It

'Hmmmm?' Ben looked up from the spreading pool of water behind the dam and belched gently against the back of his hand. 'Oh! Well, I knew she'd be grocery-shopping yesterday afternoon, so I was able to beat her home. I took a bath and washed my hair. Then I threw away the jeans and the sweatshirt I was wearing. I don't know if she'll notice they're gone or

not. Probably not the sweatshirt, I got lots of sweatshirts, but I guess I ought to buy myself a new pair of jeans before she gets nosing through my drawers.'

The thought of wasting his money on such a nonessential item cast momentary gloom across Ben's face.

'W-W-What about the way yuh-you w-were b-bruised up?'

'I told her I was so excited to be out of school that I ran out the door and fell down the steps,' Ben said, and looked both amazed and a little hurt when Eddie and Bill began laughing. Bill, who had been chowing up a piece of his mother's devil's food cake, blew out a brown jet of crumbs and then had a coughing fit. Eddie, still howling, clapped him on the back.

'Well, I almost did fall down the steps,' Ben said. 'Only it was because Victor Criss pushed me, not because I was running.'

'I'd be as h-hot as a tuh-tuh –tamale in a swuh-heatshirt like that,' Bill said, finishing the last bite of his cake.

Ben hesitated. For a moment it seemed he would say nothing. 'It's better when you're fat,' he said finally. 'Sweatshirts, I mean.'

'Because of your gut?' Eddie asked.

Bill snorted. 'Because of your tih-tih-tih — '

'Yeah, my tits. So what?'

'Yeah,' Bill said mildly. 'S-So what?'

There was a moment of awkward silence and then Eddie said, 'Look how dark the water's getting when it goes around that side of the dam.'

'Oh, cripes!' Ben shot to his feet. 'Current's pulling out the fill! Jeez, I wish we had cement!'

The damage was quickly repaired, but even Eddie could see what would happen without someone there to almost constantly shovel in fresh filclass="underline" erosion would eventually cause the upstream board to collapse against the downstream board, and then everything would fall over.

'We can shore up the sides,' Ben said. That won't stop the erosion, but it'll slow it down.'

'If we use sand and mud, won't it just go on washing away?' Eddie asked.

'We'll use chunks of sod.'

Bill nodded, smiled, and made an O with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. 'Let's g-g-go. I'll d-dig em and y-you sh-show me where to p-put em ih-in, Big Ben.'

From behind them a stridently cheery voice called: 'My Gawd, someone put the Y– pool down in the Barrens, bellybutton lint and all!'

Eddie turned, noticing the way Ben tightened up at the sound of a strange voice, the way his lips thinned. Standing above them and aways upstream, on the path Ben had crossed the day before, were Richie Tozier and Stanley Uris.

Richie came bopping down to the stream, glanced at Ben with some interest, and then pinched Eddie's check.

'Don't do that! I hate it when you do that, Richie.'

'Ah, you love it, Eds,' Richie said, and beamed at him. 'So what do you say? You havin any good chucks, or what?'

5

The five of them knocked off around four o'clock. They sat much higher on the bank — the place where Bill, Ben, and Eddie had eaten lunch was now underwater — and stared down at their handiwork. Even Ben found it a little difficult to believe. He felt a sense of tired accomplishment which was mixed with uneasy fright. He found himself thinking of Fantasia,

and how Mickey Mouse had known enough to get the brooms started . . . but not enough to make them stop.

'Fucking incredible,' Richie Tozier said softly, and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

Eddie glanced over at him, but Richie was not doing one of his numbers now; his face was thoughtful, almost solemn.

On the far side of the stream, where the land first rose and then tilted shallowly downhill, they had created a new piece of bogland. Bracken and holly bushes stood in a foot of water. Even as they sat here they could see the bog sending out fresh pseudopods, spreading steadily westward. Behind the dam the Kenduskeag, shallow and harmless just this morning, had become a still, swollen band of water.

