"HI-YO SILVER, AWAYYYY!" he screamed triumphantly.
Silver flew over the first curbing, and as they almost always did at that point, his feet lost contact with the pedals. He was freewheeling, now wholly in the lap of whatever god has been appointed the job of protecting small boys. He swerved into the street, doing maybe fifteen miles an hour over the posted speed of twenty-five.
It was all behind him now: his stutter, his dad's blank hurt eyes as he puttered around his garage workshop, the terrible sight of the dust on the closed piano cover upstairs-dusty because his mother didn't play anymore. The last time had been at George's funeral, three Methodist hymns. George going out into the rain, wearing his yellow slicker, carrying the newspaper boat with its glaze of paraffin; Mr Gardener coming up the street twenty minutes later with his body wrapped in a bloodstained quilt; his mother's agonized shriek. All behind him. He was the Lone Ranger, he was John Wayne, he was Bo Diddley, he was anybody he wanted to be and nobody who cried and got scared and wanted his muh-muh-mother.
Silver flew and Stuttering Bill Denbrough flew with him; their gantry-like shadow fled behind them. They raced down Up-Mile Hill together; the playing cards roared. Bill's feet found the pedals again and he began to pump, wanting to go even faster, wanting to reach some hypothetical speed-not of sound but of memory-and crash through the pain barrier.
He raced on, bent over his handlebars; he raced to beat the devil.
The three-way intersection of Kansas, Center, and Main was coming up fast. It was a horror of one-way traffic and conflicting signs and stoplights which were supposed to be timed but really weren't. The result, a Derry News editorial had proclaimed the year before, was a traffic-rotary conceived in hell.
As always, Bill's eyes flicked right and left, fast, gauging the traffic flow, looking for the holes. If his judgment was mistaken-if he stuttered, you might say-he would be badly hurt or killed.
He arrowed into the slow-moving traffic which dogged the intersection, running a red light and fading to the right to avoid a lumbering portholed Buick. He shot a bullet of a glance back over his shoulder to make sure the middle lane was empty. He looked forward again and saw that in roughly five seconds he was going to crash into the rear end of a pick-up truck that had stopped squarely in the middle of the intersection while the Uncle Ike type behind the wheel craned his neck to read all the signs and make sure he hadn't taken a wrong turn and somehow ended up in Miami Beach.
The lane on Bill's right was full of a Derry-Bangor intercity bus. He slipped in that direction just the same and shot the gap between the stopped pick-up and the bus, still moving at forty miles an hour. At the last second he snapped his head hard to one side, like a soldier doing an over-enthusiastic eyes-right, to keep the mirror mounted on the passenger side of the pick-up from rearranging his teeth. Hot diesel from the bus laced his throat like a kick of strong liquor. He heard a thin gasping squeal as one of his bike-grips kissed a line up the coach's aluminum side. He got just a glimpse of the bus driver, his face paper-white under his peaked Hudson Bus Company cap. The driver was shaking his fist at Bill and shouting something. Bill doubted it was happy birthday.
Here was a trio of old ladies crossing Main Street from the New England Bank side to the Shoeboat side. They heard the harsh burr of the playing cards and looked up. Their mouths dropped open as a boy on a huge bike passed within half a foot of them like a mirage.
The worst-and the best-of the trip was behind him now. He had looked at the very real possibility of his own death again and again had found himself able to look away. The bus had not crushed him; he had not killed himself and the three old ladies with their Freese's shopping bags and their Social Security checks; he had not been splattered across the tailgate of Uncle Ike's old Dodge pick-up. He was going uphill again now, speed bleeding away. Something-oh, call it desire, that was good enough, wasn't it?-was bleeding away with it. All the thoughts and memories were catching up-in Bill, gee, we almost lost sight of you for awhile there, but here we are-rejoining him, climbing up his shirt and jumping into his ear and whooshing into his brain like little kids going down a slide. He could feel them settling into their accustomed places, their feverish bodies jostling each other. Gosh! Wow! Here we are inside Bill's head again! Let's think about George! Okay! Who wants to start?
You think too much, Bill.
No-that wasn't the problem. The problem was, he imagined too much.
He turned into Richard's Alley and came out on Center Street a few moments later, pedaling slowly, feeling the sweat on his back and in his hair. He dismounted Silver in front of the Center Street Drug Store and went inside.
6
Before George's death, Bill would have gotten the salient points across to Mr Keene by speaking to him. The druggist was not exactly kind-or at least Bill had an idea he was not-but he was patient enough, and he did not tease or make fun. But now Bill's stutter was much worse, and he really was afraid something bad might happen to Eddie if he didn't move fast.
