It

Before the echoes have died away, before the first shocked jay can begin scolding him for his sacrilege, the doe flicks her tail at him like a truce flag and disappears into the smoky-looking firs on the left side of the road, leaving only a small pile of steaming pellets behind to show that, even at thirty-seven, Richie Tozier is still capable of Getting Off A Good One from time to time.

Richie begins to laugh. He is only chuckling at first, and then his own ludicrousness strikes him — standing here in the dawnlight of a Maine morning, thirty-four hundred miles from home, shouting at a deer in the accents of an Irish cop. The chuckles become a string of giggles, the giggles become guffaws, the guffaws become howls, and he is finally reduced to

holding on to his car while tears roll down his face and he wonders dimly if he's going to wet his pants or what. Every time he starts to get control of himself his eyes fix on that little clump of pellets and he goes off into fresh gales.

Snorting and snickering, he is at last able to get back into the driver's seat and restart the Mustang's engine. An Orinco chemical-fertilizer truck snores by in a blast of wind. After it passes him, Rich pulls out and heads for Derry again. He feels better now, in control . . . or maybe it's just that he's moving again, making miles, and the dream has reasserted itself.

He starts thinking about Mr Nell again — Mr Nell and that day by the dam. Mr Nell had asked them who thought this little trick up. He can see the five of them looking uneasily at each other, and remembers how Ben finally stepped forward, cheeks pale and eyes downcast, face trembling all over as he fought grimly to keep from blubbering. Poor kid probably thought he was going to get five-to-ten in Shawshank for back-flooding the drains on Witcham Street, Rich thinks now, but he had owned up to it just the same. And by doing that he had forced the rest of them to come forward and back him up. It was either that or consider themselves bad guys. Cowards. All the things their TV heroes were not. And that had welded them together, for better or worse. Had apparently welded them together for the last twenty-seven years. Sometimes events are dominoes. The first knocks over the second, the second knocks over the third, and there you are.

When, Richie wonders, did it become too late to turn back? When he and Stan showed up and pitched in, helping to build the dam? When Bill told them how the school picture of his brother had turned its head and winked? Maybe . . . but to Rich Tozier it seems that the dominoes really began to fall when Ben Hanscom stepped forward and said' I showed them

2

how to do it. It's my fault.'

Mr Nell simply stood there looking at him, lips pressed together, hands on his creaking black leather belt. He looked from Ben to the spreading pool behind the dam and then back to Ben again, his face that of a man who can't believe what he is seeing. He was a burly Irishman, his hair a premature white, combed back in neat waves beneath his peaked blue cap. His eyes were bright blue, his nose bright red. There were small nests of burst capillaries in his cheeks. He was a man of no more than medium height, but to the five boys arrayed before him he looked at least eight feet tall.

Mr Nell opened his mouth to speak, but before he could. Bill Denbrough had stepped up beside Ben.

'Ih-Ih-Ih-It w-wuh-wuh-was m-my i-i-i-i-idea,' he finally managed to say. He heaved in a gigantic, gulping breath and as Mr Nell stood there regarding him impassively, the sun tossing back imperial flashes from his badge, Bill managed to stutter out the rest of what he needed to say: it wasn't Ben's fault; Ben just happened to come along and show them how to do better what they were already doing badly.

'Me too,' Eddie said abruptly, and stepped up on Ben's other side.

'What's this "me too"?' Mr Nell asked. 'Is that yer name or yer address, buckaroo?'

Eddie flushed brightly — the color went all the way up to the roots of bis hair. 'I was with Bill before Ben even came,' he said. 'That was all I meant.'

Richie stepped up next to Eddie. The idea that a Voice or two might cheer Mr Nell up a little, get him thinking jolly thoughts, popped into his head. On second thought (and second thoughts were, for Richie, extremely rare and wonderful things), maybe a Voice or two might only make things worse. Mr Nell didn't look like he was in what Richie sometimes thought of

as a chuckalicious mood. In fact, Mr Nell looked like maybe chucks were the last thing on his mind. So he just said, 'I was in on it too,' in a low voice, and then made his mouth shut up.

'And me,' Stan said, stepping next to Bill.

Now the five of them were standing before Mr Nell in a line. Ben looked from one side to the other, more than dazed — he was almost stupefied by their support. For a moment Richie thought ole Haystack was going to burst into tears of gratitude.

'Jaysus,' Mr Nell said again, and although he sounded deeply disgusted, his face suddenly looked as if it might like to laugh. 'A sorrier bunch of boyos I ain't nivver seen. If yer folks knew where you were, I guess there'd be some hot bottoms tonight. I ain't sure there won't be anyway.'

Richie could hold back no longer; his mouth simply fell open and then ran away like the gingerbread man, as it so often did.

'How's things back in the auid country, Mr Nell?' it bugled. 'Ah, yer a sight for sore eyes, sure an begorrah, yer a lovely man, a credit to the auld sod — '

'I'll be a credit to the seat of yer pants in about three seconds, my dear little friend,' Mr Nell said dryly.

Bill turned on him, snarled: 'For G-G-God's s-sake R-R-Richie shuh-shuh-hut UP!'

'Good advice, Master William Denbrough,' Mr Nell said. 'I'll bet Zack doesn't know you're down here in the Bar'ns playing amongst the floating turdies, does he?'

Bill dropped his eyes, shook his head. Wild roses burned in his cheeks.

Mr Nell looked at Ben. 'I don't recall your name, son.'

'Ben Hanscom, sir,' Ben whispered.

Mr Nell nodded and looked back at the dam again. 'This was your idea?'

'How to build it, yeah.' Ben's whisper was now nearly inaudible.

'Well, yer a hell of an engineer, big boy, but you don't know Jack Shit about these here Bar'ns or the Derry drainage system, do you?'

Ben shook his head.

Not unkindly, Mr Nell told him, 'There's two parts to the system. One part carries solid human waste — shit, if I'd not be offendin yer tender ears. The other part carries gray water — water flushed from toilets or run down the drains from sinks and washin-machines and showers; it's also the water that runs down the gutters into the city drains.

'Well, ye've caused no problems with the solid –waste removal, thank God — all of that gets pumped into the Kenduskeag a bit farther down. There's probably some almighty big patties down that way half a mile dryin in the sun thanks to what you done, but you can be pretty sure that there ain' t shit stickin to anyone's ceiling because of it.

'But as for the gray water . . . well, there's no pumps for gray water. That all runs downhill in what the engineer boyos call gravity drains. And I'll bet you know where all them gravity drains end up, don't you, big boy?'

'Up there,' Ben said. He pointed to the area behind the dam, the area they had in large part submerged. He did this without looking up. Big tears were beginning to course slowly down his cheeks. Mr Nell pretended not to notice.

'That's right, my large young friend. All them gravity drains feed into streams that feed into the upper Barrens. In fact, a good many of them little streams that come tricklin down are gray water and gray water only, comin out of drams you can't even see, they're so deep-buried in the underbrush. The shit goes one way and everythin else goes the other, God praise the clever mind o man, and did it ever cross yer minds that you'd spent the whole live-long day paddlin around in Derry's pee an old wash-water?'