There was the statue of Paul Bunyan, standing on its pedestal where it always stood, axe on its shoulder, head cocked toward the sky, lips parted in the eternal optimistic grin of the myth-hero. The bench which had been sheared in two was whole and intact, thank you very much. The gravel where Tall Paul (He's-a my all, Annette Funicello sang maniacally in Richie's head) had planted his huge foot was raked and immaculate except for the scuffed spot where Richie had fallen off while he was
(getting away from the giant)
dreaming. There was no footprint, no axe-slash in the concrete. There was nothing here but a boy who had been chased by other boys, bigger boys, and so had had himself a very small (but very potent) dream about a homicidal Colossus . . . the Giant Economy-Size Henry Bowers, if you pleased.
'Shit,' Richie said in a tiny wavering voice, and then uttered an uncertain laugh.
He stood there awhile longer, waiting to see if the statue would move again - perhaps wink, perhaps shift its axe from one shoulder to the other, perhaps come down and have at him again. But of course none of those things happened.
Of course.
What, me worry? Har-de-har-har-har.
A doze. A dream. No more than that.
But, as Abraham Lincoln or Socrates or someone like that had once observed, enough was enough. It was time to go home and cool out; to make like Kookie on 77 Sunset Strip and just lay chilly.
And although it would have been quicker to cut through the City Center grounds, he decided not to. He didn't want to get close to that statue again. So he had gone the long way around and by that evening he had nearly forgotten the incident.
Until now.
Here sits a man, he thought, here sits a man dressed in a mossy-green sportcoat purchased at one of the best shops on Rodeo Drive; here sits a man with Bass Weejuns on his feet and Calvin Klein underwear to cover his ass; here sits a man with soft contact lenses resting easily on his eyes; here sits a man remembering the dream of a boy who thought an Ivy League shin with a fruit-loop on the back and a pair of Snap Jack shoes was the height of fashion; here sits a grownup looking at the same old statue, and hey, Paul, Tall Paul, I'm here to say you're the same in every way, you ain't aged a motherfucking day.
The old explanation still rang true in his mind: a dream.
He supposed he could believe in monsters if he had to; monsters were no big deal. Hadn't he sat in radio studios at one time or another reading news copy about such fellows as Idi Amin Dada and Jim Jones and that guy who had blown away all those folks in a McDonald's just down the road apiece? Shitfire and save matches, monsters were cheap! Who needed a five-buck movie ticket when you could read about them in the paper for thirty-five cents or hear about them on the radio for free? And he supposed if he could believe in the Jim Jones variety, he could believe in Mike Hanlon's version, at least for awhile; It even had Its own sorry charm, because It came from Outside and no one had to claim responsibility for It. He could believe in a monster that had as many faces as there are rubber masks in a novelty shop (if you're gonna have one, you might as well have a pack of em, he thought, cheaper by the dozen, right, gang?), at least for the sake of argument . . . but a thirty-foot-high plastic statue that stepped off its pedestal and then tried to carve you up with its plastic axe? That was just a little too ripe. As Abraham Lincoln or Socrates or someone had also said, I'll eat fish and I'll eat meat, but there is some shit I will not eat. It just wasn't -
That sharp needling pain struck his eyes again, without warning jerking a dismayed cry from him. This was the worst yet, going deeper and lasting longer, scaring the bejesus out of him. He clapped his hands to his eyes and then groped instinctively for the bottom lids with his forefingers, meaning to pop his contacts out. It's maybe some kind of infection, he thought dimly. But Jesus it hurts!
He pulled the lids down and was ready to give the single practiced blink that would send them tumbling out (and he would spend the next fifteen minutes grovelling myopically for them in the gravel surrounding the bench but Jesus God who gave a shit, right now it felt like there were nails in his eyes), when the pain disappeared. It did not dwindle; it just went. One moment there, the next moment gone. His eyes teared briefly and then stopped.
He lowered his hands slowly, his heart running fast in his chest, ready to blink them out the instant the pain started again. It didn't. And suddenly he found himself thinking about the only horror movie that had ever really scared him as a kid, possibly because he had taken so much shit about his glasses and had spent so much time thinking about his eyes. That movie had been The Crawling Eye, with Forrest Tucker. Not very good. The other kids had laughed themselves into hysterics over it, but Richie had not laughed. Richie had been rendered cold and white and dumb, for once with not a single Voice to command, as that gelatinous tentacled eye came out of the manufactured fog of some English movie set, waving its fibrous tentacles in front of it. The sight of that eye had been very bad, the embodiment of a hundred not-quite-realized fears and disquiets. On some night not long after, he had dreamed of looking at himself in a mirror and bringing a large pin up and sticking it slowly into the black iris of his eye and feeling a numb, watery springiness as the bottom of his eye filled up with blood. He remembered - now he remembered - waking up and discovering that he had wet the bed. The best indicator of how gruesome that dream had been was that his primary feeling had been not shame at his nocturnal indiscretion but relief; he had embraced the warm wet patch with his body and blessed the reality of his sight.
'Fuck this,' Richie Tozier said in a low voice that was not quite steady, and started to get up.
He would go back to the Derry Town House and take a nap. If this was Memory Lane, he preferred the LA. Freeway at rush-hour. The pain in his eyes was probably no more than a signal of exhaustion and jet-lag, plus the stress of meeting the past all at once, in one afternoon. Enough shocks; enough exploring. He didn't like the way his mind was skittering from one subject to the next. What was that Peter Gabriel tune? 'Shock the Monkey.' Well, this monkey had been shocked enough. It was time to catch some z's and maybe gain a little perspective.
As he rose his eyes went to the marquee in front of City Center again. All at once the strength ran out of his legs and he sat down again. Hard.
RICHIE TOZIER MAN OF 1000 VOICES
RETURNS TO DERRY LAND OF 1000 DANCES
IN HONOUR OF TRASHMOUTH'S RETURN CITY CENTER PROUDLY PRESENTS
THE RICHIE TOZIER 'ALL-DEAD' ROCK SHOW
BUDDY HOLLY RICHIE VALENS THE BIG BOPPER
FRANKIE LYMON GENE VINCENT MARVIN GAYE
HOUSE BAND
JIMI HENDRIX LEAD GUITAR
JOHN LENNON RHYTHM GUITAR
PHIL LINOTT BASS GUITAR
KEITH MOON DRUMS
SPECIAL GUEST VOCLAIST JIM MORRISON
WELCOME HOME RICHIE!
YOU'RE DEAD TOO!
He felt as if someone had whopped all the breath out of him . . . and then he heard that sound again, that sound that was half pressure on the skin and eardrums, that keen homicidal whispering rush - Swiipppp! He rolled off the bench onto the gravel, thinking So this is what they mean by déjà vu, now you know, you'll never have to ask anybody again -
He hit on his shoulder and rolled, looking up at the Paul Bunyan statue - only it was no longer Paul Bunyan. The clown stood there instead, resplendent and evident, fantastic in plastic, twenty feet of Day-Glo colors, its painted face surmounting a cosmic comic ruff. Orange pompom buttons cast in plastic, each as big as a volleyball, ran down the front of the silvery suit. Instead of an axe it held a huge bunch of plastic balloons. Engraved on each were two legends: IT'S STILL ROCK AND ROLL TO ME and RICHIE TOZIER 's 'ALL-DEAD' ROCK SHOW.