According to the Derry Chief of Police, the department was following up all sorts of good leads and an arrest was expected soon. Reached by phone, Doris Dunning declared herself to be shocked and devastated. There was no mention of the fact that she and the decedent had been living apart. Various friends and co-workers at the Center Street Market expressed similar shock. Everyone seemed in agreement that Frank Dunning had been an absolutely terrific guy, and no one could guess why someone would want to shoot him.
Tony Tracker was especially outraged (possibly because the corpse had been found in the family body-bank). For this guy, they ought to bring back the death penalty, he said.
On Wednesday, the eighth of October, the Yankees squeezed out a two-to-one win over the Braves at County Stadium; on Thursday they broke a two-two tie in the eighth, scoring four runs and closing the Series out. On Friday, I went back to the Mermaid Pawn & Loan, expecting to be met there by Mrs. Grump and Mr. Gloom. The large lady more than lived up to my expectationsshe curled her lip when she saw me and shouted, Chazzy! Mr. Moneybags is here! Then she shoved through the curtained-off doorway and out of my life.
Frati came out wearing the same chipmunk grin Id first encountered in The Lamplighter, on my previous trip into Derrys colorful past. In one hand he was holding a well-stuffed envelope with G. AMBERSON printed on the front.
There you are, cuz, he said, big as life and twice as handsome. And heres your loot. Feel free to count it.
I trust you, I said, and put the envelope in my pocket. Youre mighty cheery for a fellow who just forked over three large.
I wont deny that you cut into this years Fall Classic take, he said. Seriously cut into it, although I still made a few bucks. I always do. But Im mostly in the game because its a whattayacallit, public service. People are gonna bet, people are always gonna bet, and I give em a prompt payoff when a payoffs due. Also, I like taking bets. Its a kind of hobby with me. And do you know when I like it best?
No.
When someone like you comes along, a real stampeder who bucks the odds and comes through. That restores my faith in the random nature of the universe.
I wondered how random hed think it was if he could see Al Templetons cheat sheet.
Your wifes view doesnt appear to be so, um, catholic.
He laughed, and his small black eyes sparkled. Win, lose, or draw, the little man with the mermaid on his arm flat-out enjoyed life. I admired that. Oh, Marjorie. When some sad sack comes in here with his wifes engagement ring and a sob story, she turns into a pile of goo. But on the sports-book stuff, shes a different lady. That she takes personal.
You love her a lot, dont you, Mr. Frati?
Like the moon and the stars, cuz. Like the moon and the stars.
Marjorie had been reading that days paper, and it was still on the glass-topped counter containing the rings and things. The headline read HUNT FOR MYSTERY KILLER GOES ON AS FRANK DUNNING IS LAID TO REST.
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What do you reckon that was about? I asked.
Dunno, but Ill tell you something. He leaned forward, and the smile was gone. He wasnt the saint the local rag is makin him out to be. I could tell you stories, cuz.
Go ahead. Ive got all day.
The smile reappeared. Nah. In Derry, we keep ourselves to ourselves.
So Ive noticed, I said.
14
I wanted to go back to Kossuth Street. I knew the cops might be watching the Dunning house to see if anyone showed an unusual interest in the family, but the desire was very strong, just the same. It wasnt Harry I wanted to see; it was his little sister. There were things I wanted to tell her.
That she should go out trick-or-treating on Halloween no matter how sad she felt about her daddy.
That shed be the prettiest, most magical Indian princess anyone had ever seen, and would come home with a mountain of candy.
That she had at least fifty-three long and busy years ahead of her, and probably many more.
Most of all that someday her brother Harry was going to want to put on a uniform and go for a soldier and she must do her very, very, very best to talk him out of it.
Only kids forget. Every teacher knows this.
And they think theyre going to live forever.
15
It was time to leave Derry, but I had one final little chore to take care of before I went. I waited until Monday. That afternoon, the thirteenth of October, I threw my valise into the Sunliners trunk, then sat behind the wheel long enough to scribble a brief note. I tucked it into an envelope, sealed it, and printed the recipients name on the front.
