11/22/63 Кинг Стивен

“Well I’d say the Tamarack Motor Court, about five miles up 196 on your way to Lewiston,” Anicetti Senior said. “It’s near the drive-in movie.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said, getting up.

“You bet. And if you want to get trimmed up before any of your meetings, try Baumer’s Barber Shop. He does a real fine job.”

“Thanks. Another good tip.”

“Tips are free, root beers are sold American. Enjoy your time in Maine, Mr. Amberson. And Frankie? You drink that milkshake and get on back to school.”

“You bet, Pop.” This time it was Junior who tipped a wink in my direction.

“Frank?” one of the ladies called in a yoo-hoo voice. “Are these oranges fresh?”

“As fresh as your smile, Leola,” he replied, and the ladies tee-hee’d. I’m not trying to be cute here; they actually tee-hee’d.

I passed them, murmuring “Ladies” as I went by. The bell jingled and I went out into the world that had existed before my birth. But this time instead of crossing the street to the courtyard where the rabbit-hole was, I walked deeper into that world. Across the street, the wino in the long black coat was gesticulating at the tunic-wearing clerk. The card he was waving might be orange instead of yellow, but otherwise he was back on script.

I took that as a good sign.

3

Titus Chevron was beyond the Red & White Supermarket, where Al had bought the same supplies for his diner over and over again. According to the sign in the window, lobster was going for sixty-nine cents a pound. Across from the market, standing on a patch of ground that was vacant in 2011, was a big maroon barn with the doors standing open and all sorts of used furniture on display—cribs, cane rockers, and overstuffed easy chairs of the “Dad’s relaxin’” type seemed in particularly abundant supply. The sign over the door read THE JOLLY WHITE ELEPHANT. An additional sign, this one an A-frame propped to catch the eye of folks on the road to Lewiston, made the audacious claim that IF WE DON’T HAVE IT, YOU DON’T NEED IT. A fellow I took to be the proprietor was sitting in one of the rocking chairs, smoking a pipe and looking across at me. He wore a strap-style tee-shirt and baggy brown slacks. He also wore a goatee, which I thought equally audacious for this particular island in the time-stream. His hair, although combed back and held in place with some sort of grease, curled down to the nape of his neck and made me think of some old rock-and-roll video I’d seen: Jerry Lee Lewis jumping on his piano as he sang “Great Balls of Fire.” The proprietor of the Jolly White Elephant probably had a reputation as the town beatnik.

I tipped a finger to him. He gave me the faintest of nods and went on puffing his pipe.

At the Chevron (where regular was selling for 19.9 cents a gallon and “super” was a penny more), a man in blue coveralls and a strenuous crewcut was working on a truck—the Anicettis’, I presumed—that was up on the lift.

“Mr. Titus?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Ayuh?”

“Mr. Anicetti said I could use your restroom?”

“Key’s inside the front door.” Doe-ah.

“Thank you.”

The key was attached to a wooden paddle with MEN printed on it. The other key had GIRLS printed on the paddle. My ex-wife would have shit a brick at that, I thought, and not without glee.

The restroom was clean but smoky-smelling. There was an urn-style ashtray beside the commode. From the number of butts studding it, I would guess a good many visitors to this tidy little room enjoyed puffing as they pooped.

When I came out, I saw two dozen or so used cars in a small lot next to the station. A line of colored pennants fluttered above them in a light breeze. Cars that would have sold for thousands—as classics, no less—in 2011 were priced at seventy-five and a hundred dollars. A Caddy that looked in nearly mint condition was going for eight hundred. The sign over the little sales booth (inside, a gum-chewing, ponytailed cutie was absorbed in Photoplay) read: ALL THESE CARS RUN GOOD AND COME WITH THE BILL TITUS GUARENTEE WE SERVICE WHAT WE SELL!

I hung the key up, thanked Titus (who grunted without turning from the truck on the lift), and started back toward Main Street, thinking it would be a good idea to get my hair cut before visiting the bank. That made me remember the goatee-wearing beatnik, and on impulse I crossed the street to the used furniture emporium.

“Morning,” I said.

“Well, it’s actually afternoon, but whatever makes you happy.” He puffed his pipe, and that light late-summer breeze brought me a whiff of Cherry Blend. Also a memory of my grandfather, who used to smoke it when I was a kid. He sometimes blew it in my ear to quell the earache, a treatment that was probably not AMA-approved.

“Do you sell suitcases?”

“Oh, I got a few in my kick. No more’n two hundred, I’d say. Walk all the way to the back and look on your right.”

“If I buy one, could I leave it here for a couple of hours, while I do some shopping?”

“I’m open until five,” he said, and turned his face up into the sun. “After that you’re on your own.”

4

I traded two of Al’s vintage dollars for a leather valise, left it behind the beatnik’s counter, then walked up to Main Street with my briefcase banging my leg. I glanced into the greenfront and saw the clerk sitting beside the cash register and reading a newspaper. There was no sign of my pal in the black overcoat.

