about glamours, manitous, and Richie's bad James Dean imitation as Stan produced a package of Black Cats from his hip pocket. Even Bill was impressed.

'J-Jesus Christ, Stuh-Stuh-han, w-where did you g-g-get thuh-hose? '

'From this fat kid that I go to synagogue with sometimes, ' Stan said. 'I

traded a bunch of Superman and Little Lulu funnybooks for em. '

'Let's shoot em off! ' Richie cried, nearly apoplectic in his joy. 'Let's go shoot em off, Stanny, I won't tell any more guys you and your dad killed Christ, I promise, what do you say? I'll tell em your nose is small, Stanny! I'll tell em you're not circumcised! '

At this Beverly began to shriek with laughter and actually appeared to be approaching apoplexy before covering her face with her hands. Bill began to laugh, Eddie began to laugh, and after a moment even Stan joined in. The sound of it drifted across the broad shallow expanse of the Kenduskeag on that day before July 4th, a summer-sound, as bright as the sunrays darting off the water, and none of them saw the orange eyes staring at them from a tangle of brambles and sterile blackberry bushes to their left. This brambly patch scrubbed the entire bank for thirty feet, and in the center of it was one of Ben's Morlock holes. It was from this raised concrete pipe that the eyes, each more than two feet across, stared.

The reason Mike ran afoul of Henry Bowers and his not-so-merry band on that same day was because the next day was the Glorious Fourth. The Church School had a band in which Mike played the trombone. On the Fourth, the band would march in the annual holiday parade, playing 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic, ' 'Onward Christian Soldiers, ' and 'America the Beautiful. ' This was an occasion that Mike had been looking forward to for over a month. He walked to the final rehearsal because his bike had a busted chain. The rehearsal was not scheduled until two-thirty, but he left at one because he wanted to polish his trombone, which was stored in the school's music room, until it glowed. Although his trombone-playing was really not much better than Richie's Voices, he was fond of the instrument, and whenever he felt blue a half an hour of foghorning Sousa marches, hymns, or patriotic airs cheered hun right up again. There was a can of Saddler's brass polish in one of the flap pockets of his khaki shirt and two or three clean rags were dangling from the hip pocket of his jeans. The thought of Henry Bowers was the furthest thing from his mind. A glance behind as he approached Neibolt Street and the Church School would have changed his mind in a hurry, because Henry, Victor, Belch, Peter Gordon, and Moose Sadler were spread across the road behind him. If they had left the Bowers house five minutes later, Mike would have been out of sight over the crest of the next hill; the apocalyptic rockfight and everything that followed it might have happened differently, or not at all.

But it was Mike himself, years later, who advanced the idea that perhaps none of them were entirely their own masters in the events of that summer; that if luck and free will had played parts, then their roles had been narrow ones. He would point out a number of these suspicious coincidences to the others at their reunion lunch, but there was at least one of which he was unaware. The meeting in the Barrens that day broke up when Stan Uris produced the Black Cats and the Losers' Club headed toward the dump to shoot them off. And Victor, Belch, and the others had come out to the Bowers farm because Henry had firecrackers, cherry-bombs, and M-80s (the possession of these last would a few years hence become a felony). The big boys were planning to go down beyond the trainyard coalpit and explode Henry's treasures.

None of them, not even Belch, went out to the Bowers farm under ordinary circumstances

— primarily because of Henry's crazy father but also because they always ended up helping Henry do his chores: the weeding, the endless rock-picking, the lugging of wood, the toting of water, the pitching of hay, the picking of whatever happened to be ripe at the time of the season — peas, cukes, tomatoes, potatoes. These boys were not exactly allergic to work, but they had plenty to do at their own places without sweating for Henry's kooky father, who didn't much care who he hit (he had once taken a length of stovewood to Victor Criss when the boy dropped a basket of tomatoes he was lugging out to the roadside stand). Getting whopped with a chunk of birch was bad enough; what made it worse was that Butch Bowers had chanted 'I'm gonna kill all the Nips! I'm gonna kill all the fuckin Nips! ' when he did it. Dumb as he was, Belch Huggins had expressed it best: 'I don't fuck with crazy people, ' he told Victor one day two years before. Victor had laughed and agreed.

But the siren-song of all those firecrackers had been too great to be withstood.

Tell you what, Henry, ' Victor said when Henry called him up that morning at nine and invited him out. 'I'll meet you at the coalpit around one o'clock, what do you say? '

'You show up at the coalpit around one and I'm not gonna be there, ' Henry replied. 'I got too many chores. If you show up at the coalpit around three, I will be there. And the first M-

80 is going to go right up your old tan track, Vie. '

Vie hesitated, then agreed to come over and help with the chores.

The others came as well, and with the five of them, all big boys, working like fiends around the Bowers place, they got all the chores finished by early afternoon. When Henry asked his father if he could go, Bowers the elder simply waved a languid hand at his son. Butch was settled in for the afternoon on the back porch, a quart milk-bottle filled with exquisitely hard cider by his rocker, his Philco portable radio on the porch rail (later that afternoon the Red Sox would be playing the Washington Senators, a prospect that would have given a man who was not crazy a bad case of cold chills). An unsheathed Japanese sword lay across Butch's lap, a war souvenir which, Butch said, he had taken off the body of a dying Nip on the island of Tarawa (he had actually traded six bottles of Budweiser and three joysticks for the sword in Honolulu). Lately Butch almost always got out his sword when he drank. And since all of the boys, including Henry himself, were secretly convinced that sooner or later he would use it on someone, it was best to be far away when it made its appearance on Butch's lap.

The boys had no more than stepped out into the road when Henry spied Mike Hanlon up ahead. 'It's the nigger! ' he said, his eyes lighting up like the eyes of a small child contemplating Santa Claus's imminent arrival on Christmas Eve.

'The nigger? ' Belch Huggins looked puzzled — he had seen the Hanlons only rarely — and then his dim eyes lit up. 'Oh yeah! The nigger! Let's get him, Henry! '

Belch broke into a thunderous trot. The others were following suit when Henry grabbed Belch and hauled him back. Henry had more experience than the others chasing Mike Hanlon, and he knew that catching him was easier said than done. That black boy could move.