I drove down to the Low Town, parked, and walked into the Sleepy Silver Dollar. It was empty except for Pete the bartender, as I had expected. He was washing glasses and watching Love of Life on the boob tube. He turned to me reluctantly, keeping one eye on John and Marsha, or whatever their names were.
What can I get you?
Nothing, but you can do me a favor. For which I will compensate you to the tune of five American dollars.
He looked unimpressed. Really. Whats the favor?
I put the envelope on the bar. Pass this over when the proper party comes in.
He looked at the name on the front of the envelope. What do you want with Billy Turcotte? And why dont you give it to him yourself?
Its a simple enough assignment, Pete. Do you want the five, or not?
Sure. Long as it wont do no harm. Billys a good enough soul.
It wont do him any harm. It might even do him some good.
I put a fin on top of the envelope. Pete made it disappear and went back to his soap opera. I left. Turcotte probably got the envelope. Whether or not he did anything after he read what was inside is another question, one of many to which I will never have answers. This is what I wrote:
Dear Bill
There is something wrong with your heart. You must go to the doctor soon, or it will be too late. You might think this is a joke, but it is not. You might think I couldnt know such a thing, but I do. I know it as surely as you know Frank Dunning murdered your sister Clara and your nephew Mikey. PLEASE BELIEVE ME AND GO TO THE DOCTOR!
A Friend
16
I got into my Sunliner, and as I backed out of the slant parking slot, I saw Mr. Keenes narrow and mistrustful face peering out at me from the drugstore. I unrolled my window, stuck out my arm, and shot him the bird. Then I drove up Up-Mile Hill and out of Derry for the last time.
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CHAPTER 11
As I drove south on the Mile-A-Minute Highway, I tried to convince myself that I neednt bother with Carolyn Poulin. I told myself she was Al Templetons experiment, not mine, and his experiment, like his life, was now over. I reminded myself that the Poulin girls case was very different from that of Doris, Troy, Tugga, and Ellen. Yes, Carolyn was going to be paralyzed from the waist down, and yes, that was a terrible thing. But being paralyzed by a bullet is not the same as being beaten to death with a sledgehammer. In a wheelchair or out of it, Carolyn Poulin was going to live a full and fruitful life. I told myself it would be crazy to risk my real mission by yet again daring the obdurate past to reach out, grab me, and chew me up.
None of it would wash.
I had meant to spend my first night on the road in Boston, but the image of Dunning on his fathers grave, with the crushed basket of flowers beneath him, kept recurring. He had deserved to diehell, needed tobut on October 5 he had as yet done nothing to his family. Not to his second one, anyway. I could tell myself (and did!) that hed done plenty to his first one, that on October 13 of 1958 he was already a murderer twice over, one of his victims little more than an infant, but I had only Bill Turcottes word for that.
I guess in the end, I wanted to balance something that felt bad, no matter how necessary, with something that felt good. So instead of driving to Boston, I got off the turnpike at Auburn and drove west into Maines lakes region. I checked into the cabins where Al had stayed, just before nightfall. I got the largest of the four waterside accommodations at a ridiculous off-season rate.
Those five weeks may have been the best of my life. I saw no one but the couple who ran the local store, where I bought a few simple groceries twice a week, and Mr. Winchell, who owned the cabins. He stopped in on Sundays to make sure I was okay and having a good time. Every time he asked, I told him I was, and it was no lie. He gave me a key to the equipment shed, and I took a canoe out every morning and evening when the water was calm. I remember watching the full moon rise silently over the trees on one of those evenings, and how it beat a silver avenue across the water while the reflection of my canoe hung below me like a drowned twin. A loon cried somewhere, and was answered by a pal or a mate. Soon others joined the conversation. I shipped my paddle and just sat there three hundred yards out from shore, watching the moon and listening to the loons converse. I remember thinking if there was a heaven somewhere and it wasnt like this, then I didnt want to go.
The fall colors began to bloomfirst timid yellow, then orange, then blazing, strumpet red as autumn burned away another Maine summer. There were cardboard boxes filled with coverless paperbacks at the market, and I must have read three dozen or more: mysteries by Ed McBain, John D. MacDonald, Chester Himes, and Richard S. Prather; steamy melodramas like Peyton Place and A Stone for Danny Fisher; westerns by the score; and one science-fiction novel called The Lincoln Hunters, which concerned time-travelers trying to record a forgotten speech by Abraham Lincoln.
