by Stephen King
"Frank?" one of the ladies called in a yoo-hoo voice. "Are these oranges fresh?"
"As fresh as your smile, Leola," he replied, and the ladies tee-hee'd. I'm not trying to be cute here; they actually tee-hee'd.
I passed them, murmuring "Ladies" as I went by. The bell jingled and I went out into the world that had existed before my birth. But this time instead of crossing the street to the courtyard where the rabbit-hole was, I walked deeper into that world. Across the street, the wino in the long black coat was gesticulating at the tunic-wearing clerk. The card he was waving might be orange instead of yellow, but otherwise he was back on script.
I took that as a good sign.
3
Titus Chevron was beyond the Red & White Supermarket, where Al had bought the same supplies for his diner over and over again. According to the sign in the window, lobster was going for sixty-nine cents a pound. Across from the market, standing on a patch of ground that was vacant in 2011, was a big maroon barn with the doors standing open and all sorts of used furniture on display--cribs, cane rockers, and overstuffed easy chairs of the "Dad's relaxin'" type seemed in particularly abundant supply. The sign over the door read THE JOLLY WHITE ELEPHANT. An additional sign, this one an A-frame propped to catch the eye of folks on the road to Lewiston, made the audacious claim that IF WE DON'T HAVE IT, YOU DON'T NEED IT. A fellow I took to be the proprietor was sitting in one of the rocking chairs, smoking a pipe and looking across at me. He wore a strap-style tee-shirt and baggy brown slacks. He also wore a goatee, which I thought equally audacious for this particular island in the time-stream. His hair, although combed back and held in place with some sort of grease, curled down to the nape of his neck and made me think of some old rock-and-roll video I'd seen: Jerry Lee Lewis jumping on his piano as he sang "Great Balls of Fire." The proprietor of the Jolly White Elephant probably had a reputation as the town beatnik.
I tipped a finger to him. He gave me the faintest of nods and went on puffing his pipe.
At the Chevron (where regular was selling for 19.9 cents a gallon and "super" was a penny more), a man in blue coveralls and a strenuous crewcut was working on a truck--the Anicettis', I presumed--that was up on the lift.
"Mr. Titus?"
He glanced over his shoulder. "Ayuh?"
"Mr. Anicetti said I could use your restroom?"
"Key's inside the front door." Doe-ah.
"Thank you."
The key was attached to a wooden paddle with MEN printed on it. The other key had GIRLS printed on the paddle. My ex-wife would have shit a brick at that, I thought, and not without glee.
The restroom was clean but smoky-smelling. There was an urn-style ashtray beside the commode. From the number of butts studding it, I would guess a good many visitors to this tidy little room enjoyed puffing as they pooped.
When I came out, I saw two dozen or so used cars in a small lot next to the station. A line of colored pennants fluttered above them in a light breeze. Cars that would have sold for thousands
--as classics, no less--in 2011 were priced at seventy-five and a hundred dollars. A Caddy that looked in nearly mint condition was going for eight hundred. The sign over the little sales booth (inside, a gum-chewing, ponytailed cutie was absorbed in Photoplay) read: ALL THESE CARS RUN GOOD AND COME WITH THE BILL TITUS GUARENTEE WE SERVICE WHAT WE SELL!
I hung the key up, thanked Titus (who grunted without turning from the truck on the lift), and started back toward Main Street, thinking it would be a good idea to get my hair cut before visiting the bank. That made me remember the goatee-wearing beatnik, and on impulse I crossed the street to the used furniture emporium.
"Morning," I said.
"Well, it's actually afternoon, but whatever makes you happy." He puffed his pipe, and that light late-summer breeze brought me a whiff of Cherry Blend. Also a memory of my grandfather, who used to smoke it when I was a kid. He sometimes blew it in my ear to quell the earache, a treatment that was probably not AMA-approved.
"Do you sell suitcases?"
"Oh, I got a few in my kick. No more'n two hundred, I'd say. Walk all the way to the back and look on your right."
"If I buy one, could I leave it here for a couple of hours, while I do some shopping?"
"I'm open until five," he said, and turned his face up into the sun. "After that you're on your own."
4
I traded two of Al's vintage dollars for a leather valise, left it behind the beatnik's counter, then walked up to Main Street with my briefcase banging my leg. I glanced into the greenfront and saw the clerk sitting beside the cash register and reading a newspaper. There was no sign of my pal in the black overcoat.
