the thunderstorm

The thunderstorm that breaks over the boys as they discover Ray Brower's body is the story's climactic natural event, transforming the scene from a grim discovery into a chaotic confrontation and forcing the boys to abandon their claim to the corpse.

Buildup and Arrival

Clouds began building in the sky around two o'clock, but at first none of the boys took them seriously after the long drought. The clouds kept building to the south, rising into great purple thunderheads that slowly moved their way. The quality of the day's light began to change, evolving from a steady, beating brightness into something filtered and almost pearly. The birds appeared from nowhere, swooping across the sky and crying shrilly. The sun sailed in and out through thickening decks of clouds, and the southern sky turned a coppery shade. The boys watched the thunderheads lumber closer, fascinated by their size and mute threat. Every now and then a giant flashbulb seemed to go off inside one of them, turning the purplish, bruised color momentarily to light gray. A jagged fork of lightning licked down from the underside of the closest cloud, bright enough to print a blue tattoo on retinas, followed by a long, shaking blast of thunder. The air began to stir, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees in seconds. Gordon Lachance looked down and saw that his shadow had disappeared entirely.

The Storm's Fury

The storm arrived with sudden, overwhelming force. A bolt of lightning flashed down from directly overhead, making Gordon cry out and clap his hands to his eyes. He heard the rending fall of some big tree not sixty yards away. The crack of thunder that followed made him cringe. Vern Tessio screamed in a high, fainting voice, pointing at a blue-white fireball bowling its way up the lefthand rail of the GS&WM tracks, crackling and hissing. It hurried past them and made a sudden pop, disappearing and leaving a greasy smell of ozone behind. Another lightning bolt crashed down, making them all duck, the following clap of thunder coming with no perceptible pause. The storm seemed to rebuke them for their discovery, and it was frightening. The rain began as dime-sized drops that struck the embankment, turning the fill dark for a moment before the greedy dry ground sucked the moisture up. Then the storm came all at once, as if a shower chain had been pulled in the sky. The whispering sound of the woods changed to loud contention.

Discovery and Confrontation

It was during this violent downpour that Vern spotted the body, a single pale white hand sticking out of a wild clockspring of blackberry brambles. The boys jumped down to the boggy cup of land where Ray Brower lay face down. They turned him face up into the pouring rain, the lightning, and the steady crack of thunder. The roaring downpour and accompanying thunder completely covered the sound of cars approaching along the Back Harlow Road and the crackle-crunch of underbrush as Ace Merrill and his gang blundered through from where they had parked. The first the boys knew of them was Ace Merrill's voice raised above the tumult of the storm, saying, "Well what the fuck do you know about this?" The storm thus provided the cover for the older boys' approach, turning the discovery into a confrontation.

Hail and Retreat

The storm returned viciously, this time as hail instead of rain. The woods seemed alive with the sound of big icy hailstones honking off treetrunks. Stinging pebbles began to hit the boys' shoulders, feeling as if some sentient, malevolent force were throwing them. Worse, the hailstones began to strike Ray Brower's upturned face with an awful splatting sound, reminding them of his terrible and unending patience. Vern caved in first, fleeing up the embankment with a wailing scream. Teddy held out a minute longer, then ran after Vern, his hands held up over his head. On the other side, Vince Desjardins floundered back under some nearby trees and Fuzzy Bracowicz joined him. The hail piled up around the boys like summer snow, welting and reddening their skins. After Chris Chambers forced Ace's gang to retreat with his father's pistol, the boys looked down at Ray Brower's body and saw that his eyes had filled up with round white hailstones that were now melting, the water running down his cheeks as if he were weeping for his own grotesque position. His clothes were also white with hail, making him seem to be lying in his own shroud. The storm's final assault, the hail, broke the group's unity and underscored the horror of their situation, contributing to their ultimate decision to abandon the body.