by Stephen King
'What paradox is that?'
'Something good is happening to one of my oldest friends - the man who hired me for my first teaching position, in fact. He's dying.'
Ralph raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
'He's got pneumonia. His niece will probably haul him off to the hospital today or tomorrow, and they'll put him on a ventilator, at least for awhile, but he's almost certainly dying. I'll celebrate his death when it comes, and I suppose it's that more than anything else that's depressing the shit out of me.' McGovern paused. 'You don't understand a thing I'm saying, do you?'
'Nope,' Ralph said. 'But that's all right.'
McGovern looked into his face, did a doubletake, then snorted. The sound was harsh and thick with his tears, but Ralph thought it was a real laugh just the same, and risked a small return smile.
'Did I say something funny?'
'No,' McGovern said, and clapped him lightly on the shoulder. 'I was just looking at your face, so earnest and sincere - you're really an open book, Ralph - and thinking how much I like you. Sometimes I wish I could be you.'
'Not at three in the morning, you wouldn't,' Ralph said quietly.
McGovern sighed and nodded. 'The insomnia.'
'That's right. The insomnia.'
'I'm sorry I laughed, but--'
'No apology necessary, Bill.'
'- but please believe me when I say it was an admiring laugh.'
'Who's your friend, and why's it a good thing that he's dying?' Ralph asked. He already had a guess as to what lay at the root of McGovern's paradox; he was not quite as goodheartedly dense as Bill sometimes seemed to think.
'His name's Bob Polhurst, and his pneumonia is good news because he's suffered from Alzheimer's since the summer of '88.'
It was what Ralph had thought . . . although AIDS had crossed his mind, as well. He wondered if that would shock McGovern, and felt a small ripple of amusement at the idea. Then he looked at the man and felt ashamed of his amusement. He knew that when it came to gloom McGovern was at least a semi-pro, but he didn't believe that made his obvious grief over his old friend any less genuine.
'Bob was head of the History Department at Derry High from 1948, when he couldn't have been more than twenty-five, until 1981 or '82. He was a great teacher, one of those fiercely bright people you sometimes find out in the sticks, hiding their lights under bushels. They usually end up heading their departments and running half a dozen extra-curricular activities on the side because they simply don't know how to say no. Bob sure didn't.'
The mother was now leading her little boy past them and toward the little snackbar that would be closing up for the season very soon now. The kid's face had an extraordinary translucence, a beauty that was enhanced by the rose-colored aura Ralph saw revolving about his head and moving across his small, lively face in calm waves.
'Can we go home, Mommy?' he asked. 'I want to use my Play-Doh now. I want to make the Clay Family.'
'Let's get something to eat first, big boy - 'kay? Mommy's hungry.'
'Okay.'
There was a hook-shaped scar across the bridge of the boy's nose, and here the rosy glow of his aura deepened to scarlet.
Fell out of his crib when he was eight months old, Ralph thought. Reaching for the butterflies on the mobile his mom hung from the ceiling. It scared her to death when she ran in and saw all the blood; she thought the poor kid was dying. Patrick, that's his name. She calls him Pat. He's named after his grandfather, and--
He closed his eyes tightly for a moment. His stomach was fluttering lightly just below his Adam's apple and he was suddenly sure he was going to vomit.
'Ralph?' McGovern asked. 'Are you all right?'
He opened his eyes. No aura, rose-colored or otherwise; just a mother and son heading over to the snackbar for a cold drink, and there was no way, absolutely no way that he could tell she didn't want to take Pat home because Pat's father was drinking again after almost six months on the wagon, and when he drank he got mean--
Stop it, for God's sake stop it.
'I'm okay,' he told McGovern. 'Got a speck in my eye is all. Go on. Finish telling me about your friend.'
'Not much to tell. He was a genius, but over the years I've become convinced that genius is a vastly overrated commodity. I think this country is full of geniuses, guys and gals so bright they make your average card-carrying MENSA member look like Fucko the Clown. And I think that most of them are teachers, living and working in small-town obscurity because that's the way they like it. It was certainly the way Bob Polhurst liked it.
