It (109 page)

As the trainyard gate with its sign—
PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
—loomed up, Mike was forced to let himself out to the limit. There was no pain—his breathing was rapid yet still controlled—but he knew everything was going to start hurting if he had to keep this pace up for long.

The gate was standing halfway open. He snapped a second look back and saw that he'd pulled away from Peter again. Victor was perhaps ten paces behind Peter, the others now forty or fifty yards back. Even in that quick glance Mike could see the black anger on Henry's face.

He skittered through the opening, whirled, and slammed the gate closed. He heard the click as it latched. A moment later Peter Gordon slammed into the chainlink, and a moment after that, Victor Criss ran up beside him. Peter's smile was gone; a sulky, balked look had replaced it. He grabbed for the latch, but of course there was none: the latch was on the inside.

Incredibly, he said: “Come on, kid, open the gate. That's not fair.”

“What's your idea of fair?” Mike asked, panting. “Five against one?”

“Fair-up,” Peter repeated, as if he had not heard Mike at all.

Mike looked at Victor, saw the troubled look in Victor's eyes. He started to speak, but that was when the others pulled up to the gate.

“Open up, nigger!” Henry bawled. He began to shake the chainlink with such ferocity that Peter looked at him, startled. “Open up! Open up
right now!”

“I won't,” Mike said quietly.

“Open up!” Belch shouted. “Open up, ya fuckin jigaboo!”

Mike backed away from the gate, his heart beating heavily in his chest. He couldn't remember ever being quite this scared, quite this
upset.
They lined their side of the gate, shouting at him, calling him names for nigger he had never dreamed existed—nightfighter, Ubangi, spade, blackberry, junglebunny, others. He was barely aware that Henry was taking something from his pocket, that he had popped a wooden match alight with his thumbnail—and then a round red something came over the fence and he flinched instinctively away as the cherry-bomb exploded to his left, kicking up dust.

The bang silenced them all for a moment—Mike stared unbelievingly at them through the fence, and they stared back. Peter Gordon looked utterly shocked, and even Belch looked stunned.

They're ascared of him now,
Mike thought suddenly, and a new voice spoke inside of him, perhaps for the first time, a voice that was disturbingly adult.
They're ascared, but that won't stop them. You got to get away, Mikey, or something's going to happen. Not all of them will want it to happen, maybe—not Victor and maybe not Peter Gordon—but it will happen anyway because Henry will
make
it happen. So get away. Get away fast.

He backed up another two or three steps and then Henry Bowers said: “I was the one killed your dog, nigger.”

Mike froze, feeling as if he had been hit in the belly with a bowl
ing ball. He stared into Henry Bowers's eyes and understood that Henry was telling the simple truth: he had killed Mr. Chips.

That moment of understanding seemed nearly eternal to Mike—looking into Henry's crazed sweat-ringed eyes and his rage-blackened face, it seemed to him that he understood a great many things for the first time, and the fact that Henry was far crazier than Mike had ever dreamed was only the least of them. He realized above all that the world was not kind, and it was more this than the news itself that forced the cry from him: “You honky chickenshit
bastard!”

Henry uttered a shriek of rage and attacked the fence, monkeying his way toward the top with a brute strength that was terrifying. Mike paused a moment longer, wanting to see if that adult voice that had spoken inside had been a true voice, and yes, it had been true: after the slightest hesitation, the others spread out and also began to climb.

Mike turned and ran again, sprinting across the trainyards, his shadow trailing squat at his feet. The freight which the Losers had seen crossing the Barrens was long gone now, and there was no sound but Mike's own breathing in his ears and the musical jingle of chainlink as Henry and the others climbed the fence.

Mike ran across one triple set of tracks, his sneakers kicking back cinders as he ran across the space between. He stumbled crossing the second set of tracks, and felt pain flare briefly in his ankle. He got up and ran on again. He heard a thud as Henry jumped down from the top of the fence behind him.
“Here I come for your ass, nigger!”
Henry bawled.

Mike's reasoning self had decided that the Barrens were his only chance how. If he could get down there he could hide in the tangles of underbrush, in the bamboo . . . or, if things became really desperate, he could climb into one of the drainpipes and wait it out.

