Chapter 10 #3
I had come back to Derry to knock Frank Dunning’s house of cards down, but until then I had to protect it.
7
I bade Chaz Frati goodnight and went back to my apartment.
My bottle of Kaopectate was in the bathroom medicine cabinet, and my new souvenir pillow with the Standpipe embroidered on it in gold thread was on the kitchen table.
I took a knife from the silverware drawer and carefully cut the pillow along a diagonal.
I put my revolver inside, shoving it deep into the stuffing.
I wasn’t sure I’d sleep, but I did, and soundly.
Do your best and let God do the rest is just one of many sayings Christy dragged back from her AA meetings.
I don’t know if there’s a God or not—for Jake Epping, the jury’s still out on that one—but when I went to bed that night, I was pretty sure I’d done my best. All I could do now was get some sleep and hope my best was enough.
8
There was no stomach flu. This time I awoke at first light with the most paralyzing headache of my life.
A migraine, I supposed. I didn’t know for sure, because I’d never had one.
Looking into even dim light produced a sick, rolling thud from the nape of my neck to the base of my sinuses. My eyes gushed senseless tears.
I got up (even that hurt), put on a pair of cheap sunglasses I’d picked up on my trip north to Derry, and took five aspirin.
They helped just enough for me to be able to get dressed and into my overcoat.
Which I would need; the morning was chilly and gray, threatening rain.
In a way, that was a plus. I’m not sure I could have survived in sunlight.
I needed a shave, but skipped it; I thought standing under a bright light—one doubled in the bathroom mirror—might cause my brains simply to disintegrate.
I couldn’t imagine how I was going to get through this day, so I didn’t try.
One step at a time, I told myself as I walked slowly down the stairs.
I was clutching the railing with one hand and my souvenir pillow with the other.
I must have looked like an overgrown child with a teddy bear. One step at a ti—
The banister snapped.
For a moment I tilted forward, head thudding, hands waving wildly in the air.
I dropped the pillow (the gun inside clunked) and clawed at the wall above my head.
In the last second before my tilt would have become a bone-breaking tumble, my fingers clutched one of the old-fashioned wall sconces screwed into the plaster.
It pulled free, but the electrical wire held just long enough for me to regain my balance.
I sat down on the steps with my throbbing head on my knees.
The pain pulsed in sync with the jackhammer beat of my heart.
My watering eyes felt too big for their sockets.
I could tell you I wanted to creep back to my apartment and give it all up, but that wouldn’t be the truth.
The truth was I wanted to die right there on the stairs and have done with it.
Are there people who have such headaches not just occasionally but frequently? If so, God help them.
There was only one thing that could get me back on my feet, and I forced my aching brains not just to think of it but see it: Tugga Dunning’s face suddenly obliterated as he crawled toward me. His hair and brains leaping into the air.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, yeah, okay.”
I picked up the souvenir pillow and tottered the rest of the way down the stairs.
I emerged into an overcast day that seemed as bright as a Sahara afternoon.
I felt for my keys. They weren’t there. What I found where they should have been was a good-sized hole in my right front pants pocket.
It hadn’t been there the night before, I was almost sure of that.
I turned around in small, jerky steps. The keys were lying on the stoop in a litter of spilled change.
I bent down, wincing as a lead weight slid forward inside my head.
I picked up the keys and made my way to the Sunliner.
And when I tried the ignition, my previously reliable Ford refused to start.
There was a click from the solenoid. That was all.
I had prepared for this eventuality; what I hadn’t prepared for was having to drag my poisoned head up the stairs again. Never in my life had I wished so fervently for my Nokia. With it, I could have called from behind the wheel, then just sat quietly with my eyes closed until Randy Baker came.
Somehow, I got back up the stairs, past the broken banister and the light fixture that dangled against the torn plaster like a dead head on a broken neck. There was no answer at the service station—it was early and it was Sunday—so I tried Baker’s home number.
He’s probably dead, I thought. Had a heart attack in the middle of the night. Killed by the obdurate past, with Jake Epping as the unindicted co-conspirator.
