11/22/63: A Novel (25 page)

But when Frank Dunning arrived tonight, I meant to be there.
Even if I was still heaving and shitting graywater, I meant to be there. Even if it killed me, I meant to be there.

Mr. Norbert Keene, proprietor of the Center Street Drug, was behind the counter when I came in on that Friday afternoon. The wooden paddle-fan over his head lifted what remained of his hair in a wavery dance: cobwebs in a summer breeze. Just looking at that made my abused stomach give another warning lurch. He was skinny inside his white cotton smock—almost emaciated—and when he saw me coming, his pale lips creased in a smile.

“You look a little under the weather, my friend.”

“Kaopectate,” I said in a hoarse voice that didn’t sound like my own. “Do you have it?” Wondering if it had even been invented yet.

“Are we suffering a little touch of the bug?” The overhead light caught in the lenses of his small rimless spectacles and skated around when he moved his head.
Like butter across a skillet,
I thought, and at that my stomach gave another lunge. “It’s been going around town. You’re in for a nasty twenty-four hours, I’m afraid. Probably a germ, but you may have used a public convenience and forgotten to wash your hands. So many people are lazy about th—”

“Do you have Kaopectate or not?”

“Of course. Second aisle.”

“Continence pants—what about those?”

The thin-lipped grin spread out. Continence pants are funny, of course they are. Unless, of course, you’re the one who needs them. “Fifth aisle. Although if you stay close to home, you won’t need them. Based on your pallor, sir . . . and the way you’re sweating . . . it might be wiser to do that.”

“Thanks,” I said, and imagined socking him square in the mouth and knocking his dentures down his throat.
Suck on a little Polident, pal.

I shopped slowly, not wanting to joggle my liquefied guts any more than necessary. Got the Kaopectate (Large Economy Size? check), then the continence pants (Adult Large? check). The pants were in Ostomy Supplies, between the enema bags and brooding yellow coils of plastic hose whose function I didn’t want to know about. There were also adult diapers, but at those I balked. If necessary, I would stuff the continence pants with dish towels. This struck me as funny, and despite my misery I had to struggle not to laugh. Laughing in my current delicate state might bring on disaster.

As if sensing my distress, the skeletal druggist rang up my items in slow motion. I paid him, holding out a five-dollar bill with a hand that was shaking appreciably.

“Anything else?”

“Just one thing. I’m miserable, you can see I’m miserable, so why the hell are you grinning at me?”

Mr. Keene took a step backward, the smile falling from his lips. “I assure you, I wasn’t
grinning.
I certainly hope you feel better.”

My bowels cramped. I staggered a little, grabbing the paper bag with my stuff inside it and holding onto the counter with my free hand. “Do you have a bathroom?”

The smile reappeared. “Not for customers, I’m afraid. Why not try one of the . . . the establishments across the street?”

“You’re quite the bastard, aren’t you? The perfect goddam Derry citizen.”

He stiffened, then turned away and stalked into the nether regions where his pills, powders, and syrups were kept.

I walked slowly past the soda fountain and out the door. I felt like a man made of glass. The day was cool, no more than forty-five degrees, but the sun felt hot on my skin. And sticky. My bowels cramped again. I stood stock-still for a moment with my head down, one foot on the sidewalk and one in the gutter. The cramp passed. I crossed the street without looking for traffic, and someone honked at me. I restrained myself from flipping the bird at the honker, but only because I had enough trouble. I couldn’t risk getting into a fight; I was in one already.

The cramp struck again, a double knife to the lower gut. I broke into a run. The Sleepy Silver Dollar was closest, so that was the door I jerked open, hustling my unhappy body into semidarkness and the yeasty smell of beer. On the jukebox, Conway Twitty was moaning that it was only make-believe. I wished he were right.

The place was empty except for one patron sitting at an empty table, looking at me with startled eyes, and the bartender leaning at the end of the stick, doing the crossword puzzle in the daily paper. He looked up at me.

“Bathroom,” I said. “Quick.”

He pointed to the back, and I sprinted toward the doors marked BUOYS and GULLS. I straight-armed BUOYS like a fullback looking for open field to run in. The place stank of shit, cigarette smoke, and eye-watering chlorine. The single toilet stall had no door, which was probably good. I tore my pants open like Superman late for a bank robbery, turned, and dropped.