'He don't see us. Let's just walk fast till he does. Cut the distance. '

They did so. An observer might have been amused: the five of them looked as if they were trying out for that peculiar Olympic walking competition. Moose Sadler's considerable belly joggled up and down inside his Derry High School tee-shirt. Sweat rolled down Belch's face, which soon grew red. But the distance between them and Mike closed — two hundred yards, a hundred and fifty yards, a hundred — and so far Little Black Sambo hadn't looked back. They could hear him whistling.

'What you gonna do to him, Henry? ' Victor Criss asked in a low voice. He sounded merely interested, but in truth he was worried. Just lately Henry had begun to worry him more and more. He wouldn't care if Henry wanted them to beat the Hanlon kid up, maybe even rip his shut off or throw his pants and underwear up in a tree, but he was not sure that was all Henry had in mind. This year there had been several unpleasant encounters with the children from Derry Elementary Henry referred to as 'the little shits. ' Henry was used to dominating and terrorizing the little shits, but since March he had been balked by them time and time again.

Henry and his friends had chased one of them, the four-eyes Tozier kid, into Freese's, and had lost him somehow just when it seemed his ass was surely theirs. Then, on the last day of school, the Hanscom kid —

But Victor didn't like to think of that.

What worried him, simply, was this: Henry might go TOO FAR Just what TOO FAR might be was something Victor didn't like to think of. . . but his uneasy heart had prompted the question just the same.

'We're gonna catch him and take him down to that coalpit, ' Henry said. 'I thought we'd put a couple of firecrackers in his shoes and see if he dances. '

'But not the M-80s, Henry, right? '

If Henry intended something like that Victor was going to take a powder. An M-80 in each shoe would blow that nigger's feet off, and that was much TOO FAR

'I've got only four of those, ' Henry said, not taking his eyes off Mike Hanlon's back. They had closed the distance to seventy-five yards now and he also spoke in a low voice. 'You think I'd waste two of em on a fuckin nightfighter? '

'No, Henry. Course not. '

'We'll just put a couple of Black Cats in his loafers, ' Henry said, 'then strip him bareass and throw his clothes down into the Barrens. Maybe he'll catch poison ivy going after them. '

'We gotta roll im in the coal, too, ' Belch said, his formerly dim eyes now glowing brightly.

'Okay, Henry? Is that cool? '

'Cool as a moose, ' Henry said in a casual way Victor didn't quite like. 'We'll roll im in the coal, just like I rolled im in the mud that other time. And. . . ' Henry grinned, showing teeth that were already beginning to rot at the age of twelve. 'And I got something to tell him. I don't think he heard when I told im before. '

'What's that, Henry? ' Peter asked. Peter Gordon was merely interested and excited. He came from one of Berry's 'good families'; he lived on West Broadway and in two years he would be sent to prep school in Groton — or so he believed on that July 3rd. He was brighter than Vie Criss, but had not hung around long enough to understand how Henry was eroding.

'You'll find out, ' Henry said. 'Now shut up. We're gettin close. '

They were twenty-five yards behind Mike and Henry was just opening his mouth to give the order to charge when Moose Sadler set off the first firecracker of the day. Moose had eaten three plates of baked beans the night before, and the fart was almost as loud as a shotgun blast.

Mike looked around. Henry saw his eyes widen.

'Get him! ' Henry howled.

Mike froze for a moment; then he took off, running for his life.

The Losers wound their way through the bamboo in the Barrens in this order: Bill; Richie; Beverly behind Richie, walking slim and pretty in bluejeans and a white sleeveless blouse, zoris on her feet; then Ben, trying not to puff too loudly (although it was eighty-one that day, he was wearing one of his baggy sweatshirts); Stan; Eddie bringing up the rear, the snout of his aspirator poking out of his right front pants pocket. Bill had fallen into a 'jungle-safari' fantasy, as he often did when walking through this part of the Barrens. The bamboo was high and white, limiting visibility to the path they had made through here. The earth was black and squelchy, with sodden patches that had to be avoided or jumped over if you didn't want to get mud in your shoes. The puddles of standing water had oddly flat rainbow colors. The air had a reeky smell that was half the dump and half rotting vegetation.

Bill halted one turn away from the Kenduskeag and turned back to Richie. T-T-Tiger up ahead, T-T-Tozier. '

Richie nodded and turned back to Beverly. 'Tiger, ' he breathed.

'Tiger, ' she told Ben. _:

'Man-eater? ' Ben asked, holding his breath to keep from panting.

'There's blood all over him, ' Beverly said.

'Man-eating tiger, ' Ben muttered to Stan, and he passed the news back to Eddie, whose thin face was hectic with excitement.

They faded into the bamboo, leaving the path of black earth that looped through it magically bare. The tiger passed in front of them and all of them nearly saw it: heavy, perhaps four hundred pounds, its muscles moving with grace and power beneath the silk of its striped pelt. They nearly saw its green eyes, and the flecks of blood around its snout from the last batch of pygmy warriors it had eaten alive.

The bamboo rattled faintly, a noise both musical and eerie, and then was still again. It might have been a breath of summer breeze. . . or it might have been the passage of an African tiger on its way toward the Old Cape side of the Barrens.

'Gone, ' Bill said. He let out a pent-up breath and stepped out onto the path again. The others followed suit.

Richie was the only one who had come armed: he produced a cap-pistol with a frictiontaped handgrip. 'I could have had a clear shot at him if you'd moved, Big Bill, ' he said grimly.

He pushed the bridge of his old glasses up on his nose with the muzzle of the gun.

'There's Wuh-Wuh-Watusis around h-h-here, ' Bill said. 'C-C-Can't rih-risk a shot. Y-You w-want them down on t-t-top of us? ' 'Oh, ' Richie said, convinced.