My mechanic wasn’t dead. He answered on the second ring, voice sleepy, and when I told him my car wouldn’t start, he asked the logical question: “How’d you know yesterday?”
“I’m a good guesser,” I said. “Get here as soon as you can, okay? There’ll be another twenty in it for you, if you can get it going.”
9
When Baker replaced the battery cable that had mysteriously come loose in the night (maybe at the same moment that hole was appearing in the pocket of my slacks) and the Sunliner still wouldn’t start, he checked the plugs and found two that were badly corroded.
He had extras in his large green toolkit, and when they were in place, my chariot roared to life.
“It’s probably not my business, but the only place you should be going is back to bed. Or to a doctor. You’re as pale as a ghost.”
“It’s just a migraine. I’ll be okay. Let’s look in the trunk. I want to check the spare.”
We checked the spare. Flat.
I followed him to the Texaco through what had become a light, steady drizzle.
The cars we passed had their headlights on, and even with the sunglasses, each pair seemed to bore holes through my brain.
Baker unlocked the service bay and tried to blow up my spare.
No go. It hissed air from half a dozen cracks almost as fine as pores in human skin.
“Huh,” he said. “Never seen that before. Tire must be defective.”
“Put another one on the rim,” I said.
I went around to the back of the station while he did it. I couldn’t stand the sound of the compressor. I leaned against the cinderblock and turned my face up, letting cold mist fall on my hot skin. One step at a time, I told myself. One step at a time.
When I tried to pay Randy Baker for the tire, he shook his head. “You already give me half a week’s pay. I’d be a dog to take more. I’m just worried you’ll run off the road, or something. Is it really that important?”
“Sick relative.”
“You’re sick yourself, man.”
I couldn’t deny it.
10
I drove out of town on Route 7, slowing to look both ways at every intersection whether I had the right of way or not.
This turned out to be an excellent idea, because a fully loaded gravel truck blew through a red at the intersection of 7 and the Old Derry Road.
If I hadn’t come to an almost complete stop in spite of a green light, my Ford would have been demolished.
With me turned to hamburger inside it. I laid on my horn in spite of the pain in my head, but the driver paid no attention.
He looked like a zombie behind the wheel.
I’ll never be able to do this, I thought. But if I couldn’t stop Frank Dunning, how could I even hope to stop Oswald? Why go to Texas at all?
That wasn’t what kept me moving, though. It was the thought of Tugga that did that. Not to mention the other three kids. I had saved them once. If I didn’t save them again, how could I escape the sure knowledge that I had participated in murdering them, just by triggering another reset?
I approached the Derry Drive-In, and turned into the gravel drive leading to the shuttered box office.
The drive was lined with decorative fir trees.
I parked behind them, turned off the engine, and tried to get out of the car.
I couldn’t. The door wouldn’t open. I slammed my shoulder against it a couple of times, and when it still wouldn’t open, I saw the lock was pushed down even though this was long before the era of self-locking cars, and I hadn’t pushed it down myself.
I pulled on it. It wouldn’t come up. I wiggled it.
It wouldn’t come up. I unrolled my window, leaned out, and managed to use my key on the door lock below the chrome thumb-button on the outside handle.
This time the lock popped up. I got out, then reached in for the souvenir pillow.
Resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act, I had told Al in my best school-lecture voice, and it was true. But I’d had no idea of the personal cost. Now I did.
I walked slowly up Route 7, my collar raised against the rain and my hat pulled low over my ears.
When cars came—they were infrequent—I faded back into the trees that lined my side of the road.
I think that once or twice I put my hands on the sides of my head to make sure it wasn’t swelling. It felt like it was.
At last, the trees pulled back. They were replaced by a rock wall.
Beyond the wall were manicured rolling hills dotted with headstones and monuments.
I had come to Longview Cemetery. I breasted a hill, and there was the flower stand on the other side of the road.
It was shuttered and dark. Weekends would ordinarily be busy visiting-the-dead-relatives days, but in weather like this, business would be slow, and I supposed the old lady who ran the place was sleeping in a little bit.
She would open later, though. I had seen that for myself.