the leech-infested pond

The leech-infested pond was a beaver pond located along the Great Southern and Western Maine Railroad tracks in Harlow, created when beavers sealed the right end of a large-bore culvert running under the railroad embankment with a dam of sticks, branches, leaves, twigs, and dried mud. Behind the dam lay a clear, shining pool of water that brilliantly mirrored the sunlight, with beaver houses humping up and out of the water in several places like wooden igloos. A small creek trickled into the far end of the pool, and the trees bordering it were gnawed a clean bone-white to a height of almost three feet in places. The pool had formed because the beavers' dam blocked the culvert that was meant to drain the area, and Chris Chambers noted that the railroad would eventually clean out the dam, shoot the beavers, and let the area return to being a bog.

The Swim and the Discovery

When Teddy Duchamp and Chris Chambers spotted the water ahead around nine-thirty on the second day of their hike, the boys were exhausted, hungry, and covered in sweat and grime from the relentless heat. Chris immediately ran down the bank, kicked off his sneakers, pushed down his pants and undershorts with a single shove, and made a shallow dive into the pond. He came up shaking his head, shouting that the water was "fuckin great." Vern Tessio and Gordon Lachance quickly joined him, stripping and plunging in. The water was clean and cool, and for half an hour they goofed off, swimming, diving, and ducking each other, loving the silky feel of having nothing on but water. Teddy, who had never learned to swim, stayed on the bank. The pond seemed like a perfect respite from the grueling journey.

The Leeches

The idyll shattered when Vern swam into the shallower part, went under, and stood on his hands. When his legs broke water in a shaky but triumphant V, Gordon saw that they were covered with blackish-gray lumps—the same kind of lump he had noticed on Chris's shoulder earlier but dismissed as mud. They were leeches, big ones. Teddy screamed, his face going pale, and all three boys in the water thrashed for the bank as fast as they could. The leeches carried a local anesthetic and an anti-coagulant in their alien saliva, meaning the host never felt a thing when they attached themselves. If not discovered, they would go on feeding until their swelled, loathsome bodies fell off sated or until they actually burst.

The Aftermath and Psychological Trauma

On the bank, Teddy went into a hysterical paroxysm as he looked down at himself, screaming as he picked leeches off his trembling thighs and threw them as far as he could. Vern paddled across the pool and stumbled out, crying "OhGodOhGodOhGod!" Gordon picked half a dozen leeches off his arms and several more off his chest, then removed five or six from Chris's back, describing them as running down his spine like grotesque black buttons. He brushed even more off his legs and had Chris do his back. But the worst was yet to come: Gordon looked down and saw the granddaddy of all leeches clinging to his testicles, its body swelled to four times its normal size, its blackish-gray skin gone a bruised purplish-red. He tried to brush it off with the back of his hand but couldn't bring himself to actually touch it. Chris backed away, shaking his head, his mouth twisted, unable to help. Gordon finally reached down and picked it off, and it burst between his fingers, his own blood running across his palm and inner wrist in a warm flood. He began to cry and could not stop, the shakes setting in and making it worse. The experience left a permanent scar—a tiny crescent-shaped mark that Gordon still carries, and for which he later lied to his wife about its origin. The burst leech, lying deflated but still ominous on the tromped-down bushes, became a recurring image in Gordon's memory, resurfacing years later when he saw used condoms floating on the swells from the Staten Island Ferry, triggering a moment of almost total recall and time-travel back to that embankment.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The leech incident is a pivotal moment in the story, marking a sharp descent from the adventure's initial excitement into genuine horror and vulnerability. It is the first direct physical violation the boys suffer on their journey, and it comes from nature itself—not from a human threat like Milo Pressman or Ace Merrill. The pond, which had promised refreshment and escape from the heat, instead delivered a visceral lesson in the body's permeability and the hidden dangers that lurk beneath even the most inviting surfaces. The trauma is so profound that Gordon faints later on the tracks, waves of whiteness coming over his sight as he falls. The incident also deepens the bond between the boys, as they help each other remove the leeches and share in the aftermath of shock and tears. It foreshadows the even greater horror of discovering Ray Brower's corpse, and it reinforces the story's central theme that the most important and formative experiences are often the hardest to bear and the hardest to articulate.