So when Mr Keene said, "Hello, Billy Denbrough, can I help you?," Bill took a folder advertising vitamins, turned it over, and wrote on the back: Eddie Kaspbrak and I were playing in the Barrens. He's got a bad assmar attack, I mean he can hardly breath. Canyon give me a refill on his asspirador?
He pushed this note across the glass-topped counter to Mr Keene, who read it, looked at Bill's anxious blue eyes, and said, "Of course. Wait right here, and don't be handling anything you shouldn't."
Bill shifted impatiently from one foot to the other while Mr Keene was behind the rear counter. Although he was back there less than five minutes, it seemed an age before he returned with one of Eddie's plastic squeeze-bottles. He handed it over to Bill, smiled, and said, This should take care of the problem."
"Th-th-th-thanks," Bill said. "I don't h-have a-any m-m-muh-muh-"
"That's all right, son. Mrs Kaspbrak has an account here. I'll just add this on. I'm sure she'll want to thank you for your kindness."
Bill, much relieved, thanked Mr Keene and left quickly. Mr Keene came around the counter to watch him go. He saw Bill toss the aspirator into his bike-basket and mount clumsily. Can he actually ride a bike that big? Mr Keene wondered. I doubt it. I doubt it very much. But the Denbrough kid somehow got it going without falling on his head, and pedaled slowly away. The bike, which looked to Mr Keene like somebody's idea of a joke, wobbled madly from side to side. The aspirator rolled back and forth in the basket.
Mr Keene grinned a little. If Bill had seen that grin, it might have gone a good way toward confirming his idea that Mr Keene was not exactly one of the world's champion nice guys. It was sour, the grin of a man who has found much to wonder about but almost nothing to uplift in the human condition. Yes-he would add Eddie's asthma medication to Sonia Kaspbrak's bill, and as always she would be surprised-and suspicious rather than grateful-at how cheap the medication was. Other drugs were so dear, she said. Mrs Kaspbrak, Mr Keene knew, was one of those people who believed nothing cheap could do a person much good. He could really have soaked her for her son's HydrOx Mist, and there had been times when he had been tempted... but why should he make himself a party to the woman's foolishness? It wasn't as though he were going to starve.
Cheap? Oh my, yes. HydrOx Mist (Administer as needed typed neatly on the gummed label he pasted on each aspirator bottle) was wonderfully cheap, but even Mrs Kaspbrak was willing to admit that it controlled her son's asthma quite well in spite of that fact. It was cheap because it was nothing but a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, with a dash of camphor added to give the mist a faint medicinal taste.
In other words, Eddie's asthma medicine was tapwater.
7
It took Bill longer to get back, because he was going uphill. In several places he had to dismount and push Silver. He simply didn't have the musclepower necessary to keep the bike going up more than mild slopes.
By the time he had stashed his bike and made his way back to the stream, it was ten past four. All sorts of black suppositions were crossing his mind. The Hanscom kid would have deserted, leaving Eddie to die. Or the bullies could have backtracked and beaten the shit out of both of them. Or... worst of all... the man whose business was murdering kids might have gotten one or both of them. As he had gotten George.
He knew there had been a great deal of gossip and speculation about that. Bill had a bad stutter, but he wasn't deaf-although people sometimes seemed to think he must be, since he spoke only when absolutely necessary. Some people felt that the murder of his brother wasn't related at all to the murders of Betty Ripsom, Cheryl Lamonica, Matthew Clements, and Veronica Grogan. Others claimed that George, Ripsom, and Lamonica had been killed by one man, and the other two were the work of a "copy-cat killer." A third school of thought held that the boys had been killed by one man, the girls by another.
Bill believed they had all been killed by the same person... if it was a person. He sometimes wondered about that. As he sometimes wondered about his feelings concerning Derry this summer. Was it still the aftermath of George's death, the way his parents seemed to ignore him now, so lost in their grief over their younger son that they couldn't see the simple fact that Bill was still alive, and might be hurting himself? Those things combined with the other murders? The voices that sometimes seemed to speak in his head now, whispering to him (and surely they were not variations of his own voice, for these voices did not stutter-they were quiet, but they were sure), advising him to do certain things but not others? Was it those things which made Derry seem somehow different now? Somehow threatening, with unexplored streets that did not invite but seemed instead to yawn in a kind of ominous silence? That made some faces look secret and frightened?