Bill made a come-on gesture with his arm and they were back on the path again, which narrowed into a neck at the end of the bamboo patch. They stepped out onto the bank of the Kenduskeag, where a series of stepping-stones led across the river. Ben had shown them how to place them. You got a big rock and plopped it in the water, then you got a second and plopped it in the water while you were stepping on the first, then you got a third and plopped it in the water while you were stepping on the second, and so on until you were all the way across the river (which here, and at this time of year, was less than a foot deep and shaled with tawny sandbars) with your feet still dry. The trick was so simple it was damn near babyish, but none of them had seen it until Ben pointed it out. He was good at stuff like that, but when he showed you he never made you feel like a dummy.

They went down the bank in single file and started across the dry backs of the rocks they had planted.

'Bill! ' Beverly called urgently.

He froze at once, not looking back, arms held out. The water chuckled and rilled around him. 'What? '

'There's piranha fish in here! I saw them eat a whole cow two days ago. A minute after it fell in, there was nothing but bones. Don't fall off! '

'Right, ' Bill said. 'Be careful, men. '

They teetered their way across the rocks. A freight-train charged by on the railway embankment as Eddie Kaspbrak neared the halfway point, and the sudden blast of its airhorn caused him to jiggle on the edge of balance. He looked into the bright water and for one moment, between the sunnxx¹ ashes that darted arrows of light into his eyes, he actually saw the cruising piranhas. They were not part of the make-believe that went with Bill's jungle safari fantasy; he was quite sure of that. The fish he saw looked like oversized goldfish with the great ugly jaws of catfish or groupers. Sawteeth protruded between their thick lips and, like goldfish, they were orange. As orange as the fluffy pompoms you sometimes saw on the suits the clowns wore at the circus.

They circled in the shallow water, gnashing.

Eddie pin wheeled his arms. I'm going in, he thought. I'm going in and they'll eat me alive

—

Then Stanley Uris gripped his wrist firmly and brought him back to dead center.

'Close call, ' Stan said. 'If you fell in, your mother'd give you heck. '

Thoughts of his mother were, for once, the furthest things from Eddie's mind. The others had gained the far bank now and were counting cars on the freight. Eddie stared wildly into Stan's eyes, then looked into the water again. He saw a potato-chip bag go dancing by, but that was all. He looked up at Stan again.

'Stan, I saw — '

— 'What? '

Eddie shook his head. 'Nothing, I guess, ' he said. 'I'm just a little

(but they were there yes they were and they would have eaten me alive)

' — jumpy. The tiger, I guess. Keep going. '

This western bank of the Kenduskeag — the Old Cape bank — was a quagmire of mud during rainy weather and the spring runoff, but there had been no heavy rain in Derry for two weeks or more and the bank had dried to an alien crack-glaze from which several of those cement cylinders poked, casting grim little shadows. About twenty yards farther down, a cement pipe jutted out over the Kenduskeag and spilled a steady thin stream of foul-looking brown water into the river.

Ben said quietly, 'It's creepy here, ' and the others nodded.

Bill led them up the dry bank and back into the heavy shrubbery, where bugs whirred and chiggers chigged. Every now and then there would be a heavy ruffle of wings as a bird took off. Once a squirrel ran across their path, and about five minutes later, as they approached the low wrinkle of ridge that guarded the town dump's blind side, a large rat with a bit of cellophane caught in its whiskers trundled in front of Bill, passing along its own secret run through its own microcosmic wilderness.

The smell of the dump was now clear and pungent; a black column of smoke rose in the sky. The ground, while still heavily overgrown except for their own narrow path, began to be strewn with litter. Bill had dubbed this 'dump-dandruff, ' and Richie had been delighted; he had laughed almost until he cried. 'You ought to write that down, Big Bill, ' he said. 'That's really good. '

Papers caught on branches wavered and flapped like cut-rate pennants; here was a silver gleam of summer sun reflected from a clutch of tin cans lying at the bottom of a green and tangled hollow; there the hotter reflection of sunrays bouncing off a broken beer bottle. Beverly spied a babydoll, its plastic skin so brightly pink it looked almost boiled. She picked it up, then dropped it with a little cry as she saw the whitish-gray beetles squirming from beneath its moldy skirt and down its rotting legs. She rubbed her fingers on her jeans.

They climbed to the top of the ridge and looked down into the dump.

'Oh shit, ' Bill said, and jammed his hands into his pockets as ht e others gathered around him.

They were burning the northern end today, but here, at their end, the dumpkeeper (he was, in fact, Armando Fazio, Mandy to his friends, and the bachelor brother of the Derry Elementary School janitor) was tinkering on the World War II D-9 'dozer he used to push the crap into piles for burning. His shirt was off, and the big portable radio sitting under the canvas parasol on the 'dozer's seat was putting out the Red Sox — Senators pregame festivities.

'Can't go down there, ' Ben agreed. Mandy Fazio was not a bad guy, but when he saw kids in the dump he ran them off at once — because of the rats, because of the poison he regularly sowed to keep the rat population down, because of the potential for cuts, falls, and burns. . . but mostly because he believed a dump was no place for children to be. 'Ain't you nice? ' he would yell at the kids he spied who had been drawn to the dump with their. 22s to plink away at bottles (or rats, or seagulls) or by the exotic fascination of d'ump-picking': you might find a toy that still worked, a chair that could be mended for a clubhouse, or a junked TV with the picture-tube still intact — if you threw a rock through one of these there was a very satisfying explosion. 'Ain't you kids nice? ' Mandy would bellow (he bellowed not because he was angry but because he was deaf and wore no hearing-aid). 'Dintchore folks teach you to be nice?

Nice boys and girls don't play in the dump! Go to the park! Go to the liberry! Go down to Community House and play box-hockey! Be nice! '

'Nope, ' Richie said. 'Guess the dump's out. '

They all sat down for a few moments to watch Mandy work on his 'dozer, hoping he would give up and go away but not really believing he would: the presence of the radio suggested Mandy intended to stay all afternoon. It was enough to piss off the Pope, Bill thought. There was really no better place to come with firecrackers than the dump. You could put them under tin cans and then watch the cans fly into the air when the firecrackers went off, or you could light the fuses and drop them into bottles and then run like hell. The bottles didn't always break, but usually they did.

'Wish we had some M-80s, ' Richie sighed, unaware of how soon one would be chucked at his head.