It would have been hard to get lost in the shopping district; it was only a block long. Three of four storefronts up from the Kennebec Fruit, I came to Baumer’s Barber Shop. A red-and-white barber pole twirled in the window. Next to it was a political poster featuring Edmund Muskie. I remembered him as a tired, slope-shouldered old man, but this version of him looked almost too young to vote, let alone get elected to anything. The poster read, SEND ED MUSKIE TO THE U.S. SENATE, VOTE DEMOCRAT! Someone had put a bright white band around the bottom. Hand-printed on it was THEY SAID IT COULDN’T BE DONE IN MAINE BUT WE DID IT! NEXT UP: HUMPHREY IN 1960!

Inside, two old parties were sitting against the wall while an equally old third party got his tonsure trimmed. Both of the waiting men were puffing like choo-choos. So was the barber (Baumer, I assumed), with one eye squinted against the rising smoke as he clipped. All four studied me in a way I was familiar with: the not-quite-mistrustful look of appraisal that Christy once called the Yankee Glare. It was nice to know that some things hadn’t changed.

“I’m from out of town, but I’m a friend,” I told them. “Voted the straight Democratic ticket my whole life.” I raised my hand in a so-help-me-God gesture.

Baumer grunted with amusement. Ash tumbled from his cigarette. He brushed it absently off his smock and onto the floor, where there were several crushed butts among the cut hair. “Harold there’s a Republican. You want to watch out he don’t bitecha.”

“He ain’t got the choppers for it nummore,” one of the others said, and they all cackled.

“Where you from, mister?” Harold the Republican asked.

“Wisconsin.” I picked up a copy of Man’s Adventure to forestall further conversation. On the cover, a subhuman Asian gent with a whip in one gloved hand was approaching a blonde lovely tied to a post. The story that went with it was called JAP SEX-SLAVES OF THE PACIFIC. The barbershop’s smell was a sweet and completely wonderful mixture of talcum powder, pomade, and cigarette smoke. By the time Baumer motioned me to the chair, I was deep into the sex-slaves story. It wasn’t as exciting as the cover.

“Been doin some traveling, Mr. Wisconsin?” he asked as he settled a white rayon cloth over my front and wrapped a paper collar around my neck.

“Quite a lot,” I said truthfully.

“Well, you’re in God’s country now. How short do you want it?”

“Short enough so I don’t look like”—a hippie, I almost finished, but Baumer wouldn’t know what that was—“like a beatnik.”

“Let it get a little out of control, I guess.” He began to clip. “Leave it much longer and you’d look like that faggot who runs the Jolly White Elephant.”

“I wouldn’t want that,” I said.

“Nosir, he’s a sight, that one.” That-un.

When Baumer finished, he powdered the back of my neck, asked me if I wanted Vitalis, Brylcreem, or Wildroot Cream Oil, and charged me forty cents.

I call that a deal.

5

My thousand-dollar deposit at the Hometown Trust raised no eyebrows. The freshly barbered look probably helped, but I think it was mostly being in a cash-and-carry society where credit cards were still in their infancy… and probably regarded with some suspicion by thrifty Yankees. A severely pretty teller with her hair done up in tight rolls and a cameo at her throat counted my money, entered the amount in a ledger, then called over the assistant manager, who counted it again, checked the ledger, and then wrote out a receipt that showed both the deposit and the total in my new checking account.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, that’s a mighty big amount to be carrying in checking, Mr. Amberson. Would you like to open a savings account? We’re currently offering three percent interest, compounded quarterly.” He widened his eyes to show me what a wonderful deal this was. He looked like that old-time Cuban bandleader, Xavier Cugat.

“Thanks, but I’ve got a fair amount of business to transact.” I lowered my voice. “Real estate closing. Or so I hope.”

“Good luck,” he said, lowering his own to the same confidential pitch. “Lorraine will fix you up with checks. Fifty enough to go on with?”

“Fifty would be fine.”

“Later on, we can have some printed with your name and your address.” He raised his eyebrows, turning it into a question.

“I expect to be in Derry. I’ll be in touch.”

“Fine. I’m at Drexel eight four-seven-seven-seven.”

I had no idea what he was talking about until he slid a business card through the window. Gregory Dusen, Assistant Manager, was engraved on it, and DRexel 8-4777.

Lorraine got my checks and a faux alligator checkbook to put them in. I thanked her and dropped them into my briefcase. At the door I paused for a look back. A couple of the tellers were working adding machines, but otherwise the transactions were all of the pen-and-elbow-grease variety. It occurred to me that, with a few exceptions, Charles Dickens would have felt at home here. It also occurred to me that living in the past was a little like living underwater and breathing through a tube.

6

I got the clothes Al had recommended at Mason’s Menswear, and the clerk told me yes, they would be more than happy to take a check, providing it was drawn on a local bank. Thanks to Lorraine, I could oblige in that regard.

