Gordie and Vern are nearly run over by a train while crossing a trestle. Teddy gets into a verbal skirmish with Milo when the latter insults Teddy's father by calling him a 'loonie'.

One day, Chico has a fight with his father over Virginia and leaves the house.Īlong the way, the boys trespass at the town dump and are chased by Chopper, the dump custodian Milo Pressman's dog. Chico knows that his stepmother Virginia slept with his brother before he died, but he hesitates to tell his father about it. He has a girlfriend, Jane, who he does not have particularly strong feelings for. Over the course of the narrative, the adult Gordie recalls his first published story, Stud City, about the life of a simple man named Edward 'Chico' May whose older brother also died.

In preparation for the expedition, Chris steals a gun from his father, and the boys camp out in a nearby field. The boys get the idea to find the body 'officially' so that they may become famous. Because the gang found the body while driving a stolen car, they elected not to report the body to the police. In 1960, Gordie and his three friends − Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio − learn that a gang of hooligans led by John 'Ace' Merrill have accidentally discovered the dead body of a missing boy named Ray Brower, who was hit by a train. At that time, Gordie's elder brother Dennis, whom his parents favored, had recently died, leaving Gordie's parents too depressed to pay much attention to him. Gordon 'Gordie' LaChance reminisces about his childhood in Castle Rock, Maine. During the course of their journey, the boys, who all come from abusive or dysfunctional families, come to grips with death and the harsh truths of growing up in a small factory town that does not seem to offer them much of a future. After a boy disappears and is presumed dead, twelve-year-old Gordie LaChance and his three friends set out to find his body along the railway tracks. The story takes place during the summer of 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. The Body was published in King's 1982 collection Different Seasons and later adapted into the 1986 film Stand by Me. The Body is a novella by American writer Stephen King.

Different seasons novellas