'My mother says people ought to be happy with what they have, ' Eddie said so solemnly that they all laughed.

When the laughter died away, they all looked toward Bill again.

Bill thought about it and then said, 'I nuh-know a p-place. There's an old gruh-gruh-gravelpit at the end of the Bun-Barrens by the t-t-trainyards — '

'Yeah! ' Stan said, getting to his feet. 'I know that place! You're a genius, Bill! ' 'They'll really echo there, ' Beverly agreed.

'Well, let's go, ' Richie said.

The six of them, one shy of the magic number, walked along the brow of the hill which circled the dump. Mandy Fazio glanced up once and saw them silhouetted against the blue sky like Indians out on a raiding party. He thought about hollering at them — the Barrens was no place for kids — and then he turned back to his work instead. At least they weren't in his dump.

Mike Hanlon ran past the Church School without pausing and pelted straight up Neibolt Street toward the Derry trainyards. There was a janitor at NCS, but Mr Gendron was very old and even deafer than Mandy Fazio. Also, he liked to spend most of his summer days asleep in the basement by the summer-silent boiler, stretched out in a battered old reclining chair with the Derry News in his lap. Mike would still be pounding on the door and shouting for the old man to let him in when Henry Bowers came up behind him and tore his freaking head off. So Mike just ran.

But not blindly; he was trying to pace himself, trying to control his breathing, not yet going all out. Henry, Belch, and Moose Sadler presented no problems; even relatively fresh they ran like wounded buffalo. Victor Criss and Peter Gordon, however, were much faster. As Mike passed the house where Bill and Richie had seen the clown — or the werewolf — he snapped a glance back and was alarmed to see that Peter Gordon had almost closed the distance. Peter was grinning cheerfully — a steeplechase grin, a full-out polo grin, a pip-pip-jolly-goodshow grin, and Mike thought: I wonder if he'd grin that way if he knew what's going to happen if they catch me. . . Does he think they're just going to say 'Tag, you're it, ' and run away?

As the trainyard gate with its sign — PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT VIOLATORS WILL BE

PROSECUTED — loomed up, Mike was forced to let himself out to the limit. There was no pain — his breathing was rapid yet still controlled — but he knew everything was going to start hurting if he had to keep this pace up for long. The gate was standing halfway open. He snapped a second look back and saw that he'd pulled away from Peter again. Victor was perhaps ten paces behind Peter, the others now forty or fifty yards back. Even in that quick glance Mike could see the black anger on Henry's face.

He skittered through the opening, whirled, and slammed the gate closed. He heard the click as it latched. A moment later Peter Gordon slammed into the chainlink, and a moment after that, Victor Criss ran up beside him. Peter's smile was gone; a sulky, balked look had replaced it. He grabbed for the latch, but of course there was none: the latch was on the inside.

Incredibly, he said: 'Come on, kid, open the gate. That's not fair. ' 'What's your idea of fair? ' Mike asked, panting. 'Five against one? '

'Fair-up, ' Peter repeated, as if he had not heard Mike at all.

Mike looked at Victor, saw the troubled look in Victor's eyes. He started to speak, but that was when the others pulled up to the gate.

'Open up, nigger! ' Henry bawled. He began to shake the chainlink with such ferocity that Peter looked at him, startled. 'Open up! Open up right now! ' 'I won't, ' Mike said quietly.

'Open up! ' Belch shouted. 'Open up, ya fuckin jigaboo! '

Mike backed away from the gate, his heart beating heavily in his chest. He couldn't remember ever being quite this scared, quite this upset. They lined their side of the gate, shouting at him, calling him names for nigger he had never dreamed existed — nightfighter, Ubangi, spade, blackberry, junglebunny, others. He was barely aware that Henry was taking something from his pocket, that he had popped a wooden match alight with his thumbnail — and then a round red something came over the fence and he flinched instinctively away as the cherry-bomb exploded to his left, kicking up dust.

The bang silenced them all for a moment — Mike stared unbelievingly at them through the fence, and they stared back. Peter Gordon looked utterly shocked, and even Belch looked stunned.

They're ascared of him now, Mike thought suddenly, and a new voice spoke inside of him, perhaps for the first time, a voice that was disturbingly adult. They're ascared, but that won't stop them. You got to get away, Mikey, or something's going to happen. Not all of them will want it to happen, maybe — not Victor and maybe not Peter Gordon — but it will happen anyway because Henry will make it ' happen. So get away. Get away fast.

He backed up another two or three steps and then Henry Bowers said: 'I was the one killed your dog, nigger. '

Mike froze, feeling as if he had been hit in the belly with a bowling ball. He stared into Henry Bowers's eyes and understood that Henry was telling the simple truth: he had killed Mr Chips.

That moment of understanding seemed nearly eternal to Mike — looking into Henry's crazed sweat-ringed eyes and his rage-blackened face, it seemed to him that he understood a great many things for the first time, and the fact that Henry was far crazier than Mike had ever dreamed was only the least of them. He realized above all that the world was not kind, and it was more this than the news itself that forced the cry from him: 'You honky chickenshit bastard! '

Henry uttered a shriek of rage and attacked the fence, monkeying his way toward the top with a brute strength that was terrifying. Mike paused a moment longer, wanting to see if that adult voice that had spoken inside had been a true voice, and yes, it had been true: after the slightest hesitation, the others spread out and also began to climb.

Mike turned and ran again, sprinting across the trainyards, his shadow trailing squat at his feet. The freight which the Losers had seen crossing the Barrens was long gone now, and there was no sound but Mike's own breathing in his ears and the musical jingle of chainlink as Henry and the others climbed the fence.

Mike ran across one triple set of tracks, his sneakers kicking back cinders as he ran across the space between. He stumbled crossing the second set of tracks, and felt pain flare briefly in his ankle. He got up and ran on again. He heard a thud as Henry jumped down from the top of the fence behind him. 'Here I come for your ass, nigger! ' Henry bawled.

Mike's reasoning self had decided that the Barrens were his only chance now. If he could get down there he could hide in the tangles of underbrush, in the bamboo. . . or, if things became really desperate, he could climb into one of the drainpipes and wait it out.

