It

stood away and watched as the big circular cap overbalanced, then fell. It dug a slash in the wet earth and landed upside down, like an oversized checker. Beetles scurried off its surface and into the matted grass.
‘Uck,’ Eddie said.
Bill peered inside. Iron rungs descended to a circular pool of black water, its surface now pocked with raindrops. The silent pump brooded in the middle of this, half –submerged. He could see water flowing into the pumping-station from the mouth of its inflow pipe, and with a sinking in his guts he thought: That’s where we have to go. In there.
‘Eh-Eh –Eh –Eddie. G-Grab on to m-m-me.’
Eddie looked at him, uncomprehending.
‘Like a puh-puh-pigger-back. Hold on with y-your g-g-good ah-ah-arm.’ He demonstrated.
Eddie understood but was reluctant.
‘Quick!’ Bill snapped. ‘Th-Th –They’ll b-b-be here!’
Eddie grabbed on around Bill’s neck; Stan and Mike boosted him up so he could hook his legs around Bill’s midsection. As Bill swung clumsily over the lip of the cylinder, Ben saw that Eddie’s eyes were tightly shut.
Over the rain, he could hear another sound: whipping branches, snapping twigs, voices. Henry, Victor, and Belch. The world’s ugliest cavalry charge.
Bill gripped the rough concrete lip of the cylinder and felt his way down, step by careful step. The iron rungs were slippery. Eddie had him in what was almost a deathgrip, and Bill supposed he was getting a pretty graphic demonstration of what Eddie’s asthma was really all about.
‘I’m scared, Bill,’ Eddie whispered.
‘I-I-I am, too.’
He let go of the concrete rim and grabbed the topmost rung. Although Eddie was nearly choking him and felt as if he had already gained forty pounds, Bill paused a moment, looking at the Barrens, the Kenduskeag, the racing clouds. A voice inside — not a frightened voice, just a firm one — had told him to take a good look, in case he never saw the upper world again.
So he looked, then began to descend with Eddie clinging to his back.
‘I can’t hold on much longer,’ Eddie managed.
‘You w-w-won’t have to,’ Bill said. ‘We’re almost duh-hown.’
One of his feet went into chilly water. He felt for the next rung and found it. There was another below that and then the ladder ended. He was standing in knee-deep water beside the pump.
He squatted, wincing as the cold water soaked his pants, and let Eddie off. He drew a deep breath. The smell wasn’t so hot, but it was great not to have Eddie’s arm wrapped around his throat.
He looked up at the cylinder’s mouth. It was about ten feet over his head. The others were grouped around the rim, looking down. ‘C-C-Come on!’ he shouted. ‘Wuh-one at a t-t-time! Be quick!’
Beverly came first, swinging easily over the rim and grabbing the ladder, and Stan next. The others followed. Richie came last, pausing to listen to the progress of Henry and friends. He thought, from the sound of their blundering progress, that they would probably pass a little to the left of this pumping-station, but almost certainly not by enough to make a difference.
At that moment Victor bellowed: ‘Henry! There! Tozier!’
Richie looked around and saw them rushing toward him. Victor was in the lead . . . and then Henry pushed him aside so savagely that Victor skidded to his knees. Henry had a knife, all right, a regular pigsticker. Drops of water were falling from the blade.
Richie glanced into the cylinder, saw Ben an d Stan helping Mike off the ladder, and swung over himself. Henry understood what he was doing and s c r e a m e d a t h i m . R i c h i e , l a u g h i n g crazily, slammed his left hand in the crook of his right elbow and stuck his forearm skyward, his hand fisted in what may be the world’s oldest gesture. To be sure Henry got the point, he popped his middle finger up.
‘You’ll die down there!’ Henry shouted.
‘Prove it!’ Richie shouted, laughing. He was terrified of going into this concrete throat, but he still couldn’t stop laughing. And in his Irish Cop’s Voice he bugled: ‘Sure an begorrah, the luck of the Irish never runs out, me foine lad!’
Henry slipped on the wet grass and went sprawling on his butt less than twenty feet from where Richie stood, his feet on the top rung of the ladder bolted to the inner curve of the pumping-station, his head and chest out.
‘Hey, banana-heels!’ Richie shouted, delirious with triumph, and then scooted down the ladder. The iron rungs were slick and once he almost fell. Then Bill and Mike grabbed him and he was standing up to his knees in water with the rest of them in a loose circle around the pump. He was trembling all