'He saw into people in a way that seemed scary to me . . . at first, anyway. After awhile you found out you didn't have to be scared, because Bob was kind, but at first he inspired a sense of dread. You sometimes wondered if it was an ordinary pair of eyes he was using to look at you, or some kind of X-ray machine.'
At the snackbar, the woman was bending down with a small paper cup of soda. The kid reached up for it with both hands, grinning, and took it. He drank thirstily. The rosy glow pulsed briefly into existence around him again as he did, and Ralph knew he had been right: the kid's name was Patrick, and his mother didn't want to take him home. There was no way he could know such things, but he did just the same.
'In those days,' McGovern said, 'if you were from central Maine and not one hundred per cent heterosexual, you tried like hell to pass for it. That was the only choice there was, outside of moving to Greenwich Village and wearing a beret and spending Saturday nights in the kind of jazz clubs where they used to applaud by snapping their fingers. Back then, the idea of "coming out of the closet" was ridiculous. For most of us the closet was all there was. Unless you wanted a pack of liquored-up fraternity boys sitting on you in an alley and trying to pull your face off, the world was your closet.'
Pat finished his drink and tossed his paper cup on the ground. His mother told him to pick it up and put it in the litter basket, a task he performed with immense good cheer. Then she took his hand and they began to walk slowly out of the park. Ralph watched them go with a feeling of trepidation, hoping the woman's fears and worries would turn out to be unjustified, fearing that they wouldn't be.
'When I applied for a job in the Derry High history department - this was in 1951 - I was fresh from two years teaching in the sticks, way to hell and gone in Lubec, and I figured if I could get along up there with no questions being asked, I could get along anywhere. But Bob took one look at me - hell, inside me - with those X-ray eyes of his and just knew. And he wasn't shy, either. "If I decide to offer you this job and you decide to take it, Mr McGovern, may I be assured that there will never be so much as an iota of trouble over the matter of your sexual preference?"
'Sexual preference, Ralph! Man, oh man! I'd never even dreamed of such a phrase before that day, but it came sliding out of his mouth slicker than a ball-bearing coated with Crisco. I started to get up on my high horse, tell him I didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about but I resented the hell out of it just the same - on general principles, you might say - and then I took another look at him and decided to save my energy. I might have fooled some people up in Lubec, but I wasn't fooling Bob Polhurst. He wasn't thirty himself yet, probably hadn't been south of Kittery more than a dozen times in his whole life, but he knew everything that mattered about me, and all it had taken him to find it out was one twenty-minute interview.
'"No, sir, not an iota," I said, just as meek as Mary's little lamb.'
McGovern dabbed at his eyes with the handkerchief again, but Ralph had an idea that this time the gesture was mostly theatrical.
'In the twenty-three years before I went off to teach at Derry Community College, Bob taught me everything I know about teaching history and playing chess. He was a brilliant player . . . he certainly would have given that windbag Faye Chapin some hard bark to chew on, I can tell you that. I only beat him once, and that was after the Alzheimer's started to take hold. I never played him again after that.
'And there were other things. He never forgot a joke. He never forgot the birthdays or anniversaries of the people who were close to him - he didn't send cards or give gifts, but he always offered congratulations and good wishes, and no one ever doubted his sincerity. He published over sixty articles on teaching history and on the Civil War, which was his specialty. In 1967 and 1968 he wrote a book called Later That Summer, about what happened in the months following Gettysburg. He let me read the manuscript ten years ago, and I think it's the best book on the Civil War I've ever read - the only one that even comes close is a novel called The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara. Bob wouldn't hear of publishing it, though. When I asked him why, he said that I of all people should understand his reasons.'
McGovern paused briefly, looking out across the park, which was filled with green-gold light and black interlacings of shadow which moved and shifted with each breath of wind.
'He said he had a fear of exposure.'
'Okay,' Ralph said. 'I get it.'
'Maybe this sums him up best of all: he used to do the big Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in ink. I poked him about that once - accused him of hubris. He gave me a grin and said, "There's a big difference between pride and optimism, Bill - I'm an optimist, that's all."
