It

by Stephen King

  He could see Bill getting involved, too--only a little at first, still mulling over whatever it was he had on his mind, and then, bit by bit, committing himself fully. Once or twice he clapped Ben on one meaty shoulder and told him he was unbelievable. Ben flushed with pleasure each time.

  Ben got Eddie and Bill to set one of the boards across the stream and hold it as he used the sledgehammer to seat it in the streambed. "There--it's in, but you'll have to hold it or the current'll just pull it loose," he told Eddie, so Eddie stood in the middle of the stream holding the board while water sluiced over its top and made his hands into wavering starfish shapes.

  Ben and Bill located a second board two feet downstream of the first. Ben used the sledge again to seat it and Bill held it while Ben began to fill up the space between the two boards with sandy earth from the streambank. At first it only washed away around the ends of the boards in gritty clouds and Eddie didn't think it was going to work at all, but when Ben began adding rocks and muddy gook from the streambed, the clouds of escaping silt began to diminish. In less than twenty minutes he had created a heaped brown canal of earth and stones between the two boards in the middle of the stream. To Eddie it looked like an optical illusion.

  "If we had real cement . . . instead of just . . . mud and rocks, they'd have to move the whole city . . . over to the Old Cape side by the middle of next week," Ben said, slinging the shovel aside at last and sitting on the bank until he got his breath back. Bill and Eddie laughed, and Ben grinned at them. When he grinned, there was a ghost of the handsome man he would become in the lines of his face. Water had begun to pile up behind the upstream board now.

  Eddie asked what they were going to do about the water escaping around the sides.

  "Let it go. It doesn't matter."

  "It doesn't?"

  "Nope."

  "Why not?"

  "I can't explain exactly. You gotta let some out, though."

  "How do you know?"

  Ben shrugged. I just do, the shrug said, and Eddie was silenced.

  When he was rested, Ben got a third board--the thickest of the four or five he had carried laboriously across town to the Barrens--and placed it carefully against the downstream board, wedging one end firmly into the streambed and socking the other against the board Bill had been holding, creating the strut he had put in his little drawing the day before.

  "Okay," he said, standing back. He grinned at them. "You guys should be able to let go now. The gook in between the two boards will take most of the water pressure. The strut will take the rest."

  "Won't the water wash it away?" Eddie asked.

  "Nope. The water is just gonna push it in deeper."

  "And if you're ruh-ruh-wrong, we g-get to k-k-kill yuh-you," Bill said.

  "That's cool," Ben said amiably.

  Bill and Eddie stepped back. The two boards that formed the basis of the dam creaked a little, tilted a little . . . and that was all.

  "Hot shit!" Eddie screamed, excited.

  "It's g-g-great," Bill said, grinning.

  "Yeah," Ben said. "Let's eat."

  4

  They sat on the bank and ate, not talking much, watching the water stack up behind the dam and sluice around the ends of the boards. They had already done something to the geography of the streambanks, Eddie saw: the diverted current was cutting scalloped hollows into them. As he watched, the new course of the stream undercut the bank enough on the far side to cause a small avalanche.

  Upstream of the dam the water formed a roughly circular pool, and at one place it had actually overflowed the bank. Bright, reflecting rills ran off into the grass and the underbrush. Eddie slowly began to realize what Ben had known from the first: the dam was already built. The gaps between the boards and the banks were sluiceways. Ben had not been able to tell Eddie this because he did not know the word. Above the boards the Kenduskeag had taken on a swelled look. The chuckling sound of shallow water babbling its way over stones and gravel was now gone; all the stones upstream of the dam were underwater. Every now and then more sod and dirt, undercut by the widening stream, would fall into the water with a splash.

  Downstream of the dam the watercourse was nearly empty; thin trickles ran restlessly down its center, but that was about all. Stones which had been underwater for God knew how long were drying in the sun. Eddie looked at these drying stones with mild wonder . . . and that weird other feeling. They had done this. They. He saw a frog hopping along and thought maybe old Mr. Froggy was wondering just where the water had gone. Eddie laughed out loud.

  Ben was neatly stowing his empty wrappers in the lunchbag he had brought. Both Eddie and Bill had been amazed by the size of the repast Ben had laid out with businesslike efficiency: two PB&J sandwiches, one bologna sandwich, a hardcooked egg (complete with a pinch of salt twisted up in a small piece of waxed paper), two fig-bars, three large chocolate chip cookies, and a Ring-Ding.

  "What did your ma say when she saw how bad you got racked?" Eddie asked him.

  "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 fill: 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 cheek.

  "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 words 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-muhhatch," 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 hi 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, all 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, when 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.

  Salaaming frantically in front of the startled and embarrassed Ben Hanscom, Richie was speaking in what he called his Nigger Jim Voice.