Back at the Jolly White Elephant, the beatnik watched silently as I transferred the contents of three shopping bags to my new valise. When I snapped it shut, he finally offered an opinion. “Funny way to shop, man.”

“I guess so,” I said. “But it’s a funny old world, isn’t it?”

He cracked a smile at that. “In my opinion, that’s a big you-bet. Slip me some skin, Jackson.” He extended his hand, palm up.

For a moment it was like trying to figure out what the word Drexel attached to some numbers was all about. Then I remembered Dragstrip Girl, and understood the beatnik was offering the fifties version of a fist-bump. I dragged my palm across his, feeling the warmth and the sweat, thinking again: This is real. This is happening.

“Skin, man,” I said.

7

I crossed back to Titus Chevron, swinging the newly loaded valise from one hand and the briefcase from the other. It was only midmorning in the 2011 world I’d come from, but I felt tired out. There was a telephone booth between the service station and the adjacent car lot. I went in, shut the door, and read the hand-printed sign over the old-fashioned pay phone: REMEMBER PHONE CALLS NOW A DIME COURTESY OF “MA” BELL.

I thumbed through the Yellow Pages in the local phone book and found Lisbon Taxi. Their ad featured a cartoon cab with eyes for headlights and a big smile on its grille. It promised FAST, COURTEOUS SERVICE. That sounded good to me. I grubbed for my change, but the first thing I came up with was something I should have left behind: my Nokia cell phone. It was antique by the standards of the year I’d come from—I’d been meaning to trade up to an iPhone—but it had no business here. If someone saw it, I’d be asked a hundred questions I couldn’t answer. I stowed it in the briefcase. It would be okay there for the time being, I guessed, but I’d have to get rid of it eventually. Keeping it would be like walking around with an unexploded bomb.

I found a dime, dropped it in the slot, and it went right through to the coin return. I fished it out, and one look was enough to pinpoint the problem. Like my Nokia, the dime had come from the future; it was a copper sandwich, really no more than a penny with pretensions. I pulled out all my coins, poked through them, and found a 1953 dime I’d probably got in change from the root beer I’d bought at the Kennebec Fruit. I started to put it in, then had a thought that made me feel cold. What if my 2002 dime had gotten stuck in the phone’s throat instead of falling through to the coin return? And what if the AT&T man who serviced the pay phones in Lisbon Falls had found it?

He would have thought it was a joke, that’s all. Just some elaborate prank.

I somehow doubted this—the dime was too perfect. He would have shown it around; there might even eventually have been an item about it in the newspaper. I had gotten lucky this time, but next time I might not. I needed to be careful. I thought of my cell phone again, with deepening unease. Then I put the 1953 dime in the coin slot and was rewarded with a dial tone. I placed the call slowly and carefully, trying to remember if I’d ever used a phone with a rotary dial before. I thought not. Each time I released it, the phone made a weird clucking sound as the dial spun back.

“Lisbon Taxi,” a woman said, “where the mileage is always smileage. How may we help you today?”

8

While I waited for my ride, I window-shopped my way through Titus’s car lot. I was particularly taken by a red ’54 Ford convertible—a Sunliner, according to the script below the chrome headlight on the driver’s side. It had whitewall tires and a genuine canvas roof that the cool cats in Dragstrip Girl would have called a ragtop.

“That ain’t a bad one, mister,” Bill Titus said from behind me. “Goes like a house afire, that I can testify to personally.”

I turned. He was wiping his hands on a red rag that looked almost as greasy as his hands.

“Some rust on the rocker panels,” I said.

“Yeah, well, this climate.” He gave a whattaya-gonna-do shrug. “Main thing is, the motor’s in nifty shape and those tires are almost new.”

“V-8?”

“Y-block,” he said, and I nodded as if I understood this perfectly. “Bought it from Arlene Hadley over Durham after her husband died. If there was one thing Bill Hadley knew, it was how to take care of a car… but you won’t know them because you’re not from around here, are you?”

“No. Wisconsin. George Amberson.” I held out my hand.

He shook his head, smiling a little. “Good to meet you, Mr. Amberson, but I don’t want to getcha all over grease. Consider it shook. You a buyer or a looker?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said, but this was disingenuous. I thought the Sunliner was the coolest car I’d ever seen in my life. I opened my mouth to ask what kind of mileage it got, then realized it was a question almost without meaning in a world where you could fill your tank for two dollars. Instead I asked him if it was a standard.

“Oh, ayuh. And when you catch second, you want to watch out for the cops. She goes like a bastid in second. Want to take er out for a spin?”

“I can’t,” I said. “I just called a cab.”

“That’s no way to travel,” Titus said. “If you bought this, you could go back to Wisconsin in style and never mind the train.”

“How much are you asking? This one doesn’t have a price on the windshield.”

