“She picked a bad town to come to, and the hell of it is, I doubt she knows it,” Doc Mulhare said, watching the chessboard with glum concentration as Faye Chapin blitzkrieged his king’s remaining defenders. “Things have a way of happening here. Remember the fire at the Black Spot, Faye?”
Faye grunted and captured the Doc’s remaining bishop.
“What I don’t understand is these cootie-bugs,” Lisa Zell said, picking up the front section of the News from the picnic table and slapping the photograph of the hooded figures marching in front of WomanCare. “It’s like they want to go back to the days when women gave themselves abortions with coathangers.”
“That’s what they do want,” Georgina Eberly said. “They figure if a woman’s scared enough of dying, she’ll have the baby. It never seems to cross their minds that a woman can be more scared of having a kid than using a coathanger to get rid of it.”
“What does being afraid have to do with it?” one of the kibbitzers-a shovel-faced oldster named Pedersen-asked truculently.
“Murder is murder whether the baby’s inside or outside, that’s the way I look at it. Even when they’re so small you need a microscope to see em, it’s still murder. Because they’d be kids if you let em alone.
“
“I guess that just about makes you Adolf Eichmann every time you jerk off,” Faye said, and moved his queen. “Check.”
“La-fayette Cha-pin!” Lisa Zell cried.
“Playin with yourself ain’t the same at all, Pedersen said, glowering.
“Oh no? Wasn’t there some guy in the Bible got cursed by God for hammerin the old haddock?” the other kibbitzer asked.
“You’re probably thinking of Onan,” said a voice from behind Ralph. He turned, startled, and saw Old Dor standing there. In one hand he held a paperback with a large number 5 on the cover. Where the hell did you come from? Ralph wondered. He could almost have sworn there had been no one standing behind him a minute or so before.
“Onan, Shmonan,” Pedersen said. “Those sperms aren’t the same as a baby-”
“No?” Faye asked. “Then why ain’t the Catholic Church sellin rubbers at Bingo games? Tell me that.”
“That’s just ignorant,” Pedersen said. “And if you don’t see-”
“But it wasn’t masturbation Onan was punished for,” Dorrance said in his high, penetrating old man’s voice. “He was punished for refusing to impregnate his brother’s widow, so his brother’s line could continue. There’s a poem, by Allen Ginsberg, I think-”
“Shut up, you old fool!” Pedersen yelled, and then glowered at Faye Chapin. “And if you don’t see that there’s a big difference between a man beating his meat and a woman flushing the baby God put in her belly down the toilet, you’re as big a fool as he is.”
“This is a disgusting conversation,” Lisa Zell said, sounding more fascinated than disgusted. Ralph looked over her shoulder and saw a section of chainlink fencing had been torn loose from its post and bent backward, probably by the kids who took this place over at night. That solved one mystery, anyway. He hadn’t noticed Dorrance because the old man hadn’t been in the picnic area at all; he’d been wandering around the airport grounds.
It occurred to Ralph that this was his chance to grab Dorrance and maybe get some answers out of him… except that Ralph would likely end up more confused than ever. Old Dor was too much like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland-more smile than substance.
“Big difference, huh?” Faye was asking Pedersen.
“Yeah!” Red patches glowered in Pedersen’s chapped cheeks.
Doc Mulhare shifted uneasily on his seat.
“Look, let’s just forget it and finish the game, Faye, all right?”
Faye took no notice; his attention was still fixed on Pedersen.
“Maybe you ought to think again about all the little spermies that died in the palm of your hand every time you sat on the toilet seat thinking about how nice it’d be to have Marilyn Monroe cop your-” Pedersen reached out and slapped the remaining chess-pieces off the board. Doc Mulhare winced backward, mouth trembling, eyes wide and frightened behind pink-rimmed glasses which had been mended in two places with electrical tape.
“Yeah, good! “Faye shouted. “That’s a very reasonable fuckin argument, you geek! “Pedersen raised his fists in an exaggerated John
L. Sullivan pose.
“Want to do something about it?” he asked. “Come on, let’s go!”
Faye got slowly to his feet. He stood easily a foot taller than the shovel-faced Pedersen and outweighed him by at least sixty pounds.
Ralph could hardly believe what he was seeing. And if the poison had seeped this far, what about the rest of the city? It seemed to him that Doc Mulhare was right; Susan Day must not have the slightest idea of how bad an idea bringing her act to Derry really was. In some ways-in a lot of ways, actually-Derry wasn’t like other places.
He was moving before he was consciously aware of what he meant to do, and he was relieved to see Stan Eberly doing the same thing.
They exchanged a glance as they approached the two men standing nose to nose, and Stan nodded slightly. Ralph slipped an arm around Faye’s shoulders a bare second before Stan gripped Pedersen’s upper left arm.
“You ain’t doing none of that,” Stan said, speaking directly into one of Pedersen’s tufted ears. “We’ll end up taking the both of you over to Derry Home with heart-attacks, and you don’t need another one of those, Harley-you had two already. Or is it three?”
“I ain’t letting him make jokes about wimmin murderin babies!”
