by Stephen King
'Susan Day on a - son of a bitch!' He cast a dark and humorless look at the shop next door.
'What is she, President of the National Organization of Women, or something?'
'Ex-President and co-founder of Sisters in Arms. Author of My Mother's Shadow and Lilies of the Valley - that one's a study of battered women and why so many of them refuse to blow the whistle on the men that batter them. She won a Pulitzer Prize for it. Susie Day's one of the three or four most politically influential women in America right now, and she can really write as well as think. That clown knows I've got one of her petitions sitting right by my cash register.'
'What petitions?'
'We're trying to get her up here to speak,' Davenport said. 'You know the right-to-lifers tried to firebomb WomanCare last Christmas, right?'
Ralph cast his mind cautiously back into the black pit he'd been living in at the end of 1992 and said, 'Well, I remember that the cops caught some guy in the hospital's long-term parking lot with a can of gasoline, but I didn't know--'
'That was Charlie Pickering. He's a member of Daily Bread, one of the right-to-life groups that keep the pickets marching out there,' Davenport said. 'They put him up to it, too - take my word. This year they're not bothering with gasoline, though; they're going to try to get the City Council to change the zoning regulations and squeeze WomanCare right out of existence. They just might do it, too. You know Derry, Ralph - it's not exactly a hotbed of liberalism.'
'No,' Ralph said with a wan smile. 'It's never been that. And WomanCare is an abortion clinic, isn't it?'
Davenport gave him an out-of-patience look and jerked his head in the direction of Secondhand Rose. 'That's what assholes like him call it,' he said, 'only they like to use the word mill instead of clinic. They ignore all the other stuff WomanCare does.' To Ralph, Davenport had begun to sound a little like the TV announcer who hawked run-free pantyhose during the Sunday afternoon movie. 'They're involved in family counselling, they deal with spouse and child abuse, and they run a shelter for abused women over by the Newport town line. They have a rape crisis center at the in-town building by the hospital, and a twenty-four-hour hotline for women who've been raped or beaten. In short, they stand for all the things that make Marlboro Men like Dalton shit bullets.'
'But they do perform abortions,' Ralph said. 'That's what the pickets are about, right?'
There had been sign-carrying demonstrators in front of the low-slung, unobtrusive brick building that housed WomanCare for years, it seemed to Ralph. They always looked too pale to him, too intense, too skinny or too fat, too utterly sure that God was on their side. The signs they carried said things like THE UNBORN HAVE RIGHTS, TOO and LIFE, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CHOICE and that old standby, ABORTION IS MURDER! On several occasions women using the clinic - which was near Derry Home but not actually associated with it, Ralph thought - had been spat upon.
'Yeah, they perform abortions,' Ham said. 'You got a problem with that?'
Ralph thought of all the years he and Carolyn had tried to have a baby - years that had produced nothing but several false alarms and a single messy five-months miscarriage - and shrugged. Suddenly the day seemed too hot and his legs too tired. The thought of his return journey - the Up-Mile Hill leg of it in particular - hung in the back of his mind like something strung from a line of fish-hooks. 'Christ, I don't know,' he said. 'I just wish people didn't have to get so . . . so shrill.'
Davenport grunted, walked over to his neighbor's display window, and peered at the bogus wanted poster. While he was looking at it, a tall, pallid man with a goatee - the absolute antithesis of the Marlboro Man, Ralph would have said - materialized from the gloomy depths of Secondhand Rose like a vaudeville spook that has gotten a bit mouldy around the edges. He saw what Davenport was looking at, and a tiny disdainful smile dimpled the corners of his mouth. Ralph thought it was the kind of smile that could cost a man a couple of teeth, or a broken nose. Especially on a dog-hot day like this one.
Davenport pointed to the poster and shook his head violently.
Dalton's smile deepened. He flapped his hands at Davenport - Who gives a shit what you think? the gesture said - and then disappeared back into the depths of his store.
Davenport returned to Ralph, bright spots of color burning in his cheeks. 'That man's picture should be next to the word prick in the dictionary,' he said.
Exactly what he thinks about you, I imagine, Ralph thought, but of course did not say.
