“Let’s just-”
“Hold your horses,” the Beav says. “This is a good shirt.” Except when he picks it up, they see that it isn’t. New, yes a brand-new Derry Tigers shirt, with 19 on the back. Pete doesn’t give a shit for football, but the rest of them recognize it as Richie Grenadeau’s number. Good, no-not anymore. It’s ripped deeply at the back collar, as if the person wearing it had tried to run away, then been grabbed and hauled back.
“Guess I was wrong,” the Beav says sadly, and drops it again. “Come on.”
But before they get very far, they come across something else-this time it’s yellow instead of red, that bright yellow plastic only a kid could love. Henry trots ahead of the others and picks it up. It’s a lunchbox with Scooby-Doo and his friends on it, all of them running from what appears to be a haunted house. Like the shirt it looks new, not anything that’s been lying out here for any length of time, and all at once Henry is starting to have a bad feeling about this, starting to wish they hadn’t detoured into this deserted driveway by this deserted building at all… or at least had saved it for another day. Which, even at fourteen, he realizes is stupid. When it comes to pussy, he thinks, you either go or you don 9 t, there’s no such thing as saving it for another day.
“I hate that fuckin show, Pete says, looking over Henry’s shoulder at the lunchbox. “They never change their clothes, did you ever notice that? Wear the same fuckin thing, show in and show out.”
Jonesy takes the Scooby-Doo lunchbox from Henry and turns it to look at something he’s seen pasted on the end. The wild look has gone out of Jonesy’s eyes, he’s frowning slightly, and Henry has an idea Jonesy is also wishing they’d just gone on and played some two-on-two.
The sticker on the side reads: I BELONG TO DOUGLAS CAVELL, 19 MAPLE LANE, DERRY, MAINE. IF THE BOY I BELONG TO IS LOST, CALL 949-1864. THANKS!
Henry opens his mouth to say the lunchbox and the shirt must belong to a kid who goes to The Retard Academy-he’s sure of it just looking at the sticker, which is almost like the tag their fucking dog wears-but before he can, there is a scream from the far side of the building, over where the big kids play baseball in the summer. It’s full of hurt, that scream, but what starts Henry running before he can even think about it is the surprise in it, the awful surprise of someone who has been hurt or scared (or both) for the very first time.
The others follow him. They run up the weedy right rut of the driveway, the one closest to the building, in single file: Henry, Jonesy, the Beav, and Pete.
There is hearty male laughter. “Go on and eat it,” someone says. “Eat it and you can go. Duncan might even give you your pants back.”
“Yeah, if you-” Another boy, probably Duncan, begins and then he stops, staring at Henry and his friends.
“Hey you guys, quit it!” Beaver shouts. “Just fucking quit it!” Duncan’s friends-there are two of them, both wearing Derry High School jackets-realize they are no longer unobserved at their afternoon’s entertainment, and turn. Kneeling on the gravel amid them, dressed only in underpants and one sneaker, his face smeared with blood and dirt and snot and tears, is a child of an age Henry cannot determine. He’s not a little kid, not with that powdering of hair on his chest, but he has the look of a little kid just the same. His eyes have a Chinese tilt and are bright green, swimming with tears.
On the red brick wall behind this little group, printed in large white letters which are fading but still legible, is this message: NO BOUNCE, NO PLAY. Which probably means keep the games and the balls away from the building and out in the vacant lot where the deep ruts of the basepaths and the ragged hill of the pitcher’s mound can still be seen, but who can say for sure? NO BOUNCE, NO PLAY. In the years to come they will say this often; it will become one of the private catch-phrases of their youth and has no exact meaning. Who knows? perhaps comes closest. Or What can you do? It is always best spoken with a shrug, a smile, and hands tipped up to the sky.
“Who the fuck’re you?” one of the big boys asks the Beav. On his left hand he’s wearing what looks like a batting glove or maybe a golf glove… something athletic, anyway. In it is the dried dog-turd he has been trying to make the mostly naked boy eat.
“What are you doing?” Jonesy asks, horrified. “You tryin to make him eat that? The fuck’s wrong with you?”
The kid holding the dog-turd has a wide swatch of white tape across the bridge of his nose, and Henry utters a bark of recognition that is half surprise and half laughter. It’s too perfect, isn’t it? They’re here to look at the pussy of the Homecoming Queen and here, by God, is the Homecoming King, whose football season has apparently been ended by nothing worse than a broken nose, and who is currently passing his time doing stuff like this while the rest of the team practices for this week’s game.
Richie Grenadeau hasn’t noticed Henry’s look of recognition; he’s staring at Jonesy. Because he has been startled and because Jonesy’s tone of disgust is so completely unfeigned, Richie at first takes a step backward. Then he realizes that the kid who has dared to speak to him in such reproving tones is at least three years younger and a hundred pounds lighter than he is. The sagging hand straightens again.
“I’m gonna make him eat this piece of shit,” he says. “Then he can go. You go now, snotball, unless you want half”Yeah, fuck off,” the third boy says. Richie Grenadeau is big but this boy is even bigger, a six-foot-five hulk whose face flames with acne. “While you got th-” “I know who you are,” Henry says.Richie’s eyes switch to Henry. He looks suddenly wary… but he also looks pissed off. “Fuck off, sonny. I mean it.”
“You’re Richie Grenadeau. Your picture was in the paper.
What do you think people will say if we tell em what we caught you doing?”
“You’re not gonna tell anyone anything, because you’ll be fuckin dead,” the one named Duncan says. He has dirty-blond hair falling around his face and down to his shoulders. “Get outta here. Beat feet.”
Henry pays no attention to him. He stares at Richie Grenadeau. He is aware of no fear, although there’s no doubt these three boys could stomp them flat; he is burning with an outrage he has never felt before, never even suspected. The kid kneeling on the ground is undoubtedly retarded, but not so retarded he doesn’t understand these three big boys intended to hurt him, tore off his shirt, and then-
Henry has never in his life been closer to getting good and beaten up, or been less concerned with it. He takes a step forward, fists clenching. The kid on the ground sobs, head now lowered, and the sound is a constant tone in Henry’s head, feeding his fury.
“I’ll tell,” he says, and although it is a little kid’s threat, he doesn’t sound like a little kid to himself. Nor to Richie, apparently; Richie takes a step backward and the gloved hand with the dried turd in it sags again. For the first time he looks alarmed. “Three against one, a little retarded kid, fuck yeah, man, I’ll tell. I’ll tell and I know who you are!”
Duncan and the big boy-the only one not wearing a high-school jacket-step up on either side of Richie. The boy in the underpants is behind them now, but Henry can still hear the pulsing drone of his sobs, it’s in his head, beating in his head and driving him fucking crazy.
“All right, okay, that’s it,” the biggest boy says. He grins, showing several holes where teeth once lived. “You’re gonna die now.”
“Pete, you run when they come,” Henry says, never taking his eyes from Richie Grenadeau. “Run home and tell your mother.” And, to Richie: “You’ll never catch him, either. He runs like the fucking wind.”
Pete’s voice sounds thin but not scared. “You got it, Henry.” “And the worse you beat us up, the worse it’s gonna be for you, Jonesy says. Henry has already seen this, but for Jonesy it is a revelation; he’s almost laughing. “Even if you really did kill us, what good would it do you? Because Pete does run fast, and he’ll tell.”
“I run fast, too,” Richie says coldly. “I’ll catch him.”