It
Stephen King
Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand.
All the rest is darkness.
7
"Hey!"
"Hey mister, you--"
"--look out!"
"Damn fool's gonna--"
Words whipped by in the slipstream, as meaningless as pennants in a breeze or untethered balloons. Here came the crash barriers; he could smell the sooty aroma of kerosene from the smudgepots. He saw the yawning darkness where the street had been, heard sullen water rushing down there in the tangled darkness, and laughed at the sound.
He dragged Silver hard left, so close to the crash barriers now that the leg of his jeans actually whispered along one of them. Silver's wheels were less than three inches from the place where the tar ended in empty space, and he was running out of maneuvering room. Up ahead the water had eroded all of the street and half the sidewalk in front of Cash's Jewelry Store. Barriers closed off what was left of the sidewalk; it had been severely undercut.
"Bill?" It was Audra's voice, dazed and a little thick. She sounded as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep. "Bill, where are we? What are we doing?"
"Hi yo, Silver!" Bill shouted, pointing the rushing gantry that was Silver directly at the crash barrier jutting out at right angles to the empty Cash show window. "HI YO SILVER AWAYYYYY!"
Silver struck the barrier at better than forty miles an hour and it went flying, the centerboard in one direction, the A-shaped supports in two others. Audra cried out and squeezed Bill so tightly that he lost his breath. Up and down Main Street, Canal Street, and Kansas Street, people stood in doorways and on sidewalks, watching.
Silver shot out onto the bridge of undercut sidewalk. Bill felt his left hip and knee chip the side of the jewelry store. He felt Silver's rear wheel sag suddenly and understood that the sidewalk was falling in behind them--
--and then Silver's forward motion carried them back onto solid roadway. Bill swerved to avoid an overturned trashcan and barrelled out into the street again. Brakes squealed. He saw the grille of a big truck approaching and still couldn't seem to stop laughing. He ran through the space the heavy truck wound up occupying a full second before it got there. Shit, time to spare!
Yelling, tears squirting from his eyes, Bill blew Silver's oogah-horn, listening to each hoarse bray embed itself in the day's bright light.
"Bill, you're going to kill us both!" Audra cried out, and although there was terror in her voice, she was also laughing.
Bill heeled Silver over, and this time he felt Audra leaning with him, making the bike easier to control, helping to make the two of them exist with it, at least for this small compact moment of time, as three living things.
"Do you think so?" he shouted back.
"I know so!" she cried, and then grabbed his crotch, where there was a huge and cheerful erection. "But don't stop!"
He had nothing to say about it, however. Silver's speed was bleeding away on Up-Mile Hill, the heavy roar of the playing cards becoming single gunshots again. Bill stopped and turned to her. She was pale, wide-eyed, obviously scared and confused... but awake, aware, and laughing.
"Audra," he said, laughing with her. He helped her off Silver, leaned the bike against a handy brick wall, and embraced her. He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth, her neck, her breasts.
She hugged him while he did it.
"Bill, what's been happening? I remember getting off the plane at Bangor, and I can't remember a thing after that. Are you all right?"
"Yes."
"Am I?"
"Yes. Now."
She pushed him away so she could look at him. "Bill, are you still stuttering?"
"No," Bill said, and kissed her. "My stutter is gone."
"For good?"
"Yes," he said. "I think this time it's gone for good."
"Did you say something about rock and roll?"
"I don't know. Did I?"
"I love you," she said.
He nodded and smiled. When he smiled he looked very young, bald head or not. "I love you too," he said. "And what else counts?"
8
He awakens from this dream unable to remember exactly what it was, or much at all beyond the simple fact that he has dreamed about being a child again. He touches his wife's smooth back as she sleeps her warm sleep and dreams her own dreams; he thinks that it is good to be a child, but it is also good to be grownup and able to consider the mystery of childhood ... its beliefs and desires. I will write about all of this one day, he thinks, and knows it's just a dawn thought, an after-dreaming thought. But it's nice to think so for awhile in the morning's clean silence, to think that childhood has its own sweet secrets and confirms mortality, and that mortality defines all courage and love. To think that what has looked forward must also look back, and that each life makes its own imitation of immortality: a wheel.
Or so Bill Denbrough sometimes thinks on those early mornings after dreaming, when he almost remembers his childhood, and the friends with whom he shared it.
