It

lucky we were not to be on welfare, all that sort of thing. I was so fat I disgusted her. She couldn’t leave it alone. «Ben, you ought to get more exercise. Ben, you’ll have a heart attack before you’re forty if you don’t lose weight. Ben, with little children starving in the world, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.»‘ He paused for a moment and sipped some water.
The thing was, she also trotted the starving children out if I didn’t clean my plate.’
Richie laughed and nodded.
‘Anyway, the country was just pulling out of a recession and my mother was almost a year finding steady work. By the time we moved out of aunt Jean’s place in La Vista and got our own in Omaha, I’d put on about ninety pounds over when you guys knew me. I think I put on most of it just to spite my Aunt Jean.’
Eddie whistled. ‘That would have put you at about — ‘
‘At about two hundred and ten,’ Ben said gravely. ‘Anyway, I was going to East Side High School in Omaha, and the physedPeriods were . . . well, pretty bad. The other kids called me Jugs. That ought to give you the idea.
‘The ragging went on for about seven months, and then one day, while we were getting dressed ni the locker room after the period, two or three of the guys started to . . . to kind of slap my gut. They called it «fat-paddling.» Pretty soon two or three others got in on it. Then four or five more. Pretty soon it was all of them, chasing me around the locker room and up the hall, whacking my gut, my butt, my back, my legs. I got scared and started to scream. That made the rest of them laugh like crazy.
‘You know,’ he said, looking down and carefully rearranging his silverware, ‘that’s the last time I can remember thinking of Henry Bowers until Mike called me two days ago. The kid who started it was a farmboy with these big old hands, and while they were chasing after me I remember thinking that Henry had come back. I think — no, I know — that’s when I panicked.
They chased me up the hall past the lockers where the guys who played sports kept their stuff. I was naked and red as a lobster. I’d lost any sense of dignity or . . . or of myself, I guess you’d say. Where myself was. I was screaming for help. And here they came after me, screaming «Fat-paddling! Fat-paddling! Fat-paddling!» There was a bench — ‘
‘Ben, you don’t have to put yourself through this,’ Beverly said suddenly. Her face had gone ashy-pale. She toyed with her water-glass, and almost spilled it.
‘Let him finish,’ Bill said.
Ben looked at him for a moment and then nodded. There was a bench at the end of the corridor. I fell over it and hit my head. They were all around me in another minute or two, and then this voice said: «Okay. That’s enough. You guys go change up.»
‘It was Coach, standing there in the doorway, wearing his blue sweatpants with the white stripe up the sides and his white tee-shirt. There was no way of telling how long he’d been standing there. They all looked at him, some of them grinning, some of them guilty, some of them just looking sort of vacant. They went away. And I burst into tears.
‘Coach just stood there in the doorway leading back to the gym, watching me, watching this naked fat boy with h i s s k i n a l l r e d f r o m t h e f a t – paddling, watching this fat kid crying on the floor.
‘And finally he said, «Benny, why don’t you just fucking shut up?»
‘It shocked me so much to hear a teacher use that word that I did. I looked up at him, and he came over and sat down on the bench I’d fallen over. He leaned over me, and the whistle around his neck swung out and bonked me on the forehead. For a second I thought he was going to kiss me or something, and I shrank back from him, but what he did was grab one of my tits in each hand and squeeze. Then he took his hands away and rubbed them on his pants like he’d touched something dirty.
‘»You think I’m going to comfort you?» he asked me. «I’m not. You disgust them and you disgust me as well. We got different reasons, but that’s because they’re kids and I’m not. They don’t know why you disgust them. I do know. It’s because I see you burying the good body God gave you in a great big mess of fat. It’s a lot of stupid self-indulgence, and it makes me want to puke. Now listen to me, Benny, because this is the only tune I’m going to say it to you. I got a football team to coach, and basketball, and track, and some where in between I’ve got swimming team. So I’ll just say it once. You’re fat up here.» And he tapped my forehead right where his damned whistle had bonked me. «That’s where everybody’s fat. You put what’s between your ears on a diet and you’re going to lose weight. But guys like you never do.'»
‘What a bastardl’ Beverly said indignantly.
‘Yeah,’ Ben said, grinning. ‘But he didn’t know he was a bastard,