It (153 page)

“I'll chance it,” Eddie said.

Reluctantly, Richie held his Rocket up to Eddie's mouth . . . and snatched it away quickly as soon as Eddie had gotten in a couple of moderately serious licks.

“You can have the rest of mine, if you want,” Stan said. “I'm still full from lunch.”

“Jews don't eat much,” Richie instructed. “It's part of their religion.” The three of them were walking along companionably enough now, headed up toward Kansas Street and the Barrens. Derry seemed lost in a deep hazy afternoon doze. The blinds of most of the houses they passed were pulled down. Toys stood abandoned on lawns, as if their owners had been hastily called in from play or put down for naps. Thunder rumbled thickly in the west.

“Is it?” Eddie asked Stan.

“No, Richie's just pulling your leg,” Stan said. “Jews eat as much as normal people.” He pointed at Richie. “Like him.”

“You know, you're pretty fucking mean to Stan,” Eddie told Richie. “How would you like somebody to say all that made-up shit about you, just because you're a Catholic?”

“Oh, Catholics do plenty,” Richie said. “My dad told me once that Hitler was a Catholic, and Hitler killed billions of Jews. Right, Stan?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Stan said. He looked embarrassed.

“My mom was
furious
when my dad told me that,” Richie went on. A little reminiscent grin had surfaced on his face. “Absolutely
fyoo-rious.
Us Catholics also had the Inquisition, that was the little dealie with the rack and the thumbscrews and all that stuff. I figure all religions are pretty weird.”

“Me too,” Stan said quietly. “We're not Orthodox, or anything like that. I mean, we eat ham and bacon. I hardly even know what being a Jew is. I was born in Derry, and sometimes we go up to synagogue in Bangor for stuff like Yom Kippur, but—” He shrugged.

“Ham? Bacon?” Eddie was mystified. He and his mom were Methodists.

“Orthodox Jews don't eat stuff like that,” Stan said. “It says something in the Torah about not eating anything that creeps through the mud or walks on the bottom of the ocean. I don't know exactly how it goes. But pigs are supposed to be out, also lobster. But my folks eat them. I do too.”

“That's weird,” Eddie said, and burst out laughing. “I never heard of a religion that told you what you could
eat.
Next thing, they'll be telling you what kind of gas you can buy.”

“Kosher gas,” Stan said, and laughed by himself. Neither Richie nor Eddie understood what he was laughing about.

“You gotta admit, Stanny, it
is
pretty weird,” Richie said. “I mean, not being able to eat a sausage just because you happen to be Jewish.”

“Yeah?” Stan said. “You eat meat on Fridays?”

“Jeez, no!” Richie said, shocked. “You can't eat meat on Friday, because—” He began to grin a little. “Oh, okay, I see what you mean.”

“Do Catholics really go to hell if they eat meat on Fridays?” Eddie asked, fascinated, totally unaware that, until two generations before, his own people had been devout Polish Catholics who would no more have eaten meat on Friday than they would have gone outside with no clothes on.

“Well, I'll tell you what, Eddie,” Richie said. “I don't really think God would send me down to the Hot Place just for forgetting and having a baloney sandwich for lunch on a Friday, but why take a chance? Right?”

“I guess not,” Eddie said. “But it seems so—”
So stupid,
he was going to say, and then he remembered a story Mrs. Portleigh had told the Sunday-school class when he was just a little kid—a first grader in Little Worshippers. According to Mrs. Portleigh, a bad boy had once stolen some of the communion-bread when the tray was passed and put it in his pocket. He took it home and threw it into the toilet-bowl just to see what would happen. At once—or so Mrs. Portleigh reported to her rapt Little Worshippers—the water in the toilet-bowl had turned a bright red. It was the Blood of Christ, she said, and it had appeared to that little boy because he had done a very bad act called a BLASPHEMY. It had appeared to warn him that, by throwing the flesh of Jesus into the toilet, he had put his immortal soul in danger of Hell.