This book was begun in Bangor, Maine,
on September 9th, 1981,
and completed in Bangor, Maine,
on December 28th, 1985.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted material. The acknowledgments are in the order in which the excerpts appear in the book.
"My Town" by Michael Stanley. (c) 1983 by Bema Music Co./Michael Stanley Music Co.
"The Return of the Exile" from Poems by George Seferis. Translation copyright (c) 1960 by Rex Warner. Reprinted by permission of David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.
"My My Hey Hey" by Neil Young and Jeff Blackburn. (c) 1979 Silver Fiddle. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Paterson by William Carlos Williams. Copyright (c) 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1963 Florence Williams. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
"No Surrender," "Glory Days," and "Born in the U.S.A." by Bruce Springsteen. (c) 1984 Bruce Springsteen. ASCAP. All rights reserved.
"I Heard It Through the Grapevine" words and music by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. (c) 1966 Jobete Music Co., Inc. Used by permission. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
"The Rubberband-Man" by Tom Bell and Linda Creed. (c) 1976 Mighty Three Music. Administered by the Mighty Three Music Group.
"Splish Splash" by Bobby Darin and Jean Murray. (c) 1958 Unart Music Corp. (c) renewed 1986 CBS Catalogue Partnership. All rights controlled and administered by CBS Unart Catalog Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.
Books of Blood, Volume I, by Clive Barker. Copyright 1984. Reprinted by permission of The Berkeley Publishing Group.
"Summertime Blues" by Eddie Cochran and Jerry Capehart. (c) 1958 Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp., Rightsong Music, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music. Used by permission of Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
"Earth Angel." (c) 1954, renewal 1982 by Dootsie Williams Publications. Recorded by the Penguins, Dootone Records.
"Do-Re-Mi" by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Copyright (c) 1959 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Williamson Music Co., owner of publication and allied rights throughout the Western Hemisphere and Japan. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Mean Streets, a film by Martin Scorsese. (c) 1973 Warner Bros. Inc. All rights reserved.
"Don't It Make You Wanta Go Home" by Joe South. Copyright (c) 1969 by Lowery Music Co., Inc., Atlanta, GA. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
"Here's to the State of Richard Nixon" by Phil Ochs. (c) 1974 Warner Bros. Inc. ASCAP. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
"Whole Lot of Shakin' Goin' On" by David Curlee Williams. Used by permission.
"Bristol Stomp" words and music by Kal Mann and Dave Appell. (c) 1961 Kalmann Music, Inc.
"It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" by Billy Joel. (c) 1980 Impulsive Music & April Music Inc. All rights controlled and administered by April Music Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.
"Light My Fire" words and music by The Doors. (c) 1967 Doors Music Company. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
"My Toot Toot" by Sidney Simien. (c) 1985 Flat Town Music Company and Sid-Sam Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
"Tutti Frutti" by Dorothy La Bostrie and Richard Penniman. (c) 1955, renewed 1983 Venice Music Corp. All rights controlled and administered by Blackwood Music Inc. under license from ATV Music (Venice). All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.
"Diana" by Paul Anka. Copyright (c) 1957, 1963, renewed 1985 by Spanka Music Corp./Management Agency and Music Publishing, Inc. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.
"High School Confidential" by Ron Hargrave and Jerry Lee Lewis. By permission of Penron Music.
"Travelogue for Exiles" from Collected Poems 1940-1978 by Karl Shapiro. Copyright 1942 and renewed 1970 by Karl Shapiro. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
"You Got to Lose" words and music by Earl Hooker. (c) Copyright 1969 by Duchess Music Corporation. Rights administered by MCA Music, a division of MCA Inc., New York, N.Y. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
"The Girl Can't Help It If the Menfolks Stop and Stare" words and music by Robert W. Troup. (c) 1956 Twentieth Century Music Corp., renewed 1984 Robert W. Troup. Assigned 1984 Londontown Music, Inc.
"Don't Back Down" by Brian Wilson. (c) 1964 Irving Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
"Surfin' U.S.A." music by Chuck Berry, words by Brian Wilson. Copyright (c) 1958, 1963 by Arc Music Corporation. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)" by James Keyes, Claude Feaster, Carl Feaster, Floyd F. McRae, and James Edwards. Copyright (c) 1954 by Progressive Music Publishing Co., Inc. Copyright renewed, assigned to Unichappell Music, Inc. (Rightsong Music, Publisher). International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
"I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock 'n' Roll" by Nick Lowe. (c) Anglo Rock Inc. Used with permission.
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