'W-W-Was there suh-homething, S-St-Stan?' Bill asked.
'No, I told you!' Stan got to his feet and walked to the embankment, hands in his pockets. He stood watching the water course over the top of the original dam and pile up behind the second Watergate.
'Come on, now, Stanley!' Richie said in a shrill falsetto. This was another of his Voices: Granny Grunt. When speaking in his Granny Grunt Voice, Richie would hobble around with one fist against the small of his back, and cackle a lot. He still, however, sounded more like Richie Tozier than anyone else.
'Fess up, Stanley, tell your old Granny about the baaaaad clown and I'll give you a chocker-chip cookie. You just tell — '
'Shut up!' Stan yelled suddenly, whirling on Richie, who fell back a step or two, astonished. 'Just shut up!'
'Yowza, boss,' Richie said, and sat down. He looked at Stan Uris mistrust fully. Bright spots of color flame d in Stan's cheeks, but he still looked more scared than mad.
'That's okay,' Eddie said quietly. 'Never mind, Stan.'
'It wasn't a clown,' Stanley said. His eyes flicked from one of them to the next to the next to the next. He seemed to struggle with himself.
'Y-Y-You can t-tell,' Bill said, also speaking quietly. 'W –We d-d-did.'
'It wasn't a clown. It was — '
Which was when the carrying, whiskey– roughened tones of Mr Nell interrup ted, making them all jump as if they had been shot: 'Jay-sus Christ on a jumped-up chariot-driven crutch! Look at this mess! Jaysus Christ!'
CHAPTER 8
Georgie's Room and the House on Neibolt Street
1
Richard Tozier turns off the radio, which has been blaring out Madonna's 'Like a Virgin' on WZON (a station which declares itself to be 'Banger's AM stereo rocker!' with a kind of hysterical frequency), pulls over to the side of the road, shuts down the engine of the Mustang the Avis people rented him at Bangor International, and gets out. He hears the pull and release of his own breath in his ears. He has seen a sign which has caused the flesh of his back to break out in hard ridges of gooseflesh.
He walks to the front of the car and puts one hand on its hood. He hears the engine ticking softly to itself as it cools. He hears a jay scream briefly and then shut up. There are crickets. And as far as the soundtrack goes, that's it.
He has seen the sign, he passes it, and suddenly he is in Derry again. After twenty-five years Richie 'Trashmouth' Tozier has come home. He has —
Burning agony suddenly needles into his eyes, breaking his thought cleanly off. He utters a strangled little shout and his hands fly up to his face. The only time he felt anything even remotely like this burning pain was when he got an eyelash caught under one of his contacts in college — and that was only in one eye. This terrible pain is in both.
Before he can reach even halfway to his face, the pain is gone.
He lowers his hands again slowly, thoughtfully, and looks down Route 7. He left the turnpike at the Etna-Haven exit, wanting, for some reason he doesn't understand, not to come in by the turnpike, which was still under construction in the Derry area when he and his folks shook the dust of this weird little town from their heels and headed out for the Midwest. No — the turnpike would have been quicker, but it would have been wrong.
So he had driven along Route 9 through the sleeping nestle of buildings that was Haven Village, then turned off on Route 7. And as he went the day grew steadily brighter.
Now this sign. It was the same sort of sign which marked the borders of more than six hundred Maine towns, but how this one had squeezed his heart!
Penobscot County D E R R Y Maine
Beyond that an Elks sign; a Rotary Club sign; and completing the trinity, a sign proclaiming the fact that DERR Y LIONS ROAR FO R THE UNITED FUND! Past that one there is just Route 7 again, continuing on in a straight line between bulking banks of pine and spruce. In this silent light as the day steadies itself those trees look as dreamy as blue-gray cigarette smoke stacked on the moveless air of a sealed room.
Derry, he thinks. Derry, God help me. Derry. Stone the crows.
Here he is on Route 7. Five miles up, if time or tornado has not carried it away in the intervening years, will be the Rhulin Farms, where his mother bought all of their eggs and most of their vegetables. Two miles beyond that Route 7 became Witcham Road and of course Witcham Road eventually became Witcham Street, can you gimme hallelujah world without end amen. And somewhere along there between the Rhulin Farms and town he would drive past the Bowers place and then the Hanlon place. A mile or so after Hanlon's he would see the first glitter of the Kenduskeag and the first spreading tangle of poison green. The lush lowlands that had been known for some reason as the Barrens.
I really don't know if I can face all of that, Richie thinks. I mean, let's tell the truth here, folks. I just don't know if I can.
The whole previous night has passed in a dream for him. As long as he continued travelling, moving forward, making miles, the dream went on. But now he has stopped — or rather the sign has stopped him — and he has awakened to a strange truth: the dream was the reality. Derry is the reality.
It seems he just cannot stop remembering, he thinks the memories will eventually drive him mad, and now he bites down on his lip and puts his hands together palm to palm, tight, as if to keep himself from flying apart. He feels that he will fly apart, and soon. There seems to be some mad part of him which actually looks forward to what may be coming, but most of him only wonders how he's going to get through the next few days. He —
And now his thoughts break off again.
A deer is walking out into the road. He can hear the light thud of its spring-soft hoofs on the tar.
Richie's breath stops in mid-exhale, then slowly starts again. He looks, dumbfounded, part of him thinking that he never saw anything like this on Rodeo Drive. No — he'd needed to come back home to see something like this.
It's a doe ('Doe, a deer, a female deer,' a Voice chants merrily in his head). She's out of the woods on the right and pauses in the middle of Route 7, front legs on one side of the broken white line, rear legs on the other. Her dark eyes regard Rich Tozier mildly. He reads interest in those eyes but no fear.
He looks at her in wonder, thinking she's an omen or a portent or some sort of Madame Azonka shit like that. And then, quite unexpectedly, a memory of Mr Nell comes to him. What a start he had given them that day, busting in on them in the wake of Bill's story and Ben's story and Eddie's story! The whole bunch of them had damn near gone up to heaven.
Now, looking at the deer, Rich draws in a deep breath and finds himself speaking in one of his Voices . . . but for the first time in twenty-five years or more it is the Voice of the Irish Cop, one he had incorporated into his repertoire after that memorable day. It comes rolling out of the morning silence like a great big bowling ball — it is louder and bigger than Richie would ever have believed:
'Jay-sus Christ on a jumped-up chariot-driven crutch! What's a nice girrul like you doin out in this wilderness, deer? Jaysus Christ! You be gettin on home before I decide to tell Father O'Staggers on ye!'