He didn't know, but he believed-as he believed all the murders were the work of a single agency-that Derry really had changed, and that his brother's death had signalled the beginning of that change. The black suppositions in his head came from the lurking idea that anything could happen in Derry now. Anything.
But when he came around the last bend, all looked cool. Ben Hanscom was still there, sitting beside Eddie. Eddie himself was sitting up now, his hands dangling in his lap, head bent, still wheezing. The sun had sunk low enough to project long green shadows across the stream.
"Boy, that was quick," Ben said, standing up. "I didn't expect you for another half an hour."
"I got a f-f-fast b-bike," Bill said with some pride. For a moment the two of them looked at each other cautiously, warily. Then Ben smiled tentatively, and Bill smiled back. The kid was fat, but he seemed okay. And he had stayed put. That must have taken some guts, with Henry and his j.d. friends maybe still wandering around out there someplace.
Bill winked at Eddie, who was looking at him with dumb gratitude. "H-Here you g-go, E-E-E-Eddie." He tossed him the aspirator. Eddie plunged it into his open mouth, triggered it, and gasped convulsively. Then he leaned back, eyes shut. Ben watched this with concern.
"Jeez! He's really got it bad, doesn't he?"
Bill nodded.
"I was scared there for awhile," Ben said in a low voice. "I was wonderin what to do if he had a convulsion, or something. I kept tryin to remember the stuff they told us in that Red Cross assembly we had in April. All I could come up with was put a stick in his mouth so he wouldn't bite his tongue off."
"I think that's for eh-eh-hepileptics."
"Oh. Yeah, I guess you're right."
"He w-won't have a c-c-convulsion, anyway," Bill said. "That m-m-medicine will f-fix him right up. Luh-Luh-Look."
Eddie's labored breathing had eased. He opened his eyes and looked up at them.
"Thanks, Bill," he said. "That one was a real pisswah."
"I guess it started when they creamed your nose, huh?" Ben asked.
Eddie laughed ruefully, stood up, and stuck the aspirator in his back pocket. "Wasn't even thinking about my nose. Was thinking about my mom."
"Yeah? Really?" Ben sounded surprised, but his hand went to the rags of his sweatshirt and began fiddling there nervously.
"She's gonna take one look at the blood on my shirt and have me down to the Mergency Room at Derry Home in about five seconds."
"Why?" Ben asked. "It stopped, didn't it? Gee, I remember this kid I was in kindergarten with, Scooter Morgan, and he got a bloody nose when he fell off the monkey bars. They took him to the Mergency Room, but only because it kept bleeding."
"Yeah?" Bill asked, interested. "did he d-d-die?"
"No, but he was out of school a week."
"It doesn't matter if it stopped or not," Eddie said gloomily. "she'll take me anyway. She'll think it's broken and I got pieces of bone sticking in my brain, or something."
"C-C-Can you get bones in your buh-buh-brain?" Bill asked. This was turning into the most interesting conversation he'd had in weeks.
"I don't know. If you listen to my mother, you can get anything." Eddie turned to Ben again. "she takes me down to the Mergency Room about once or twice a month. I hate that place. There was this orderly once? He told her they oughtta make her pay rent. She was really PO'd."
"Wow," Ben said. He thought Eddie's mother must be really weird. He was unconscious of the fact that now both of his hands were fiddling in the remains of his sweatshirt. "Why don't you just say no? Say something like "Hey Ma, I feel all right, I just want to stay home and watch Sea Hunt." Like that."
"Awww," Eddie said uncomfortably, and said no more.
"You're Ben H-H-H-Hanscom, r-right?" Bill asked.
"Yeah. You're Bill Denbrough."
"Yuh-Yes. And this is Eh-Eh-Eh-heh-Eh-Eh-"
"Eddie Kaspbrak," Eddie said. "I hate it when you stutter my name, Bill. You sound like Elmer Fudd."
"Suh-horry."
"Well, I'm pleased to meet you both," Ben said. It came out sounding prissy and a little lame. A silence fell amid the three of them. It was not an entirely uncomfortable silence. In it they became friends.
"Why were those guys chasing you?" Eddie asked at last.
"They're a-a-always chuh-hasing s-someone," Bill said. "I h-hate those fuckers."
Ben was silent a moment-mostly in admiration-before Bill's use of what Ben's mother sometimes called The Really Bad Word. Ben had never said The Really Bad Word out loud in his whole life, although he had written it (in extremely small letters) on a telephone pole the Halloween before last.