So he had driven along Route 9 through the sleeping nestle of buildings that was Haven Village, then turned off on Route 7. And as he went the day grew steadily brighter.

Now this sign. It was the same sort of sign which marked the borders of more than six hundred Maine towns, but how this one had squeezed his heart!

Penobscot County D E R R Y Maine

Beyond that an Elks sign; a Rotary Club sign; and completing the trinity, a sign proclaiming the fact that DERR Y LIONS ROAR FO R THE UNITED FUND! Past that one there is just Route 7 again, continuing on in a straight line between bulking banks of pine and spruce. In this silent light as the day steadies itself those trees look as dreamy as blue-gray cigarette smoke stacked on the moveless air of a sealed room.

Derry, he thinks. Derry, God help me. Derry. Stone the crows.

Here he is on Route 7. Five miles up, if time or tornado has not carried it away in the intervening years, will be the Rhulin Farms, where his mother bought all of their eggs and most of their vegetables. Two miles beyond that Route 7 became Witcham Road and of course Witcham Road eventually became Witcham Street, can you gimme hallelujah world without end amen. And somewhere along there between the Rhulin Farms and town he would drive past the Bowers place and then the Hanlon place. A mile or so after Hanlon's he would see the first glitter of the Kenduskeag and the first spreading tangle of poison green. The lush lowlands that had been known for some reason as the Barrens.

I really don't know if I can face all of that, Richie thinks. I mean, let's tell the truth here, folks. I just don't know if I can.

The whole previous night has passed in a dream for him. As long as he continued travelling, moving forward, making miles, the dream went on. But now he has stopped — or rather the sign has stopped him — and he has awakened to a strange truth: the dream was the reality. Derry is the reality.

It seems he just cannot stop remembering, he thinks the memories will eventually drive him mad, and now he bites down on his lip and puts his hands together palm to palm, tight, as if to keep himself from flying apart. He feels that he will fly apart, and soon. There seems to be some mad part of him which actually looks forward to what may be coming, but most of him only wonders how he's going to get through the next few days. He —

And now his thoughts break off again.

A deer is walking out into the road. He can hear the light thud of its spring-soft hoofs on the tar.

Richie's breath stops in mid-exhale, then slowly starts again. He looks, dumbfounded, part of him thinking that he never saw anything like this on Rodeo Drive. No — he'd needed to come back home to see something like this.

It's a doe ('Doe, a deer, a female deer,' a Voice chants merrily in his head). She's out of the woods on the right and pauses in the middle of Route 7, front legs on one side of the broken white line, rear legs on the other. Her dark eyes regard Rich Tozier mildly. He reads interest in those eyes but no fear.

He looks at her in wonder, thinking she's an omen or a portent or some sort of Madame Azonka shit like that. And then, quite unexpectedly, a memory of Mr Nell comes to him. What a start he had given them that day, busting in on them in the wake of Bill's story and Ben's story and Eddie's story! The whole bunch of them had damn near gone up to heaven.

Now, looking at the deer, Rich draws in a deep breath and finds himself speaking in one of his Voices . . . but for the first time in twenty-five years or more it is the Voice of the Irish Cop, one he had incorporated into his repertoire after that memorable day. It comes rolling out of the morning silence like a great big bowling ball — it is louder and bigger than Richie would ever have believed:

'Jay-sus Christ on a jumped-up chariot-driven crutch! What's a nice girrul like you doin out in this wilderness, deer? Jaysus Christ! You be gettin on home before I decide to tell Father O'Staggers on ye!'

Before the echoes have died away, before the first shocked jay can begin scolding him for his sacrilege, the doe flicks her tail at him like a truce flag and disappears into the smoky-looking firs on the left side of the road, leaving only a small pile of steaming pellets behind to show that, even at thirty-seven, Richie Tozier is still capable of Getting Off A Good One from time to time.

Richie begins to laugh. He is only chuckling at first, and then his own ludicrousness strikes him — standing here in the dawnlight of a Maine morning, thirty-four hundred miles from home, shouting at a deer in the accents of an Irish cop. The chuckles become a string of giggles, the giggles become guffaws, the guffaws become howls, and he is finally reduced to

holding on to his car while tears roll down his face and he wonders dimly if he's going to wet his pants or what. Every time he starts to get control of himself his eyes fix on that little clump of pellets and he goes off into fresh gales.

Snorting and snickering, he is at last able to get back into the driver's seat and restart the Mustang's engine. An Orinco chemical-fertilizer truck snores by in a blast of wind. After it passes him, Rich pulls out and heads for Derry again. He feels better now, in control . . . or maybe it's just that he's moving again, making miles, and the dream has reasserted itself.

He starts thinking about Mr Nell again — Mr Nell and that day by the dam. Mr Nell had asked them who thought this little trick up. He can see the five of them looking uneasily at each other, and remembers how Ben finally stepped forward, cheeks pale and eyes downcast, face trembling all over as he fought grimly to keep from blubbering. Poor kid probably thought he was going to get five-to-ten in Shawshank for back-flooding the drains on Witcham Street, Rich thinks now, but he had owned up to it just the same. And by doing that he had forced the rest of them to come forward and back him up. It was either that or consider themselves bad guys. Cowards. All the things their TV heroes were not. And that had welded them together, for better or worse. Had apparently welded them together for the last twenty-seven years. Sometimes events are dominoes. The first knocks over the second, the second knocks over the third, and there you are.

When, Richie wonders, did it become too late to turn back? When he and Stan showed up and pitched in, helping to build the dam? When Bill told them how the school picture of his brother had turned its head and winked? Maybe . . . but to Rich Tozier it seems that the dominoes really began to fall when Ben Hanscom stepped forward and said' I showed them

2

how to do it. It's my fault.'

Mr Nell simply stood there looking at him, lips pressed together, hands on his creaking black leather belt. He looked from Ben to the spreading pool behind the dam and then back to Ben again, his face that of a man who can't believe what he is seeing. He was a burly Irishman, his hair a premature white, combed back in neat waves beneath his peaked blue cap. His eyes were bright blue, his nose bright red. There were small nests of burst capillaries in his cheeks. He was a man of no more than medium height, but to the five boys arrayed before him he looked at least eight feet tall.

Mr Nell opened his mouth to speak, but before he could. Bill Denbrough had stepped up beside Ben.

'Ih-Ih-Ih-It w-wuh-wuh-was m-my i-i-i-i-idea,' he finally managed to say. He heaved in a gigantic, gulping breath and as Mr Nell stood there regarding him impassively, the sun tossing back imperial flashes from his badge, Bill managed to stutter out the rest of what he needed to say: it wasn't Ben's fault; Ben just happened to come along and show them how to do better what they were already doing badly.