It, Page 92

  But no one looked around; no one heard. And in the dream's fading moments, he realized with a cold and wormy horror that they couldn't hear him. He was dead. It had killed him and he was dead. He was a ghost.

  6

  Sonia Kaspbrak's sour-sweet triumph at sending Eddie's so-called friends away evaporated almost as soon as she stepped into Eddie's private room the next afternoon, on the 21st of July. She could not tell exactly why the feeling of triumph should fade like that, or why it should be displaced by an unfocused fear; it was something in her son's pale face, which was not blurred with pain or anxiety but instead bore an expression she could not remember ever having seen there before. It was sharp, somehow. Sharp and alert and set.

  The confrontation between Eddie's friends and Eddie's ma had not occurred in the waiting room, as in Eddie's dream; she had known they would be coming--Eddie's "friends," who were probably teaching him to smoke cigarettes in spite of his asthma, his "friends" who had such an unhealthy hold over him that they were all he talked about when he came home for the evening, his "friends" who got his arm broken. She had told all of this to Mrs. Van Prett next door. "The time has come," Mrs. Kaspbrak had said grimly, "to slap a few cards down on the table." Mrs. Van Prett, who had horrible skin-problems and who could almost always be counted upon to agree eagerly, almost pathetically, with everything Sonia Kaspbrak said, in this case had the temerity to disagree.

  I should think you'd be glad he's made some friends, Mrs. Van Prett said as they hung out their washes in the early-morning cool before work--this had been during the first week of July. And he's safer if he's with other children, Mrs. Kaspbrak, don't you think so? With all that's going on in this town, and all the poor children that have been murdered?

  Mrs. Kaspbrak's only reply had been an angry sniff (in fact, she couldn't just then think of an adequate verbal response, although she thought of dozens--some of them extremely cutting--later on), and when Mrs. Van Prett called her that evening, sounding rather anxious, to ask if Mrs. Kaspbrak would be going to the Beano down at Saint Mary's with her like usual, Mrs. Kaspbrak had replied coldly that she believed she would just stay home that evening and put her feet up instead.

  Well, she hoped Mrs. Van Prett was satisfied now. She hoped Mrs. Van Prett saw now that the only danger abroad in Derry this summer wasn't the sex-maniac killing children and babies. Here was her son, lying on his bed of pain in Derry Home Hospital, he might never be able to use his good right arm again, she had heard of such things, or, God forbid, loose splinters from the break might work through his bloodstream to his heart and puncture it and kill him, oh of course God would never allow that to happen, but she had heard of it happening, so that meant God could allow such a thing to happen. In certain cases.

  So she lingered on the Home Hospital's long and shady front porch, knowing they would show up, coldly determined to put paid to this so-called "friendship," this camaraderie that ended in broken arms and beds of pain, once and for all.

  Eventually they came, as she had known they would, and to her horror she saw that one of them was a nigger. Not that she had anything against niggers; she thought they had every right to ride where they wanted to on the buses down south, and eat at white lunch-counters, and should not be made to sit in nigger heaven at the movies unless they bothered white

  (women)

  people, but she also believed firmly in what she called the Bird Theory: Blackbirds flew with other blackbirds, not with the robins. Grackles roosted with grackles; they did not mix in with the bluebirds or the nightingales. To each his own was her motto, and seeing Mike Hanlon pedal up with the others just as if he belonged there caused her resolution, like her anger and her dismay, to grow apace. She thought reproachfully, as if Eddie were here and could listen to her: You never told me that one of your "friends" was a nigger.

  Well, she thought, twenty minutes later, stepping into the hospital room where her son lay with his arm in a huge cast that was strapped to his chest (it hurt her heart just to look at it), she had sent them packing in jig time ... no pun intended. None of them except for the Denbrough boy, the one who had such a horrible stutter, had had the nerve to so much as speak back to her. The girl, whoever she was, had flashed a pair of decidedly slutty jade's eyes at Sonia--from Lower Main Street or someplace even worse, had been Sonia Kaspbrak's opinion--but she had wisely kept her mouth shut. If she had dared so much as to let out a peep, Sonia would have given her a piece of her mind; would have told her what sort of girls ran with the boys. There were names for girls like that, and she would not have her son associated, now or ever, with the girls who bore them.

