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 planned to go trick-or-treating as Princess Summerfall Winterspring. Unless I did something, that was never going to happen. There was a coffin waiting for her after a long and fruitless struggle for life. There was a coffin waiting for her mother, whose first name I still didn’t know. And for Troy. And for Arthur, known as Tugga.
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.
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. Dunning do in the Center Street Market? Bevvie-on-the-levee hadn’t said. He wasn’t the manager; a glance into the glassed-in booth just beyond the produce section showed a white-haired gentleman who could have claimed Ellen Dunning as a granddaughter, perhaps, but not as a daughter. And the sign on his desk said MR. CURRIE.
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 Kennebec Fruit, clustered around the meat counter. THE BUTCHERY, read the handmade wooden sign hanging down on
decorative chrome chains. HOME-STYLE CUTS. And, at the bottom: FRANK DUNNING, HEAD BUTCHER.
Sometimes life coughs up coincidences no writer of fiction would dare copy.
