11/22/63: A Novel

by Stephen King

  The following evening I was once more at The Strand, pretending to study the poster for Thunder Road (Robert Mitchum Roars Down the Hottest Highway on Earth!), mostly because I had nowhere else to go; Halloween was still six weeks away, and I seemed to have entered the time-killing phase of our program. But this time instead of crossing to the bus stop, Frank Dunning walked down to the three-way intersection of Center, Kansas, and Witcham and stood there as if undecided. He was once more looking reet in dark slacks, white shirt, blue tie, and a sport coat in a light gray windowpane check. His hat was cocked back on his head. For a moment I thought he was going to head for the movies and check out the hottest highway on earth, in which case I would stroll casually away toward Canal Street. But he turned left, onto Witcham. I could hear him whistling. He was a good whistler.

  There was no need to follow him; he wasn’t going to commit any hammer murders on the nineteenth of September. But I was curious, and I had nothing better to do. He went into a bar and grill called The Lamplighter, not as upper-crust as the one at the Town House, but nowhere near as grotty as the ones on Canal. In every small city there are one or two borderland joints where bluecollar and whitecollar workers meet as equals, and this looked like that kind of place. Usually the menu features some local delicacy that makes outsiders scratch their head in puzzlement. The Lamplighter’s specialty seemed to be something called Fried Lobster Pickin’s.

  I passed the wide front windows, lounging rather than walking, and saw Dunning greet his way across the room. He shook hands; he patted cheeks; he took one man’s hat and scaled it to a guy standing at the Bowl Mor machine, who caught it deftly and to general hilarity. A nice man. Always joking around. Laugh-and-the-whole-world-laughs-with-you type of thing.

  I saw him sit down at a table close to the Bowl Mor and almost walked on. But I was thirsty. A beer would go down fine just about now, and The Lamplighter’s bar was all the way across a crowded room from the large table where Dunning was sitting with the all-male group he had joined. He wouldn’t see me, but I could keep an eye on him in the mirror. Not that I was apt to see anything too startling.

  Besides, if I was going to be here for another six weeks, it was time to start belonging here. So I turned around and entered the sounds of cheerful voices, slightly inebriated laughter, and Dean Martin singing “That’s Amore.” Waitresses circulated with steins of beer and heaped platters of what had to be Fried Lobster Pickin’s. And there were rising rafters of blue smoke, of course.

  In 1958, there’s always smoke.

  8

  “See you glancin at that table back there,” a voice said at my elbow. I had been at The Lamplighter long enough to have ordered my second beer and a “junior platter” of Lobster Pickin’s. I figured if I didn’t at least try them, I’d always wonder.

  I looked around and saw a small man with slicked-back hair, a round face, and lively black eyes. He looked like a cheerful chipmunk. He grinned at me and stuck out a child-sized hand. On his forearm, a bare-breasted mermaid flapped her flippy tail and winked one eye. “Charles Frati. But you can call me Chaz. Everyone does.”

  I shook. “George Amberson, but you can call me George. Everyone does that, too.”

  He laughed. So did I. It’s considered bad form to laugh at your own jokes (especially when they’re teensy ones), but some people are so engaging they never have to laugh alone. Chaz Frati was one of those. The waitress brought him a beer, and he raised it. “Here’s to you, George.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said, and clicked the rim of my glass against his.

  “Anybody you know?” he asked, looking at the big rear table in the backbar mirror.

  “Nope.” I wiped foam from my upper lip. “They just seem to be having more fun than anybody else in the place, that’s all.”

  Chaz smiled. “That’s Tony Tracker’s table. Might as well have his name engraved on it. Tony and his brother Phil own a freight-hauling company. They also own more acres in this town—and the towns around it—than Carter has liver pills. Phil don’t show up here much, he’s mostly on the road, but Tony don’t miss many Friday or Saturday nights. Has lots of friends, too. They always have a good time, but nobody makes a party go like Frankie Dunning. He’s the guy tellin jokes. Everybody likes old Tones, but they love Frankie.”

  “You sound like you know them all.”

