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"Bowers ended up sitting next to me during the exams," Ben said at last. "He wanted to copy off my paper. I wouldn't let him."
"You must want to die young, kid," Eddie said admiringly.
Stuttering Bill burst out laughing. Ben looked at him sharply, decided he wasn't being laughed at, exactly (it was hard to say how he knew it, but he did), and grinned.
"I guess I must," he said. "Anyway, he's got to take summer-school, and he and those other two guys were laying for me, and that's what happened."
"Y-You look like t-t-they kuh-hilled you," Bill said.
"I fell down here from Kansas Street. Down the side of the hill." He looked at Eddie. "I'll probably see you in the Mergency Room, now that I think about it. When my mom gets a look at my clothes, she'll put me there."
Both Bill and Eddie burst out laughing this time, and Ben joined them. It hurt his stomach to laugh but he laughed anyway, shrilly and a little hysterically. Finally he had to sit down on the bank, and the plopping sound his butt made when it hit the dirt got him going all over again. He liked the way his laughter sounded with theirs. It was a sound he had never heard before: not mingled laughter-he had heard that lots of times-but mingled laughter of which his own was a part.
He looked up at Bill Denbrough, their eyes met, and that was all it took to get both of them laughing again.
Bill hitched up his pants, flipped up the collar of his shirt, and began to slouch around in a kind of moody, hoody strut. His voice dropped down low and he said, "I'm gonna killya, kid. Don't gimme no crap. I'm dumb but I'm big. I can crack walnuts with my forehead. I can piss vinegar and shit cement. My name's Honeybunch Bowers and I'm the boss prick round dese-yere Derry parts."
Eddie had collapsed to the stream-bank now and was rolling around, clutching his stomach and howling. Ben was doubled up, head between his knees, tears spouting from his eyes, snot hanging from his nose in long white runners, laughing like a hyena.
Bill sat down with them, and little by little the three of them quieted.
"There's one really good thing about it," Eddie said presently. "If Bowers is in summer school, we won't see him much down here."
"You play in the Barrens a lot?" Ben asked. It was an idea that never would have crossed his own mind in a thousand years-not with the reputation the Barrens had-but now that he was down here, it didn't seem bad at all. In fact, this stretch of the low bank was very pleasant as the afternoon made its slow way toward dusk.
"S-S-Sure. It's n-neat. M-Mostly n-nobody b-buh-bothers u-us down h-here. We guh-guh-hoof off a lot. B-B-Bowers and those uh-other g-guys don't come d-down here eh-eh-anyway."
"You and Eddie?"
"Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-" Bill shook his head. His face knotted up like a wet dishrag when he stuttered, Ben noticed, and suddenly an odd thought occurred to him: Bill hadn't stuttered at all when he was mocking the way Henry Bowers talked. "Richie!" Bill exclaimed now, paused a moment, and then went on. "Richie T-Tozier usually c-comes down, too. But h-him and his d-dad were going to clean out their ah-ah-ah-"
"Attic," Eddie translated, and tossed a stone into the water. Plonk.
"Yeah, I know him," Ben said. "You guys come down here a lot, huh?" The idea fascinated him-and made him feel a stupid sort of longing as well.
"Puh-Puh-Pretty much," Bill said. "Wuh-Why d-don't you c-c-come back down tuh-huh-morrow? M-Me and E-E-Eddie were tub-trying to make a duh-duh-ham."
Ben could say nothing. He was astounded not only by the offer but by the simple and unstudied casualness with which it had come.
"Maybe we ought to do something else," Eddie said. "The dam wasn't working so hot anyway."
Ben got up and walked down to the stream, brushing the dirt from his huge hams. There were still matted piles of small branches at either side of the stream, but anything else they'd put together had washed away.
"You ought to have some boards," Ben said. "Get boards and put em in a row... facing each other... like the bread of a sandwich."
Bill and Eddie were looking at him, puzzled. Ben dropped to one knee. "Look," he said. "Boards here and here. You stick em in the streambed facing each other. Okay? Then, before the water can wash them away, you fill up the space between them with rocks and sand-"
"Wuh-Wuh-We," Bill said.
"Huh?"
"Wuh-We do it."
"Oh," Ben said, feeling (and looking, he was sure) extremely stupid. But he didn't care if he looked stupid, because he suddenly felt very happy. He couldn't even remember the last time he felt this happy. "Yeah. We. Anyway, if you-we-fill up the space in between with rocks and stuff, it'll stay. The upstream board will lean back against the rocks and dirt as the water piles up. The second board would tilt back and wash away after awhile, I guess, but if we had a third board... well, look."