He could do those things, maybe. . . but there was a hot spark of fury in his chest that had nothing to do with his reasoning self. He could understand Henry chasing after him when he got the chance, but Mr Chips? . . . killing Mr Chips? My DOG wasn't a nigger, you cheapshit bastard, Mike thought as he ran, and the bewildered anger grew.

Now he heard another voice, this one his father's. I don't want you to make a career out of running away. . . and what it all comes down to is that you have to be careful where you take your stand. You have to ask yourself if Henry Bowers is worth the trouble. . .

Mike had been running a straight line across the trainyards toward the storage quonsets. Beyond them another chainlink fence divided the trainyards from the Barrens. He had been planning to scale that fence and jump over to the other side. Instead he veered hard right, toward the gravel-pit.

This gravel-pit had been used as a coalpit until 1935 or so — it had been a ' stoking-point for the trains which ran through the Derry yards. Then the diesels came, and the electrics. For a number of years after the coal was gone (much of the remainder stolen by people with coalfired furnaces) a local contractor had dug gravel there, but he went bust in 1955 and since then the pit had been deserted. A spur railroad line still ran in a loop up to the pit and then back toward the switching-yards, but the tracks were dull with rust, and ragweed grew up between the rotting ties. These same weeds grew in the pit itself, vying for space with goldenrod and nodding sunflowers. Amid the vegetation there was still plenty of slag coal — the stuff people had once called 'clinkers. '

As Mike ran toward this place, he took his shirt off. He reached the run of the pit and looked back. Henry was coming across the tracks, his buddies spread out around him. That was okay, maybe.

Moving as quickly as he could, using his shirt for a bindle, Mike picked up half a dozen handfuls of hard clinkers. Then he ran back toward the fence, swinging his shirt by the arms. Instead of climbing the fence when he reached it, he turned so his back was against it. He dumped the coal out of his shirt, stooped, and picked up a couple of chunks.

Henry didn't see the coal; he only saw that he had the nigger trapped against the fence. He sprinted toward him, yelling.

'This is for my dog, you bastard! ' Mike cried, unaware that he had begun to cry. He threw one of the chunks of coal overhand. It flew in a hard direct line. It struck Henry's forehead with a loud bonk! and then rebounded into the air. Henry stumbled to his knees. His hands went to his head. Blood seeped through his fingers at once, like a magician's surprise.

The others skidded to a stop, their faces stamped with identical expressions of disbelief. Henry uttered a high scream of pain and got to his feet again, still holding his head. Mike threw another chunk of coal. Henry ducked. He began to walk toward Mike, and when Mike threw a third chunk of coal, Henry removed one hand from his gashed forehead and batted the chunk of coal almost casually aside. He was grinning.

'Oh, you're gonna get such a surprise, ' he said. 'Such a — OH MY GAWD! ' Henry tried to say more, but only inarticulate gargling noises emerged from his mouth.

Mike had pegged another chunk of coal and this one had struck Henry square in the throat. Henry buckled to his knees again. Peter Gordon gaped. Moose Sadler's brow was furrowed, as if he were trying to figure out a difficult math problem.

'What are you guys waiting for? ' Henry managed. Blood seeped between his fingers. His voice sounded rusty and foreign. 'Get him! Get the little cocksucker! '

Mike didn't wait to see if they would obey or not. He dropped his shirt and leaped at the fence. He began to pull himself up toward the top and then he felt rough hands grab his foot. He looked down and saw Henry Bowers's contorted face, smeared by blood and coal. Mike yanked his foot up. His sneaker came off in Henry's hand. He pistoned his bare foot down into Henry's face and heard something crunch. Henry screamed again and staggered backward, now holding his spouting nose.

Another hand — Belch Huggins's — snagged briefly in the cuff of Mike's leans, but he was able to pull free. He threw one leg over the top of the fence, and then something struck him with blinding force on the side of his face. Warmth trickled down his cheek. Something else struck his hip, his forearm, his upper thigh. They were throwing his own ammunition at him.

He hung briefly by his hands and then dropped, rolling over twice. The scrubby ground sloped downward here, and perhaps that saved Mike Hanlon's eyesight or even his life; Henry had approached the fence again and now looped one of his four M-80s over the top of the fence. It went off with a terrific CRRRACK! that echoed and blew a wide bare patch in the grass.

Mike, his ears ringing, went head-over-heels and staggered to his feet. He was now in high grass, on the edge of the Barrens. He wiped a hand down his right cheek and it came away bloody. The blood did not particularly worry him; he had not expected to come out of this unscathed.

Henry tossed a cherry-bomb, but Mike saw this one coming and moved away easily. 'Let's get him! ' Henry roared, and began to climb the fence.

'Jeez, Henry, I don't know — ' This had gone too far for Peter Gordon, who had never encountered a situation that had turned so suddenly savage. Things were not supposed to get bloody — at least not for your team — when the odds were comfortably slugged in your favor.

'You better know, ' Henry said, looking back at Peter from halfway up the fence. He hung there like a bloated poisonous spider in human shape. His baleful eyes stared at Peter; blood rimmed them on either side. Mike's downward kick had broken his nose, although Henry would not be aware of the fact for some time yet. 'You better know, or I'll come after you, you fucking jerk. '

The others began to climb the fence, Peter and Victor with some reluctance, Belch and Moose as vacantly eager as before.

Mike waited to see no more. He turned and ran into the scrub. Henry bellowed after him:

'I'll find you, nigger! I'll find you! '

The Losers had reached the far side of the gravel-pit, which was little more than a huge weedy pockmark in the earth now, three years after the last load of gravel had been taken out of it. They were all gathered around Stan, looking appreciatively at his package of Black Cats, when the first explosion came. Eddie jumped — he was still goofed up over the piranha fish he thought he had seen (he wasn't sure what real piranha fish looked like, but he was pretty sure they didn't look like oversized goldfish with teeth).

'Merrow down easy, Eddie-san, ' Richie said, doing his Chinese Coolie Voice. 'Iss just other kids shooting off fireclackers. '

'That s-s-sucks the r-r-root, Rih-Rih-Richie, ' Bill remarked. The others laughed.