Just in time.

When the latest throe had passed, I took the giant bottle of Kaopectate out of the paper bag and chugged three long swallows. My stomach heaved. I fought it back into place. When I was sure the first dose was going to stay down, I slugged another one, belched, and slowly screwed the cap back into place. On the wall to my left, someone had drawn a penis and testicles. The testicles were split open, and blood was gushing from them. Below this charming image, the artist had written: HENRY CASTONGUAY NEXT TIME YOU FUCK MY WIFE THIS IS WHAT YOU GET.

I closed my eyes, and when I did, I saw the startled patron who had watched my charge to the bathroom. But was he a patron? There had been nothing on his table; he had just been sitting there. With my eyes closed, I could see that face clearly. It was one I knew.

When I went back into the bar, Ferlin Husky had replaced Conway Twitty, and No Suspenders was gone. I went to the bartender and said, “There was a guy sitting over there when I came in. Who was it?”

He looked up from his puzzle. “I didn’t see no one.”

I took out my wallet, removed a five, and put it on the bar beside a Narragansett coaster. “The name.”

He held a brief silent dialogue with himself, glanced at the tip jar beside the one holding pickled eggs, saw nothing inside but one lonely dime, and made the five disappear. “That was Bill Turcotte.”

The name meant nothing to me. The empty table might mean nothing, either, but on the other hand . . .

I put Honest Abe’s twin brother on the bar. “Did he come in here to watch me?” If the answer to that was yes, it meant he had been following me. Maybe not just today, either. But why?

The bartender pushed the five back. “All I know is what he usually comes in for is beer and a lot of it.”

“Then why did he leave without having one?”

“Maybe he looked in his wallet and didn’t see nothing but his liberry card. Do I look like fuckin Bridey Murphy? Now that you’ve stunk up my bathroom, why don’t you either order something or leave?”

“It was stinking just fine before I got there, my friend.”

Not much of an exit line, but the best I could do under the circumstances. I went out and stood on the sidewalk, looking for Turcotte. There was no sign of him, but Norbert Keene was standing in the window of his drugstore, hands clasped behind his back, watching me. His smile was gone.

At five-twenty that afternoon, I parked my Sunliner in the lot adjacent to the Witcham Street Baptist Church. It had plenty of company; according to the signboard, there was a 5:00
P.M.
AA meeting at this particular church. In the Ford’s trunk were all the possessions I’d collected during my seven weeks as a resident of what I had come to think of as the Peculiar Little City. The
only indispensable items were in the Lord Buxton briefcase Al had given me: his notes, my notes, and the remaining cash. Thank God I’d kept most of it in portable form.

Beside me on the seat was a paper bag containing my bottle of Kaopectate—now three-quarters empty—and the continence pants. Thankfully, I didn’t think I was going to need those. My stomach and bowels seemed to have settled, and the shakes had left my hands. There were half a dozen Payday candybars in the glove compartment lying on top of my Police Special. I added these items to the bag. Later, when I was in position between the garage and the hedge at 202 Wyemore Lane, I’d load the gun and stuff it into my belt. Like a cheap gunsel in the kind of B pictures that played The Strand.

There was one other item in the glove compartment: an issue of
TV Guide
with Fred Astaire and Barrie Chase on the cover. For probably the dozenth time since I’d bought the magazine at the newsstand on upper Main Street, I turned to the Friday listings.

I put it into the bag with the other stuff—mostly for good luck—then got out, locked my car, and set out for Wyemore Lane. I passed a few mommies and daddies trick-or-treating with children too young to be out on their own. Carved pumpkins grinned cheerfully from many stoops, and a couple of stuffed straw-hat-wearing dummies stared at me blankly.

I walked down Wyemore Lane in the middle of the sidewalk as if I had every right to be there. When a father approached, holding the hand of a little girl wearing dangly gypsy earrings, mom’s bright red lipstick, and big black plastic ears clapped over a curly-haired wig, I tipped my hat to Dad and bent down to the child, who was carrying a paper bag of her own.

“Who are
you,
honey?”