Pedersen said, and Ralph saw there were tears rolling down the man’s cheeks. “My wife died having our second daughter! Sepsis carried her off back in ’46! So I ain’t having that talk about murderin babies!
“
“Christ,” Faye said in a different voice. “I didn’t know that, Harley. I’m sorry-”
“Ah, fuck your sorry!” Pedersen cried, and ripped his arm out of Stan Eberly’s grip. He lunged toward Faye, who raised his fists and then lowered them again as Pedersen went blundering past without looking at him. He took the path through the trees which led back out to the Extension and was gone. What followed his departure was thirty seconds of pure shocked silence, broken only by the waspwhine of an incoming Piper Cub, 3
“Jesus,” Faye said at last. “You see a guy every few days over five, ten years, and you start to think you know everything. Christ, Ralphie, I didn’t know how his wife died. I feel like a fool.”
“Don’t let it get you down,” Stan said. “He’s prob’ly just having his monthlies.”
“Shut up,” Georgina said. “We’ve had enough dirty talk for one morning.”
“I’ll be glad when that Day woman comes n goes n things can get back to normal,” Fred Zell said.
Doc Mulhare was down on his hands and knees, collecting chesspieces. “Do you want to finish, Faye?” he asked. “I think I remember where they all were.”
“No,” Faye said. His voice, which had remained steady during the confrontation with Pedersen, now sounded trembly. “Think I’ve had enough for awhile. Maybe Ralph’ll give you a little tourney prelim.”
“Think I’m going to pass,” Ralph said. He was looking around for Dorrance, and at last spotted him. He had gone back through the hole in the fence. He was standing in knee-high grass at the edge of the service road over there, bending his book back and forth in his hands as he watched the Piper Cub taxi toward the Genera Aviation terminal.
Ralph found himself remembering how Ed had come tearing along that service road in his old brown Datsun, and how he had sworn
(Hurry up! Hurry up and lick shit.)
at the slowness of the gate. For the first time in over a year he found himself wondering what Ed had been doing in there to begin with. than you did.”
“Huh?” He made an effort and focused on Faye again.
“I said you must be sleepin again, because you look a hell of a lot better than you did. But now your hearin’s going to hell, I guess.”
“I guess so,” Ralph said, and tried a little smile. “Think I’ll go grab myself a little lunch. You want to come, Faye? My treat.”
“Nah, I already had a Coffee Pot,” Faye said. “It’s sittin in my gut like a piece of lead right now, to tell you the truth. Cheer, Ralph, the old fart was crying, did you see that?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t make it into a big deal if I were you,” Ralph said. He started walking toward the Extension, and Faye ambled along beside him. With his broad shoulders slumped and his head lowered, Faye looked quite a lot like a trained bear in a man-suit.
“Guys our age cry over just about anything. You know that.”
“I spose.” He gave Ralph a grateful smile. “Anyway, thanks for stoppin me before I could make it worse. You know how I am, sometimes.”
I only wish someone had been there when Bill got zito ZI, Ralph thought. Out loud he said, “NO problem. It’s me t hat should be thanking you, actually. It’s something else to Put on my resume when I apply for that high-paying job at the U.N.”
Faye laughed, delighted, and clapped Ralph on the shoulder.
Yeah, Secretary-General! Peacemaker Number One! You could do it, Ralph, no shit!”
“No question about it. Take care of yourself, Faye.
He started to turn away and Faye touched his arm. “You’re still up for the tournament next week, aren’t you? The Runway 3 Classic?”
It took a moment for Ralph to figure out what he was talking about, although it had been the retired carpenter’s main topic of conversation ever since the leaves had begun to show color. Faye had been putting on the chess tournament he called The Runway 3 Classic ever since the end of his “real life” in 1984. The trophy was an oversized chrome hubcap with a fancy crown and scepter engraved on it. Faye, easily the best player among the Old Crocks on the west side of town, at least), had awarded the trophy to himself on six of the nine occasions it had been given out, and Ralph had a suspicion that he had gone in the tank the other three times, just to keep the rest of the tourney participants interested. Ralph hadn’t thought much about chess this fall; he’d had other things on his mind.
“Sure,” he said, “I guess I’ll be playing.”
Faye grinned. “Good. We should have had it last weekend-that was the schedule-but I was hopin that if I put it off, jimmy V. would be able to play. He’s still in the hospital, though, and if I put it off much longer it’ll be too cold to play outdoor and we’ll end up in the back of Dully Sprague’s barber shop, like we did in ’90.”
“What’s wrong with Jimmy V.?”
“Cancer come back on him again,” Faye said, then added in a lower tone: “I don’t think he’s got a snowball’s chance in hell of beating it this time.”
Ralph felt a sudden and surprisingly sharp pang of sorrow at this news. He and jimmy Vandermeer had known each other well during their own “real lives.” Both had been on the road back then, jimmy in candy and greeting cards, Ralph in printing supplies and paper products, and the two of them had gotten on well enough to team up on several New England tours, splitting the driving and sharing rather more luxurious accommodations than either could have afforded alone.
They had also shared the lonely, unremarkable secrets of travelling men. Jimmy told Ralph about the whore who’d stolen his wallet in 1958, and how he’d
