Eddie had never really paid attention to the way people walked until it was all there was to look at it. Richie almost strutted, like he had somewhere important to go all the time. Ben took big steps, not hurrying, his gaze planted ahead. Bill took smaller, faster steps, but at the same time they looked very deliberate. Stan walked with purpose, his head bobbing a little as he stepped. Henry Bowers was nowhere in sight, so Eddie couldn't observe how he was walking. That probably wasn't that much of a loss.
"D-do you think anybody's ever died this early on?" Bill asked.
"That's morbid," Ben said. "I don't want to think about that. I don't think you should think about it either. You'll make yourself nervous."
"N-no, it's not for m-me." Ben looked at him quizzically. Eddie fell into step beside them, keen to listen. "M-my best friend, M-Mike Hanlon. H-he and I made a pr-promise, that I w-would write about the W-Walk and he'd write about back home and we'd exchange. W-we're from Maine. So I'll s-see him on the way."
"What're you writing about?" Richie had come over, too.
"J-just wh-what I'm feeling. What I'm s-seeing. Y-you know."
"Got a pretty bad stutter there, don't you, Maine-boy?" Henry Bowers. Eddie immediately slowed down. He felt like a coward. "Kind of a pity that the state poster boy is a sissy like you." He eyed Bill's moleskine notebook. Eddie was so focused on watching the scene that he didn't notice when a strangled, raspy cough forced itself out of his mouth. Shit. His throat felt dry.
What people didn't get about asthma was that it was a hundred times worse than a normal cough. When he coughed even a little, he felt like he'd swallowed sandpaper. He blindly groped for his aspirator, spraying it into his mouth and gasping a sigh of relief when the feeling subsided. Unfortunately, Henry Bowers had turned around and was leering at him.
"Is that a fucking aspirator?!"
Eddie shoved the cursed device back in his jacket pocket. "What's it to you?" He said crossly.
"They let you on the Walk with a fucking aspirator?!" He laughed wildly. "The Long Walk is a fucking sham, everybody. First stuttering sissies and now sons-of-bitches who can't even breathe."
"Lay off him, Bowers," Richie said, his tone dangerous. Eddie thought they were going to start fighting again, but the monotonous voices of the soldiers pierced the air and brought them out of it.
"Warning. Warning 93." It was Stan. He'd dropped something that looked like a book on the ground and had bent down to pick it up. He had it in his hands, then dropped it again with the butterfingered clumsiness of a comic book character and bent down again. Richie, Eddie, Bill, and Ben walked backwards and watched him with almost horrid fascination,
"L-leave it!" Bill shouted.
Stan looked at him, but if he heard him, ignored him. He scooped the book up and resumed walking at a decent pace. Henry Bowers had disappeared. Eddie wondered if Henry was afraid of Richie, or if it was the other way around. Stan's nose was in his book, and Eddie thought that must have been why he dropped it in the first place. He wasn't looking where he was going.
"That wasn't a very good idea," Ben said to Stan. "Think about it, what's more important, that book or your life?"
"Y-you called me morbid," Bill said, and both laughed. There was something about Bill. Eddie couldn't put his finger on what it was, but he had this quality about him, something that made him inescapably likable. Maybe it was that his face was just so innocent or maybe it was the way he joked like any other boy even with his stutter. Eddie couldn't imagine Bill getting shot down. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe Bill was the lucky winner.
"So, Eddie, you've got asthma," Richie said, falling into step beside him.
"Water is wet."
"Geez. You aren't a happy camper right now, are you? But anyways. How'd you pass the physical with that?"
"I dunno. My lungs were just good that day, I guess."
"Luck, I see."
Richie was well-built, there was no question how he'd passed the physical. He was lanky and long-legged, but his legs looked thick and strong. "I guess you could say that. Listen, Richie, I kinda just want to process what's going on right now. We can talk about the physical later."
"Gotcha." Richie reached over and ruffled his hair and then walked away. Eddie wondered what the hell Richie was trying to say, doing that. It felt like the kind of thing a big brother would do, but there was nothing big brotherly about Richie. He seemed more the little brother type. Eddie subconsciously wondered what his mother would have thought of Richie. She wouldn't have liked him, that was for sure.
Up ahead, Henry had fallen in with a group of boys the way Eddie had fallen in with Ben, Bill, Stan, and Richie. He recognized Patrick Hockstetter, and a kid with the same name as him, Eddie Corcoran. He turned around and saw that the starting line had disappeared. How long had they walked for? He hadn't packed a watch. His mother had packed a handkerchief and a bottle of Advil, but not a fucking watch.
"Hey, Stan."
Stan was still engrossed in his book. Upon closer inspection, it was a book about birds. One of those Audobon books. "Yeah? You're Kaspbrak, right?"
"Yeah. I just wanted to know if you've got the time."
He looked up at the sky. "9:20-ish."
"You aren't wearing a watch either! How do you know that?!"
"How warm it is, how bright it is, how many footsteps I've taken. I don't know. It's just scout sense, I guess."
"Do you really know?"
"'Course I do."
"What if it rains? What if it's December?"
"There are different ways for every climate. And I said ish, didn't I?"
Eddie sighed. He supposed 9:20ish was what he would have estimated himself, too. He had an uneasy feeling in his stomach, because suddenly he was wondering if he'd see 9:20-ish AM tomorrow.
Kind of an exposition chapter, but ya know.