'I keep trying, Big Bill, ' Richie said. 'I feel like, if I get good enough, someday I'll earn your love. ' He made dainty kissing gestures at the air. Bill shot him the finger. Ben and Eddie stood side by side, grinning.

'Oh I'm so young and you're so old, ' Stan Uris piped up suddenly, doing an eerily accurate

Paul Anka imitation, 'this my darling I've been told — '

'He can sayng! ' Richie screeched in his Pickaninny Voice. 'Lawks-a-mussy, thisyere boy can sayng! ' And then, in the MovieTone Announcer's Voice: 'Want you to sign right here, boy, on this dotted line. ' Richie slung an arm around Stan's shoulders and favored him with a gigantic gleaming smile. 'We're going to grow your hair out, boy. Going to give you a git-tar.

Going to — '

Bill popped Richie twice on the arm, quickly and lightly. They were all excited at the prospect of shooting off firecrackers.

'Open them up, Stan, ' Beverly said. 'I've got some matches. '

They gathered around again as Stan carefully opened the package of firecrackers. There were exotic Chinese letters on the black label and a sober caution in English that got Richie giggling again. 'Do not hold in hand after fuse is lit, ' this warning read.

'Good thing they told me, ' Richie said. 'I always used to hold them after I lit them. I thought that's how you got rid of your frockin hangnails. '

Working slowly, almost reverently, Stan removed the red cellophane and laid the block of cardboard tubes, blue and red and green, on the palm of his hand. Their fuses had been braided together in a Chinese pigtail.

'I'll unwind the — ' Stan began, and then there was a much louder explosion. The echo rolled slowly across the Barrens. A cloud of gulls rose from the eastern side of the dump, squalling and crying. They all jumped this time. Stan dropped the firecrackers and had to pick them up.

Was that dynamite? ' Beverly asked nervously. She was looking at Bill, whose head was up, his eyes wide. She thought he had never looked so handsome — but there was something too alert, too strung-up, in the attitude of his head. He was like a deer scenting fire in the air.

'That was an M-80, I think, ' Ben said quietly. 'Last Fourth of July I was in the park and there were these high-school kids that had a couple. They put one of them in a steel trash-can.

It made a noise like that. '

'Did it blow a hole in the can, Haystack? ' Richie asked.

'No, but it bulged out the side. Looked like there was some little guy inside who just stroked it one. They ran away. '

The big one was closer, ' Eddie said. He also glanced at Bill.

'Do you guys want to shoot these off or not? ' Stan asked. He had unbraided about a dozen of the firecrackers and had put the rest neatly back in the waxed paper for later.

'Sure, ' Richie said.

'P-P-Put them a-a-away. '

They looked at Bill questioningly, a little scared — it was his abrupt tone more than what he had said.

'P-P-Puh-hut them a-a-a-away, ' Bill repeated, his face contorting with the effort he was making to get the words out. Spit flew from his lips. 'S-S-Suh-homething's g-g-gonna h-hhappen. '

Eddie licked his lips, Richie shoved his glasses up the sweaty slope of his nose with his thumb, and Ben moved closer to Beverly without even thinking about it.

Stan opened his mouth to say something and then there was another, smaller explosion — another cherry-bomb.

'Ruh-Rocks, ' Bill said.

'What, Bill? ' Stan asked.

'Ruh-Ruh-Rocks. A-A-Ammo. ' Bill began to pick up stones, stuffing them into his pockets until they bulged. The others stared at him as though he had gone crazy. . . and then Eddie felt sweat break on his forehead. All of a sudden he knew what a malaria attack felt like. He had sensed something like this on the day he and Bill had met Ben (except Eddie, like the others, was already coming to think of Ben as Haystack), the day Henry Bowers had casually bloodied his nose — but this felt worse. This felt like maybe it was going to be Hiroshima time in the Barrens.

Ben started to get rocks, then Richie, moving quickly, not talking now. His glasses slipped all the way off and clicked to the gravelly surface of the ground. He folded them up absently and put them inside his shirt.

'Why did you do that, Richie? ' Beverly asked. Her voice sounded thin, too taut.

'Don't know, keed, ' Richie said, and went on picking up rocks.

'Beverly, maybe you better, uh, go back toward the dump for awhile, ' Ben said. His hands were full of rocks.

'Shit on that, ' she said. 'Shit all over that, Ben Hanscom. ' She bent and began to gather rocks herself.

Stan looked at them thoughtfully as they grubbed for rocks like lunatic farmers. Then he began to gather them himself, his lips pressed into a thin and prissy line.

Eddie felt the familiar tightening sensation as his throat began to close up to a pinhole.

Not this time, dammit, he thought suddenly. Not if my friends need me. Like Bev said, shit all over that.

He also began to gather rocks.

Henry Bowers had gotten too big too fast to be either quick or agile under ordinary circumstances, but these circumstances were not ordinary. He was in a frenzy of pain and rage, and these lent him an ephemeral unthinking physical genius. Conscious thought was gone; his mind felt the way a late-summer grassfire looks as dusk comes on, all rose-red and smoke-gray. He took after Mike Hanlon like a bull after a red flag. Mike was following a rudimentary path along the side of the big pit, a path which would eventually lead to the dump, but Henry was too far gone to bother with such niceties as paths; he slammed through the bushes and the brambles on a straight line, feeling neither the tiny cuts inflicted by the thorns nor the slaps of limber bushes striking his face, neck, and arms. The only thing that mattered was the nigger's kinky head, drawing closer. Henry had one of the M-80s in his right hand and a wooden match in his left. When he caught the nigger he was going to strike the match, light the fuse, and stuff that ashcan right down the front of his pants.

Mike knew that Henry was gaining and the others were close on his heels. He tried to push himself faster. He was badly scared now, keeping panic at bay only by a grim effort of will. He had turned his ankle more seriously crossing the tracks than he had thought at first, and now he was limp-skipping along. The crackle and crash of Henry's go-for-broke progress behind him called up unpleasant images of being chased by a killer dog or a rogue bear.