It would have been hard to get lost in the shopping district; it was only a block long. Three of four storefronts up from the Kennebec Fruit, I came to Baumer's Barber Shop. A red-and-white barber pole twirled in the window. Next to it was a political poster featuring Edmund Muskie. I remembered him as a tired, slope-shouldered old man, but this version of him looked almost too young to vote, let alone get elected to anything. The poster read, SEND ED MUSKIE TO THE U.S. SENATE, VOTE DEMOCRAT! Someone had put a bright white band around the bottom. Hand-printed on it was THEY SAID IT COULDN'T BE DONE IN MAINE BUT WE DID IT! NEXT UP: HUMPHREY IN 1960!
Inside, two old parties were sitting against the wall while an equally old third party got his tonsure trimmed. Both of the waiting men were puffing like choo-choos. So was the barber (Baumer, I assumed), with one eye squinted against the rising smoke as he clipped. All four studied me in a way I was familiar with: the not-quite-mistrustful look of appraisal that Christy once called the Yankee Glare. It was nice to know that some things hadn't changed.
"I'm from out of town, but I'm a friend," I told them. "Voted the straight Democratic ticket my whole life." I raised my hand in a so-help-me-God gesture.
Baumer grunted with amusement. Ash tumbled from his cigarette. He brushed it absently off his smock and onto the floor, where there were several crushed butts among the cut hair. "Harold there's a Republican. You want to watch out he don't bitecha."
"He ain't got the choppers for it nummore," one of the others said, and they all cackled.
"Where you from, mister?" Harold the Republican asked.
"Wisconsin." I picked up a copy of Man's Adventure to forestall further conversation. On the cover, a subhuman Asian gent with a whip in one gloved hand was approaching a blonde lovely tied to a post. The story that went with it was called JAP SEX-SLAVES OF THE PACIFIC. The barbershop's smell was a sweet and completely wonderful mixture of talcum powder, pomade, and cigarette smoke. By the time Baumer motioned me to the chair, I was deep into the sex-slaves story. It wasn't as exciting as the cover.
"Been doin some traveling, Mr. Wisconsin?" he asked as he settled a white rayon cloth over my front and wrapped a paper collar around my neck.
"Quite a lot," I said truthfully.
"Well, you're in God's country now. How short do you want it?"
"Short enough so I don't look like"--a hippie, I almost finished, but Baumer wouldn't know what that was--"like a beatnik."
"Let it get a little out of control, I guess." He began to clip. "Leave it much longer and you'd look like that faggot who runs the Jolly White Elephant."
"I wouldn't want that," I said.
"Nosir, he's a sight, that one." That-un.
When Baumer finished, he powdered the back of my neck, asked me if I wanted Vitalis, Brylcreem, or Wildroot Cream Oil, and charged me forty cents.
I call that a deal.
5
My thousand-dollar deposit at the Hometown Trust raised no eyebrows. The freshly barbered look probably helped, but I think it was mostly being in a cash-and-carry society where credit cards were still in their infancy . . . and probably regarded with some suspicion by thrifty Yankees. A severely pretty teller with her hair done up in tight rolls and a cameo at her throat counted my money, entered the amount in a ledger, then called over the assistant manager, who coun
ted it again, checked the ledger, and then wrote out a receipt that showed both the deposit and the total in my new checking account.
"If you don't mind me saying so, that's a mighty big amount to be carrying in checking, Mr. Amberson. Would you like to open a savings account? We're currently offering three percent interest, compounded quarterly." He widened his eyes to show me what a wonderful deal this was. He looked like that old-time Cuban bandleader, Xavier Cugat.
"Thanks, but I've got a fair amount of business to transact." I lowered my voice. "Real estate closing. Or so I hope."
"Good luck," he said, lowering his own to the same confidential pitch. "Lorraine will fix you up with checks. Fifty enough to go on with?"
"Fifty would be fine."
"Later on, we can have some printed with your name and your address." He raised his eyebrows, turning it into a question.
"I expect to be in Derry. I'll be in touch."
"Fine. I'm at Drexel eight four-seven-seven-seven."
I had no idea what he was talking about until he slid a business card through the window. Gregory Dusen, Assistant Manager, was engraved on it, and DRexel 8-4777.