  “For years. Know most of the people in Derry, but I don’t know you.”

  “That’s because I just got here. I’m in real estate.”

  “Business real estate, I take it.”

  “You take it right.” The waitress deposited my Lobster Pickin’s and hustled away. The heap on the platter looked like roadkill, but it smelled terrific and tasted better. Probably a billion grams of cholesterol in every bite, but in 1958, nobody worries about that, which is restful. “Help me with this,” I said.

  “Nope, they’re all yours. You out of Boston? New York?”

  I shrugged and he laughed.

  “Playin it cagey, huh? Don’t blame you, cuz. Loose lips sink ships. But I have a pretty good idea what you’re up to.”

  I paused with a forkful of Lobster Pickin’s halfway to my mouth. It was warm in The Lamplighter, but I felt suddenly chilly. “Is that so?”

  He leaned close. I could smell Vitalis on his slicked-back hair and Sen-Sen on his breath. “If I said ‘possible mall site,’ would that be a bingo?”

  I felt a gust of relief. The idea that I was in Derry looking for a place to put a shopping mall had never crossed my mind, but it was a good one. I dropped Chaz Frati a wink. “Can’t say.”

  “No, no, course you couldn’t. Business is as business does, I always say. We’ll drop the subject. But if you’d ever consider letting one of the local yokels in on a good thing, I’d love to listen. And just to show you that my heart is in the right place, I’ll give you a little tip. If you haven’t checked out the old Kitchener Ironworks yet, you ought to. Perfect spot. And malls? Do you know what malls are, my son?”

  “The wave of the future,” I said.

  He pointed a finger at me like a gun and winked. I laughed again, just couldn’t help it. Part of it was the simple relief of finding out that not every grown-up in Derry had forgotten how to be friendly to a stranger. “Hole in one.”

  “And who owns the land the old Kitchener Ironworks sits on, Chaz? The Tracker brothers, I suppose?”

  “I said they own most of the land around here, not all of it.” He looked down at the mermaid. “Milly, should I tell George who owns that prime business-zoned real estate only two miles from the center of this metropolis?”

  Milly wagged her scaly tail and jiggled her teacup breasts. Chaz Frati didn’t clench his hand into a fist to make this happen; the muscles in his forearm seemed to move on their own. It was a good trick. I wondered if he also pulled rabbits out of hats.

  “All right, dear.” He looked up at me again. “Actually, that would be yours truly. I buy the best and let the Tracker brothers have the rest. Business is as business does. May I give you my card, George?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He did. The card simply said CHARLES “CHAZ” FRATI BUY SELL TRADE. I tucked it into my shirt pocket.

  “If you know all those people and they know you, why aren’t you over there instead of sitting at the bar with the new kid on the block?” I asked.

  He looked surprised, then amused all over again. “Was you born in a trunk and then threw off a train, cuz?”

  “Just new in town. Haven’t learned the ropes. Don’t hold it against me.”

  “Never would. They do business with me because I own half this town’s motor courts, both downtown movie theaters and the drive-in, one of the banks, and all of the pawnshops in eastern and central Maine. But they don’t eat with me or drink with me or invite me into their homes or their country club because I’m a member of the Tribe.”

  “You lost me.”

  “I’m a Jew, cuz.”

  He saw my expression and
grinned. “You didn’t know. Even when I wouldn’t eat any of your lobster, you didn’t know. I’m touched.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out why it should make a difference,” I said.

  He laughed as though this were the best joke he’d heard all year. “Then you was born under a cabbage leaf instead of in a trunk.”

  In the mirror, Frank Dunning was talking. Tony Tracker and his friends were listening with big grins on their faces. When they exploded into bull roars of laughter, I wondered if it had been the one about the three jigs stuck in the elevator or maybe something even more amusing and satiric—three Yids on a golf course, maybe.

  Chaz saw me looking. “Frank knows how to make a party go, all right. You know where he works? No, you’re new in town, I forgot. Center Street Market. He’s the head butcher. Also half-owner, although he don’t advertise it. You know what? He’s half the reason that place stands up and makes a profit. Draws the ladies like bees to honey.”