When I wasnt reading or canoeing, I was walking in the woods. Long autumn afternoons, most hazy and warm. Dusty gilded light slanting down through the trees. At night, a quiet so vast it seemed almost to reverberate. Few cars passed on Route 114, and after ten oclock or so there were none at all. After ten, the part of the world where I had come to rest belonged only to the loons and the wind in the fir trees. Little by little, the image of Frank Dunning lying on his fathers grave began to fade, and I found myself less likely to recall at odd moments how I had dropped the souvenir pillow, still smoldering, over his staring eyes in the Tracker mausoleum.
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By the end of October, as the last of the leaves were swirling down from the trees and the nighttime temperatures began to dip into the thirties, I started driving into Durham, getting the lay of the land around Bowie Hill, where a shooting was going to occur in another two weeks. The Friends Meeting House Al had mentioned made a convenient landmark. Not far past it, a dead tree was leaning toward the road, probably the one Al had been struggling with when Andrew Cullum came along, already wearing his orange hunting vest. I also made it a point to locate the accidental shooters home, and to trace his probable course from there to Bowie Hill.
My plan was no plan at all, really; Id just follow the trail Al had already blazed. Id drive to Durham early in the day, park near the fallen tree, struggle with it, then pretend to have a heart attack when Cullum came along and pitched in. But after locating Cullums house, I happened to stop for a cold drink at Brownies Store half a mile away, and saw a poster in the window that gave me an idea. It was crazy, but sort of interesting.
The poster was headed ANDROSCOGGIN COUNTY CRIBBAGE TOURNAMENT RESULTS. There followed a list of about fifty names. The tourney winner, from West Minot, had scored ten thousand pegs, whatever they were. The runner-up had scored ninety-five hundred. In third place, with 8,722 pegsthe name had been circled in red, which was what drew my attention in the first placewas Andy Cullum.
Coincidences happen, but Ive come to believe they are actually quite rare. Something is at work, okay? Somewhere in the universe (or behind it), a great machine is ticking and turning its fabulous gears.
The next day, I drove back to Cullums house just shy of five in the afternoon. I parked behind his Ford woody station wagon and went to the door.
A pleasant-faced woman wearing a ruffled apron and holding a baby in the crook of her arm opened to my knock, and I knew just looking at her that I was doing the right thing. Because Carolyn Poulin wasnt going to be the only victim on the fifteenth of November, just the one whod end up in a wheelchair.
Yes?
My names George Amberson, maam. I tipped my hat to her. I wonder if I could speak to your husband.
Sure I could. Hed already come up behind her and put an arm around her shoulders. A young guy, not yet thirty, now wearing an expression of pleasant inquiry. His baby reached for his face, and when Cullum kissed the kids fingers, she laughed. Cullum extended his hand to me, and I shook it.
What can I do for you, Mr. Amberson?
I held up the cribbage board. I noticed at Brownies that youre quite the player. So I have a proposal for you.
Mrs. Cullum looked alarmed. My husband and I are Methodists, Mr. Amberson. The tournaments are just for fun. He won a trophy, and Im happy to polish it for him so it looks good on the mantel, but if you want to play cards for money, youve come to the wrong household. She smiled. I could see it cost her an effort, but it was still a good one. I liked her. I liked both of them.
Shes right. Cullum sounded regretful but firm. I used to play penny-a-peg back when I was working in the woods, but that was before I met Marnie.
Id be crazy to play you for money, I said, because I dont play at all. But I want to learn.
In that case, come on in, he said. Ill be happy to teach you. Wont take but fifteen minutes, and its an hour yet before we eat our dinner. Shoot a pickle, if you can add to fifteen and count to thirty-one, you can play cribbage.
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Im sure theres more to it than a little counting and adding, or you wouldnt have placed third in the Androscoggin Tournament, I said. And I actually want a little more than to just learn the rules. I want to buy a day of your time. November the fifteenth, to be exact. From ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, lets say.
Now his wife began to look scared. She was holding the baby close to her chest.
For those six hours of your time, Ill pay you two hundred dollars.