“Annette Foonijello,” she said. “She’s the
prettiest
Mouseketeer.”

“And you’re just as pretty,” I told her. “Now what do you say?”

She looked puzzled, so her father leaned over and whispered in her ear. She brightened into a smile. “Trigger-treat!”

“Right,” I said. “But no tricks tonight.” Except for the one I hoped to play on the man with the hammer.

I took a Payday from my bag (I had to paw past the gun to get it), and held it out. She opened her bag and I dropped it in. I was just a guy on the street, a perfect stranger in a town that had been beset by terrible crimes not long ago, but I saw the same childlike trust on the faces of both father and daughter. The days of candy doctored with LSD were far in the future—as were those of DO NOT USE IF SEAL IS BROKEN.

The father whispered again.

“Thank you, mister,” Annette Foonijello said.

“Very welcome.” I winked to Dad. “You two have a great night.”

“She’ll probably have a bellyache tomorrow,” Dad said, but he smiled. “Come on, Punkin.”

“I’m
Annette
!” she said.

“Sorry, sorry. Come on, Annette.” He gave me a grin, tipped his own hat, and they were off again, in search of plunder.

I continued on to 202, not too fast. I would have whistled if my lips hadn’t been so dry. At the driveway I risked one quick look around. I saw a few trick-or-treaters on the other side of the street, but no one who was paying the slightest attention to me. Excellent. I walked briskly up the driveway. Once I was behind the house, I breathed a sigh of relief so deep it seemed to come all the way from my heels. I took up my position in the far right corner of the backyard, safely hidden between the garage and the hedge. Or so I thought.

I peered into the Dunnings’ backyard. The bikes were gone. Most of the toys were still there—a child’s bow and some arrows with suction-cup tips, a baseball bat with its handle wrapped in friction tape, a green Hula Hoop—but the Daisy air rifle was missing.
Harry had taken it inside. He meant to bring it when he went out trick-or-treating as Buffalo Bob.

Had Tugga given him shit about that yet? Had his mother already said
you take it if you want to, it’s not a real gun
? If not, they would. Their lines had already been written. My stomach cramped, this time not from the twenty-four-hour bug that was going around, but because total realization—the kind you feel in your gut—had finally arrived in all its bald-ass glory. This was actually going to happen. In fact, it was happening already. The show had started.

I glanced at my watch. It seemed to me that I’d left the car in the church parking lot an hour ago, but it was only quarter to six. In the Dunning house, the family would be sitting down to supper . . . although if I knew kids, the younger ones would be too excited to eat much, and Ellen would already be wearing her Princess Summerfall Winterspring outfit. She’d probably jumped into it as soon as she got home from school, and would be driving her mother crazy with requests to help her put on her warpaint.

I sat down with my back propped against the rear wall of the garage, rummaged in my bag, and brought out a Payday. I held it up and considered poor old J. Alfred Prufrock. I wasn’t so different, although it was a candybar I wasn’t sure I dared to eat. On the other hand, I had a lot to do in the next three hours or so, and my stomach was a rumbling hollow.

Fuck it,
I thought, and unwrapped the candybar. It was wonderful—sweet, salty, and chewy. I gobbled most of it in two bites. I was getting ready to pop the rest of it into my mouth (and wondering why in God’s name I hadn’t packed a sandwich and a bottle of Coke), when I saw movement from the corner of my left eye. I started to turn, reaching into the bag for the gun at the same time, but I was too late. Something cold and sharp pricked the hollow of my left temple.

“Take your hand out of that bag.”

I knew the voice at once.
Should hope to smile n kiss a pig,
its owner had said when I asked if he or any of his friends knew a
fellow named Dunning. He had said Derry was full of Dunnings, and I verified that for myself not long after, but he’d had a good idea which one I was after right from the get-go, hadn’t he? And this was the proof.

The point of the blade dug a little deeper, and I felt a trickle of blood run down the side of my face. It was warm against my chilly skin. Almost hot.

“Take it out
now,
chum. I think I know what’s in there, and if your hand don’t come out empty, your Halloween treat’s gonna be eighteen inches of Jap steel. This thing’s plenty sharp. It’ll pop right out the other side of your head.”