  “Does he, now?”

  “Yep, and the men like him, too. That’s not always the case. Fellas don’t always like a ladies’ man.”

  That made me think of my ex-wife’s fierce Johnny Depp fixation.

  “But it’s not like the old days when he’d drink with em until closin, then play poker with em down at the freight depot until the crack of dawn. These days he’ll have one beer—maybe two—and then he’s out the door. You watch.”

  It was a behavior pattern I knew about firsthand from Christy’s sporadic efforts to control her booze intake rather than stop altogether. It would work for awhile, but sooner or later she always went off the deep end.

  “Drinking problem?” I asked.

  “Don’t know about that, but he’s sure got a temper problem.” He looked down at the tattoo on his forearm. “Milly, you ever notice how many funny fellas have got a mean streak?”

  Milly flipped her tail. Chaz looked at me solemnly. “See? The women always know.” He snuck a Lobster Pickin’ and shot his eyes comically from side to side. He was a very amusing fellow, and it never crossed my mind that he was anything other than what he claimed to be. But, as Chaz himself had implied, I was a bit on the naïve side. Certainly for Derry. “Don’t tell Rabbi Snoresalot.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  By the way the men at the Tracker table were leaning toward Frank, he had launched into another joke. He was the kind of man who talked a lot with his hands. They were big hands. It was easy to imagine one of them holding the haft of a Craftsman hammer.

  “He ripped and roared something terrible back in high school,” Chaz said. “You’re looking at a guy who knows, because I went to the old County Consolidated with him. But I mostly kept out of his way. Suspensions left and right. Always for fighting. He was supposed to go to the University of Maine, but he got a girl pregnant and ended up getting married instead. After a year or two of it, she collected the baby and scrammed. Probably a smart idea, the way he was then. Frankie was the kind of guy, fighting the Germans or the Japs probably would have been good for im—get all that mad out, you know. But he came up 4-F. I never heard why. Flat feet? Heart murmur? The high blood? No way of telling. But you probably don’t want to hear all this old gossip.”

  “I do,” I said. “It’s interesting.” It sure was. I’d come into The Lamplighter to wet my whistle and had stumbled into a gold mine instead. “Have another Lobster Pickin’.”

  “Twist my arm,” he said, and popped one into his mouth. He jerked a thumb at the mirror as he chewed. “And why shouldn’t I? Just look at those guys back there—half of em Catholics and still chowing up on burgers n BLTs n sausage subs. On Friday! Who can make sense of religion, cuz?”

  “You got me,” I said. “I’m a lapsed Methodist. Guess Mr. Dunning never got that college education, huh?”

  “Nope, by the time his first wife done her midnight flit, he was gettin a graduate degree in cuttin meat, and he was good at it. Got into some more trouble—and yeah, drinkin was somewhat involved from what I heard, people gossip terrible, y’know, and a man who owns pawnshops hears it all—so Mr. Vollander, him who owned the market back in those days, he sat down and had a Dutch uncle talk with ole Frankie.” Chaz shook his head and picked another Pickin’. “If Benny Vollander had ever known Frankie Dunning was gonna own half the place by the time that Korea shit was over, he probably would have had a brain hemorrhage. Good thing we can’t see the future, isn’t it?”

  “That would complicate things, all right.”

  Chaz was warming to his story, and when I told the waitress to bring another couple of beers, he didn’t tell her no.

  “Benny Vollander said Frankie was the best ’prentice butcher he’d ever had, but if he got in any more trouble with the cops—fightin if anyone farted sideways, in other words—he’d have to let him go. A word to the wise is sufficient, they say, and Frankie straightened up. Divorced that first wife of his on grounds of desertion after she was gone a year or two, then remarried not long after. The war was goin full steam by then and he could have had his pick of the ladies—he has that charm, you know, and most of the competition was overseas, anyway—but he settled on Doris McKinney. Lovely girl she was.”

  “And still is, I’m sure.”