Cullum frowned. Whats your game, mister?
Im hoping to make it cribbage. That, however, wasnt going to be enough. I saw it on their faces. Look, Im not going to try and kid you that there isnt more to it, but if I tried to explain, youd think I was crazy.
I think that already, Marnie Cullum said. Send him on his way, Andy.
I turned to her. Its nothing bad, its nothing illegal, its not a scam, and its not dangerous. I take my oath on it. But I was starting to think it wasnt going to work, oath or no oath. It had been a bad idea. Cullum would be doubly suspicious when he met me near the Friends Meeting House on the afternoon of the fifteenth.
But I kept pushing. It was a thing Id learned to do in Derry.
Its just cribbage, I said. You teach me the game, we play for a few hours, I give you two hundred bucks, and we all part friends. What do you say?
Where are you from, Mr. Amberson?
Upstate in Derry, most recently. Im in commercial real estate. Right now Im vacationing on Sebago Lake before heading back down south. Do you want some names? References, so to speak? I smiled. People wholl tell you Im not nuts?
He goes out in the woods on Saturdays during hunting season, Mrs. Cullum said. Its the only chance he gets, because he works all week and when he gets home its so close to dark it doesnt even pay to load a gun.
She still looked mistrustful, but now I saw something else on her face that gave me hope. When youre young and have a kid, when your husband works manual laborwhich his chapped, callused hands said he didtwo hundred bucks can mean a lot of groceries. Or, in 1958, two and a half house payments.
I could miss an afternoon in the woods, Cullum said. Towns pretty well hunted out, anyway. The only place left where you can get a damn deer is Bowie Hill.
Watch your language around the baby, Mr. Cullum, she said. Her tone was sharp, but she smiled when he kissed her cheek.
Mr. Amberson, I need to talk to mwife, Cullum said. Do you mind standing on the stoop for a minute or two?
Ill do better than that, I said. Ill go down to Brownies and get myself a dope. That was what most Derryites called sodas. Can I bring either of you back a cold drink?
They declined with thanks, and then Marnie Cullum closed the door in my face. I drove to Brownies, where I bought an Orange Crush for myself and a licorice whip I thought the baby might like, if she was old enough to have such things. The Cullums were going to turn me down, I thought. With thanks, but firmly. I was a strange man with a strange proposal. I had hoped that changing the past might be easier this time, because Al had already changed it twice. Apparently that wasnt going to be the case.
But I got a surprise. Cullum said yes, and his wife allowed me to give the licorice to the little girl, who received it with a gleeful chortle, sucked on it, then ran it through her hair like a comb. They even invited me to stay for the evening meal, which I declined. I offered Andy Cullum a fifty-dollar retainer, which he declined until his wife insisted that he take it.
I went back to Sebago feeling exultant, but as I drove back to Durham on the morning of November fifteenth (the fields white with a frost so thick that the orange-clad hunters, who were already out in force, left tracks), my mood had changed. He will have called the State Police or the local constable, I thought. And while theyre questioning me in the nearest police station, trying to find out what kind of loony I am, Cullum will be off hunting in the Bowie Hill woods.
But there was no police car in the driveway, just Andy Cullums Ford woody. I took my new cribbage board and went to the door. He opened it and said, Ready for your lesson, Mr. Amberson?
I smiled. Yes, sir, I am.
He took me out to the back porch; I dont think the missus wanted me in the house with her and the baby. The rules were simple. Pegs were points, and a game was two laps around the board. I learned about the right jack, double runs, being stuck in the mudhole, and what Andy called mystic nineteenthe so-called impossible hand. Then we played. I kept track of the score to begin with, but quit once Cullum pulled four hundred points ahead. Every now and then some hunter would bang off a distant round, and Cullum would look toward the woods beyond his small backyard.
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Next Saturday, I said on one of these occasions. Youll be out there next Saturday, for sure.
Itll probably rain, he said, then laughed. I should complain, huh? Im having fun and making money. And youre getting better, George.
