His eye fixed on a door which read EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY\ ALARM WILL SOUND! Hope kindled in his chest.
Richie ran down an aisle crammed with Donald Duck jack-in-the –boxes, United States Army tanks made in Japan, Lone Ranger cap pistols, wind-up robots. He reached the door and slammed the push-bar as hard as he could. The door opened, letting in cool mid –March air. The alarm went off with a strident bray. Richie immediately doubled back and dropped to his hands and knees in the next aisle over. He was down before the door could settle closed again.
Henry, Belch, and Victor thundered into the toy department just as the door clicked shut and the alarm cut off. They raced for it, Henry in the lead, his face set and intent.
A sales clerk finally appeared, coming on the run. He wore a blue nylon duster over a plaid sportcoat of excruciating ugliness. The rims of his spectacles were as pink as the eyes of a white rabbit. Richie thought he looked like Wally Cox in his Mr Peepers role, and he had to slam his traitor mouth into the fat part of his forearm to keep from screaming out gales of exhausted laughter.
'You boys!' Mr Peepers exclaimed. 'You boys can't go out there! That's an emergency exit! You! Hey! You boys!'
Victor glanced at him a little nervously, but Henry and Belch never turned from their course and Victor followed them. The alarm brayed again, longer this time as they charged into the alley. Before it stopped clanging Richie was on his feet and trotting back toward ladies' lingerie.
'You boys will be barred from the store!' the clerk yelled after him.
Looking back over his shoulder Richie squealed in his Granny Grunt Voice, 'Did anyone ever tell you you look just like Mr Peepers, young man?'
And so he had escaped. And so he had finished up almost a mile from Freese's, in front of City Center . . . and, he devoutly hoped, out of harm's way. At least for the time being. He was spent. He sat down on a bench just to the left of the Paul Bunyan statue, wanting only a little peace while he got himself back together. In a bit he would get up and head home, but for now it felt too good to just sit here in the afternoon sun. The day had opened in a cold drizzly gloom, but now you could believe spring might actually be on the way.
Farther up the lawn he could see the City Center marquee, which on that March day bore this message in large blue translucent letters:
HEY TEENS!
COMING MARCH 28TH
THE ARNIE "WOO-WOO' GINSBERG ROCK AND ROLL SHOW!
JERRY LEE LEWIS
THE PENGUINS
FRANKIE LYMON AND THE TEENAGERS
GENE VINCENT AND THE BLUE CAPS
FREDDY 'BOOM –BOOM ' CANNON
AN EVENING OF WHOLESOME ENTERTAINMENT!!
That was a show Richie really wanted to see, but he knew there wasn't a chance. His mother's idea of wholesome entertainment did not include Jerry Lee Lewis telling the young people of America we got chicken in the barn, whose barn, what barn, my barn. Nor, for that matter, did it include Freddy Cannon, whose Tallahassee lassie had a hi-fi chassis. She was willing to admit that she had done her share of screaming for Frank Sinatra (whom she now called Frankie the Snot) as a bobby-soxer, but, like Bill Denbrough's mother, she was death on rock and roll. Chuck Berry terrified her, and she declared that Richard Penniman, better known to his teen and subteen constituency as Little Richard, made her want to 'barf like a chicken.'
This was a phrase for which Richie had never asked a translation.
His dad was neutral on the subject of rock and roll and could perhaps have been swayed, but Richie knew in his heart that his mother's wishes would rule on this subject — until he was sixteen or seventeen, anyway — and by then, his mother was firmly convinced, the country's rock and roll mania would have passed.
Richie thought Danny and the Juniors were more right on that subject than his mom — rock and roll would never die. He himself loved it, although his sources were really only two — American Bandstand on Channel 7 in the afternoon and WMEX out of Boston at night, when the air had thinned and the hoarse enthusiastic voice of Arnie Ginsberg came wavering in and out like the voice of a ghost called up at a seance. The beat did more than make him happy. It made him feel bigger, stronger, more there. When Frankie Ford sang 'Sea Cruise' or Eddie Cochran sang 'Summertime Blues,' Richie was actually transported with joy. There was power in that music, a power which seemed to most rightfully belong to all the skinny kids, fat kids, ugly kids, shy kids — the world's losers, in short. In it he felt a mad hilarious voltage which had the power to both kill and exalt. He idolized Fats Domino (who made even Ben Hanscom look sum and trim) and Buddy Holly, who, like Richie, wore glasses, and Screaming Jay Hawkins, who popped out of a coffin at his concerts (or so Richie had been told), and the Dovells, who danced as good as black guys.
Well, almost.
He would have his rock and roll someday if he wanted it — he was confident it would still be there for him when his mother finally gave in and let him have it — but that would not be on March 28th, 1958 . . . or in 1959 . . . or . . .
His eyes had drifted away from the marquee and then . . . well . . . then he must have fallen asleep. It was the only explanation that made sense. What had happened next could only happen in dreams.
And now here he was again a Richie Tozier who had finally gotten all the rock and roll he had ever wanted . . . and who had found, happily, that it still wasn't enough. His eyes went to the marquee in front of City Center and saw that, with a hideous kind of serendipity, those same blue letters spelled out:
JUNE 14TH
HEAVY METAL MANIA!
JUDAS PRIEST
IRON MAIDEN
BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE OR AT ANY TICKETRON OUTLET
Somewhere along the way they dropped the wholesome entertainment line, thought Richie, but as far as I can tell that's just about the only difference,
And heard Danny and the Juniors, dim and distant, like voices heard down a long corridor coming out of a cheap radio: Rock and roll will never die, I'll dig it to the end . . . It'll go down in history, just you watch my friend . . .
Richie looked back at Paul Bunyan, patron saint of Derry — Derry, which had come into being, according to the stories, because this was where the logs fetched up when they came downriver. There had been a time when, in the spring, both the Penobscot and the Kenduskeag would have been solid logs from one side to the other, their black bark hides glistening in the spring sun. A fellow who was fast on his feet could walk from Wally's Spa in Hell's Half-Acre over to Ramper's in Brewster (Ramper's was a tavern of such horrible repute that it was commonly called the Bucket of Blood) without getting his boots wet over the third crossing of his rawhide laces. Or so it had been storied in Richie's youth, and he supposed there was a bit of Paul Bunyan in all such stories.
Old Paul, he thought, looking up at the plastic statue. What you been doing since I've beengone? Made any new riverbeds coming home tired and dragging your axe behind you? Made any new lakes on account of wanting a bathtub big enough so you could sit in water up to your neck? Scared any more little kids the way you scared me that day?
Ah, and suddenly he remembered it all, the way you will sometimes suddenly remember a word which has been dancing on the tip of your tongue.
There he had been, sitting in that mellow March sunshine, drowsing a little, thinking about going home and catching the last half hour of Bandstand, and suddenly there had been a warm swash of air into his face. It blew his hair back from his forehead. He looked up and Paul Bunyan's huge plastic face had been right in front of his, bigger than a face on a movie screen, filling everything. The rush of air had been caused by Paul bending down . . . although he did not precisely look like Paul anymore. The forehead was now low and beetling; tufts of wiry hair poked from a nose as red as the nose of a long-time drunkard; his eyes were bloodshot and one had a slight cast to it.