“Nope, just took it in trade day before yest’y. Haven’t got around to it.” Gut. He took out his cigarettes. “I’m carryin it at three-fifty, but tell you what, I’d dicker.” Dicka.

I clamped my teeth together to keep my jaw from dropping and told him I’d think it over. If my thinking went the right way, I said, I’d come back tomorrow.

“Better come early, Mr. Amberson, this one ain’t gonna be on the lot for long.”

I was again comforted. I had coins that wouldn’t work in pay phones, banking was still done mostly by hand, and the phones made an odd chuckling sound in your ear when you dialed, but some things didn’t change.

9

The taxi driver was a fat man who wore a battered hat with a badge on it reading LICENSED LIVERY. He smoked Luckies one after the other and played WJAB on the radio. We listened to “Sugartime” by the McGuire Sisters, “Bird Dog” by the Everly Brothers, and “Purple People Eater,” by some creature called a Sheb Wooley. That one I could have done without. After every other song, a trio of out-of-tune young women sang: “Four-teen for-ty, WJA-beee… the Big Jab!” I learned that Romanow’s was having their annual end-of-summer blowout sale, and F. W. Woolworth’s had just gotten a fresh order of Hula Hoops, a steal at $1.39.

“Goddam things don’t do nothin but teach kids how to bump their hips,” the cabbie said, and let the wing window suck ash from the end of his cigarette. It was his only stab at conversation between Titus Chevron and the Tamarack Motor Court.

I unrolled my window to get away from the cigarette smog a little and watched a different world roll by. The urban sprawl between Lisbon Falls and the Lewiston city line didn’t exist. Other than a few gas stations, the Hi-Hat Drive-In, and the outdoor movie theater (the marquee advertised a double feature consisting of Vertigo and The Long, Hot Summer—both in CinemaScope and Technicolor), we were in pure Maine countryside. I saw more cows than people.

The motor court was set back from the highway and shaded not by tamaracks but by huge and stately elms. It wasn’t like seeing a herd of dinosaurs, but almost. I gawked at them while Mr. Licensed Livery lit up another smoke. “Need a hand witcher bags, sir?”

“No, I’m fine.” The fare on his meter wasn’t as stately as the elms, but still rated a double take. I gave the guy two dollars and asked fifty cents back. He seemed satisfied with that; the tip was enough to buy a pack of Luckies.

10

I checked in (no problem there; cash on the counter and no ID required) and took a long nap in a room where the air-conditioning was a fan on the windowsill. I awoke refreshed (good) and then found it impossible to get to sleep that night (not good). There was next to no traffic on the highway after sundown, and the quiet was so deep it was disquieting. The television was a Zenith table model that must have weighed a hundred pounds. Sitting on top was a pair of rabbit ears. Propped against them was a sign reading ADJUST ANTENNA BY HAND DO NOT USE “TINFOIL!” THANKS FROM MANAGEMENT.

There were three stations. The NBC affiliate was too snowy to watch no matter how much I fiddled with the rabbit ears, and on CBS the picture rolled; adjusting the vertical hold had no effect. ABC, which came in clear as a bell, was showing The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O’Brian. He shot a few outlaws and then an ad for Viceroy cigarettes came on. Steve McQueen explained that Viceroys had a thinking man’s filter and a smoking man’s taste. While he was lighting up, I got off the bed and turned the TV off.

Then there was just the sound of the crickets.

I stripped to my shorts, lay down, and tried to sleep. My mind turned to my mother and father. Dad was currently six years old and living in Eau Claire. My mom, only five, was living in an Iowa farmhouse that would burn to the ground three or four years from now. Her family would then move to Wisconsin, and closer to the intersection of lives that would eventually produce… me.

I’m crazy, I thought. Crazy and having a terribly involved hallucination in a mental hospital somewhere. Perhaps some doctor will write me up for a psychiatric journal. Instead of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, I’ll be The Man Who Thought He Was in 1958.

But I ran my hand over the nubby fabric of the bedspread, which I had yet to turn back, and knew that it was all true. I thought of Lee Harvey Oswald, but Oswald still belonged to the future and he wasn’t what was troubling me in this museum piece of a motel room.

I sat on the edge of the bed, opened the briefcase, and took out my cell phone, a time-traveling gadget that was absolutely worthless here. Nevertheless, I could not resist flipping it open and pushing the power button. NO SERVICE popped up in the window, of course—what had I expected? Five bars? A plaintive voice saying Come home, Jake, before you cause damage you can’t undo? Stupid, superstitious idea. If I did damage, I could undo it, because every trip was a reset. You could say that time-travel came with a built-in safety switch.

That was comforting, but having a phone like this in a world where color TV was the biggest technological breakthrough in consumer electronics wasn’t comforting at all. I wouldn’t be hung as a witch if I was found with it, but I might be arrested by the local cops and held in a jail cell until some of J. Edgar Hoover’s boys could arrive from Washington to question me.