  The others had done no more than look down at their shuffling feet. That was about what she had expected. When she was done saying what she had to say, they had gotten on their bikes and ridden away. The Denbrough boy had the Tozier boy riding double behind him on a huge, unsafe-looking bike, and with an interior shudder Mrs. Kaspbrak had wondered how many times her Eddie had ridden on that dangerous bike, risking his arms and his legs and his neck and his life.

  I did this for you, Eddie, she thought as she walked into the hospital with her head firmly up. I know you may feel a bit disappointed at first; that's natural enough. But parents know better than their children; the reason God made parents in the first place was to guide, instruct ... and protect. After his initial disappointment, he would understand. And if she felt a certain relief now, it was of course on Eddie's behalf and not on her own. Relief was only to be expected when you had saved your son from bad companions.

  Except that her sense of relief was marred by fresh unease now, looking into Eddie's face. He was not asleep, as she had thought he would be. Instead of a drugged doze from which he would wake disoriented, dimwitted, and psychologically vulnerable, there was this sharp, watchful look, so different from Eddie's usual soft tentative glance. Like Ben Hanscom (although Sonia did not know this), Eddie was the sort of boy who would look quickly into a face, as if to test the emotional weather brewing there, and glance just as quickly away. But he was looking at her steadily now (perhaps it's the medication, she thought, of course that's it; I'll have to consult with Dr. Handor about his medication), and she was the one who felt a need to glance aside. He looks like he's been waiting for me, she thought, and it was a thought that should have made her happy--a boy waiting for his mother must surely be one of God's most favored creations--

  "You sent my friends away." The words came out flatly, with no doubt or question in them.

  She flinched almost guiltily, and certainly the first thought to flash through her mind was a guilty one--How does he know that? He can't know that!-- and she was immediately furious with herself (and him) for feeling that way. So she smiled at him.

  "How are we feeling today, Eddie?"

  That was the right response. Someone--some foolish candy-striper, or perhaps even that incompetent and antagonistic nurse from the day before--had been carrying tales. Someone.

  "How are we feeling?" she asked again when he didn't respond. She thought he hadn't heard her. She'd never read in any of her medical literature of a broken bone affecting the sense of hearing, but she supposed it was possible, anything was possible.

  Eddie still didn't respond.

  She came farther into the room, hating the tentative, almost timid feeling inside her, dstrusting it because she had never felt tentative or timid around Eddie before. She felt anger as well, although that was still nascent. What right did he have to make her feel that way, after all she had done for him, after all she had sacrificed for him?

  "I've talked to Dr. Handor, and he assures me that you're going to be perfectly all right," Sonia said briskly, sitting down in the straight-backed wooden chair by the bed. "Of course if there's the slightest problem, we'll go to see a specialist in Portland. In Boston, if that's what it takes." She smiled, as if conferring a great favor. Eddie did not smile back. And still he did not reply.

  "Eddie, are you hearing me?"

  "You sen
t my friends away," he repeated.

  "Yes," she said, dropping the pretense, and said no more. Two could play at that game. She simply looked back at him.

  But a strange thing happened; a terrible thing, really. Eddie's eyes seemed to ... to grow, somehow. The flecks of gray in them seemed actually to be moving, like racing stormclouds. She became aware suddenly that he was not "in a snit," or "having a poopie," or any of those things. He was furious with her ... and Sonia was suddenly scared, because something more than her son seemed to be in this room. She dropped her eyes and fumbled her purse open. She began searching for a Kleenex.

  "Yes, I sent them away," she said, and found that her voice was strong enough and steady enough ... as long as she wasn't looking at him. "You've been seriously injured, Eddie. You don't need any visitors right now except for your own ma, and you don't need visitors like that, ever. If it hadn't been for them, you'd be home watching the TV right now, or building on your soapbox racer in the garage."