Marnie gave us lunch at noonbig tuna sandwiches and bowls of homemade tomato soup. We ate in the kitchen, and when we were done, she suggested we bring our game inside. She had decided I wasnt dangerous, after all. That made me happy. They were nice people, the Cullums. A nice couple with a nice baby. I thought of them sometimes when I heard Lee and Marina Oswald screaming at each other in their low-end apartments or saw them, on at least one occasion, carry their animus out onto the street. The past harmonizes; it also tries to balance, and mostly succeeds. The Cullums were at one end of the seesaw; the Oswalds were at the other.
And Jake Epping, also known as George Amberson? He was the tipping point.
Toward the end of our marathon session, I won my first game. Three games later, at just a few minutes past four, I actually skunked him, and laughed with delight. Baby Jenna laughed right along with me, then leaned forward from her highchair and gave my hair a companionable tug.
Thats it! I cried, laughing. The three Cullums were laughing right along with me. Thats the one I stop on! I took out my wallet and laid three fifties down on the red-and-white checked oilcloth covering the kitchen table. And worth every cent!
Andy pushed it back to my side. Put it in your billfold where it belongs, George. I had too much fun to take your money.
I nodded as if I agreed, then pushed the bills to Marnie, who snatched them up. Thank you, Mr. Amberson. She looked reproachfully at her husband, then back at me. We can really use this.
Good. I got up and stretched, hearing my spine crackle. Somewherefive miles from here, maybe sevenCarolyn Poulin and her father were getting back into a pickemup with POULIN CONSTRUCTION AND CARPENTRY painted on the door. Maybe theyd gotten a deer, maybe not. Either way, I was sure theyd had a nice afternoon in the woods, talking about whatever fathers and daughters talk about, and good for them.
Stay for supper, George, Marnie said. Ive got beans and hot-dogs.
So I stayed, and afterward we watched the news on the Cullums little table-model TV. There had been a hunting accident in New Hampshire, but none in Maine. I allowed myself to be talked into a second dish of Marnies apple cobbler, although I was full to bursting, then stood and thanked them very much for their hospitality.
Andy Cullum put out his hand. Next time we play for free, all right?
You bet. There was going to be no next time, and I think he knew that.
His wife did, too, it turned out. She caught up to me just before I got into my car. She had swaddled a blanket around the baby and put a little hat on her head, but Marnie had no coat on herself. I could see her breath, and she was shivering.
Mrs. Cullum, you should go in before you catch your death of c
What did you save him from?
I beg pardon?
I know thats why you came. I prayed on it while you and Andy were out there on the porch. God sent me an answer, but not the whole answer. What did you save him from?
I put my hands on her shivering shoulders and looked into her eyes. Marnie if God had wanted you to know that part, He would have told you.
Abruptly she put her arms around me and hugged me. Surprised, I hugged her back. Baby Jenna, caught in between, goggled up at us.
Whatever it was, thank you, Marnie whispered in my ear. Her warm breath gave me goosebumps.
Go inside, hon. Before you freeze.
The front door opened. Andy was standing there, holding a can of beer. Marnie? Marn?
She stepped back. Her eyes were wide and dark. God brought us a guardian angel, she said. I wont speak of this, but Ill hold it. And ponder it in my heart. Then she hurried up the walk to where her husband was waiting.
Angel. It was the second time Id heard that, and I pondered the word in my own heart, both that night while I lay in my cabin, waiting for sleep, and the next day as I drifted my canoe across still Sunday waters under a cold blue tilting-to-winter sky.
Guardian angel.
On Monday the seventeenth of November, I saw the first whirling flurries of snow, and took them as a sign. I packed up, drove down to Sebago Village, and found Mr. Winchell drinking coffee and eating doughnuts at the Lakeside Restaurant (in 1958, folks eat a lot of doughnuts). I gave him my keys and told him Id had a wonderful, restorative time. His face lit up.
Thats good, Mr. Amberson. Thats just how its sposed to be. Youre paid until the end of the month. Give me an address where I can send you a refund for your last two weeks, and Ill put a check in the mail.
I wont be entirely sure where Im going until the brass in the home office makes up its corporate mind, I said, but Ill be sure to write you. Time-travelers lie a lot.
He held out his hand. Been a pleasure having you.
I shook it. The pleasure was all mine.