I put it on the bed, then pulled all of my change out of my right front pocket. I separated the coins into two piles. Those from 1958 and earlier went back into my pocket. Those from the future went into one of the envelopes I found in the desk drawer (along with a Gideon Bible and a Hi-Hat takeout menu). I got dressed, took my key, and left the room.

The crickets were much louder outside. A broken piece of moon hung in the sky. Away from its glow, the stars had never seemed so bright or close. A truck droned past on 196, and then the road was still. This was the countryside, and the countryside was sleeping. In the distance, a freight train whistled a hole in the night.

There were only two cars in the courtyard, and the units they belonged to were dark. So was the office. Feeling like a criminal, I walked into the field behind the motor court. High grass whickered against the legs of my jeans, which I would swap tomorrow for my new Ban-Lon slacks.

There was a smoothwire fence marking the edge of the Tamarack’s property. Beyond it was a small pond, what rural people call a tank. Nearby, half a dozen cows were sleeping in the warm night. One of them looked up at me as I worked my way under the fence and walked to the tank. After that it lost interest and lowered its head again. It didn’t raise it when my Nokia cell phone splashed into the pond. I sealed the envelope with my coins inside it and sent it after the phone. Then I went back the way I came, pausing at the rear of the motel to make sure the courtyard was still empty. It was.

I let myself into my room, undressed, and was asleep almost instantly.

CHAPTER 6

1

The same chain-smoking cabbie picked me up the next morning, and when he dropped me off at Titus Chevron, the convertible was there. I had expected this, but it was still a relief. I was wearing a nondescript gray sport coat I’d bought off the rack at Mason’s Menswear. My new ostrich wallet was safe in its inner pocket, and lined with five hundred dollars of Al’s cash. Titus came over to me while I was admiring the Ford, wiping his hands on what looked like the same rag he’d been using on them yesterday.

“I slept on it, and I want it,” I said.

“That’s good,” he said, then assumed an air of regret. “But I slept on it, too, Mr. Amberson, and I guess I told you a lie when I said there might be some room for dickerin. Do you know what my wife said this morning while we were eatin our pancakes n bacon? She said ‘Bill, you’d be a damn fool to let that Sunliner go for less’n three-fifty.’ In fact, she said I was a damn fool for pricin it that low to start with.”

I nodded as if I’d expected nothing else. “Okay,” I said.

He looked surprised.

“Here’s what I can do, Mr. Titus. I can write you a check for three hundred and fifty—good check, Hometown Trust, you can call them and see—or I can give you three hundred in cash right out of my wallet. Less paperwork if we do it like that. What do you say?”

He grinned, revealing teeth of startling whiteness. “I say they know how to drive a bargain out there in Wisconsin. If you make it three-twenty, I’ll put on a sticker and a fourteen-day plate and off you go.”

“Three-ten.”

“Aw, don’t make me squirm,” Titus said, but he wasn’t squirming; he was enjoying himself. “Add a fin onto that and we’ll call it a deal.”

I held out my hand. “Three hundred and fifteen works for me.”

“Yowza.” This time he shook with me, never minding the grease. Then he pointed to the sales booth. Today the ponytailed cutie was reading Confidential. “You’ll want to pay the young lady, who happens to be my daughter. She’ll write up the sale. When you’re done, come around and I’ll put on that sticker. Throw in a tank of gas, too.”

Forty minutes later, behind the wheel of a 1954 Ford ragtop that now belonged to me, I was headed north toward Derry. I learned on a standard, so that was no problem, but this was the first car I’d ever driven with the gearshift on the column. It was weird at first, but once I got used to it (I would also have to get used to operating the headlight dimmer switch with my left foot), I liked it. And Bill Titus had been right about second gear; in second, the Sunliner went like a bastid. In Augusta, I stopped long enough to haul the top down. In Waterville, I grabbed a fine meatloaf dinner that cost ninety-five cents, apple pie la mode included. It made the Fatburger look overpriced. I hummed along with the Skyliners, the Coasters, the Del Vikings, the Elegants. The sun was warm, the breeze ruffled my new short haircut, and the turnpike (nicknamed “The Mile-A-Minute Highway,” according to the billboards) was pretty much all mine. I seemed to have left my doubts of the night before sunk in the cow-tank along with my cell phone and futuristic change. I felt good.

Until I saw Derry.

2

There was something wrong with that town, and I think I knew it from the first.

I took Route 7 when The Mile-A-Minute Highway petered down to an asphalt-patched two-lane, and twenty miles or so north of Newport, I came over a rise and saw Derry hulking on the west bank of the Kenduskeag under a cloud of pollution from God knew how many paper and textile mills, all operating full bore. There was an artery of green running through the center of town. From a distance it looked like a scar. The town around that jagged greenbelt seemed to consist solely of sooty grays and blacks under a sky that had been stained urine yellow by the stuff billowing from all those smokestacks.

