e could really have soaked her for her son's HydrOx Mist, and there had been times when he had been tempted... but why should he make himself a party to the woman's foolishness? It wasn't as though he were going to starve.
Cheap? Oh my, yes. HydrOx Mist (Administer as needed typed neatly on the gummed label he pasted on each aspirator bottle) was wonderfully cheap, but even Mrs. Kaspbrak was willing to admit that it controlled her son's asthma quite well in spite of that fact. It was cheap because it was nothing but a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, with a dash of camphor added to give the mist a faint medicinal taste.
In other words, Eddie's asthma medicine was tapwater.
7
It took Bill longer to get back, because he was going uphill. In several places he had to dismount and push Silver. He simply didn't have the musclepower necessary to keep the bike going up more than mild slopes.
By the time he had stashed his bike and made his way back to the stream, it was ten past four. All sorts of black suppositions were crossing his mind. The Hanscom kid would have deserted, leaving Eddie to die. Or the bullies could have backtracked and beaten the shit out of both of them. Or ... worst of all ... the man whose business was murdering kids might have gotten one or both of them. As he had gotten George.
He knew there had been a great deal of gossip and speculation about that. Bill had a bad stutter, but he wasn't deaf--although people sometimes seemed to think he must be, since he spoke only when absolutely necessary. Some people felt that the murder of his brother wasn't related at all to the murders of Betty Ripsom, Cheryl Lamonica, Matthew Clements, and Veronica Grogan. Others claimed that George, Ripsom, and Lamonica had been killed by one man, and the other two were the work of a "copy-cat killer." A third school of thought held that the boys had been killed by one man, the girls by another.
Bill believed they had all been killed by the same person ... if it was a person. He sometimes wondered about that. As he sometimes wondered about his feelings concerning Derry this summer. Was it still the aftermath of George's death, the way his parents seemed to ignore him now, so lost in their grief over their younger son that they couldn't see the simple fact that Bill was still alive, and might be hurting himself? Those things combined with the other murders? The voices that sometimes seemed to speak in his head now, whispering to him (and surely they were not variations of his own voice, for these voices did not stutter--they were quiet, but they were sure), advising him to do certain things but not others? Was it those things which made Derry seem somehow different now? Somehow threatening, with unexplored streets that did not invite but seemed instead to yawn in a kind of ominous silence? That made some faces look secret and frightened?
He didn't know, but he believed--as he believed all the murders were the work of a single agency--that Derry really had changed, and that his brother's death had signalled the beginning of that change. The black suppositions in his head came from the lurking idea that anything could happen in Derry now. Anything.
But when he came around the last bend, all looked cool. Ben Hanscom was still there, sitting beside Eddie. Eddie himself was sitting up now, his hands dangling in his lap, head bent, still wheezing. The sun had sunk low enough to project long green shadows across the stream.
"Boy, that was quick," Ben said, standing up. "I didn't expect you for another half an hour."
"I got a f-f-fast b-bike," Bill said with some pride. For a moment the two of them looked at each other cautiously, warily. Then Ben smiled tentatively, and Bill smiled back. The kid was fat, but he seemed okay. And he had stayed put. That must have taken some guts, with Henry and his j.d. friends maybe still wandering around out there someplace.
Bill winked at Eddie, who was looking at him with dumb gratitude. "H-Here you g-go, E-E-E-Eddie." He tossed him the aspirator. Eddie plunged it into his open mouth, triggered it, and gasped convulsively. Then he leaned back, eyes shut. Ben watched this with concern.
"Jeez! He's really got it bad, doesn't he?"
Bill nodded.
"I was scared there for awhile," Ben said in a low voice. "I was wonderin what to do if he had a convulsion, or something. I kept tryin to remember the stuff they told us in that Red Cross assembly we had in April. All I could come up with was put a stick in his mouth so he wouldn't bite his tongue off."
"I think that's for eh-eh-hepileptics."
"Oh. Yeah, I guess you're right."
"He w-won't have a c-c-convulsion, anyway," Bill said. "That m-m-medicine will f-fix him right up. Luh-Luh-Look."
Eddie's labored breathing had eased. He opened his eyes and looked up at them.
"Thanks, Bill," he said. "That one was a real pisswah."
"I guess it started when they creamed your nose, huh?" Ben asked.
Eddie laughed ruefully, stood up, and stuck the aspirator in his back pocket. "Wasn't even thinking about my nose. Was thinking about my mom."
"Yeah? Really?" Ben sounded surprised, but his hand went to the rags of his sweatshirt and began fiddling there nervously.
"She's gonna take one look at the blood on my shirt and have me down to the Mergency Room at Derry Home in about five seconds."
"Why?" Ben asked. "It stopped, didn't it? Gee, I remember this kid I was in kindergarten with, Scooter Morgan, and he got a bloody nose when he fell off the monkey bars. They took him to the Mergency Room, but only because it kept bleeding."
"Yeah?" Bill asked, interested. "Did he d-d-die?"
"No, but he was out of school a week."
"It doesn't matter if it stopped or not," Eddie said gloomily. "She'll take me anyway. She'll think it's broken and I got pieces of bone sticking in my brain, or something."
"C-C-Can you get bones in your buh-buh-brain?" Bill asked. This was turning into the most interesting conversation he'd had in weeks.
"I don't know. If you listen to my mother, you can get anything." Eddie turned to Ben again. "She takes me down to the Mergency Room about once or twice a month. I hate that place. There was this orderly once? He told her they oughtta make her pay rent. She was really P.O.'d."
"Wow," Ben said. He thought Eddie's mother must be really weird. He was unconscious of the fact that now both of his hands were fiddling in the remains of his sweatshirt. "Why don't you just say no? Say something like 'Hey Ma, I feel all right, I just want to stay home and watch Sea Hunt.' Like that."
"Awww," Eddie said uncomfortably, and said no more.
"You're Ben H-H-H-Hanscom, r-right?" Bill asked.
"Yeah. You're Bill Denbrough."
"Yuh-Yes. And this is Eh-Eh-Eh-heh-Eh-Eh--"
"Eddie Kaspbrak," Eddie said. "I hate it when you stutter my name, Bill. You sound like Elmer Fudd."
"Suh-horry."
"Well, I'm pleased to meet you both," Ben said. It came out sounding prissy and a little lame. A silence fell amid the three of them. It was not an entirely uncomfortable silence. In it they became friends.
"Why were those guys chasing you?" Eddie asked at last.
"They're a-a-always chuh-hasing s-someone," Bill said. "I h-hate those fuckers."
Ben was silent a moment--mostly in admiration--before Bill's use of what Ben's mother sometimes called The Really Bad Word. Ben had never said The Really Bad Word out loud in his whole life, although he had written it (in extremely small letters) on a telephone pole the Halloween before last.
"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 tuh-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:
"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 sanwidges, 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 fall. Some guy killed him. Pulled one of his arms right off, just like pulling a wing off'n 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 jok