  “Absolutely, cuz. Pretty as a picture. They’ve got three or four kids. Nice family.” Chaz leaned close again. “But Frankie still loses his temper now and then, and he must have lost it at her last spring, because she turned up at church with bruises on her face and a week later he was out the door. He’s living in a rooming house as close as he could get to the old homestead. Hopin she’ll take him back, I imagine. And sooner or later, she will. He’s got that charming way of—whoops, lookie there, what’d I tell you? He’s a gone cat.”

  Dunning was getting up. The other men were bellowing for him to sit back down, but he was shaking his head and pointing to his watch. He tipped the last swallow of his beer down his throat, then bent and kissed one man’s bald head. This brought a room-shaking roar of approval and Dunning surfed on it toward the door.

  He slapped Chaz on the back as he went by and said, “Keep that nose clean, Chazzy—it’s too long to get dirty.”

  Then he was gone. Chaz looked at me. He was giving me the cheerful chipmunk grin, but his eyes weren’t smiling. “Ain’t he a card?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  9

  I’m one of those people who doesn’t really know what he thinks until he writes it down, so I spent most of that weekend making notes about what I’d seen in Derry, what I’d done, and what I planned to do. They expanded into an explanation of how I’d gotten to Derry in the first place, and by Sunday I realized that I’d started a job that was too big for a pocket notebook and ballpoint pen. On Monday I went out and bought a portable typewriter. My intention had been to go to the local business supply store, but then I saw Chaz Frati’s card on the kitchen table, and went there instead. It was on East Side Drive, a pawnshop almost as big as a department store. The three gold balls were over the door, as was traditional, but there was something else, as well: a plaster mermaid flapping her flippy tail and winking one eye. This one, being out in public, was wearing a bra top. Frati himself was not in evidence, but I got a terrific Smith-Corona for twelve dollars. I told the clerk to tell Mr. Frati that George the real estate guy had been in.

  “Happy to do it, sir. Would you like to leave your card?”

  Shit. I’d have to have some of those printed … which meant a visit to Derry Business Supply after all. “Left them in my other suit coat,” I said, “but I think he’ll remember me. We had a drink at The Lamplighter.”

  That afternoon I began expanding my notes.

  10

  I got used to the planes coming in for a landing directly over my head. I arranged for newspaper and milk delivery: thick glass bottles brought right to your doorstep. Like the root beer Frank Anicetti had served me on my first jaunt into 1958, the milk tasted incredibly full and rich. The cream was ev
en better. I didn’t know if artificial creamers had been invented yet, and had no intention of finding out. Not with this stuff around.

  The days slipped by. I read Al Templeton’s notes on Oswald until I could have quoted long passages by heart. I visited the library and read about the murders and the disappearances that had plagued Derry in 1957 and 1958. I looked for stories about Frank Dunning and his famous bad temper, but found none; if he had ever been arrested, the story hadn’t made it into the newspaper’s Police Beat column, which was good-sized on most days and usually expanded to a full page on Mondays, when it contained a full summary of the weekend’s didoes (most of which happened after the bars closed). The only story I found about the janitor’s father concerned a 1955 charity drive. The Center Street Market had contributed ten percent of their profits that fall to the Red Cross, to help out after hurricanes Connie and Diane slammed into the East Coast, killing two hundred and causing extensive flood damage in New England. There was a picture of Harry’s father handing an oversized check to the regional head of the Red Cross. Dunning was flashing that movie-star smile.

  I made no more shopping trips to the Center Street Market, but on two weekends—the last in September and the first in October—I followed Derry’s favorite butcher after he finished his half-day Saturday stint behind the meat counter. I rented nondescript Hertz Chevrolets from the airport for this chore. The Sunliner, I felt, was a little too conspicuous for shadowing.

  On the first Saturday afternoon, he went to a Brewer flea market in a Pontiac he kept in a downtown pay-by-the-month garage and rarely used during the workweek. On the following Sunday, he drove to his house on Kossuth Street, collected his kids, and took them to a Disney double feature at the Aladdin. Even at a distance, Troy, the eldest, looked bored out of his mind both going into the theater and coming out.