I drove past several produce stands where the people minding the counters (or just standing side o’ the road and gaping as I drove past) looked more like inbred hillbillies from Deliverance than Maine farmers. As I passed the last of them, BOWERS ROADSIDE PRODUCE, a large mongrel raced out from behind several heaped baskets of tomatoes and chased me, drooling and snapping at the Sunliner’s rear tires. It looked like a misbegotten bulldog. Before I lost sight of it, I saw a scrawny woman in overalls approach it and begin beating it with a piece of board.

This was the town where Harry Dunning had grown up, and I hated it from the first. No concrete reason; I just did. The downtown shopping area, situated at the bottom of three steep hills, felt pitlike and claustrophobic. My cherry-red Ford seemed like the brightest thing on the street, a distracting (and unwelcome, judging by most of the glances it was attracting) splash of color amid the black Plymouths, brown Chevrolets, and grimy delivery trucks. Running through the center of town was a canal filled almost to the top of its moss-splotched concrete retaining walls with black water.

I found a parking space on Canal Street. A nickel in the meter bought me an hour’s worth of shopping time. I’d forgotten to buy a hat in Lisbon Falls, and two or three storefronts up I saw an outfit called Derry Dress & Everyday, Central Maine’s Most Debonair Haberdashery. I doubted there was much competition in that regard.

I had parked in front of the drugstore, and paused to examine the sign in the window. Somehow it sums up my feelings about Derry—the sour mistrust, the sense of barely withheld violence—better than anything else, although I was there for almost two months and (with the possible exception of a few people I happened to meet) disliked everything about it. The sign read:

SHOPLIFTING IS NOT A “KICK” OR A “GROOVE” OR A “GASSER”! SHOPLIFTING IS A CRIME, AND WE WILL PROSECUTE!

NORBERT KEENE

OWNER & MANAGER

And the thin, bespectacled man in the white smock who was looking out at me just about had to be Mr. Keene. His expression did not say Come on in, stranger, poke around and buy something, maybe have an ice cream soda. Those hard eyes and that turned-down mouth said Go away, there’s nothing here for the likes of you. Part of me thought I was making that up; most of me knew I wasn’t. As an experiment, I raised my hand in a hello gesture.

The man in the white smock did not raise his in return.

I realized that the canal I’d seen must run directly beneath this peculiar sunken downtown, and I was standing on top of it. I could feel hidden water in my feet, thrumming the sidewalk. It was a vaguely unpleasant feeling, as if this little piece of the world had gone soft.

A male mannequin wearing a tuxedo stood in the window of Derry Dress & Everyday. There was a monocle in one eye and a school pennant in one plaster hand. The pennant read DERRY TIGERS WILL SLAUGHTER BANGOR RAMS! Even though I was a fan of school spirit, this struck me as a little over the top. Beat the Bangor Rams, sure—but slaughter them?

Just a figure of speech, I told myself, and went in.

A clerk with a tape measure around his neck approached me. His duds were much nicer than mine, but the dim overhead bulbs made his complexion look yellow. I felt an absurd urge to ask, Can you sell me a nice summer straw hat, or should I just go fuck myself? Then he smiled, asked how he could help me, and everything seemed almost normal. He had the required item, and I took possession of it for a mere three dollars and seventy cents.

“A shame you’ll have such a short time to wear it before the weather turns cold,” he said.

I put the hat on and adjusted it in the mirror beside the counter. “Maybe we’ll get a good stretch of Indian summer.”

Gently and rather apologetically, he tilted the hat the other way. It was a matter of two inches or less, but I stopped looking like a clodhopper on a visit to the big city and started to look like… well… central Maine’s most debonair time-traveler. I thanked him.

“Not at all, Mr.—?”

“Amberson,” I said, and held out my hand. His grip was short, limp, and powdery with some sort of talcum. I restrained an urge to rub my hand on my sport coat after he released it.

“In Derry on business?”

“Yes. Are you from here yourself?”

“Lifelong resident,” he said, and sighed as if this were a burden. Based on my own first impressions, I guessed it might be. “What’s your game, Mr. Amberson, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Real estate. But while I’m here, I thought I’d look up an old Army buddy. His name is Dunning. I don’t recall his first name, we just used to call him Skip.” The Skip part was a fabrication, but it was true that I didn’t know the first name of Harry Dunning’s father. Harry had named his brothers and sister in his theme, but the man with the hammer had always been “my father” or “my dad.”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t help you there, sir.” Now he sounded distant. Business was done, and although the store was empty of other customers, he wanted me gone.

“Well, maybe you can with something else. What’s the best hotel in town?”

“That would be the Derry Town House. Just turn back to Kendukeag Avenue, take your right, and go up Up-Mile Hill to Main Street. Look for the carriage lamps out front.”

“Up-Mile Hill?”

“That’s what we call it, yes sir. If there’s nothing else, I have several alterations to make out back.”

