It

he talked about it you could tell he thought about it like that, in capital letters (and maybe neon, as well). THE FABULOUS GUM – STICK was a birch branch with a big wad of bubble – gum stuck on the tip. In his spare time Freddy (or Frankie) walked around Derry with it, peering into sewers and drains. Sometimes he saw money — pennies mostly, but sometimes a dime or even a quarter (he referred to these latter, for some reason known only to him, as ‘quay-monsters’). Once the money was spotted, Frankie-or-Freddy and THE FABULOUS GUM –STICK would swing into action. One downward poke through the grating and the coin was as good as in his pocket.
Ben had heard rumors of Frankie –or-Freddy and his gum stick long before the kid had vaulted into the limelight by discovering the body of Veronica Grogan. ‘He’s really gross,’ a kid named Richie Tozier had confided to Ben one day during activity period. Tozier was a scrawny kid who wore glasses. Ben thought that without them Tozier probably saw every bit as well as Mr Magoo; his magnified eyes swam behind the thick lenses with an expression of perpetual surprise. He also had huge front teeth that had earned him the nickname Bucky Beaver. He was in the same fifth-grade class as Freddy-or-Frankie. ‘Pokes that gum stick of his down sewerdrains all day long and then chews the gum from the end of it at night.’
‘Oh gosh, that’s bad!’ Ben had exclaimed.
‘Dat’s wight, wabbit,’ Tozier said, and walked away.
Frankie-or-Freddy had worked THE FABULOUS GUM-STICK back and forth through the grate of the stormdrain, believing he’d found a wig. He thought maybe he could dry it out and give it to his mother for her birthday, or something. After a few minutes of poking and prodding, just as he was about to give up, a face had floated out of the murky water in the plugged drain, a face with dead leaves plastered to its white cheeks and dirt in its staring eyes.
Freddy-or-Frankie ran home screaming.
Veronica Grogan had been in the fourth grade at the Neibolt Street Church School, which was run by people Ben’s mother called ‘the Christers.’ She was buried on what would have been her tenth birthday.
After this most recent horror, Arlene Hanscom had taken Ben into the living room one evening and sat beside him on the couch. She picked up his hands and looked intently into his face. Ben looked back, feeling a little uneasy.
‘Ben,’ she said presently, ‘are you a fool?’
‘No, Mamma,’ Ben said, feeling more uneasy than ever. He hadn’t the slightest idea what this was about. He could not remember ever seeing his mamma look so grave.
‘No,’ she echoed. ‘I don’t believe you are.’
She fell silent for a long time then, not looking at Ben but pensively out the window. Ben wondered briefly if she had forgotten all about him. She was a young woman still — only thirty-two — but raising a boy by herself had put a mark on her. She worked forty hours a week in the spool-and-bale room at Stark’s Mills in Newport, and after workdays when the dust and lint had been particularly bad, she sometimes coughed so long and hard that Ben would become frightened. On those nights he would lie awake for a long time, looking through the window beside his bed into the darkness, wondering what would become of him if she died. He would be an orphan then, he supposed. He might become a State Kid (he thought that meant you had to go live with farmers who made you work from sunup to sunset), or he might be sent to the Bangor Orphan Asylum. He tried to tell himself it was foolish to worry about such things, but the telling did absolutely no good. Nor was it just himself he was worried about; he worried for her as well. She was a hard woman, his mamma, and she insisted on having her own way about most things, but she was a good mamma. He loved her very much.
‘You know about these murders,’ she said, looking back at last.
He nodded.
‘At first people thought they were . . . ‘ She hesitated over the next word, never spoken in her son’s presence before, but the circumstances were unusual and she forced herself. ‘ . . . sex crimes. Maybe they were and maybe they weren’t. Maybe they’re over and maybe they’re not. No one can be sure of anything anymore, except that some crazy man who preys on little children is out there. Do you understand me, Ben?’
He nodded.
‘And you know what I mean when I say they may have been sex crimes?’
He didn’t — at least not exactly — but he nodded again. If his mother felt sh e had to talk to him about the birds and bees as well as this other business, he thought he would die of embarrassment.
‘I worry about you, Ben. I worry that I’m not doing right by you.’
Ben squirmed and said nothing.
‘You’re on your own a lot. Too much, I guess. You — ‘
‘Mamma — ‘
‘Hush while I’m talking to you,’ she said,