'Anyway, you get the picture. A kind man, a good teacher, a brilliant mind. His specialty was the Civil War, and now he doesn't even know what a civil war is, let alone who won ours. Hell, he doesn't even know his own name, and at some point soon - the sooner the better, actually - he's going to die without any idea that he ever lived.'
A middle-aged man in a University of Maine tee-shirt and a pair of ragged blue jeans came shuffling through the playground, carrying a crumpled paper shopping bag under one arm. He stopped beside the snackbar to examine the contents of the waste-barrel, hoping for a returnable or two. As he bent over, Ralph saw the dark green envelope which surrounded him and the lighter green balloon-string which rose, wavering, from the crown of his head. And suddenly he was too tired to close his eyes, too tired to wish it away.
He turned to McGovern and said, 'Ever since last month I've been seeing stuff that--'
'I guess I'm in mourning,' McGovern said, giving his eyes another theatrical wipe, 'although I don't know if it's for Bob or for me. Isn't that a hoot? But if you could have seen how bright he was in those days . . . how goddam scary-bright . . .'
'Bill? You see that guy over there by the snackbar? The one rooting through the trash barrel? I see--'
'Yeah, those guys are all over the place now,' McGovern said, giving the wino (who had found two empty Budweiser cans and tucked them into his bag) a cursory glance before turning to Ralph again. 'I hate being old - I guess maybe that's all it really comes down to. I mean big-time.'
The wino approached their bench in a bent-kneed shuffle, the breeze heralding his arrival with a smell which was not English Leather. His aura - a sprightly and energetic green that made Ralph think of Saint Patrick's Day decorations - went oddly with his subservient posture and sickly grin.
'Say, you guys! How you doon?'
'We've been better,' McGovern said, hoisting the satiric eyebrow, 'and I expect we'll be better again once you shove off.'
The wino looked at McGovern uncertainly, seemed to decide he was a lost cause, and shifted his gaze to Ralph. 'You got a bitta spare change, mister? I gotta get to Dexter. My uncle call me out dere at the Shelter on Neibolt Street, say I can have my old job back at the mill, but only if I--'
'Get lost, chum,' McGovern said.
The wino gave him a brief, anxious glance, and then his bloodshot brown eyes rolled back to Ralph again. 'Dass a good job, you know? I could have it back, but on'y if I get dere today. Dere's a bus--'
Ralph reached into his pocket, found a quarter and a dime, and dropped them into the outstretched hand. The wino grinned. The aura surrounding him brightened, then suddenly disappeared. Ralph found that a great relief.
'Hey, great! Thank you, mister!'
'Don't mention it,' Ralph said.
The wino lurched off in the direction of the Shop 'n Save, where such brands as Night Train, Old Duke, and Silver Satin were always on sale.
Oh shit, Ralph, would it hurt you to be a little charitable in your head, as well? he asked himself. Go another half a mile in that direction, you come to the bus station.
True, but Ralph had lived long enough to know there was a world of difference between charitable thinking and illusions. If the wino with the dark green aura was going to the bus station, then Ralph was going to Washington to be Secretary of State.
'You shouldn't do that, Ralph,' McGovern said reprovingly. 'It just encourages them.'
'I suppose,' Ralph said wearily.
'What were you saying when we were so rudely interrupted?'
The idea of telling McGovern about the auras now seemed an incredibly bad one, and he could not for the life of him imagine how he had gotten so close to doing it. The insomnia, of course - that was the only answer. It had done a number on his judgement as well as his short-term memory and sense of perception.
'That I got something in the mail this morning,' Ralph said. 'I thought it might cheer you up.' He passed Helen's postcard over to McGovern, who read it and then reread it. The second time through, his long, horsey face broke into a broad grin. The combination of relief and honest pleasure in that expression made Ralph forgive McGovern his self-indulgent bathos at once. It was easy to forget that Bill could be generous as well as pompous.
'Say, this is great, isn't it? A job!'
'It sure is. Want to celebrate with some lunch? There's a nice little diner two doors down from the Rite Aid - Day Break, Sun Down, it's called. Maybe a little ferny, but--'
'Thanks, but I promised Bob's niece I'd go over and sit with him awhile. Of course he's doesn't have the slightest idea of who I am, but that doesn't matter, because I know who he is. You capisce?'
