elinorwise

It was possible they’d hate my pictures, but that was all right because I didn’t hate them. Let them have their little laugh, their little boo-and-hiss, their little gasp of distaste (or their little yawn), if that was what they wanted to do; when it was over, I could go back and paint more.

 And if they loved them? Same deal.

Keep your focus. It’s the difference between a good picture and just one more image cluttering up a world filled with them.

  “It’s shells,” I murmured, lying back down. “Shells under the house. The tide’s in.”

  I loved that sound from the first, when I woke up and heard it in the dark of night, when I didn’t know where I was, who I was, or what parts were still attached. It was mine.

  It had me from hello.

For a moment everything was clear, and when that
happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don’t
we all secretly know this? It’s a perfectly balanced
mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels
and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we
call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms.
Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns.
Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle
what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss
surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in
defiance of the dark.

Mike and Jim persuaded the
rest of the football team to perform a spirited can-can
wearing petticoats and bloomers down south and nothing
but skin up north. Jo Peet found wigs for them, and they
stopped the show. The town ladies seemed especially crazy
about those bare-chested young men, wigs and all.

Donald was a permanent resident of Rockville, in
the state of Daddy Cool. He wore pink-rimmed specs with
thick lenses, belt-in-the-back slacks, and saddle shoes so
grotesquely square they were authentically crazy, man. His
face was an exploding zit-factory below a Brylcreem-loaded
Bobby Rydell duck’s ass. He looked like he might get his first
kiss from a real live girl around the age of forty-two, but he
was fast and funny with the mike, and his record collection
(which he called “the stack-o-wax” and “Donny B.’s round
mound of sound”) was, as previously noted, the ginchiest.

“Jake? Is that you?” This was followed by a fusillade of dry,
barking coughs.

I almost kept silent. I could have kept silent. Then I
thought of how much of his life Al had invested in this
project, and how I was now the only thing he had left to
hope for.

I turned toward the sound of those coughs and spoke in a
low voice. “Al? Talk to me. Count off.” I could have added, Or
just keep coughing.

He began to count. I went toward the sound of the
numbers, feeling with my foot. After ten steps—far beyond
the place where I had given up—the toe of my shoe simultaneously took a step forward and struck something
that stopped it cold. I took one more look around. Took one
more breath of the chemical-stenchy air. Then I closed my
eyes and started climbing steps I couldn’t see. On the fourth
one, the chilly night air was replaced with stuffy warmth and
the smells of coffee and spices. At least that was the case
with my top half. Below the waist, I could still feel the night.

I stood there for maybe three seconds, half in the present
and half in the past. Then I opened my eyes, saw Al’s
haggard, anxious, too-thin face, and stepped back into
2011.

How should I tell you, then?

In my life as a teacher, I used to hammer away at the idea
of simplicity. In both fiction and nonfiction, there’s only one
question and one answer. What happened? the reader asks.
This is what happened, the writer responds. This... and this... and this, too. Keep it simple. It’s the only sure way home.

So I’ll try, although you must always keep in mind that in
Derry, reality is a thin skim of ice over a deep lake of dark
water. But still:

What happened?

This happened. And this. And this, too.

I was six feet five, blue eyes, brown hair, weight one-ninety. I had been born on April 22, 1923, and lived at 19 Bluebird Lane in Sabattus, which happened

to be my 2011 address.

“Six-five about right?” Al asked. “I had to guess.”

“Close enough.”