The path opened out just ahead, and Mike more fell than ran into the gravel-pit. He rolled to the bottom, got to his feet, and was halfway across before he realized that there were kids there, six of them. They were spread out in a straight line and there was a funny look on their faces. It wasn't until alter, when he'd had a chance to sort out his thoughts, that he realized what was so odd about that look: it was as if they had been expecting him.

'Help, ' Mike managed as he limped toward them. He spoke instinctively to the tall boy with the red hair. 'Kids. . . big kids — '

That was when Henry burst into the gravel-pit. He saw the six of them and came to a skidding halt. For a moment his face was marked with uncertainty and he looked back over his shoulder. He saw his troops, and when Henry looked back at the Losers (Mike was now standing beside and slightly behind Bill Denbrough, panting rapidly), he was grinning.

'I know you, kid, ' he said, speaking to Bill. He glanced at Richie. 'I know you, too. Where's your glasses, four-eyes? ' And before Richie could reply, Henry saw Ben. 'Well, son of a bitch! The Jew and the fatboy are here too! That your girlfriend, fatboy? '

Ben jumped a little, as if goosed.

Just then Peter Gordon pulled up beside Henry. Victor arrived and stood on Henry's other side; Belch and Moose Sadler arrived last. They flanked Peter and Victor, and now the two opposing groups stood facing each other in neat, almost formal lines.

Panting heavily as he spoke and still sounding more than a little like a human bull, Henry said, 'I got bones to pick with a lot of you, but I can let that go for today. I want that nigger. So you little shits buzz off. '

'Right! ' Belch said smartly.

'He killed my dog! ' Mike cried out, his voice shrill and breaking. 'He said so! ' 'You come on over here right now, ' Henry said, 'and maybe I won't kill you. ' Mike trembled but did not move.

Speaking softly and clearly, Bill said: 'The B-Barrens are ours. You k-k-kids get out of hhere. '

Henry's eyes widened. It was as if he'd been slapped unexpectedly.

'Who's gonna make me? ' he asked. 'You, horsefoot? '

'Uh-Uh-Us, ' Bill said. 'We're through t-t-taking your shit, B-B-Bowers. Get ow-ow-out. ' 'You stuttering freak, ' Henry said. He lowered his head and charged.

Bill had a handful of rocks; all of them had a handful except Mike and Beverly, who was only holding one. Bill began to throw at Henry, not hurrying his throws, but chucking hard and with fair accuracy. The first rock missed; the second struck Henry on the shoulder. If the third had missed, Henry might have closed with Bill and wrestled him to the ground, but it didn't miss; it struck Henry's lowered head.

Henry cried out in surprised pain, looked up. . . and was hit four more times: a little billetdoux from Richie Tozier on the chest, one from Eddie that ricocheted off his shoulder-blade, one from Stan Uris that struck his shin, and Beverly's one rock, which hit him in the belly.

He looked at them unbelievingly, and suddenly the air was full of whizzing missiles. Henry fell back, that same bewildered, pained expression on his face. 'Come on, you guys! ' he shouted. 'Help me! '

'Ch-ch-charge them, ' Bill said in a low voice, and not waiting to see if they would or not, he ran forward.

They came with him, firing rocks not only at Henry now but at all the others. The big boys were grubbing on the ground for ammunition of their own, but before they could gather much, they had been peppered. Peter Gordon screamed as a rock thrown by Ben glanced off his cheekbone and drew blood. He backed up a few steps, paused, threw a hesitant rock or two back. . . and then fled. He had had enough; things were not done this way on West Broadway.

Henry grabbed up a handful of rocks in a savage sweeping gesture. Most of them, fortunately for the Losers, were pebbles. He threw one of the larger ones at Beverly and it cut her arm. She cried out.

Bellowing, Ben ran for Henry Bowers, who looked around in time to see him coming but not in time to sidestep. Henry was off-balance; Ben was one hundred and fifty trying for onesixty; the result was no contest. Henry did not go sprawling but flying. He landed on his back and skidded. Ben ran toward him again and was only vaguely aware of a warm, blooming pain in his ear as Belch Huggins nailed him with a rock roughly the size of a golf ball.

Henry was getting groggily to his knees as Ben reached him and kicked him hard, his sneakered foot connecting solidly with Henry's left hip. Henry rolled over heavily on his back. His eyes blazed up at Ben.

'You ain't supposed to throw rocks at girls! ' Ben shouted. He could not remember ever in his life feeling so outraged. 'You aint — '

Then he saw a flame in Henry's hand as Henry popped the wooden match alight. He touched it to the thick fuse of the M-80, which he then threw at Ben's face. Acting with no thought at all, Ben struck the ashcan with the palm of his hand, swinging at it as one would swing a racket at a badminton birdie. The M-80 went back down. Henry saw it coming. His eyes widened and then he rolled away, screaming. The ashcan exploded a split-second later, blackening the back of Henry's shirt and tearing some of it away.

A moment later Ben was hit by Moose Sadler and driven to his knees. His teeth clicked together over his tongue, drawing blood. He blinked around, dazed. Moose was coming toward him, but before he could reach the place where Ben was kneeling, Bill came up behind him and began pelting the big kid with rocks. Moose wheeled around, bellowing.

'You hit me from behind, yellowbelly! ' Moose screamed. 'You fuckin dirtyfighter! '

He gathered himself to charge, but Richie joined Bill and also began to fire rocks at Moose. Richie was unimpressed with Moose's rhetoric on the subject of what might or might not constitute yellowbelly behavior; he had seen the five of them chasing one scared kid, and he didn't think that exactly put them up there with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. One of Richie's missiles split the skin above Moose's left eyebrow. Moose howled.

Eddie and Stan Uris moved up to join Bill and Richie. Beverly moved in with them, her arm bleeding but her eyes wildly alight. Rocks flew. Belch Huggins screamed as one of them clipped his crazy bone. He began to dance lumbersomely, rubbing his elbow. Henry got to his feet, the back of his shirt hanging in rags, the skin beneath almost miraculously unmarked. Before he could turn around, Ben Hanscom bounced a rock off the back of his head and drove him to his knees again.