He drew in the dirt with a stick. Bill and Eddie Kaspbrak leaned over and studied this little drawing with sober interest:
[image of a simple dam, built with boards and rocks]
"You ever built a dam before?" Eddie asked. His tone was respectful, almost awed.
"Nope."
"Then h-h-how do you know this'll w-w-work?"
Ben looked at Bill, puzzled. "sure it will," he said. "Why wouldn't it?"
"But h-how do you nuh-nuh-know?" Bill asked. Ben recognized the tone of the question as one not of sarcastic disbelief but honest interest. "H-How can y-you tell?"
"I just know," Ben said. He looked down at his drawing in the dirt again as if to confirm it to himself. He had never seen a cofferdam in his life, either in diagram or in fact, and had no idea that he had just drawn a pretty fair representation of one.
"O-Okay," Bill said, and clapped Ben on the back. "s-See you tuh-huh-morrow."
"What time?"
"M-Me and Eh-Eddie'll g-get here by eh-eh-eight-th-thirty or so-"
"If me and my mom aren't still waiting at the Mergency Room," Eddie said, and sighed.
"I'll bring some boards," Ben said. "This old guy on the next block's got a bunch of "em. I'll hawk a few."
"Bring some supplies, too," Eddie said. "stuff to eat. You know, like san-widges, Ring-Dings, stuff like that."
"Okay."
"You g-g-got any guh-guh-guns?"
"I got my Daisy air rifle," Ben said. "My mom gave it to me for Christmas, but she gets mad if I shoot it off in the house."
"B-Bring it d-d-down," Bill said. "We'll play g-guns, maybe."
"Okay," Ben said happily. "Listen, I got to split for home, you guys."
"Uh-Us, too," Bill said.
The three of them left the Barrens together. Ben helped Bill push Silver up the embankment. Eddie trailed behind them, wheezing again and looking unhappily at his blood-spotted shirt.
Bill said goodbye and then pedaled off, shouting "Hi-yo Silver, AWAYYY!" at the top of his lungs.
"That's a gigantic bike," Ben said.
"Bet your fur," Eddie said. He had taken another gulp from his aspirator and was breathing normally again. "He rides me double sometimes on the back. Goes so fast it just about scares the crap outta me. He's a good man, Bill is." He said this last in an offhand way, but his eyes said something more emphatic. They were worshipful. "You know about what happened to his brother, don't you?"
"No-what about him?"
"Got killed last fail. Some guy killed him. Pulled one of his arms right off, just like pulling a wing off n a fly."
"Jeezum-crow!"
"Bill, he used to only stutter a little. Now it's really bad. Did you notice that he stutters?"
"Well... a little."
"But his brains don't stutter-get what I mean?"
"Yeah."
"Anyway, I just told you because if you want Bill to be your friend, it's better not to talk to him about his little brother. Don't ask him questions or anythin. He's all frigged up about it."
"Man, I would be, too," Ben said. He remembered now, vaguely, about the little kid who had been killed the previous fall. He wondered if his mother had been thinking about George Denbrough when she gave him the watch he now wore, or only about the more recent killings. "did it happen right after the big flood?"
"Yeah."
They had reached the corner of Kansas and Jackson, where they would have to split up. Kids ran here and there, playing tag and throwing baseballs. One dorky little kid in big blue shorts went trotting self-importantly past Ben and Eddie, wearing a Davy Crockett coonskin backward so that the tail hung down between his eyes. He was rolling a Hula Hoop and yelling "Hoop-tag, you guys! Hoop-tag, wanna?"
The two bigger boys looked after him, amused, and then Eddie said: "Well, I gotta go."
"Wait a sec," Ben said. "I got an idea, if you really don't want to go to the Mergency Room."
"Oh yeah?" Eddie looked at Ben, doubtful but wanting to hope.
"You got a nickel?"
"I got a dime. So what?"
Ben eyed the drying maroon splotches on Eddie's shirt. "stop at the store and get a chocolate milk. Pour about half of it on your shirt. Then when you get home tell your mama you spilled all of it."
Eddie's eyes brightened. In the four years since his dad had died, his mother's eyesight had worsened considerably. For reasons of vanity (and because she didn't know how to drive a car), she refused to see an optometrist and get glasses. Dried bloodstains and chocolate milk stains looked about the same. Maybe...
