It

Through half-lidded, tear-blurred eyes, Eddie saw a big hand come down and grab Henry by the collar of his shirt and the right strap of his biballs. The hand gave a yank and Henry was pulled off. He landed in the gravel and got up. Eddie rose more slowly. He was trying to scramble to his feet, but his scrambler seemed temporarily broken. He gasped and spat chunks of bloody gravel out of his mouth.
It was Mr Gedreau, dressed in his long white apron, and he looked furious. There was no fear in his face, although Henry stood about three inches taller and probably outweighed him by fifty pounds. There was no fear in his face because he was the grownup and Henry was the kid. Except this time, Eddie thought, that might not mean anything. Mr Gedreau didn’t understand. He didn’t understand that Henry was nuts.
‘You get out of here,’ Mr Gedreau said, advancing on Henry until he stood toe to toe with the hulking sullen-faced boy. ‘You get out and you don’t want to come back, either. I don’t hold with bullying. I don’t hold with four against one. What would your mothers think?’
He swept the others with his hot, angry eyes. Moose and Victor dropped their gazes and examined their sneakers. Patrick only stared at and through Mr Gedreau with that vacant
gray-green look. Mr Gedreau looked back at Henry and got just as far as ‘You get on your bikes and — ‘ when Henry gave him a good hard push.
An expression of surprise that would have been comical in other circumstances spread across Mr Gedreau’s face as he flew backward, loose gravel spurting out from under his heels. He struck the steps leading up to the screen door and sat down hard.
‘Why you — ‘ he began.
Henry’s shadow fell on him. ‘Get inside,’ he said.
‘You — ‘ Mr Gedreau said, and this time he stopped on his own. Mr Gedreau had finally seen it, Eddie realized — the light in Henry’s eyes. He got up quickly, apron flapping. He went up the stairs as fast as he could, stumbling on the second one from the top and going briefly to one knee. He was up again at once, but that stumble, as brief as it had been, seemed to rob him of the rest of his grownup authority.
He spun around at the top and yelled: ‘I’m calling the cops!’
Henry made as if to lunge for him, and Mr Gedreau flinched back. That was the end, Eddie realized. As incredible, as unthinkable as it seemed, there was no protection for him here. It was time to go.
While Henry was standing at the bottom of the steps and glaring up at Mr Gedreau and while the others were staring, transfixed (and, except for Patrick Hockstetter, not a little horrified) by this sudden successful defiance of adult authority, Eddie saw his chance. He whirled, took to his heels, and ran.
He was halfway up the block before Henry turned, his eyes blazing. ‘Get him!’ he bellowed.
Asthma or no asthma, Eddie ran them a good race that day. There were spaces, some of them as long as fifty feet, when he couldn’t remember if the soles of his P.P. Flyers had touched the sidewalk or not. For a few moments he even entertained the giddy notion that he might be able to outrun them.
Then, just before he reached Kansas Street and what might have been safety, a ilttle kid on a trike suddenly pedaled out of a driveway and right into Eddie’s path. Eddie tried to swerve, but running full –out as he had been, he might have done better to jump over the kid (the kid’s name, in fact, was Richard Cowan, and he would grow up, marry, and father a son named Frederick Cowan, who would be drowned in a toilet and then be partially eaten by a thing that rose up from the toilet like black smoke and then took an unthinkable shape), or at least to try.
One of Eddie’s feet caught on the trike’s back deck, where an adventurous little shit might stand and push the trike along like a scooter. Richard Cowan, whose unborn son would be murdered by It twenty-seven years later, barely rocked on his trike. Eddie, however, went flying. He struck the sidewalk on his shoulder, rebounded, came down again, and skidded ten feet, erasing the skin from his elbows and knees. He was trying to get up when Henry Bowers hit him like a shell from a bazooka and knocked him flat. Eddie’s nose connected briskly with the concrete. Blood flew.
Henry did a quick side-roll like a paratrooper and was up again. He grabbed Eddie by the nape of the neck and by his right wrist. His breath, snorting through his swelled and splinted nose, was warm and moist.
‘Want rocks, Rock Man? Sure! Shit!’ He jerked Eddie’s wrist halfway up his back. Eddie yelled. ‘Rocks for the Rock Man, right, Rock Man?’ He jerked Eddie’s wrist up even higher. Eddie screamed. Behind him, dimly, he could hear the others approaching, and the little kid on the trike starting to bawl. Join the club, kid,