Lorraine got my checks and a faux alligator checkbook to put them in. I thanked her and dropped them into my briefcase. At the door I paused for a look back. A couple of the tellers were working adding machines, but otherwise the transactions were all of the pen-and-elbow-grease variety. It occurred to me that, with a few exceptions, Charles Dickens would have felt at home here. It also occurred to me that living in the past was a little like living underwater and breathing through a tube.
6
I got the clothes Al had recommended at Mason's Menswear, and the clerk told me yes, they would be more than happy to take a check, providing it was drawn on a local bank. Thanks to Lorraine, I could oblige in that regard.
Back at the Jolly White Elephant, the beatnik watched silently as I transferred the contents of three shopping bags to my new valise. When I snapped it shut, he finally offered an opinion. "Funny way to shop, man."
"I guess so," I said. "But it's a funny old world, isn't it?"
He cracked a smile at that. "In my opinion, that's a big you-bet. Slip me some skin, Jackson." He extended his hand, palm up.
For a moment it was like trying to figure out what the word Drexel attached to some numbers was all about. Then I remembered Dragstrip Girl, and understood the beatnik was offering the fifties version of a fist-bump. I dragged my palm across his, feeling the warmth and the sweat, thinking again: This is real. This is happening.
"Skin, man," I said.
7
I crossed back to Titus Chevron, swinging the newly loaded valise from one hand and the briefcase from the other. It was only midmorning in the 2011 world I'd come from, but I felt tired out. There was a telephone booth between the service station and the adjacent car lot. I went in, shut the door, and read the hand-printed sign over the old-fashioned pay phone: REMEMBER PHONE CALLS NOW A DIME COURTESY OF "MA" BELL.
I thumbed through the Yellow Pages in the local phone book and found Lisbon Taxi. Their ad featured a cartoon cab with eyes for headlights and a big smile on its grille. It promised FAST, COURTEOUS SERVICE. That sounded good to me. I grubbed for my change, but the first thing I came up with was something I should have left behind: my Nokia cell phone. It was antique by the standards of the year I'd come from--I'd been meaning to trade up to an iPhone--but it had no business here. If someone saw it, I'd be asked a hundred questions I couldn't answer. I stowed it in the briefcase. It would be okay there for the time being, I guessed, but I'd have to get rid of it eventually. Keeping it would be like walking around with an unexploded bomb.
I found a dime, dropped it in the slot, and it went right through to the coin return. I fished it out, and one look was enough to pinpoint the problem. Like my Nokia, the dime had come from the future; it was a copper sandwich, really no more than a penny with pretensions. I pulled out all my coins, poked through them, and found a 1953 dime I'd probably got in change from the root beer I'd bought at the Kennebec Fruit. I started to put it in, then had a thought that made me feel cold. What if my 2002 dime had gotten stuck in the phone's throat instead of falling through to the coin return? And what if the AT&T man who serviced the pay phones in Lisbon Falls had found it?
He would have thought it was a joke, that's all. Just some elaborate prank.
I somehow doubted this--the dime was too perfect. He would have shown it around; there might even eventually have been an item about it in the newspaper. I had gotten lucky this time, but next time I might not. I needed to be careful. I thought of my cell phone again, with deepening unease. Then I put the 1953 dime in the coin slot and was rewarded with a dial tone. I placed the call slowly and carefully, trying to remember if I'd ever used a phone with a rotary dial before. I thought not. Each time I released it, the phone made a weird clucking sound as the dial spun back.
"Lisbon Taxi," a woman said, "where the mileage is always smileage. How may we help you today?"
8
While I waited for my ride, I window-shopped my way through Titus's car lot. I was particularly taken by a red '54 Ford convertible--a Sunliner, according to the script below the chrome headlight on the driver's side. It had whitewall tires and a genuine canvas roof that the cool cats in Dragstrip Girl would have called a ragtop.
"That ain't a bad one, mister," Bill Titus said from behind me. "Goes like a house afire, that I can testify to personally."
I turned. He was wiping his hands on a red rag that looked almost as greasy as his hands.
"Some rust on the rocker panels," I said.
"Yeah, well, this climate." He gave a whattaya-gonna-do shrug. "Main thing is, the motor's in nifty shape and those tires are almost new."
"V-8?"