Up until then, Eddie had rather enjoyed the act of communion, which he had only been allowed to take since the previous year. The Methodists used Welch's grape juice instead of wine, and the Body of Christ was represented by cut-up cubes of fresh, springy Wonder Bread. He liked the idea of taking in food and drink as a religious rite. But following Mrs. Portleigh's story, his awe of the ritual darkened into something more potent, something rather dreadful. Simply reaching for the cubes of bread became an act which required courage, and he always feared an electrical shock . . . or worse, that the bread would suddenly change color in his hand, become a blood-clot, and a disembodied Voice would begin to thunder in the church:
Not worthy! Not worthy! Damned to Hell! Damned to Hell!
Often, after he had taken communion, his throat would close up, his breath would begin to wheeze in and out, and he would wait with panicky impatience for the benediction to be over so he could hurry into the vestibule and use his aspirator.

You don't want to be so silly,
he told himself as he grew older.
That was nothing but a story, and Mrs. Portleigh sure wasn't any saint—Mamma said she was divorced down in Kittery and that she plays Bingo at Saint Mary's in Bangor, and that
real
Christians don't gamble, real Christians leave gambling for pagans and Catholics.

All that made perfect sense, but it didn't relieve his mind. The story of the communion bread that turned the water in the toilet-bowl to blood worried at him, gnawed at him, even caused him to lose sleep. It came to him one night that the way to get this behind him once and for all would be to take a piece of the bread himself, toss it in the toilet, and see what happened.

But such an experiment was far beyond his courage; his rational mind could not stand against that sinister image of the blood spreading its cloud of accusation and potential damnation in the water. It could not stand against that talismanic magical incantation:
This is my body, take, eat; this is my blood, shed for you and for many.

No, he had never made the experiment.

“I guess all religions are weird,” Eddie said now. But
powerful,
his mind added, almost
magical
 . . . or was that BLASPHEMY? He began to think about the thing they had seen on Neibolt Street, and for the first time he saw a crazy parallel—the Werewolf had, after all, come out of the toilet.

“Boy, I guess everybody's asleep,” Richie said, tossing his empty Rocket-tube nonchalantly into the gutter. “You ever see it so quiet? What, did everbody go to Bar Harbor for the day?”

“H-H-H-Hey you guh-guh-guys!” Bill Denbrough shouted from behind them. “Wuh-Wuh-hait up!”

Eddie turned, delighted as always to hear Big Bill's voice. He was wheeling Silver around the corner of Costello Avenue, outdistancing Mike, although Mike's Schwinn was almost brand-new.

“Hi-yo Silver, AWAYYYY!”
Bill yelled. He rolled up to them doing perhaps twenty miles an hour, the playing cards clothespinned to the fender-struts roaring. Then he backpedalled, locked the brakes, and produced an admirably long skid-mark.

“Stuttering Bill!” Richie said. “Howay a, boy? Ah say . . . Ah say . . . how
aw
you, boy?”

“I'm o-o-okay,” Bill said. “Seen Ben or Buh-Buh-heverly?”

Mike rode up and joined them. Sweat stood out on his face in little drops. “How fast does that bike go, anyway?”

Bill laughed. “I d-d-don't nuh-know, e-exactly. Pretty f-f-fast.”

“I haven't seen them,” Richie said. “They're probably down there, hanging out. Singing two-part harmony. ‘Sh-boom, sh-boom . . . ya-da-da-da-da-da-da . . . you look like a dream, shweetheart.' ”

Stan Uris made throwing-up noises.

“He's just jealous,” Richie said to Mike. “Jews can't sing.”

“Buh-buh-buh—”

“ ‘Beep-beep, Richie,' ” Richie said for him, and they all laughed.

They started toward the Barrens again, Mike and Bill pushing their bikes. Conversation was brisk at first, but then it lagged. Looking at Bill, Eddie saw an uneasy look on his face, and he thought that maybe the quiet was getting to him, too. He knew Richie had meant it as a joke, but it really
did
seem that everyone in Derry had gone to Bar Harbor for the day . . . to
somewhere.
Not a car moved on the street; there wasn't a single old lady pushing a carrier full of groceries back to her house or apartment.

“Sure is quiet, isn't it?” Eddie ventured, but Bill only nodded.

They crossed to the Barrens side of Kansas Street, and then they saw Ben and Beverly, running toward them, shouting. Eddie was shocked by Beverly's appearance; she was usually so neat and clean, her hair always washed and tied back in a pony-tail. Now she was streaked with what looked like every kind of gluck in the universe. Her eyes were wide and wild. There was a scratch on one cheek. Her jeans were caked with crap and her blouse was torn.

Ben fell behind her, puffing, his stomach wobbling.

“Can't go down in the Barrens,” Beverly was panting.