By two o'clock the widening pool behind the dam had taken so much embankment that the spillways had grown almost to the size of rivers themselves. Everyone but Ben had gone on an emergency expedition to the dump in search of more materials. Ben stuck around, methodically sodding up leaks. The scavengers had returned not only with boards but with four bald tires, the rusty door of a 1949 Hudson Hornet, and a big piece of corrugated– steel siding. Under Ben's leadership they had built two wings on the original dam, blocking off the water's escape around the sides again — and, with the wings raked back at an angle against the current, the dam worked even better than before.

'Stopped that sucker cold,' Richie said. 'You're a genius, man.'

Ben smiled. 'It's not so much.'

'I got some Winstons,' Richie said. 'Who wants one?'

He produced the crumpled red-and-white pack from his pants pocket and passed it around. Eddie, thinking of the hell a cigarette would raise with his asthma, refused. Stan also refused. Bill took one, and, after a moment's thought, Ben took one, too. Richie produced a book of matches with the wor ds ROI –TAN on the outside, and lit first Ben's cigarette, then Bill's. He was about to light his own when Bill blew out the match.

'Thanks a lot, Denbrough, you wet,' Richie said.

Bill smiled apologetically. 'The –The-Three on a muh-muh-hatch,' he said. 'B-Bad luh –luh –luck.'

'Bad luck for your folks when you were born,' Richie said, and lit his cigarette with another match. He lay down and crossed his arms beneath his head. The cigarette jutted upward between his teeth. 'Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.' He turned his head slightly and winked at Eddie. 'Ain't that right, Eds?'

Ben, Eddie saw, was looking at Richie with a mixture of awe and wariness. Eddie could understand that. He had known Richie Tozier for four years, and he still didn't really understand what Richie was about. He knew that Richie got A's and B's in his schoolwork, but he also knew that Richie regularly got C's and D's in deportment. His father really racked him about it and his mother just about cried every time Richie brought home those poor conduct grades, and Richie would swear to do better, and maybe he even would . . . for a quarter or two. The trouble with Richie was that he couldn't keep still for more than a minute at a time and he couldn't keep his mouth shut at all. Down here in the Barrens that didn't get him in much trouble, but the Barrens weren't Never-Never Land and they couldn't be the Wild Boys for more than a few hours at a stretch (the idea of a Wild Boy with an aspirator in his back pocket made Eddie smile). The trouble with the Barrens was that you always had to leave. Out there in the wider world, Richie's bullshit was always getting him in trouble — with adults, which was bad, and with guys like Henry Bowers, which was even worse.

His entrance earlier today was a perfect example. Ben Hanscom had no more than started to say in when Richie had fallen on his knees at Ben's feet. He then began a series of gigantic salaams, his arms outstretched, his hands fwapping against the muddy bank every time he bowed again. At the same time he had begun to speak in one of his Voices.

Richie had about a dozen different Voices. His ambition, he had told Eddie one rainy afternoon when they were in the little raftered room over the Kaspbrak garage reading Little Lulu comic books, was to become the world's greatest ventriloquist. He was going to be even greater than Edgar Bergen, he said, and he would be on The Ed Sullivan Show every week. Eddie admired this ambition but foresaw problems with it. First, ail of Richie's Voices sounded pretty much like Richie Tozier. This was not to say Richie could not be very funny from time to time; he could be. When referring to verbal zingers and loud farts, Richie's terminology was the same: he called it Getting Off A Good One, and he got off Good Ones of both types frequently . . . usually in inappropriate company, however. Second, when Richie did ventriloquism, his lips moved. Not just a little, on the 'p' — and 'b' — sounds, but a lot, and on all the sounds. Third, whe n Richie said he was going to throw his voice, it usually didn't go very far. Most of his friends were too kind — or too bemused with Richie's sometimes enchanting, often exhausting charm — to mention these little failings to him.