Davenport stood in front of the library cart full of paperbacks, hands stuffed into his pockets beneath his red change apron, brooding at the poster of (hey hey) Susan Day.
'Well,' Ralph said, 'I suppose I better--'
Davenport shook himself out of his brown study. 'Don't go yet,' he said. 'Sign my petition first, will you? Put a little shine back on my morning.'
Ralph shifted his feet uncomfortably. 'I usually don't get involved in confrontational stuff like--'
'Come on, Ralph,' Davenport said in a let's-be-reasonable voice. 'We're not talking confrontation here; we're talking about making sure that the fruits and nuts like the ones who run Daily Bread - and political Neanderthals like Dalton - don't shut down a really useful women's resource center. It's not like I'm asking you to endorse testing chemical warfare weapons on dolphins.'
'No,' Ralph said. 'I suppose not.'
'We're hoping to send five thousand signatures to Susan Day by the first of September. Probably won't do any good - Derry's really not much more than a wide place in the road, and she's probably booked into the next century anyhow - but it can't hurt to try.'
Ralph thought about telling Ham that the only petition he wanted to sign was one asking the gods of sleep to give him back the three hours or so of good rest a night they had stolen away, but then he took another look at the man's face and decided against it.
Carolyn would have signed his damned petition, he thought. She was no fan of abortion, but she was also no fan of men coming home after the bars close and mistaking their wives and kids for soccer balls.
True enough, but that wouldn't have been her main reason for signing; she would have done it on the off-chance that she might get to hear an authentic firebrand like Susan Day up close and in person. She would have done it out of the ingrained curiosity which had perhaps been her dominating characteristic - something so strong not even the brain tumor had been able to kill it. Two days before she died she had pulled the movie ticket he'd been using as a bookmark out of the paperback novel he'd left on her bedside table because she had wanted to know what he'd been to see. It had been A Few Good Men, as a matter of fact, and he was both surprised and dismayed to discover how much it hurt to remember that. Even now it hurt like hell.
'Sure,' he told Ham. 'I'll be happy to sign it.'
'My man!' Davenport exclaimed, and clapped him on the shoulder. The broody look was replaced by a grin, but Ralph didn't think the change much of an improvement. The grin was hard and not especially charming. 'Step into my den of iniquity!'
Ralph followed him into the tobacco-smelling shop, which did not seem particularly iniquitous at nine-thirty in the morning. Winston Smith fled before them, pausing just once to look back with his ancient yellow eyes. He's a fool and you're another, that parting stare might have said. Under the circumstances, it wasn't a conclusion Ralph felt much inclined to dispute. He tucked his newspapers under his arm, leaned over the ruled sheet on the counter beside the cash register, and signed the petition asking Susan Day to come to Derry and speak in defense of WomanCare.
3
He did better climbing Up-Mile Hill than he had expected, and crossed the X-shaped intersection of Witcham and Jackson thinking, There, that wasn't so bad, was--
He suddenly realized that his ears were ringing and his legs had begun to tremble beneath him. He stopped on the far side of Witcham and placed one hand against his shirt. He could feel his heart beating just beneath it, pumping away with a ragged fierceness that was scary. He heard a papery rustle
and saw an advertising supplement slip out of the Boston Globe and go seesawing down into the gutter. He started to bend over and get it, then stopped.
Not a good idea, Ralph - if you bend over, you're more than likely going to fall over. I suggest you leave that one for the sweeper.
'Yeah, okay, good idea,' he muttered, and straightened up. Black dots surged across his vision like a surreal flock of crows, and for a moment Ralph was almost positive he was going to wind up lying on top of the ad supplement no matter what he did or didn't do.
'Ralph? You all right?'
He looked up cautiously and saw Lois Chasse, who lived on the other side of Harris Avenue and half a block down from the house he shared with Bill McGovern. She was sitting on one of the benches just outside Strawford Park, probably waiting for the Canal Street bus to come along and take her downtown.
'Sure, fine,' he said, and made his legs move. He felt as if he were walking through syrup, but he thought he got over to the bench without looking too bad. He could not, however, suppress a grateful little gasp as he sat down next to her.
