He hears the scrape of their chairs, the mutter of their voices; he hears Richie saying 'Oh Jesus, what's up now?' and another ear, this one in his memory, hears Richie saying something else, and suddenly he remembers what it is he has been searching for; even more, he understands why it has seemed so elusive. The reaction of the others when he stepped into the clearing in the darkest, deepest, and most overgrown part of the Barrens that day had been . . . nothing. No surprise, no questions about how he had found them, no big deal. Ben had been eating a Twinkie, he remembers, Beverly and Richie had been smoking cigarettes, Bill had been lying on his back with his hands behind his head, looking at the sky, Eddie and Stan were looking doubtfully at a series of strings which had been pegged into the ground to form a square of about five feet on a side.

No surprise, no questions, no big deal. He had simply shown up and been accepted. It was as if, without even knowing it, they had been waiting for him. And in that third ear, memory's ear, he hears Richie's Pickaninny Voice raised as it was earlier tonight: 'Lawdy, Miss Clawdy, here come

2

that black chile agin! Lawks-a-mussy, I doan know what thisyere Barrens is comin to! Look at that there nappy haid, Big Bill!' Bill didn't even look around; he just went on staring dreamily at the fat summer clouds marching across the sky. He was giving an important question his most careful consideration. Richie was not offended by the lack of attention,

however. He pushed onward. 'Jest lookin at that nappy haid makes me b'leeve I needs me another mint joolip! I'se gwinter have it out on the verandah, where it's be a little bit coolah — '

'Beep-beep, Richie,' Ben said from around a mouthful of Twinkie, and Beverly laughed.

'Hi,' Mike said uncertainly. His heart was beating a little too hard, but he wa s determined to go on with this. He owed his thanks, and his father had told him that you always paid what you owed — and as quick as you could, before the interest mounted up.

Stan looked around. 'Hi,' he said, and then looked back at the square of strings pegged into the center of the clearing. 'Ben, are you sure this is going to work?'

'It'll work,' Ben said. 'Hi, Mike.'

'Want a cigarette?' Beverly asked. 'I got two left.'

'No thank you.' Mike took a deep breath and said, 'I wanted to thank you all again for helping me the other day. Those guys meant to hurt me bad. I'm sorry some of you guys got banged up.'

Bill waved his hand, dismissing it. 'D-D-Don't wuh-wuh-horry a-a-bout it. Th-they've h-had it i-i-in f-for us all y-y-year.' He sat up and looked at Mike with sudden starry interest. 'C-Can I a-ask you s-s-something?'

'I guess so,' Mike said. He sat down gingerly. He had heard such prefaces before. The Denbrough kid was going to ask him what it was like to be a Negro.

But instead Bill said: 'When L-L-Larsen pitched the n-no-h-hitter in the World S-Series two years ago, d-do you think that was just luh-luck?'

Richie dragged deep on his cigarette and started to cough. Beverly pounded nun good-naturedly on the back. 'You're just a beginner, Richie, you'll learn.'

'I think it's gonna fall in, Ben,' Eddie said worriedly, looking at the pegged square. 'I don't know how cool I am on the idea of getting buried alive.'

'You're not gonna get buried alive,' Ben said. 'And if you are, just suck your damn old aspirator until someone pulls you out.'

This struck Stanley Uris as deliciously funny. He leaned back on his elbow, his head turned up to the sky, and laughed until Eddie kicked his shin and told him to shut up.

'Luck,' Mike said finally. 'I think any no-hitter's more luck than skill.'

'M-M-Me t-too,' Bill said. Mike waited to see if there was more, but Bill seemed satisfied. He lay down again, laced his hands behind his head again, and went back to studying the clouds as they floated by.

'What are you guys up to?' Mike asked, looking at the square of strings pegged just above the ground

'Oh, this is Haystack's big idea of the week,' Richie said. 'Last time he flooded out the Barrens and that was pretty good, but this one's a real dinner-winner. This is Dig Your Own Clubhouse Month. Next month — '

'Y-You don't nuh-nuh –need to put B-B-B-Ben d-duh-hown,' Bill said, still looking at the sky. 'It's going to be guh-guh –good.'

'God's sake, Bill, I was just kidding.'

'Suh-Sometimes you k-k-kid too much, Rih-Richie.'

Richie accepted the rebuke silently.

'I still don't get it,' Mike said.

'Well, it's pretty simple,' Ben said. 'They wanted a treehouse, and we could do that, but people have a bad habit of breaking their bones when they fall out of treehouses — '

'Kookie . . . Kookie . . . lend me your bones,' Stan said, and laughed again while' the others looked at him, puzzled. Stan did not have much sense of humor, and the bit he did have was sort of peculiar.

'You ees goin loco, senhorr,' Richie said. 'Eees the heat an the cucarachas , I theenk.'

'Anyway,' Ben said, 'what we'll do is dig down about five feet in the square I pegged out there. We can't go much deeper than that or we'll hit groundwater, I guess. It's pretty close to the surface down here. Then we'll shore up the sides just to make sure they don't cave in.' He looked significantly at Eddie here, but Eddie was worried.

'Then what?' Mike asked, interested.

'We'll cap off the top.'

'Huh?'

'Put boards over the top of the hole. We can put in a trapdoor or something so we can get in and out, even windows if we want — '

'We'll need some hih-h i h –hinges,' Bill said, still looking at the clouds.

'We can get those at Reynolds Hardware,' Ben said.

'Y-You guh –guh-guys have your a-a-allowances,' Bill said.

'I've got five dollars,' Beverly said. 'I saved it up from babysitting.' Richie immediately began to crawl toward her on his hands and knees. 'I love you, Bevvie,' he said, making dog's eyes at her. 'Will you marry me? We'll live in a pine-studded bungalow — '

'A what'?' Beverly asked, while Ben watched them with an odd mixture of anxiety, amusement, and concentration.

'A bung-studded pinealo w,' Richie said. 'Five bucks is enough, sweetie, you and me and baby makes three — '

Beverly laughed and blushed and moved away from him.

'We sh-share the e-expenses,' Bill said. 'That's why we got a club.'

'So after we cap the hole with boards,' Ben went on, 'we put down this heavy-duty glue — Tangle-Track, they call it — and put the sods back on. Maybe sprinkle it with pine needles. We could be down there and people — people like Henry Bowers — could walk right over us and not even know we were there.'

'You thought of that?' Mike said. 'Jeez, that's great!'

Ben smiled. It was his turn to blush.

Bill sat up suddenly and looked at Mike. 'You w-w-want to heh-help?'

'Well . . . sure,' Mike said. That'd be fun.'

A look passed among the others — Mike felt it as well as saw it. There are seven of us here, Mike thought, and for no reason at all he shivered.

'When are you going to break ground?'

'P-P-hretty s-soon,' Bill said, and Mike knew — knew — that it wasn't just Ben's underground clubhouse Bill was talking about. Ben knew it, too. So did Richie, Beverly, and Eddie. Stan Uris had stopped smiling; 'W-We're g-gonna start this pruh-huh-hoject pretty suh-suh –soon.'

There was a pause then, and Mike was suddenly aware of two things: they wanted to say something, tell him something . . . and he was not entirely sure he wanted to hear it. Ben had picked up a stick and was doodling aimlessly in the dirt, his hair hiding his face. Richie was gnawing at his already ragged fingernails. Only Bill was looking directly at Mike.

'Is something wrong?' Mike asked uneasily.