'That might work," he said.
"Just don't tell her it was my idea if she finds out."
"I won't," Eddie said. "seeya later, alligator."
"Okay."
"No," Eddie said patiently. "When I say that you're supposed to say, "After awhile, crocodile."
"Oh. After awhile, crocodile."
"You got it." Eddie smiled.
"You know something?" Ben said. "You guys are really cool."
Eddie looked more than embarrassed; he looked almost nervous. "Bill is," he said, and started off.
Ben watched him go down Jackson Street, and then turned toward home. Three blocks up the street he saw three all-too-familiar figures standing at the bus stop on the corner of Jackson and Main. They were mostly turned away from Ben, which was damned lucky for him. He ducked behind a hedge, his heart beating hard. Five minutes later the Derry-Newport-Haven interurban bus pulled up. Henry and his friends pitched their butts into the street and swung aboard.
Ben waited until the bus was out of sight and then hurried home.
8
That night a terrible thing happened to Bill Denbrough. It happened for the second time.
His mom and dad were downstairs watching TV, not talking much, sitting at either end of the couch like bookends. There had been a time when the TV room opening off the kitchen would have been full of talk and laughter, sometimes so much of both you couldn't hear the TV at all. "shut up, Georgie!" Bill would roar. "stop hogging all the popcorn and I will," George would return. "Ma, make Bill give me the popcorn." "Bill, give him the popcorn. George, don't call me Ma. Ma's a sound a sheep makes." Or his dad would tell a joke and they would all laugh, even Mom. George didn't always get the jokes, Bill knew, but he laughed because everyone else was laughing.
In those days his mom and dad had also been bookends on the couch, but he and George had been the books. Bill had tried to be a book between them while they were watching TV since George's death, but it was cold work. They sent the cold out from both directions and Bill's defroster was simply not big enough to cope with it. He had to leave because that kind of cold always froze his cheeks and made his eyes water.
"W-Want to h-hear a joke I heard today in s-s-school?" he had tried once, some months ago.
Silence from them. On television a criminal was begging his brother, who was a priest, to hide him.
Bill's dad glanced up from the True he was looking at and glanced at Bill with mild surprise. Then he looked back down at the magazine again. There was a picture of a hunter sprawled in a snowbank and staring up at a huge snarling polar bear. "Mauled by the Killer from the White Wastes" was the name of the article. Bill had thought, I know where there's some white wastes-right between my dad and mom on this couch.
His mother had never looked up at all.
"It's about h-how many F-F-Frenchmen it takes to sc-c-herew in a luhhh-hightbulb," Bill plunged ahead. He felt a fine mist of sweat spring out upon his forehead, as it sometimes did in school when he knew the teacher had ignored him as long as she safely could and must soon call on him. His voice was too loud, but he couldn't seem to lower it. The words echoed in his head like crazy chimes, echoing, jamming up, spilling out again.
"D-D-Do you know h-h-how muh-muh-many?"
"One to hold the bulb and four to turn the house," Zack Denbrough said absently, and turned the page of his magazine.
"Did you say something, dear?" his mother asked, and on Four Star Playhouse the brother who was a priest told the brother who was a hoodlum to turn himself in and pray for forgiveness.
Bill sat there, sweating but cold-so cold. It was cold because he wasn't really the only book between those two ends; Georgie was still there, only now it was a Georgie he couldn't see, a Georgie who never demanded the popcorn or hollered that Bill was pinching. This new version of George never cut up dickens. It was a one-armed Georgie who was palely, thoughtfully silent in the Motorola's shadowy white-and-blue glow, and perhaps it was not from his parents but from George that the big chill was really coming; perhaps it was George who was the real killer from the white wastes. Finally Bill had fled from that cold, invisible brother and into his room, where he lay face down on his bed and cried into his pillow.
George's room was just as it had been on the day he died. Zack had put a bunch of George's toys into a canon one day about two weeks after he was buried, meaning them for the Goodwill or the Salvation Army or someplace like that, Bill supposed. Sharon Denbrough had spotted him coming out with the box in his arms and her hands had flown to her head like startled white birds and plunged themselves deep into her hair where they locked themselves into pulling fists. Bill had seen this and had fallen against the wall, the strength suddenly running out of his legs. His mother looked as mad as Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein.