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CHAPTER 7
1
How should I tell you about my seven weeks in Derry? How to explain the way I came to hate and fear it?
It wasn’t because it kept secrets (although it did), and it wasn’t because terrible crimes, some of them still unsolved, had happened there (although they had). All that’s over, the girl named Beverly had said, the boy named Richie had agreed, and I came to believe that, too . . . although I also came to believe the shadow never completely left that city with its odd sunken downtown.
It was a sense of impending failure that made me hate it. And that feeling of being in a prison with elastic walls. If I wanted to leave, it would let me go (willingly!), but if I stayed, it would squeeze me tighter. It would squeeze me until I couldn’t breathe. And—here’s the bad part—
leaving wasn’t an option, because now I had seen Harry before the limp and before the trusting but slightly dazed smile. I had seen him before he became Hoptoad Harry, hoppin down the av-a- new.
I had seen his sister, too. Now she was more than just a name in a painstakingly written essay, a faceless little girl who loved to pick flowers and put them in vases. Sometimes I lay awake thinking of how she pla
If I let that happen, I didn’t see how I could live with myself. So I stayed, but it wasn’t easy.
And every time I thought of putting myself through this again, in Dallas, my mind threatened to freeze up. At least, I told myself, Dallas wouldn’t be like Derry. Because no place on earth could be like Derry.
How should I tell you, then?
In my life as a teacher, I used to hammer away at the idea of simplicity. In both fiction and nonfiction, there’s only one question and one answer. What happened? the reader asks. This is what happened, the writer responds. This . . . and this . . . and this, too. Keep it simple. It’s the only sure way home.
So I’ll try, although you must always keep in mind that in Derry, reality is a thin skim of ice over a deep lake of dark water. But still:
What happened?
This happened. And this. And this, too.
2
On Friday, my second full day in Derry, I went down to the Center Street Market. I waited until five in the afternoon, because I thought that was when the place would be busiest—Friday’s payday, after all, and for a lot of people (by which I mean wives; one of the rules of life in 1958 is Men Don’t Buy Groceries) that meant shopping day. Lots of shoppers would make it easier for me to blend in. To help in that regard, I went to W. T. Grant’s and supplemented my wardrobe with some chinos and blue workshirts. Remembering No Suspenders and his buddies outside the Sleepy Silver Dollar, I also bought a pair of Wolverine workboots. On my way to the market, I kicked them repeatedly against the curbing until the toes were scuffed.
The place was every bit as busy as I’d hoped, with a line at all three cash registers and the aisles full of women pushing shopping carts. The few men I saw only had baskets, so that was what I took. I put a bag of apples in mine (dirt cheap), and a bag of oranges (almost as expensive as 2011
oranges). Beneath my feet, the oiled wooden floor creaked.
What exactly did Mr. Du
As I walked along the back of the store, past the dairy case (I was amused by a sign reading HAVE YOU TRIED “YOGHURT?” IF NOT YOU WILL LOVE IT WHEN YOU DO), I began to hear laughter. Female laughter of the immediately identifiable oh-you-rascal variety. I turned into the far aisle and saw a covey of women, dressed in much the same style as the ladies in the Ke
Sometimes life coughs up coincidences no writer of fiction would dare copy.
It was Frank Du
Du
All in all, Mr. Frank Du
“There you are, Mrs. Levesque, one pound of German bologna, sliced thin.” He leaned confidentially over the counter, close enough so that Mrs. Levesque (and the other ladies) would be able to whiff on the entrancing aroma of his cologne. Was it Aqua Velva, Fred Toomey’s brand? I thought not. I thought a fascinator like Frank Du
“No,” she said, dragging it out a little so it became Noo-oo. The other ladies twittered in anticipation.
Du
“An hour after you eat some, you’re hungry for power.”
I’m not sure all the ladies got it, but they all shrieked with appreciation. Du
Levesque happily on her way, and as I passed out of hearing, he was turning his attention to a Mrs.
Bowie. Who would, I was sure, be equally happy to receive it.