"Y-block," he said, and I nodded as if I understood this perfectly. "Bought it from Arlene Hadley over Durham after her husband died. If there was one thing Bill Hadley knew, it was how to take care of a car . . . but you won't know them because you're not from around here, are you?"
"No. Wisconsin. George Amberson." I held out my hand.
He shook his head, smiling a little. "Good to meet you, Mr. Amberson, but I don't want to getcha all over grease. Consider it shook. You a buyer or a looker?"
"I don't know yet," I said, but this was disingenuous. I thought the Sunliner was the coolest car I'd ever seen in my life. I opened my mouth to ask what kind of mileage it got, then realized it was a question almost without meaning in a world where you could fill your tank for two dollars. Instead I asked him if it was a standard.
"Oh, ayuh. And when you catch second, you want to watch out for the cops. She goes like a bastid in second. Want to take er out for a spin?"
"I can't," I said. "I just called a cab."
"That's no way to travel," Titus said. "If you bought this, you could go back to Wisconsin in style and never mind the train."
"How much are you asking? This one doesn't have a price on the windshield."
"Nope, just took it in trade day before yest'y. Haven't got around to it." Gut. He took out his cigarettes. "I'm carryin it at three-fifty, but tell you what, I'd dicker." Dicka.
I clamped my teeth together to keep my jaw from dropping and told him I'd think it over. If my thinking went the right way, I said, I'd come back tomorrow.
"Better come early, Mr. Amberson, this one ain't gonna be on the lot for long."
I was again comforted. I had coins that wouldn't work in pay phones, banking was still done mostly by hand, and the phones made an odd chuckling sound in your ear when you dialed, but some things didn't change.
9
The taxi driver was a fat man who wore a battered hat with a badge on it reading LICENSED LIVERY. He smoked Luckies one after the other and played WJAB on the radio. We listened to "Sugartime" by the McGuire Sisters, "Bird Dog" by the Everly Brothers, and "Purple People Eater," by some creature called a Sheb Wooley. That one I could have done without. After every ot
her song, a trio of out-of-tune young women sang: "Four-teen for-ty, WJA-beee . . . the Big Jab!" I learned that Romanow's was having their annual end-of-summer blowout sale, and F. W. Woolworth's had just gotten a fresh order of Hula Hoops, a steal at $1.39.
"Goddam things don't do nothin but teach kids how to bump their hips," the cabbie said, and let the wing window suck ash from the end of his cigarette. It was his only stab at conversation between Titus Chevron and the Tamarack Motor Court.
I unrolled my window to get away from the cigarette smog a little and watched a different world roll by. The urban sprawl between Lisbon Falls and the Lewiston city line didn't exist. Other than a few gas stations, the Hi-Hat Drive-In, and the outdoor movie theater (the marquee advertised a double feature consisting of Vertigo and The Long, Hot Summer--both in CinemaScope and Technicolor), we were in pure Maine countryside. I saw more cows than people.
The motor court was set back from the highway and shaded not by tamaracks but by huge and stately elms. It wasn't like seeing a herd of dinosaurs, but almost. I gawked at them while Mr. Licensed Livery lit up another smoke. "Need a hand witcher bags, sir?"
"No, I'm fine." The fare on his meter wasn't as stately as the elms, but still rated a double take. I gave the guy two dollars and asked fifty cents back. He seemed satisfied with that; the tip was enough to buy a pack of Luckies.
10
I checked in (no problem there; cash on the counter and no ID required) and took a long nap in a room where the air-conditioning was a fan on the windowsill. I awoke refreshed (good) and then found it impossible to get to sleep that night (not good). There was next to no traffic on the highway after sundown, and the quiet was so deep it was disquieting. The television was a Zenith table model that must have weighed a hundred pounds. Sitting on top was a pair of rabbit ears. Propped against them was a sign reading ADJUST ANTENNA BY HAND DO NOT USE "TINFOIL!" THANKS FROM MANAGEMENT.
There were three stations. The NBC affiliate was too snowy to watch no matter how much I fiddled with the rabbit ears, and on CBS the picture rolled; adjusting the vertical hold had no effect. ABC, which came in clear as a bell, was showing The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O'Brian. He shot a few outlaws and then an ad for Viceroy cigarettes came on. Steve McQueen explained that Viceroys had a thinking man's filter and a smoking man's taste. While he was lighting up, I got off the bed and turned the TV off.