He could do those things, maybe . . . but there was a hot spark of fury in his chest that had nothing to do with his reasoning self. He could understand Henry chasing after him when he got the chance, but Mr. Chips? . . . killing Mr. Chips?
My DOG wasn't a nigger, you cheapshit bastard,
Mike thought as he ran, and the bewildered anger grew.

Now he heard another voice, this one his father's.
I don't want you to
make a career out of running away . . . and what it all comes down to is that you have to be careful where you take your stand. You have to ask yourself if Henry Bowers is worth the trouble. . . .

Mike had been running a straight line across the trainyards toward the storage quonsets. Beyond them another chainlink fence divided the trainyards from the Barrens. He had been planning to scale that fence and jump over to the other side. Instead he veered hard right, toward the gravel-pit.

This gravel-pit had been used as a coalpit until 1935 or so—it had been a stoking-point for the trains which ran through the Derry yards. Then the diesels came, and the electrics. For a number of years after the coal was gone (much of the remainder stolen by people with coal-fired furnaces) a local contractor had dug gravel there, but he went bust in 1955 and since then the pit had been deserted. A spur railroad line still ran in a loop up to the pit and then back toward the switching-yards, but the tracks were dull with rust, and ragweed grew up between the rotting ties. These same weeds grew in the pit itself, vying for space with goldenrod and nodding sunflowers. Amid the vegetation there was still plenty of slag coal—the stuff people had once called “clinkers.”

As Mike ran toward this place, he took his shirt off. He reached the rim of the pit and looked back. Henry was coming across the tracks, his buddies spread out around him. That was okay, maybe.

Moving as quickly as he could, using his shirt for a bindle, Mike picked up half a dozen handfuls of hard clinkers. Then he ran back toward the fence, swinging his shirt by the arms. Instead of climbing the fence when he reached it, he turned so his back was against it. He dumped the coal out of his shirt, stooped, and picked up a couple of chunks.

Henry didn't see the coal; he only saw that he had the nigger trapped against the fence. He sprinted toward him, yelling.

“This is for my dog, you bastard!”
Mike cried, unaware that he had begun to cry. He threw one of the chunks of coal overhand. It flew in a hard direct line. It struck Henry's forehead with a loud
bonk!
and then rebounded into the air. Henry stumbled to his knees. His hands went to his head. Blood seeped through his fingers at once, like a magician's surprise.

The others skidded to a stop, their faces stamped with identical
expressions of disbelief. Henry uttered a high scream of pain and got to his feet again, still holding his head. Mike threw another chunk of coal. Henry ducked. He began to walk toward Mike, and when Mike threw a third chunk of coal, Henry removed one hand from his gashed forehead and batted the chunk of coal almost casually aside. He was grinning.

“Oh, you're gonna get such a surprise,” he said. “Such a—
OH MY GAWD!”
Henry tried to say more, but only inarticulate gargling noises emerged from his mouth.

Mike had pegged another chunk of coal and this one had struck Henry square in the throat. Henry buckled to his knees again. Peter Gordon gaped. Moose Sadler's brow was furrowed, as if he were trying to figure out a difficult math problem.

“What are you guys waiting for?”
Henry managed. Blood seeped between his fingers. His voice sounded rusty and foreign.
“Get
him!
Get
the little cocksucker!”

Mike didn't wait to see if they would obey or not. He dropped his shirt and leaped at the fence. He began to pull himself up toward the top and then he felt rough hands grab his foot. He looked down and saw Henry Bowers's contorted face, smeared by blood and coal. Mike yanked his foot up. His sneaker came off in Henry's hand. He pistoned his bare foot down into Henry's face and heard something crunch. Henry screamed again and staggered backward, now holding his spouting nose.

Another hand—Belch Huggins's—snagged briefly in the cuff of Mike's jeans, but he was able to pull free. He threw one leg over the top of the fence, and then something struck him with blinding force on the side of his face. Warmth trickled down his cheek. Something else struck his hip, his forearm, his upper thigh. They were throwing his own ammunition at him.

