Tracker Brothers

Tracker Brothers was a trucking depot located in Derry, Maine, a low brick structure surrounded by gravel lots where long-distance haulers were parked. The building was old, with crumbling bricks and dirty windows, except for a small circular pane kept clean by boys who came to look at the Playboy calendar inside the starter's office. The depot was owned by two bachelor brothers, Phil and Tony Tracker. Phil drove freight himself, while Tony kept the books and was a fixture at the baseball games played in the back lot, his voice a constant summer presence. The lot behind the depot was a gravel expanse where local boys played baseball, using four pieces of dirty canvas as bases, stored under the loading bay. Tony Tracker, a large man with a gut to match, would yell encouragement and criticism, never calling the boys by name but using nicknames like "Red," "Blondie," "Four-Eyes," and "Half-Pint." He referred to a bat as an "ash-handle" and a ball as a "bawl." The lot was a place of summer ritual, where the Losers' Club sometimes gathered, and where Eddie Kaspbrak, who never played due to his mother's fears, would watch. It was also where Belch Huggins once hit a ball so hard the cover came off, and Tony Tracker declared it "would have been out of Yankee Stadium." By 1985, the depot was dark and silent, with weeds growing through the gravel and a realtor's FOR SALE sign in the window. The brothers had gone out of business, and the lot where baseball had been played was overgrown. The decline of Tracker Brothers symbolized the erosion of the childhood world the Losers had known. The depot also figured in the final confrontation with It, as the area around it was one of the places where the creature's influence was felt, and where the Losers' memories of their past struggles were rekindled.