It

And so, following an experience that might well have sent an adult running for the nearest headshrinker, Richie Tozier got up, ate a giant pancake breakfast, saw the ad for the two horror movies on the Amusements page of the paper, checked his funds, found them a ilttle low (well . . . 'nonexistent' might actually have been a better word), and began to pester his father for chores.

His dad, who had come to the table already wearing his white dentist's tunic, put down the Sports pages and poured himself a second cup of coffee. He was a pleasant-looking man with a rather thin face. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles, was developing a bald spot at the back of his head, and would die of cancer of the larynx in 1973. He looked at the ad to which Richie was pointing.

'Horror movies,' Wentworth Tozier said.

'Yeah,' Richie said, grinning.

'Feel like you have to go,' Wentworth Tozier said.

'Yeah!'

'Feel like you'll probably die in convulsions of disappointment if you don't get to see those two trashy movies.'

'Yeah, yeah, I would! I know I would! Graaaag!' Richie fell out of his chair onto the floor, clutching his throat, his tongue sticking out. This was Richie's admittedly peculiar way of turning on the charm.

'Oh God, Richie, will you please stop it?' his mother asked him from the stove, where she was frying him a couple of eggs to top off the pancakes.

'Gee, Rich,' his father said as Richie got back into his chair. 'I guess I must have forgotten to pay you your allowance on Monday. That's the only reason I can think of for you needing more money on Friday.'

'Well . . . '

'Gone?'

'Well . . . '

'That's an extremely deep subject for a boy with such a shallow mind,' Wentworth Tozier said. He put his elbow on the table and then cupped his chin on the palm of his hand, regarding his only son with what appeared to be deep fascination. 'Where'd it go?'

Richie immediately fell into the Voice of Toodles the English Butler. 'Why, I spent it, didn't I, guv'nor? Pip-pip, cheerio, and a lthat rot! my part of the war effort. All got to do our bit to beat back the bloody Hun, don't we? Bit of a sticky wicket, ay-wot? Bit of a wet hedgehog, wot-wot? Bit of a — '

'Bit of a pile of bullshit,' Went said amiably, and reached for the strawberry preserves.

'Spare me the vulgarity at the breakfast table, if you please,' Maggie Tozier said to her husband as she brought Richie's eggs over to the table. And to Richie: 'I don't know why you want to fill your head up with such awful junk anyway.'

'Aw, Mom,' Richie said. He was outwardly crushed, inwardly jubilant. He could read both of his parents like books — well-worn and well –loved books — and he was pretty sure he was going to get what he wanted: chores and permission to go to the show Saturday afternoon.

Went leaned forward toward Richie and smiled widely. 'I think I have you right where I want you,' he said.

'Is that right, Dad?' Richie said, and smiled back . . . a trifle uneasily.

'Oh yes. You know our lawn, Richie? You are familiar with our lawn?'

'Indeed I am, guv'nor,' Richie said, becoming Toodles again — or trying to. 'Bit shaggy, ay-wot?'

'Wot-wot,' Went agreed. 'And you, Richie, will remedy that condition.'

'I will?'

'You will. Mow it, Richie.'

'Okay, Dad, sure,' Richie said, but a terrible suspicion had suddenly blossomed in his mind. Maybe his dad didn't mean just the front lawn.

Wentworth Tozier's smile widened to a predatory shark's grin. 'All of it, O idiot child of my loins. Front. Back. Sides. And when you finish, I will cross your palm with two green pieces of paper with the likeness of George Washington on one side and a picture of a pyramid o'ertopped with the Ever-Watching Oculary on the other.'

'I don't get you, Dad,' Richie said, but he was afraid he did.

'Two bucks.'

'Two bucks for the whole lawn ?' Richie cried, genuinely wounded. 'It's the biggest lawn on the block! Jeez, Dad!'

Went sighed and picked the paper up again. Richie could read the front page headline: MISSING BOY PROMPTS NEW FEARS. He thought briefly of George Denbrough's strange scrapbook — but that had surely been a hallucination . . . and even if it hadn't been, that was yesterday and this was today.

'Guess you didn't want to see those movies as bad as you thought,' Went said from behind the paper. A moment later his eyes appeared over the top, studying Richie. Studying him a trifle smugly, in truth. Studying him the way a man with four of a kind studies his poker opponent over the fan of his cards.

'When the Clark twins do it all, you give them two dollars each !'

'That's true,' Went admitted. 'But as far as I know, they don't want to go to the movies tomorrow. Or if they do, they must have funds sufficient to the occasion, because they haven't popped by to check the state of the herbiage surrounding our domicile lately. You, on the other hand, do want to go and find yourself lacking the funds to do so. That pressure you feel in your midsection may be the five pancakes and two eggs you ate for breakfast, Richie, or it may just be the barrel I have you over. Wot-wot?' Went's eyes submerged behind the paper again.

'He's blackmailing me,' Richie said to his mother, who was eating dry toast. She was trying to lose weight again. This is blackmail, I just hope you know that.'

'Yes, dear, I know that,' his mother said. 'There's egg on your chin.'

Richie wiped the egg off his chin. 'Three bucks if I have it all done when you get home tonight?' he asked the newspaper.

His father's eyes appeared again briefly.'Two-fifty.'

'Oh, man,' Richie said. 'You and Jack Benny.'

'My idol,' Went said from behind the paper. 'Make up your mind, Richie. I want to read these box scores.'

'Deal,' Richie said, and sighed. When your folks had you by the balls, they really knew how to squeeze. It was pretty chuckalicious, when you thought it over. As he mowed, he practiced his Voices.

7

He finished — front, back, and sides — by three o'clock Friday afternoon, and began Saturday with two dollars and fifty cents in his jeans. Pretty damn near a fortune. He called Bill up, but Bill told him glumly that he had to go up to Bangor and take some kind of speech-therapy test.

Richie sympathized and then added in his best Stuttering Bill Voice: 'G-G-G i v e em h– h-hell, Buh-Buh-Big Bih-Bill.'

'Your f-f-face and my buh –buh –butt, T-T-Tozier,' Bill said, and hung up.

He called Eddie Kaspbrak next, but Eddie sounded even more depressed than Bill — his mother had gotten them each a full-day bus –pass, he said, and they were going to visit Eddie's aunts in Haven and Bangor and Hampden. All three of them were fat, like Mrs Kaspbrak, and all three of them were single.

'They'll all pinch my cheek and tell me how much I've grown,' Eddie said.

'That's cause they know how cute you are, Eds — just like me. I saw what a cutie you were the first time I met you.'

'Sometimes you're really a turd, Richie.'

'It takes one to know one, Eds, and you know em all. You gonna be down in the Barrens next week?'

'I guess so, if you guys are. Want to play guns?'

'Maybe. But . . . I think me and Big Bill have got something to tell you.'