It was Victor Criss who did the most damage to the Losers that day, partly because he was a pretty fair fastball pitcher, but mostly — paradoxically — because he was the least emotionally involved. More and more he didn't want to be here. People could get seriously hurt in rockfights; a kid could get his skull split, a mouthful of broken teeth, could even lose an eye. But since he was in it, he was in it. He intended to dish out some trouble.

That coolness had allowed him to take an extra thirty seconds and pick up a handful of good-sized rocks. He threw one at Eddie as the Losers re-formed their rough skirmish line, and it struck Eddie on the chin. He fell down, crying, the blood already starting to flow. Ben turned toward him but Eddie was already getting up again, the blood gruesomely bright against his pallid skin, his eyes slitted.

Victor threw at Richie and the rock thudded off Richie's chest. Richie threw back but Vie ducked it easily and threw one sidearm at Bill Denbrough. Bill snapped his head back, but not quite quickly enough; the rock cut his cheek wide open.

Bill turned toward Victor. Their eyes locked, and Victor saw something in the stuttering kid's gaze that scared the hell out of him. Absurdly, the words I take it back! trembled behind his lips. . . except that was nothing you said to a little kid. Not if you didn't want your buddies to start ranking you to the dogs and back.

Bill started to walk toward Victor now, and Victor began to walk toward Bill. At the same moment, as if by some telepathic signal, they began to throw rocks at each other, still closing the distance. The righting flagged around them as the others turned to watch; even Henry turned his head.

Victor ducked and bobbed, but Bill made no such effort. Victor's rocks slammed him in the chest, the shoulder, the stomach. One clipped by his ear. Apparently unshaken by any of this, Bill threw one rock after another, pegging them with murderous force. The third one struck Victor's knee with a brittle chipping sound and Victor uttered a stifled groan. He was out of ammunition. Bill had one rock left. It was smooth and white, shot with quartz, roughly the size and shape of a duck's egg. To Victor Criss it looked very hard. Bill was less than five feet away from him.

'Y-Y-You g-get ow-out of h-h-here now, ' he said, 'or I'm g-going to spuh-puh-lit your hhead o-o-open. I m-mean ih-ih-it. '

Looking into his eyes, Victor saw that he really did. Without another word, he turned and headed back the way Peter Gordon had gone.

Belch and Moose Sadler were looking around uncertainly. Blood trickled from the corner of the Sadler boy's mouth, and blood from a scalp-wound was sheeting down the side of Belch's face.

Henry's mouth worked but no sound came out. Bill turned toward Henry. 'G-G-Get out, ' he said.

'What if I won't? ' Henry was trying to sound tough, but Bill could now see a different thing in Henry's eyes. He was scared, and he would go. It should have made Bill feel good — triumphant, even — but he only felt tired.

'I-If you w-won't, ' Bill said, 'w-w-we're g-going to muh-move i-in on y-you. I think the s-ssix of u-us can p-put you in the huh-huh-hospital. '

'Seven, ' Mike Hanlon said, and joined them. He had a softball-sized rock in each hand.

'Just try me, Bowers. I'd love to. '

'You fucking NIGGER! ' Henry's voice broke and wavered on the edge of tears. That voice took the last of the fight out of Belch and Moose; they backed away, their remaining rocks dropping from relaxing hands. Belch looked around as if wondering exactly where he might be.

'Get out of our place, ' Beverly said.

'Shut up, you cunt, ' Henry said. 'You — ' Four rocks flew at once, hitting Henry in four different places He screamed and scrambled backward over the weed-raddled ground, the tatters of his shirt flapping around him. He looked from the grim, old-young faces of the little kids to the frantic ones of Belch and Moose. There was no help there; no help at all. Moose turned away, embarrassed.

Henry got to his feet, sobbing and snuffling through his broken nose. 'I'll kill you all, ' he said, and suddenly ran for the path. A moment later he was gone.

'G-G-Go on, ' Bill said, speaking to Belch. 'Get ow-out. And d-don't c-c-come down h-here anymore. The B-B-Barrens are ow-ow-ours.

'You're gonna wish you didn't cross Henry, kid, ' Belch said. 'Come on, Moose. '

They started away, heads down, not looking back.

The seven of them stood in a loose semicircle, all of them bleeding somewhere. The apocalyptic rockfight had lasted less than four minutes, but Bill felt as if he had fought his way through all of World War II, both theaters, without so much as a single time-out.

The silence was broken by Eddie Kaspbrak's whooping, whining struggle for air. Ben went toward him, felt the three Twinkies and four Ding-Dongs he had eaten on his way down to the Barrens begin to struggle and churn in his stomach, and ran past Eddie and into the bushes, where he was sick as privately and quietly as he could be.

It was Richie and Bev who went to Eddie. Beverly put an arm around the thin boy's waist while Richie dug his aspirator out of his pocket. 'Bite on this, Eddie, ' he said, and Eddie took a hitching, gasping breath as Richie pulled the trigger.

'Thanks, ' Eddie managed at last.

Ben came back out of the bushes, blushing, wiping a hand over his mouth. Beverly went over to him and took both of his hands in hers.

'Thanks for sticking up for me, ' she said.

Ben nodded, looking at his dirty sneakers. 'Any time, keed, ' he said.

One by one they turned to look at Mike, Mike with his dark skin. They looked at him carefully, cautiously, thoughtfully. Mike had felt such curiosity before — there had not been a time in his life when he had not felt it — and he looked back candidly enough.

Bill looked from Mike to Richie. Richie met his eyes. And Bill seemed almost to hear the click — some final part fitting neatly into a machine of unknown intent. He felt ice-chips scatter up his back. We're all together now, he thought, and the idea was so strong, so right, that for a moment he thought he might have spoken it aloud. But of course there was no need to speak it aloud; he could see it in Richie's eyes, in Ben's, in Eddie's, in Beverly's, in Stan's. We're all together now, he thought again. Oh God help us. Now it really starts. Please God, help us.

'What's your name, kid? ' Beverly asked.

'Mike Hanlon. '

'You want to shoot off some firecrackers? ' Stan asked, and Mike's grin was answer enough.

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