It

put on so much, you a-hole!’ Bill said. ‘You want to sink it on its m-maiden cruise?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s all right. Just g-go easy.’
George finished the other side, then held the boat in his hands. It felt a little heavier, but not much. ‘Too cool,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna go out and sail it.’
‘Yeah, you do that,’ Bill said. He suddenly looked tired — tired and still not very well.
‘I wish you could come,’ George said. He really did. Bill sometimes got bossy after awhile, but he always had the coolest ideas and he hardly ever hit. ‘It’s your boat, really.’
‘She,’ Bill said. ‘You call boats sh-she.’
‘She, then.’
‘I wish I could come, too,’ Bill said glumly.
‘Well . . . ‘ George shifted from one foot to the other, the boat in his hands.
‘You put on your rain –stuff,’ Bill said, ‘or you’ll wind up with the fluh-hu like me. Probably catch it anyway, from my juh-germs.’
‘Thanks, Bill. It’s a neat boat.’ And he did something he hadn’t done for a long time, something Bill never forgot: he leaned over and kissed his brother’s cheek.
‘You’ll catch it for sure now, you a-hole,’ Bill said, but he seemed cheered up all the same. He smiled at George. ‘Put all this stuff back, too. Or Mom’ll have a b-bird.’
‘Sure.’ He gathered up the waterproofing equipment and crossed the room, the boat perched precariously on top of the paraffin box, which was sitting askew in the little bowl.
‘Juh juh-Georgie?’
George turned back to look at his brother.
‘Be c-careful.’
‘Sure.’ His brow creased a little. That was something your mom said, not your big brother. It was as strange as him giving Bill a kiss. ‘Sure I will.’
He went out. Bill never saw him again.
3
Now here he was, chasing his boat down the left side of Witcham Street. He was running fast but the water was running faster and his boat was pulling ahead. He heard a deepening roar and saw that fifty yards farther down the hill the water in the gutter was cascading into a stormdrain that was still open. Ii was a long dark semicircle cut into the curbing, and as George watched, a stripped branch, its bark as dark and glistening as sealskin, shot into the stormdrain’s maw. It hung up there for a moment and then slipped down inside. That was where his boat was headed.
‘Oh shit and Shinola!’ he yelled, dismayed.
He put on speed, and for a moment he thought he would catch the boat. Then one of his feet slipped and he went sprawling, skinning one knee and crying out in pain. From his new pavement-level perspective he watched his boat swing around twice, momentarily caught in another whirlpool, and then disappear.
‘Shit and Shinola!’ he yelled again, and slammed his fist down on the pavement. That hurt too, and he began to cry a little. What a stupid way to lose the boat!
He got up and walked over to the stormdrain. He dropped to his knees and peered in. The water made a dank hollow sound as it fell into the darkness. It was a spooky sound. It reminded him of —
‘Huh!’ The sound was jerked out of him as if on a string, and he recoiled.
There were yellow eyes in there: the sort of eyes he had always imagined but never actually seen down in the basement. It’s an animal, he thought incoherently, that’s all it is,some animal, maybe a housecat that got stuck down in there —
Still, he was ready to run — would run in a second or two, when his mental switchboard had dealt with the shock those two shiny yellow eyes had given him. He felt the rough surface of the macadam under his fingers, and the thin sheet of cold water flowing around
them. He saw himself getting up and backing away, and that was when a voice — a perfectly reasonable and rather pleasant voice — spoke to him from inside the stormdrain.
‘Hi, Georgie,’ it said.
George blinked and looked again. He could barely credit what he saw; it was like something from a made-up story, or a movie where you know the animals will talk and dance. If he had been ten years older, he would not have believed what he was seeing, but he was not sixteen. He was six.
There was a clown in the stormdrain. The light in there was far from good, but it was good enough so that George Denbrough was sure of what he was seeing. It was a clown, like in the circus or on TV. In fact he looked like a cross between Bozo and Clarabell, who talked by honking his (or was it her? — George was never really sure of the gender) horn on Howdy Doody Saturday mornings — Buffalo Bob was just about the only one who could understand Clarabell, and that always cracked George up. The face of the clown in