When I left, the light had begun to drain from the sky. One thing I remember vividly about the time I spent in Derry during September and October of 1958 was how evening always seemed to come early.

One storefront down from Derry Dress & Everyday was Machen’s Sporting Goods, where THE FALL GUN SALE was under way. Inside, I saw two men sighting hunting rifles while an elderly clerk with a string tie (and a stringy neck to go with it) looked on approvingly. The other side of Canal appeared to be lined with workingmen’s bars, the kind where you could get a beer and a shot for fifty cents and all the music on the Rock-Ola would be C & W. There was the Happy Nook, the Wishing Well (which the habitus called the Bucket of Blood, I later learned), Two Brothers, the Golden Spoke, and the Sleepy Silver Dollar.

Standing outside the latter, a quartet of bluecollar gents was taking the afternoon air and staring at my convertible. They were equipped with mugs of beer and cigarettes. Their faces were shaded beneath flat caps of tweed and cotton. Their feet were clad in the big no-color workboots my 2011 students called shitkickers. Three of the four were wearing suspenders. They watched me with no expression on their faces. I thought for a moment of the mongrel that had chased my car, snapping and drooling, then crossed the street.

“Gents,” I said. “What’s on tap in there?”

For a moment none of them answered. Just when I thought none of them would, the one sans suspenders said, “Bud and Mick, what else? You from away?”

“Wisconsin,” I said.

“Bully for you,” one of them muttered.

“Late in the year for tourists,” another said.

“I’m in town on business, but I thought I might look up an old service buddy while I’m here.” No response to this, unless one of the men dropping his cigarette butt onto the sidewalk and then putting it out with a snot-loogie the size of a small mussel could be termed an answer. Nevertheless, I pushed on. “Skip Dunning’s his name. Do any of you fellows know a Dunning?”

“Should hope to smile n kiss a pig,” No Suspenders said.

“I beg pardon?”

He rolled his eyes and turned down the corners of his mouth, the out-of-patience expression a man gives to a stupid person with no hope of ever being smart. “Derry’s full of Dunnings. Check the damn phone book.” He started inside. His posse followed. No Suspenders opened the door for them, then turned back to me. “What’s that Ford got in it?” Gut for got. “V-8?”

“Y-block.” Hoping I sounded as if I knew what it meant.

“Pretty good goer?”

“Not bad.”

“Then maybe you should climb in and go ’er right on up the hill. They got some nice joints there. These bars are for millies.” No Suspenders assessed me in a cold way I came to expect in Derry, but never got used to. “You’d get stared at. P’raps more, when the ’leven-to-seven lets out from Striar’s and Boutillier’s.”

“Thanks. That’s very kind of you.”

The cold assessment continued. “You don’t know much, do you?” he remarked, then went inside.

I walked back to my convertible. On that gray street, with the smell of industrial smokes in the air and the afternoon bleeding away to evening, downtown Derry looked only marginally more charming than a dead hooker in a church pew. I got in, engaged the clutch, started the engine, and felt a strong urge to just drive away. Drive back to Lisbon Falls, climb up through the rabbit-hole, and tell Al Templeton to find another boy. Only he couldn’t, could he? He was out of strength and almost out of time. I was, as the New England saying goes, the trapper’s last shot.

I drove up to Main Street, saw the carriage lamps (they came on for the night just as I spotted them), and pulled into the turnaround in front of the Derry Town House. Five minutes later, I was checked in. My time in Derry had begun.

3

By the time I got my new possessions unpacked (some of the remaining cash went into my wallet, the rest into the lining of my new valise) I was good and hungry, but before going down to dinner, I checked the telephone book. What I saw caused my heart to sink. Mr. No Suspenders might not have been very welcoming, but he was right about Dunnings selling cheap in Derry and the four or five surrounding hamlets that were also included in the directory. There was almost a full page of them. It wasn’t that surprising, because in small towns certain names seem to sprout like dandelions on a lawn in June. In my last five years teaching English at LHS, I must have had two dozen Starbirds and Lemkes, some of them siblings, most of them first, second, or third cousins. They intermarried and made more.

Before leaving for the past I should have taken time to call Harry Dunning and ask him his father’s first name—it would have been so simple. I surely would have, if I hadn’t been so utterly and completely gobsmacked by what Al had shown me, and what he was asking me to do. But, I thought, how hard can it be? It shouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to find a family with kids named Troy, Arthur (alias Tugga), Ellen, and Harry.

With this thought to cheer me, I went down to the hotel restaurant and ordered a shore dinner, which came with clams and a lobster roughly the size of an outboard motor. I skipped dessert in favor of a beer in the bar. In the detective novels I read, bartenders were often excellent sources of information. Of course, if the one working the Town House stick was like the other people I’d met so far in this grim little burg, I wouldn’t get far.

He wasn’t. The man who left off his glass-polishing duties to serve me was young and stocky, with a cheery full moon of a face below his flattop haircut. “What can I get you, friend?”