Lois Chasse had large dark eyes - the kind that had been called Spanish eyes when Ralph was a kid - and he bet they had danced through the minds of dozens of boys during Lois's high school years. They were still her best feature, but Ralph didn't much care for the worry he saw in them now. It was . . . what? A little too neighborly for comfort was the first thought to occur to him, but he wasn't sure it was the right thought.
'Fine,' Lois echoed.
'You betcha.' He took his handkerchief from his back pocket, checked to make sure it was clean, and then wiped his brow with it.
'I hope you don't mind me saying it, Ralph, but you don't look fine.'
Ralph did mind her saying it, but didn't know how to say so.
'You're pale, you're sweating, and you're a litterbug.'
Ralph looked at her, startled.
'Something fell out of your paper. I think it was an ad circular.'
'Did it?'
'You know perfectly well it did. Excuse me a second.'
She got up, crossed the sidewalk, bent (Ralph noticed that, while her hips were fairly broad, her legs were still admirably trim for a woman who had to be sixty-eight), and picked up the circular. She came back to the bench with it and sat down.
'There,'she said. 'Now you're not a litterbug anymore.'
He smiled in spite of himself. 'Thank you.'
'Don't mention it. I can use the Maxwell House coupon, also the Hamburger Helper and the Diet Coke. I've gotten so fat since Mr Chasse died.'
'You're not fat, Lois.'
'Thank you, Ralph, you're a perfect gentleman, but let's not change the subject. You had a dizzy spell, didn't you? In fact, you almost passed out.'
'I was just catching my breath,' he said stiffly, and turned to watch a bunch of kids playing scrub baseball just inside the park. They were going at it hard, laughing and grab-assing around. Ralph envied the efficiency of their air-conditioning systems.
'Catching your breath, were you?'
'Yes.'
'Just catching your breath.'
'Lois, you're starting to sound like a broken record.'
'Well, the broken record's going to tell you something, okay? You're nuts to be trying Up-Mile Hill in this heat. If you want to walk, why not go out the Extension, where it's flat, like you used to?'
'Because it makes me think of Carolyn,' he said, not liking the stiff, almost rude way that sounded but unable to help it.
'Oh shit,'she said, and touched his hand briefly. 'Sorry.'
'It's okay.'
'No, it's not. I should have known better. But the way you looked just now, that's not okay, either. You're not twenty anymore, Ralph. Not even forty. I don't mean you're not in good shape - anyone can see you're in great shape for a guy your age - but you ought to take better care of yourself. Carolyn would want you to take care of yourself.'
'I know,' he said, 'but I'm really--'
- all right, he meant to finish, and then he looked up from his hands, looked into her dark eyes again, and what he saw there made it impossible to finish for a moment. There was a weary sadness in her eyes . . . or was it loneliness? Maybe both. In any case, those were not the only things he saw in them. He also saw himself.
You're being silly, the eyes looking into his said. Maybe we both are. You're seventy and a widower, Ralph. I'm sixty-eight and a widow. How long are we going to sit on your porch in the evenings with Bill McGovern as the world's oldest chaperone? Not too long, I hope, because neither of us is exactly fresh off the showroom lot.
'Ralph?' Lois asked, suddenly concerned. 'Are you okay?'
'Yes,' he said, looking down at his hands again. 'Yes, sure.'
'You had a look on your face like . . . well, I don't know.'
Ralph wondered if maybe the combination of the heat and the walk up Up-Mile Hill had scrambled his brains a little. Because this was Lois, after all, whom McGovern always referred to (with a small, satiric lift of his left eyebrow) as 'Our Lois'. And okay, yes, she was still in good shape - trim legs, nice bust, and those remarkable eyes - and maybe he wouldn't mind taking her to bed, and maybe she wouldn't mind being taken. But what would there be after that? If she happened to see a ticket-stub poking out of the book he was reading, would she pull it out, too curious about what movie he'd been to see to think about how she was losing his place?
Ralph thought not. Lois's eyes were remarkable, and he had found his own eyes wandering down the V of her blouse more than once as the three of them sat on the front porch, drinking iced tea in the cool of the evening, but he had an idea that your little head could get your big head in trouble even at seventy. Getting old was no excuse to get careless.