  It was Eddie's dream to build a soapbox racer and take it to Bangor. If he won there, he would be awarded an all-expenses-paid trip to Akron, Ohio, for the National Soapbox Derby. Sonia was perfectly willing to allow him this dream as long as it seemed to her that completion of the racer, which was made out of orange crates and the wheels from a Choo-Choo Flyer wagon, was just that--a dream. She certainly had no intention of letting Eddie risk his life in such a dangerous contraption, not in Derry, not in Bangor, and certainly not in Akron, which (Eddie had informed her) would mean riding in an airplane as well as making a suicidal run down a steep hill in a wheeled orange crate with no brakes. But, as her own mother had often said, what a person didn't know couldn't hurt him (her mother had also been fond of saying "Tell the truth and shame the devil," but when it came to the recollection of aphorisms Sonia, like most people, could be remarkably selective).

  "My friends didn't break my arm," Eddie said in that same flat voice. "I told Dr. Handor last night and I told Mr. Nell when he came in this morning. Henry Bowers broke my arm. Some other kids were with him, but Henry did it. If I'd been with my friends, it never would have happened. It happened because I was alone."

  This made Sonia think of Mrs. Van Prett's comment about how it was safer to have friends, and that brought the rage back like a tiger. She snapped her head up. "That doesn't matter and you know it! What do you think, Eddie? That your ma fell off a hay truck yesterday? Is that what you think? I know well enough why the Bowers boy broke your arm. That Paddy cop was at our house, too. That big boy broke your arm because you and your 'friends' crossed him somehow. Now do you think that would have happened if you'd listened to me and stayed away from them in the first place?"

  "No--I think that something even worse might have happened," Eddie said.

  "Eddie, you don't mean that."

  "I mean it," he said, and she felt that power coming off him, coming out of him, in waves. "Bill and the rest of my friends will be back, Ma. That's something I know. And when they come, you're not going to stop them. You're not going to say a word to them. They're my friends, and you're not going to steal my friends just because you're scared of being alone."

  She stared at him, flabbergasted and terrified. Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, wetting the powder there. "This is how you talk to your mother now, I guess," she said through her sobs. "Maybe this is the way your 'friends' talk to their folks. I guess you learned it from them."

  She felt safer in her tears. Usually when she cried Eddie cried, too. A low weapon, some might say, but were there really any low weapons when it came to protecting her son? She thought not.

  She looked up, the tears streaming from her eyes, feeling both unutterably sad, bereft, betrayed ... and sure. Eddie would not be able to stand against such a flood of tears and sorrow. That cold sharp look would leave his face. Perhaps he would begin to gasp and wheeze a little bit, and that would be a sign, as it was always a sign, that the fight was over and that she had won another victory ... for him, of course. Always for him.

  She was so shocked to see that same expression on his face--it had, if anything, deepened--that her voice caught in mid-sob. There was sorrow under his expression, but even that was frightening: it struck her in some way as an adult sorrow, and thinking of Eddie as adult in any way always caused a panicky little bird to flutter inside her mind. This was how she felt on the infrequent occasions when she wondered what would happen to her if Eddie didn't want to go to Derry Business College or the University of Maine in Orono or Husson in Bangor so he could come home every day after his classes were done, what would happen if he met a girl, fell in love, wanted to get married. Where's the place for me in any of that? the panicky bird-voice would cry when these strange, almost nightmarish thoughts came. Where would my place be in a life like that? I love you, Eddie! I love you! I take care of you and I love you! You don't know how to cook, or change your sheets, or wash your underwear! Why should you? I know those things for you! I know because I love you!

  He said it himself now: "I love you, Ma. But I love my friends, too. I think ... I think you're making yourself cry."

