It

Eddie glances at the change lined up neatly on the 'Dorado's dashboard — lining up the change is another of those automatic tricks of the trade. When the tollbooths come up, you never want to have to dig for your silver, never want to find that you've gotten in an automatic –toll lane with the wrong change.

Among the coins are two or three Susan B. Anthony silver dollars. They are coins, he reflects, that you probably only find in the pockets of chauffeurs and taxi-drivers from the New York area these days, just as the only place you are apt to see a lot of two-dollar bills is at a race-track payoff window. He always keeps a few on hand because the robot tolltaker baskets on the George Washington and the Triboro Bridges take them.

Another of those lights suddenly comes on in his head: silver dollars. Not these fake copper sandwiches but real silver dollars, with Lady Liberty dressed in her gauzy robes stamped upon them. Ben Hanscom's silver dollars. Yes, but wasn't it Bill who once used one of those silver cartwheels to save their lives? He is not quite sure of this, is, in fact, not quite sure of anything . . . or is it just that he doesn't want to remember?

It was dark in there, he thinks suddenly. I remember that much. It was dark

in there.

Boston is well behind him now and the fog is starting to bum off. Ahead is MAINE, N.H., ALL NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND POINTS. Derry is ahead, and there is something in Derry whichshould be twenty-seven years dead and yet is somehow not. Something with as many faces as Lon Chaney. But what is it really.' Didn't they see it at the end as it really was, with all its masks cast aside?

Ah, he can remember so much . . . but not enough.

He remembers that he loved Bill Denbrough; he remembers that well enough. Bill never made fun of his asthma. Bill never called him little sissy queerboy. He loved Bill like he would have loved a big brother . . . or a father. Bill knew stuff to do. Places to go. Things to see. Bill was never up against it. When you ran with Bill you ran to beat the devil and you laughed . . . but you hardly ever ran out of breath. And hardly ever running out of breath was great, so fucking great, Eddie would tell the world. When you ran with Big Bill, you got your chucks every day.

'Sure, kid, EV-ery day,' he says in a Richie Tozier Voice, and laughs again.

It had been Bill's idea to make the dam in the Barrens, and it was, in a way, the dam that had brought them all together. Ben Hanscom had been the one to show them how the dam could be built — and they had built it so well that they'd gotten in a lot of trouble with Mr Nell, the cop on the beat — but it had been Bill's idea. And although all of them except Richie had seen very odd things — frightening things — in Derry since the turn of the year, it had been Bill who had first found the courage to say something out loud.

That dam.

That damn dam.

He remembered Victor Cris: 'Ta-ta, boys. It was a real baby dam, believe me. You're better off without it.'

A day later, Ben Hanscom was grinning at them, saying:

'We could

'We could flood

'We could flood out the

2

whole Barrens, if we wanted to.'

Bill and Eddie looked at Ben doubtfully, and then at the stuff Ben had brought along with him: some boards (scrounged from Mr McKibbon's back yard, but that was okay, since Mr McKibbon had probably scavenged them from someone else's), a sledgehammer, a shovel.

'I dunno,' Eddie said, glancing at Bill. 'When we tried yesterday, it didn't work very good. The current kept washing our sticks away.'

'This'll work,' Ben said. He also looked to Bill for the final decision.

'Well, let's g-give it a t-t-try,' Bill said. 'I c-called R-R-R-Richie Tozier this m-morning. He's g-gonna be oh-over Mater, he s-said. Maybe him and Stuh-huh –hanley will want to h-help.'

'Stanley who?' Ben asked.

'Uris,' Eddie said. He was still looking cautiously at Bill, who seemed somehow different today — quieter, less enthusiastic about the idea of the dam. Bill looked pale today. Distant.

'Stanley Uris? I guess I don't know him. Does he go to Derry Elementary?'

'He's our age but he just finished the fourth grade,' Eddie said. 'He started school a year late because he was sick a lot when he was a little kid. You think you took chong yesterday, you just oughtta be glad you're not Stan. Someone's always rackin Stan to the dogs an back.'

'He's Juh-juh –hooish,' Bill said. 'Luh –lots of k-kids don't luh-hike him because h-he's Jewish.'

'Oh yeah?' Ben asked, impressed. 'Jewish, huh?' He paused and then said carefully: 'Is that like being Turkish, or is it more like, you know, Egyptian?'

'I g-guess it's mo re like Tur –hur –hurkish,' Bill said. He picked up one of the boards Ben had brought and looked at it. It was about six feet long and three feet wide. 'My d-d-dad says most J-Jews have big nuh-noses and lots of m-m-money, but Stuh-Stuh-Stuh — '

'But Sta n's got a regular nose and he's always broke,' Eddie said.

'Yeah,' Bill said, and broke into a real grin for the first time that day.

Ben grinned.

Eddie grinned.

Bill tossed the board aside, got up and brushed off the seat of his jeans. He walked to the edge of the stream and the other two boys joined him. Bill shoved his hands in his back pockets and sighed deeply. Eddie was sure Bill was going to say something serious. He looked from Eddie to Ben and then back to Eddie again, not smiling now. Eddie was suddenly afraid.

But all Bill said then was, 'You got your ah-ah-aspirator, E-Eddie?'

Eddie slapped his pocket. 'I'm loaded for bear.'

'Say, how'd it work with the chocolate milk?' Ben asked.

Eddie laughed. 'Worked great!' he said. He and Ben broke up while Bill looked at them, smiling but puzzled. Eddie explained and Bill nodded, grinning again.

'E-E-Eddie's muh-hum is w-w-worried that h-he's g-gonna break and sh-she wuh-hon't be able to g-get a re-re-refund.'

Eddie snorted and made as if to push him into the stream.

'Watch it, fuckface,' Bill said, sounding uncannily like Henry Bowers. 'I'll twist your head so far around you'll be able to watch when you wipe yourself.'

Ben collapsed, shrieking with laughter. Bill glanced at him, still smiling, hands still in the back pockets of his jeans, smiling, yeah, but a little distant again, a little vague. He looked at Eddie and then cocked his head toward Ben.

'Kid's suh-suh –soft,' he said.

'Yeah,' Eddie agreed, but he felt somehow that they were only going through the motions of having a good time. Something was on Bill's mind. He supposed Bill would spill it when he was ready; the question was, did Eddie want to hear what it was? 'Kid's mentally retarded.'

'Retreaded,' Ben said, still giggling.

'Y-You g-g-gonna sh-show us how to b-build a dam or a-are you g-g-gonna si-hit there on your b-big c-c-can all d-day?'

Ben got to his feet again. He looked first at the stream, flowing past them at moderate speed. The Kenduskeag was not terribly wide this far up in the Barrens, but it had defeated them yesterday just the same. Neither Eddie nor Bill had been able to figure out how to get a foothold on the current. But Ben was smiling, the smile of one who contemplates doing something new . . . something that will be fun but not very hard. Eddie thought: He knowshow — I really think he does.