He got to his feet, aware of Lois looking at him and making an extra effort not to stoop. 'Thanks for your concern,' he said. 'Want to walk an old feller up the street?'
'Thanks, but I'm going downtown. They've got some beautiful rose-colored yarn in at The Sewing Circle, and I'm thinking afghan. Meanwhile, I'll just wait for the bus and gloat over my coupons.'
Ralph grinned. 'You do that.' He glanced over at the kids on the scrub ballfield. As he watched, a boy with an extravagant mop of red hair broke from third, threw himself down in a headfirst slide . . . and fetched up against one of the catcher's shinguards with an audible thonk. Ralph winced, envisioning ambulances with flashing lights and screaming sirens, but the carrot-top bounced to his feet laughing.
'Missed the tag, you hoser!' he shouted.
'The hell I did!' the catcher responded indignantly, but then he began to laugh, too.
'Ever wish you were that age again, Ralph?' Lois asked.
He thought it over. 'Sometimes,' he said. 'Mostly it just looks too strenuous. Come on over tonight, Lois - sit with us awhile.'
'I might just do that,' she said, and Ralph started up Harris Avenue, feeling the weight of her remarkable eyes on him and trying hard to keep his back straight. He thought he managed fairly well, but it was hard work. He had never felt so tired in his life.
CHAPTER TWO
* * *
1
Ralph made the appointment to see Dr Litchfield less than an hour after his conversation with Lois on the park bench; the receptionist with the cool, sexy voice told him she could fit him in next Tuesday morning at ten, if that was okay, and Ralph told her that was fine as paint. Then he hung up, went into the living room, sat in the wing-chair that overlooked Harris Avenue, and thought about how Dr Litchfield had initially treated his wife's brain tumor with Tylenol-3 and pamphlets explaining various relaxation techniques. From there he moved on to the look he'd seen in Litchfield's eyes after the magnetic resonance imaging tests had confirmed the CAT scan's bad news . . . that look of guilt and unease.
Across the street, a bunch of kids who would soon be back in school came out of the Red Apple armed with candy bars and Slurpies. As Ralph watched them mount their bikes and tear away into the bright eleven o'clock heat
, he thought what he always did when the memory of Dr Litchfield's eyes surfaced: that it was most likely a false memory.
The thing is, old buddy, you wanted Litchfield to look uneasy . . . but even more than that, you wanted him to look guilty.
Quite possibly true, quite possibly Carl Litchfield was a peach of a guy and a helluva doctor, but Ralph still found himself calling Litchfield's office again half an hour later. He told the receptionist with the sexy voice that he'd just rechecked his calendar and discovered next Tuesday at ten wasn't so fine after all. He'd made an appointment with the podiatrist for that day and forgotten all about it.
'My memory's not what it used to be,' Ralph told her.
The receptionist suggested next Thursday at two.
Ralph countered by promising to call back.
Liar, liar, pants on fire, he thought as he hung up the phone, walked slowly back to the wing-chair, and lowered himself into it. You're done with him, aren't you?
He supposed he was. Not that Dr Litchfield was apt to lose any sleep over it; if he thought about Ralph at all, it would be as one less old geezer to fart in his face during the prostate exam.
All right, so what are you going to do about the insomnia, Ralph?
'Sit quiet for half an hour before bedtime and listen to classical music,' he said out loud. 'Buy some Depends for those troublesome calls of nature.'
He startled himself by laughing at the image. The laughter had a hysterical edge he didn't much care for - it was damned creepy, as a matter of fact - but it was still a little while before he could make himself stop.
Yet he supposed he would try Hamilton Davenport's suggestion (although he would skip the diapers, thank you), as he had tried most of the folk remedies well-meaning people had passed on to him. This made him think of his first bona fide folk remedy, and that raised another grin.
It had been McGovern's idea. He had been sitting on the porch one evening when Ralph came back from the Red Apple with some noodles and spaghetti sauce, had taken one look at his upstairs neighbor and made a tsk-tsk sound, shaking his head dolefully.
'What's that supposed to mean?' Ralph asked, taking the seat next to him. A little farther down the street, a little girl in jeans and an oversized white tee-shirt had been skipping rope and chanting in the growing gloom.