“The boys . . . Henry . . . Victor . . . they're down there somewhere . . . the knife . . . he has a knife. . . .”

“Sluh-slow down,” Bill said, taking charge at once in that effortless, almost unconscious way of his. He glanced at Ben as he ran up, his cheeks flushed bright, his considerable chest heaving.

“She says Henry's gone crazy, Big Bill,” Ben said.

“Shit, you mean he used to be
sane?”
Richie asked, and spat between his teeth.

“Sh-Shut uh-up, Ruh-Richie,” Bill said, and then looked back at Beverly. “Teh-Tell,” he said. Eddie's hand crept into his pocket and touched his aspirator. He didn't know what all this was, but he already knew it wasn't good.

Forcing herself to speak as calmly as possible, Beverly managed to get out an edited version of the story—a version that began with Henry, Victor, and Belch catching up to her on the street. She didn't tell them about her father—she was desperately ashamed of that.

When she was finished Bill stood silent for a moment, hands in his pockets, chin down, Silver's handlebars leaning against his chest. The others waited, throwing frequent glances at the railing that ran along the edge of the dropoff. Bill thought for a long time, and no one interrupted him. Eddie became aware, suddenly and effortlessly, that this might be the final act. That was how the day's silence felt, wasn't it? The feeling that the whole town had up and left, leaving only the deserted husks of buildings behind.

Richie was thinking about the picture in George's album that had suddenly come to life.

Beverly was thinking about her father, how pale his eyes had been.

Mike was thinking about the bird.

Ben was thinking about the mummy, and a smell like dead cinnamon.

Stan Uris was thinking of bluejeans, black and dripping, and hands as white as wrinkled paper, also dripping.

“Cuh-Cuh-Come oh-oh-on,” Bill said at last. “W-We're going d-d-down.”

“Bill—” Ben said. His face was troubled. “Beverly said Henry was really
crazy.
That he meant to kill—”

“Ih-It's nuh-not
theirs,”
Bill said, gesturing at the green dagger-shaped slash of the Barrens to their right and below them—the underbrush, the choked groves of trees, the bamboo, the glint of water. “Ih-Ih-It's not their
pruh-pruh-hopperty.”
He looked around at them, his face grim. “I'm t-t-tired of b-being scuh-schuh-hared by them. We b-b-beat them in the ruh-rockfight, and if we h-h-have to beat them a-a-again, we'll duh-duh-do it.”

“But Bill,” Eddie said, “what if it's not just
them?”

Bill turned to Eddie, and with real shock Eddie saw how tired and drawn Bill's face was—there was something frightening about that face, but it wasn't until much, much later, as an adult drifting toward sleep after the meeting at the library, that he understood what that frightening thing was: it was the face of a boy driven close to the brink of madness, a boy who was perhaps ultimately no more sane or in control of his own decisions than Henry was. Yet the essential Bill was still there, looking out of those haunted scarified eyes . . . an angry, determined Bill.

“Well,” he said, “whuh-whuh-what if it's
nuh-nuh-not?”

No one answered him. Thunder boomed, closer now. Eddie looked at the sky and saw the stormclouds moving in from the west in black thunderheads. It was going to rain a bitch, as his mother sometimes said.

“Nuh-nuh-how I'll t-t-tell you what,” Bill said, looking at them. “None of you have to guh-guh-go w-with me if you d-don't want to. That's uh-uh-up to you.”

“I'll go along, Big Bill,” Richie said quietly.

“Me too,” Ben said.

“Sure,” Mike said with a shrug.

Beverly and Stan agreed, and Eddie last.

“I don't think so, Eddie,” Richie said. “Your arm's not, you know, looking too cool.”

Eddie looked at Bill.

“I w-w-want h-him,” Bill said. “You w-w-walk with muh-muh-me, Eh-Eh-Eddie. I'll keep an eye on yuh-you.”

“Thanks, Bill,” Eddie said. Bill's tired, half-crazy face seemed suddenly lovely to him—lovely and well loved. He felt a dim sense of amazement.
I'd die for him, I guess, if he told me to. What kind of power is that? If it makes you look like Bill looks now, it's maybe not such a good power to have.

“Yeah, Bill's got the ultimate weapon,” Richie said. “B.O. bombs.” He raised his left arm and fluttered his right hand under the exposed armpit. Ben and Mike laughed a little, and Eddie smiled.