  "Lawks-a-mussy, it's be Haystack Calhoun!" Richie screamed. "Don't fall on me, Mistuh Haystack, suh! You'se gwineter cream me if you do! Lawks-a-mussy, lawks-a-mussy! Three hunnert pounds of swaingin meat, eighty-eight inches from tit to tit, Haystack be smellin jest like a loader panther shit! I'se gwineter leadjer inter de raing, Mistuh Haystack, suh! I'se sho enuf gwineter leadjer! Jest don'tchoo be fallin on dis yere black boy!"

  "D-Don't wuh-worry," Bill said. "It's j-j-just Ruh-Ruh-Richie. He's c-c-crazy."

  Richie bounced to his feet. "I heard that, Denbrough. You better leave me alone or I'll sic Haystack here on you."

  "B-Best p-p-part of you r-ran down your fuh-fuh-hather's l-l-leg," Bill said.

  "True," Richie said, "but look how much good stuff was left. How ya doin, Haystack? Richie Tozier is my name, doing Voices is my game." He popped his hand out. Thoroughly confused, Ben reached for it. Richie pulled his hand back. Ben blinked. Relenting, Richie shook.

  "My name's Ben Hanscom, in case you're interested," Ben said.

  "Seen you around school," Richie said. He swept a hand at the spreading pool of water. "This must have been your idea. These wet ends couldn't light a firecracker with a flamethrower."

  "Speak for yourself, Richie," Eddie said.

  "Oh--you mean it was your idea, Eds? Jesus, I'm sorry." He fell down in front of Eddie and began salaaming wildly again.

  "Get up, stop it, you're splattering mud on me!" Eddie cried.

  Richie jumped to his feet a second time and pinched Eddie's cheek. "Cute, cute, cute!" Richie exclaimed.

  "Stop it, I hate that!"

  "Fess up, Eds--who built the dam?"

  "B-B-Ben sh-showed us," Bill said.

  "Good deal." Richie turned and discovered Stanley Uris standing behind him, hands in his pockets, watching quietly as Richie put on his show. "This here's Stan the Man Uris," Richie told Ben. "Stan's a Jew. Also, he killed Christ. At least that's what Victor Criss told me one day. I been after Stan ever since. I figure if he's that old, he ought to be able to buy us some beer. Right, Stan?"

  "I think that must have been my father," Stan said in a low, pleasant voice, and that broke them all up, Ben included. Eddie laughed until he was wheezing and tears were running down his face.

  "A Good One!" Richie cried, striding around with his arms thrown up over his head like a football referee signalling that the extra point was good. "Stan the Man Gets Off A Good One! Great Moments in History! Yowza-Yowza-YOWza!"

  "Hi." Stan said to Ben, seeming to take no notice of Richie at all.

  "Hello," Ben replied. "We were in the same class in second
grade. You were the kid who--"

  "--never said anything," Stan finished, smiling a little.

  "Right."

  "Stan wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful," Richie said. "Which he FREE-quently does--yowza-yowza-YOW--"

  "Sh-Sh-Shut uh-up, Richie," Bill said.

  "Okay, but first I have to tell you one more thing, much as I hate to. I think you're losing your dam. Valley's gonna flood, pardners. Let's get the women and children out first."

  And without bothering to roll up his pants--or even to remove his sneakers--Richie jumped into the water and began to slam sods into place on the nearside wing of the dam, where the persistent current was pulling fill out in muddy streamers again. A piece of Red Cross adhesive tape was wrapped around one of the bows of his glasses, and the loose end flapped against his cheekbone as he worked. Bill caught Eddie's eye, smiled a little, and shrugged. It was just Richie. He could drive you bugshit ... but it was still sort of nice to have him around.

  They worked on the dam for the next hour or so. Richie took Ben's commands--which had become rather tentative again, with two more kids to general--with perfect willingness, and fulfilled them at a manic pace. When each mission was completed he reported back to Ben for further orders, executing a backhand British salute and snapping the soggy heels of his sneakers together. Every now and then he would begin to harangue the others in one of his Voices: the German Commandant, Toodles the English Butler, the Southern Senator (who sounded quite a bit like Foghorn Leghorn and who would, in the fullness of time, evolve into a character named Buford Kissdrivel), the MovieTone Newsreel Narrator.

  The work did not just go forward; it sprinted forward. And now, shortly before five o'clock, as they sat resting on the bank, it seemed that what Richie had said was true: they had stopped the sucker cold. The car door, the piece of corrugated steel, and the old tires had become the second stage of the dam, and it was backstopped by a huge sloping hill of earth and stones. Bill, Ben, and Richie smoked; Stan was lying on his back. A stranger might have thought he was just looking at the sky, but Eddie knew better. Stan was looking into the trees on the other side of the stream, keeping an eye out for a bird or two he could write up in his bird notebook that night. Eddie himself just sat cross-legged, feeling pleasantly tired and rather mellow. At that moment the others seemed to him like the greatest bunch of guys to chum with a fellow could ever hope to have. They felt right together; they fitted neatly against each other's edges. He couldn't explain it to himself any better than that, and since it didn't really seem to need any explaining, he decided he ought to just let it be.