  "Eddie, you hurt me so much," she whispered, and fresh tears doubled his pale face, trebled it. If her tears a few moments ago had been calculated, these were not. In her own peculiar way she was tough--she had seen her husband into his grave without cracking up, she had gotten a job in a depressed job-market where it wasn't easy to get a job, she had raised her son, and when it had been necessary, she had fought for him. These were the first totally unaffected and uncalculated tears she had wept in years, perhaps since Eddie had gotten the bronchitis when he was five and she had been so sure he would die as he lay there in his bed of pain, glowing bright with fever, whooping and coughing and gasping for breath. She wept now because of that terribly adult, somehow alien expression on his face. She was afraid for him, but she was also, in some way, afraid of him, afraid of that aura that seemed to surround him ... which seemed to demand something of her.

  "Don't make me have to choose between you and my friends, Ma," Eddie said. His voice was uneven, strained, but still under control. "Because that's not fair."

  "They're bad friends, Eddie!" she cried in a near-frenzy. "I know that, I feel that with all my heart, they'll bring you nothing but pain and grief!" And the most horrible thing of all was that she did sense that; some part of her had intuited it in the eyes of the Denbrough boy, who had stood before her with his hands in his pockets, his red hair flaming in the summer sun. His eyes had been so grave, so strange and distant ... like Eddie's eyes now.

  And hadn't that same aura been around him as was around Eddie now? The same, but even stronger? She thought yes.

  "Ma--"

  She stood up so suddenly she almost knocked the straight-backed chair over. "I'll come back this evening," she said.

  "It's the shock, the accident, the pain, those things, that make you talk this way. I know it. You ... you ..." She groped, and found her original text in the flying confusion of her mind. "You've had a bad accident, but you're going to be just fine. And you'll see I'm right, Eddie. They're bad friends. Not our sort. Not for you. You think it over and ask yourself if your ma ever told you wrong before. You think about it and ... and ..."

  I'm running! she thought with a sick and hurtful dismay. I'm running away from my own son! Oh God, please don't let this be!

  "Ma."

  For a moment she almost fled anyway, scared of him now, oh yes, he was more than Eddie; she sensed the others in him, his "friends" and something else, something that was beyond even them, and she was afraid it might flash out at her. It was as if he were in the grip of something, some dreadful fever, as he had been in the grip of the bronchitis that time when he was five, when he had almost died.

  She paused, her hand on the doorknob, not wanting to hear what he might say ... and when he said it, it was so unexpected that for a moment she didn't really understand it. When comprehension crashed down, it came like a loose load of ceme
nt, and for a moment she thought she would faint.

  Eddie said: "Mr. Keene said my asthma medicine is just water."

  "What? What?" She turned blazing eyes on him.

  "Just water. With some stuff added to make it taste like medicine. He said it was a pla-cee-bo."

  "That's a lie! That is nothing but a solid lie! Why would Mr. Keene want to tell you a lie like that? Well, there are other drugstores in Derry, I guess. I guess--"

  "I've had time to think about it," Eddie said, softly and implacably, his eyes never leaving hers, "and I think he's telling the truth."

  "Eddie, I tell you he's not!" The panic was back, fluttering.

  "What I think," Eddie said, "is that it must be the truth or there would be some kind of warning on the bottle, like if you take too much it will kill you or at least make you sick. Even--"

  "Eddie, I don't want to hear this!" she cried, and clapped her hands to her ears. "You're ... you're ... you're just not yourself and that's all that it is!"

  "Even if it's something you can just go in and buy without a prescription, they put special instructions on it," he went on, not raising his voice. His gray eyes lay on hers, and she couldn't seem to drop her gaze, or even move it. "Even if it's just Vicks cough syrup ... or your Geritol."

  He paused for a moment. Her hands dropped from her ears; it seemed too much work to hold them up. They seemed very heavy.

  "And it's like ... you must have known that, too, Ma."

  "Eddie!" She nearly wailed it.

  "Because," he went on, as if she had not spoken at all--he was frowning now, concentrating on the problem, "because your folks are supposed to know about medicines. Why, I use that aspirator five, sometimes six times a day. And you wouldn't let me do that if you thought it could, like, hurt me. Because it's your job to protect me. I know it is, because that's what you always say. So ... did you know, Ma? Did you know it was just water?"

  She said nothing. Her lips were trembling. It felt as if her whole face was trembling. She was no longer crying. She felt too scared to cry.