The f-word sounded good to me, and I returned his smile with enthusiasm. “Miller Lite?”

He looked puzzled. “Never heard of that one, but I’ve got High Life.”

Of course he hadn’t heard of Miller Lite; it hadn’t been invented yet. “That would be fine. Guess I forgot I was on the East Coast there for a second.”

“Where you from?” He used a church key to whisk the top off a bottle, and set a frosted glass in front of me.

“Wisconsin, but I’ll be here for awhile.” Although we were alone, I lowered my voice. It seemed to inspire confidence. “Real estate stuff. Got to look around a little.”

He nodded respectfully and poured for me before I could. “Good luck to you. God knows there’s plenty for sale in these parts, and most of it going cheap. I’m getting out, myself. End of the month. Heading for a place with a little less edge to it.”

“It doesn’t seem all that welcoming,” I said, “but I thought that was just a Yankee thing. We’re friendlier in Wisconsin, and just to prove it, I’ll buy you a beer.”

“Never drink alcohol on the job, but I might have a Coke.”

“Go for it.”

“Thanks very much. It’s nice to have a gent on a slow night.” I watched as he made the Coke by pumping syrup into a glass, adding soda water, and then stirring. He took a sip and smacked his lips. “I like emsweet.”

Judging by the belly he was getting, I wasn’t surprised.

“That stuff about Yankees being stand-offy is bullshit, anyway,” he said. “I grew up in Fork Kent, and it’s the friendliest little town you’d ever want to visit. Why, when tourists get off the Boston and Maine up there, we just about kiss em hello. Went to bartending school there, then headed south to seek my fortune. This looked like a good place to start, and the pay’s not bad, but—” He looked around, saw no one, but still lowered his own voice. “You want the truth, Jackson? This town stinks.”

“I know what you mean. All those mills.”

“It’s a lot more than that. Look around. What do you see?”

I did as he asked. There was a fellow who looked like a salesman in the corner, drinking a whiskey sour, but that was it.

“Not much,” I said.

“That’s the way it is all through the week. The pay’s good because there’s no tips. The beerjoints downtown do a booming business, and we get some folks in on Friday and Saturday nights, but otherwise, that’s just about it. The carriage trade does its drinking at home, I guess.” He lowered his voice further. Soon he’d be whispering. “We had a bad summer here, my friend. Local folks keep it as quiet as they can—even the newspaper doesn’t play it up—but there was some nasty work. Murders. Half a dozen at least. Kids. Found one down in the Barrens just recently. Patrick Hockstetter, his name was. All decayed.”

“The Barrens?”

“It’s this swampy patch that runs right through the center of town. You probably saw it when you flew in.”

I’d been in a car, but I still knew what he was talking about.

The bartender’s eyes widened. “That’s not the real estate you’re interested in, is it?”

“Can’t say,” I told him. “If word got around, I’d be looking for a new job.”

“Understood, understood.” He drank half his Coke, then stifled a belch with the back of his hand. “But I hope it is. They ought to pave that goddam thing over. It’s nothing but stinkwater and mosquitoes. You’d be doing this town a favor. Sweeten it up a little bit.”

“Other kids found down there?” I asked. A serial child-murderer would explain a lot about the gloom I’d been feeling ever since I crossed the town line.

“Not that I know of, but people say that’s where some of the disappeared ones went, because that’s where all the big sewage pumping stations are. I’ve heard people say there are so many sewer pipes under Derry—most of em laid in the Great Depression—that nobody knows where all of em are. And you know how kids are.”

“Adventurous.”

He nodded emphatically. “Right with Eversharp. There’s people who say it was some vag who’s since moved on. Other folks say he was a local who dressed up like a clown to keep from being recognized. The first of the victims—this was last year, before I came—they found him at the intersection of Witcham and Jackson with his arm ripped clean off. Denbrough was his name, George Denbrough. Poor little tyke.” He gave me a meaningful look. “And he was found right next to one of those sewer drains. The ones that dump into the Barrens.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah.”

“I hear you using the past tense about all this stuff.”

I got ready to explain what I meant, but apparently this guy had been listening in English class as well as bartending school. “It seems to’ve stopped, knock on wood.” He rapped his knuckles on the bar. “Maybe whoever was doing it packed up and moved on. Or maybe the sonofabitch killed himself, sometimes they do that. That’d be good. But it wasn’t any homicidal maniac in a clown suit who killed the little Corcoran boy. The clown who did that murder was the kid’s own father, if you can believe it.”

That was close enough to why I was here to feel like fate rather than coincidence. I took a careful sip of my beer. “Is that so?”

“You bet it is. Dorsey Corcoran, that was the kid’s name. Only four years old, and you know what his goddam father did? Beat him to death with a recoilless hammer.”

A hammer. He did it with a hammer. I maintained my look of polite interest—at least I hope I did—but I felt gooseflesh go marching up my arms. “That’s awful.”