I got in my car and drove south. That night I registered at Bostons Parker House, and checked out the infamous Combat Zone. After the weeks of peace on Sebago, the neon jangled my eyes and the surging crowds of night prowlersmostly young, mostly male, many wearing uniformsmade me feel both agoraphobic and homesick for those peaceful nights in western Maine, when the few stores closed at six and traffic dried up at ten.
I spent the following night at the Hotel Harrington, in D.C. Three days later I was on the west coast of Florida.
CHAPTER 12
1
I took US 1 south. I ate in a lot of roadside restaurants featuring Moms Home Cooking, places where the Blue Plate Special, including fruit cup to start and pie à la mode for dessert, cost eighty cents. I never saw a single fast-food franchise, unless you count Howard Johnsons, with its 28 Flavors and Simple Simon logo. I saw a troop of Boy Scouts tending a bonfire of fall leaves with their Scoutmaster; I saw women wearing overcoats and galoshes taking in laundry on a gray afternoon when rain threatened; I saw long passenger trains with names like The Southern Flyer and Star of Tampa charging toward those American climes where winter is not allowed. I saw old men smoking pipes on benches in town squares. I saw a million churches, and a cemetery where a congregation at least a hundred strong stood in a circle around an open grave singing The Old Rugged Cross. I saw men building barns. I saw people helping people. Two of them in a pickup truck stopped to help me when the Sunliners radiator popped its top and I was broken down by the side of the road. That was in Virginia, around four oclock in the afternoon, and one of them asked me if I needed a place to sleep. I guess I can imagine that happening in 2011, but its a stretch.
And one more thing. In North Carolina, I stopped to gas up at a Humble Oil station, then walked around the corner to use the toilet. There were two doors and three signs. MEN was neatly stenciled over one door, LADIES over the other. The third sign was an arrow on a stick. It pointed toward the brush-covered slope behind the station. It said COLORED. Curious, I walked down the path, being careful to sidle at a couple of points where the oily, green-shading-to-maroon leaves of poison ivy were unmistakable. I hoped the dads and moms who might have led their children down to whatever facility waited below were able to identify those troublesome bushes for what they were, because in the late fifties most children wear short pants.
There was no facility. What I found at the end of the path was a narrow stream with a board laid across it on a couple of crumbling concrete posts. A man who had to urinate could just stand on the bank, unzip, and let fly. A woman could hold onto a bush (assuming it wasnt poison ivy or poison oak) and squat. The board was what you sat on if you had to take a shit. Maybe in the pouring rain.
If I ever gave you the idea that 1958s all Andy-n-Opie, remember the path, okay? The one lined with poison ivy. And the board over the stream.
2
I settled sixty miles south of Tampa, in the town of Sunset Point. For eighty dollars a month, I rented a conch shack on the most beautiful (and mostly deserted) beach I had ever seen. There were four similar shacks on my stretch of sand, all as humble as my own. Of the nouveau-ugly McMansions that would later sprout like concrete toadstools in this part of the state, I saw none. There was a supermarket ten miles south, in Nokomis, and a sleepy shopping district in Venice. Route 41, the Tamiami Trail, was little more than a country road. You had to go slow on it, particularly toward dusk, because thats when the gators and the armadillos liked to cross. Between Sarasota and Venice, there were fruit stands, roadside markets, a couple of bars, and a dancehall called Blackies. Beyond Venice, brother, you were mostly on your own, at least until you got to Fort Myers.
I left George Ambersons real estate persona behind. By the spring of 1959, recessionary times had come to America. On Floridas Gulf Coast, everybody was selling and nobody was buying, so George Amberson became exactly what Al had envisioned: an authorial wannabe whose moderately rich uncle had left him enough to live on, at least for awhile.
I did write, and not on one project but two. In the mornings, when I was freshest, I began work on the manuscript youre now reading (if there ever is a you). In the evenings I worked on a novel that I tentatively called The Murder Place. The place in question was Derry, of course, although I called it Dawson in my book. I began it solely as set decoration, so Id have something to show if I made friends and one of them asked to see what I was working on (I kept my morning manuscript in a steel lockbox under my bed). Eventually The Murder Place became more than camouflage. I began to think it was good, and to dream that someday it might even see print.