'Yep,' Ralph said. 'A raincheck, then?'
'You got it.' McGovern scanned the message on the postcard again, still grinning. 'This is the berries - the absolute berries!'
Ralph laughed at this winsome old expression. 'I thought so, too.'
'I would have bet you five bucks she was going to walk right back into her marriage to that weirdo, and pushing the baby in front of her in its damn stroller . . . but I would have been glad to lose the money. I suppose that sounds crazy.'
'A little,' Ralph said, but only because he knew it was what McGovern expected to hear. What he really thought was that Bill McGovern had just summed up his own character and world-view more succinctly than Ralph ever could have done himself.
'Nice to know someone's getting better instead of worse, huh?'
'You bet.'
'Has Lois seen that yet?'
Ralph shook his head. 'She's not home. I'll show it to her when I see her, though.'
'You do that. Are you sleeping any better, Ralph?'
'I'm doing okay, I guess.'
'Good. You look a little better. A little stronger. We can't give in, Ralph, that's the important thing. Am I right?'
'I guess you are,' Ralph said, and sighed. 'I guess you are, at that.'
3
Two days later Ralph sat at his kitchen table, slowly eating a bowl of bran flakes he didn't really want (but supposed in some vague way to be good for him) and looking at the front page of the Derry News. He had skimmed the lead story quickly, but it was the photo that kept drawing his eye back; it seemed to express all the bad feelings he had been living with over the last month without really explaining any of them.
Ralph thought the headline over the photograph - WOMANCARE DEMONSTRATION SPARKS VIOLENCE - didn't reflect the story which followed, but that didn't surprise him; he had been reading the News for years and had gotten used to its biases, which included a firm anti-abortion stance. Still, the paper had been careful to distance itself from The Friends of Life in that day's tut-tut, now-you-boys-just-stop-it editorial, and Ralph wasn't surprised. The F
riends had gathered in the parking lot adjacent to both WomanCare and Derry Home Hospital, waiting for a group of about two hundred pro-choice marchers who were walking across town from the Civic Center. Most of the marchers were carrying signs with pictures of Susan Day and the slogan CHOICE, NOT FEAR on them.
The marchers' idea was to gather supporters as they went, like a snowball rolling downhill. At WomanCare there would be a short rally - intended to pump people up for the coming Susan Day speech - followed by refreshments. The rally never happened. As the pro-choice marchers approached the parking lot, the Friends of Life people rushed out and blocked the road, holding their own signs (MURDER IS MURDER, SUSAN DAY STAY AWAY, STOP THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS) in front of them like shields.
The marchers had been escorted by police, but no one had been prepared for the speed with which the heckling and angry words escalated into kicks and punches. It had begun with one of The Friends of Life recognizing her own daughter among the pro-choice people. The older woman had dropped her sign and charged the younger. The daughter's boyfriend had caught the older woman and tried to restrain her. When Mom opened his face with her fingernails, the young man had thrown her to the ground. That had ignited a ten-minute melee and provoked more than thirty arrests, split roughly half and half between the two groups.
The picture on the front page of this morning's News featured Hamilton Davenport and Dan Dalton. The photographer had caught Davenport in a snarl which was entirely unlike his usual look of calm self-satisfaction. One fist was raised over his head in a primitive gesture of triumph. Facing him - and wearing Ham's CHOICE, NOT FEAR sign around the top of his head like a surreal cardboard halo - was The Friends of Life's grand fromage. Dalton's eyes were dazed, his mouth slack. The high-contrast black and white photo made the blood flowing from his nostrils look like chocolate sauce.
Ralph would look away from this for awhile, try to concentrate on finishing his cereal, and then he would remember the day last summer when he had first seen one of the pseudo 'wanted' posters that were now pasted up all over Derry - the day he had nearly fainted outside Strawford Park. Mostly it was their faces his mind fixed on: Davenport's full of angry intensity as he peered into the dusty show window of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes, Dalton's wearing a small, disdainful smile that seemed to suggest that an ape like Hamilton Davenport could not be expected to understand the higher morality of the abortion issue, and they both knew it.