He hung briefly by his hands and then dropped, rolling over twice. The scrubby ground sloped downward here, and perhaps that saved Mike Hanlon's eyesight or even his life; Henry had approached the fence again and now looped one of his four M-80s over the top of the fence. It went off with a terrific
CRRRACK!
that echoed and blew a wide bare patch in the grass.

Mike, his ears ringing, went head-over-heels and staggered to his feet. He was now in high grass, on the edge of the Barrens. He wiped
a hand down his right cheek and it came away bloody. The blood did not particularly worry him; he had not expected to come out of this unscathed.

Henry tossed a cherry-bomb, but Mike saw this one coming and moved away easily.

“Let's get him!” Henry roared, and began to climb the fence.

“Jeez, Henry, I don't know—” This had gone too far for Peter Gordon, who had never encountered a situation that had turned so suddenly savage. Things were not supposed to get bloody—at least not for your team—when the odds were comfortably slugged in your favor.

“You
better
know,” Henry said, looking back at Peter from halfway up the fence. He hung there like a bloated poisonous spider in human shape. His baleful eyes stared at Peter; blood rimmed them on either side. Mike's downward kick had broken his nose, although Henry would not be aware of the fact for some time yet. “You
better
know, or I'll come after
you,
you fucking jerk.”

The others began to climb the fence, Peter and Victor with some reluctance, Belch and Moose as vacantly eager as before.

Mike waited to see no more. He turned and ran into the scrub. Henry bellowed after him:
“I'll find you, nigger! I'll find you!”

The Losers had reached the far side of the gravel-pit, which was little more than a huge weedy pockmark in the earth now, three years after the last load of gravel had been taken out of it. They were all gathered around Stan, looking appreciatively at his package of Black Cats, when the first explosion came. Eddie jumped—he was still goofed up over the piranha fish he thought he had seen (he wasn't sure what
real
piranha fish looked like, but he was pretty sure they didn't look like oversized goldfish with teeth).

“Merrow down easy, Eddie-san,” Richie said, doing his Chinese Coolie Voice. “Iss just other kids shooting off fireclackers.”

“That s-s-sucks the r-r-root, Rih-Rih-Richie,” Bill remarked. The others laughed.

“I keep trying, Big Bill,” Richie said. “I feel like, if I get good
enough, someday I'll earn your love.” He made dainty kissing gestures at the air. Bill shot him the finger. Ben and Eddie stood side by side, grinning.

“Oh I'm so young and you're so old,” Stan Uris piped up suddenly, doing an eerily accurate Paul Anka imitation, “this my darling I've been told—”

“He can
sayng!”
Richie screeched in his Pickaninny Voice. “Lawks-a-mussy, thisyere boy can
sayng!”
And then, in the MovieTone Announcer's Voice: “Want you to sign right here, boy, on this dotted line.” Richie slung an arm around Stan's shoulders and favored him with a gigantic gleaming smile. “We're going to grow your hair out, boy. Going to give you a
git
-tar. Going to—”

Bill popped Richie twice on the arm, quickly and lightly. They were all excited at the prospect of shooting off firecrackers.

“Open them up, Stan,” Beverly said. “I've got some matches.”

They gathered around again as Stan carefully opened the package of firecrackers. There were exotic Chinese letters on the black label and a sober caution in English that got Richie giggling again. “Do not hold in hand after fuse is lit,” this warning read.

“Good thing they told me,” Richie said. “I always used to hold them after I lit them. I thought that's how you got rid of your frockin hangnails.”

Working slowly, almost reverently, Stan removed the red cellophane and laid the block of cardboard tubes, blue and red and green, on the palm of his hand. Their fuses had been braided together in a Chinese pigtail.

“I'll unwind the—” Stan began, and then there was a much louder explosion. The echo rolled slowly across the Barrens. A cloud of gulls rose from the eastern side of the dump, squalling and crying. They all jumped this time. Stan dropped the firecrackers and had to pick them up.

“Was that dynamite?” Beverly asked nervously. She was looking at Bill, whose head was up, his eyes wide. She thought he had never looked so handsome—but there was something too alert, too strung-up, in the attitude of his head. He was like a deer scenting fire in the air.