It

'What a bastardl' Beverly said indignantly.

'Yeah,' Ben said, grinning. 'But he didn't know he was a bastard, that's how dumb he was. He'd probably seen Jack Webb in that movie The D.I. about sixty times, and he actually thought he was doing me a favor. And as it turned out, he was. Because I thought of something right then. I thought . . . '

He looked away, frowning — and Bill had the strangest feeling that he knew what Ben was going to say before he said it.

'I told you that the last time I can remember thinking of Henry Bowers was when the other boys were chasing after me and fat-paddling. Well, when the Coach was getting up to go, that was the last time I really thought of what we'd done in the summer of '58. I thought — '

He hesitated again, looking at each of them in turn, seeming to search their faces. He went on carefully.

'I thought of how good we were together. I thought of what we did and how we did it, and all at once it hit me that if Coach had to face anything like that, his hair would probably have turned white all at once and his heart would have stopped dead in his chest like an old watch. It wasn't fair, of course, but he hadn't been fair to me. What happened was simple enough — '

'You got mad,' Bill said.

Ben smiled. 'Yeah, that's right,' he said. 'I called, "Coach!"

'He turned around and looked at me. "You say you coach track?" I asked him.

'"That's right," he said. "Not that it's anything to you."

'"You listen to me, you stupid stone-brained son of a bitch," I said, and his mouth dropped open and his eyes bugged out. "I'll be out there for the track team in March. What do you think about that?"

'"I think you better shut your mouth before it gets you into big trouble," he said.

'"I'm going to run down everyone you get out," I said. "I'm going to run down your best. And then I want a fucking apology from you."

'His fists clenched, and for a minute I thought he was going to come back in there and let me have it. Then they unclenched again. "You just keep talking, fatboy," he said softly. "You got the motormouth. But the day you can outrun my best will be the day I quit this place and go back to picking corn on the circuit." And he left.'

'You lost the weight?' Richie asked.

'Well, I did,' Ben said. 'But Coach was wrong. It didn't start in my head. It started with my mother. I went home that night and told her I wanted to lose some weight. We ended up having a hell of a fight, both of us crying. She started out with that same old song and dance: I wasn't really fat, I just had big bones, and a big boy who was going to be a big man had to eat big just to stay even. It was a . . . a kind of security thing with her, I think. It was scary for her, trying to raise a boy on her own. She had no education and no real skills, just a willingness to work hard. And when she could give me a second helping . . . or when she could look across the table at me and see that I was looking solid . . . '

'She felt like she was winning the battle,' Mike said.

'Uh-huh.' Ben drank off the last of his beer and wiped a small mustache of foam off his upper lip with the heel of his hand. 'So the biggest fight wasn't with my head; it was with her. She just wouldn't accept it, not for months. She wouldn't take in my clothes and she wouldn't buy me new ones. I was running by then, I ran everywhere, and sometimes my heart pounded so hard I felt like I was going to pass out. The first of my mile runs I finished by puking and then fainting. Then for awhile I just puked. And after awhile I was holding up my pants while I r an.

'I got a paper-route and I ran with the bag around my neck, bouncing against my chest, while I held up my pants. My shirts started to look like sails. And nights when I went home and would only eat half the stuff on my plate my mother would burst ni to tears and say that I

was starving myself, killing myself, that I didn't love her anymore, that I didn't care about how hard she had worked for me.'

'Christ,' Richie muttered, lighting a cigarette. 'I don't know how you handled it, Ben.'

'I just kept the Coach's face in front of me,' Ben said. 'I just kept remembering the way he looked after he grabbed my tits in the hallway to the boys' locker room that time. That's how I did it. I got myself some new jeans and stuff with the paper-route money, and the old guy in the first –floor apartment used his awl to punch some new holes in my belt — about five of them, as I remember. I think that I might have remembered the other time I had to buy a pair of new jeans — that was when Henry pushed me into the Barrens that day and they just about got torn off my body.'

'Yeah,' Eddie said, grinning. 'And you told me about the chocolate milk. Remember that?'

Ben nodded. 'If I did remember,' he went on, 'it was just for a second — there and gone. About that same time I started taking Health and Nutrition at school, and I found out you could eat just about all the raw green stuff you wanted and not gain weight. So one night my mother put on a salad with lettuce and raw spinach in it, chunks of apple and maybe a little leftover ham. Now I've never liked rabbit-food that much, but I had three helpings and just raved on and on to my mother about how good it was.

'That went a long way toward solving the problem. She didn't care so much what I ate as long as I ate a lot of it. She buried me in salads. I ate them for the next three years. There were times when I had to look in the mirror to make sure my nose wasn't wriggling.'

'So what happened about the Coach?' Eddie asked. 'Did you go out for track?' He touched his aspirator, as if the thought of running had reminded him of it.

'Oh yeah, I went out,' Ben said. 'The two-twenty and the four-forty. By then I'd lost seventy pounds and I'd sprung up two inches so that what was left was better distributed. On the first day of trials I won the two-twenty by six lengths and the four –forty by eight. Then I went over to Coach, who looked mad enough to chew nails and spit out staples, and I said: "Looks like it's time you got out on the circuit and started picking corn. When are you heading down Kansas way?"'

'He didn't say a thing at first — just swung a roundhouse and knocked me flat on my back. Then he told me to get off the field. Said he didn't want a smartmouth bastard like me on his track team.

'"I wouldn't be on it if President Kennedy appointed me to it," I said, wiping blood out of the corner of my mouth. "And since you got me going I won't hold you to it . . . but the next time you sit down to a big plate of corn on the cob, spare me a thought."

'He told me if I didn't get out right then he was going to beat the living crap out of me.' Ben was smiling a little . . . but there was nothing very pleasant about that smile, certainly nothing nostalgic. 'Those were his exact words. Everyone was watching us, including the kids I'd beaten. They looked pretty embarrassed. So I just said, "I'll tell you what, Coach. You get one free, on account of you're a sore loser but too old to learn any better now. But you put one more on me and I'll try to see to it that you lose your job. I'm not sure I can do it, but I can make a good try. I lost the weight so I could have a little dignity and a little peace. Those are things worth fighting for."'