by Stephen King
But even its pretensions can’t hide the fact that it’s an extremely sexual story written by an extremely inexperienced young man (at the time I wrote “Stud City,” I had been to bed with two girls and had ejaculated prematurely all over one of them—not much like Chico in the foregoing tale, I guess). Its attitude toward women goes beyond hostility and to a point which verges on actual ugliness—two of the women in “Stud City” are sluts, and the third is a simple receptacle who says things like “I love you, Chico” and “Come in, I’ll give you cookies.” Chico, on the other hand, is a macho cigarette-smoking working-class hero who could have stepped whole and breathing from the grooves of a Bruce Springsteen record—although Springsteen was yet to be heard from when I published the story in the college literary magazine (where it ran between a poem called “Images of Me” and an essay on student parietals written entirely in lower case). It is the work of a young man every bit as insecure as he was inexperienced.
And yet it was the first story I ever wrote that felt like my story—the first one that really felt whole, after five years of trying. The first one that might still be able to stand up, even with its props taken away. Ugly but alive. Even now when I read it, stifling a smile at its pseudo-toughness and its pretensions, I can see the true face of Gordon Lachance lurking just behind the lines of print, a Gordon Lachance younger than the one living and writing now, one certainly more idealistic than the best-selling novelist who is more apt to have his paperback contracts reviewed than his books, but not so young as the one who went with his friends that day to see the body of a dead kid named Ray Brower. A Gordon Lachance halfway along in the process of losing the shine.
No, it’s not a very good story—its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside. But it was the first time I had ever really used the place I knew and the things I felt in a piece of fiction, and there was a kind of dreadful exhilaration in seeing things that had troubled me for years come out in a new form, a form over which I had imposed control. It had been years since that childhood idea of Denny being in the closet of his spookily preserved room had occurred to me; I would have honestly believed I had forgotten it. Yet there it is in “Stud City,” only slightly changed . . . but controlled.
I’ve resisted the urge to change it a lot more, to rewrite it, to juice it up—and that urge was fairly strong, because I find the story quite embarrassing now. But there are still things in it I like, things that would be cheapened by changes made by this later Lachance, who has the first threads of gray in his hair. Things, like that image of the shadows on Johnny’s white tee-shirt or that of the rain-ripples on Jane’s naked body, that seem better than they have any right to be.
Also, it was the first story I never showed to my mother and father. There was too much Denny in it. Too much Castle Rock. And most of all, too much 1960. You always know the truth, because when you cut yourself or someone else with it, there’s always a bloody show.
9
My room was on the second floor, and it must have been at least ninety degrees up there. It would be a hundred and ten by afternoon, even with all the windows open. I was really glad I wasn’t sleeping there that night, and the thought of where we were going made me excited all over again. I made two blankets into a bedroll and tied it with my old belt. I collected all my money, which was sixty-eight cents. Then I was ready to go.
I went down the back stairs to avoid meeting my dad in front of the house, but I hadn’t needed to worry; he was still out in the garden with the hose, making useless rainbows in the air and looking through them.
I walked down Summer Street and cut through a vacant lot to Carbine—where the offices of the Castle Rock Call stand today. I was headed up Carbine toward the clubhouse when a car pulled over to the curb and Chris got out. He had his old Boy Scout pack in one hand and two blankets rolled up and tied with clothesrope in the other.
“Thanks, mister,” he said, and trotted over to join me as the car pulled away. His Boy Scout canteen was slung around his neck and under one arm so that it finally ended up banging on his hip. His eyes were sparkling.
“Gordie! You wanna see something?”
“Sure, I guess so. What?”
“Come on down here first.” He pointed at the narrow space between the Blue Point Diner and the Castle Rock Drugstore.
“What is it, Chris?”
“Come on, I said!”
He ran down the alley and after a brief moment (that’s all it took me to cast aside my better judgment) I ran after him. The two buildings were set slightly toward each other rather than running parallel, and so the alley narrowed as it went back. We waded through trashy drifts of old newspapers and stepped over cruel, sparkly nests of broken beer and soda bottles. Chris cut behind the Blue Point and put his bedroll down. There were eight or nine garbage cans lined up here and the stench was incredible.
“Phew! Chris! Come on, gimme a break!”
“Gimme your arm,” Chris said, by rote.
“No, sincerely, I’m gonna throw u—”
The words broke off in my mouth and I forgot all about the smelly garbage cans. Chris had unslung his pack and opened it and reached inside. Now he was holding out a huge pistol with dark wood grips.
“You wanna be the Lone Ranger or the Cisco Kid?” Chris asked, grinning.
“Walking, talking Jesus! Where’d you get that?”
“Hawked it out of my dad’s bureau. It’s a forty-five.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” I said, although it could have been a .38 or a .357 for all I knew—in spite of all the John D. MacDonalds and Ed McBains I’d read, the only pistol I’d ever seen up close was the one Constable Bannerman carried . . . and although all the kids asked him to take it out of its holster, Bannerman never would. “Man, your dad’s gonna hide you when he finds out. You said he was on a mean streak anyway.”
His eyes just went on dancing. “That’s it, man. He ain’t gonna find out nothing. Him and these other rummies are all laid up down in Harrison with six or eight bottles of wine. They won’t be back for a week. Fucking rummies.” His lip curled. He was the only guy in our gang who would never take a drink, even to show he had, you know, big balls. He said he wasn’t going to grow up to be a fucking tosspot like his old man. And he told me once privately—this was after the DeSpain twins showed up with a six-pack they’d hawked from their old man and everybody teased Chris because he wouldn’t take a beer or even a swallow—that he was scared to drink. He said his father never got his nose all the way out of the bottle anymore, that his older brother had been drunk out of his tits when he raped that girl, and that Eyeball was always guzzling Purple Jesuses with Ace Merrill and Charlie Hogan and Billy Tessio. What, he asked me, did I think his chances of letting go of the bottle would be once he picked it up? Maybe you think that’s funny, a twelve-year-old worrying that he might be an incipient alcoholic, but it wasn’t funny to Chris. Not at all. He’d thought about the possibility a lot. He’d had occasion to.
“You got shells for it?”
“Nine of them—all that was left in the box. He’ll think he used em himself, shooting at cans while he was drunk.”
“Is it loaded?”
“No! Chrissake, what do you think I am?”
I finally took the gun. I liked the heavy way it sat there in my hand. I could see myself as Steve Carella of the 87th Squad, going after that guy The Heckler or maybe covering Meyer Meyer or Kling while they broke into a desperate junkie’s sleazy apartment. I sighted on one of the smelly trashcans and squeezed the trigger.
KA-BLAM!
The gun bucked in my hand. Fire licked from the end. It felt as if my wrist had just been broken. My heart vaulted nimbly into the back of my mouth and crouched there, trembling. A big hole appeared in the corrugated metal surface of the trashcan—it was the work of an evil conjuror.
“Jesus!” I screamed.
Chris was cackling wildly—in real amusement or
hysterical terror I couldn’t tell. “You did it, you did it! Gordie did it!” he bugled. “Hey, Gordon Lachance is shooting up Castle Rock!”
“Shut up! Let’s get out of here!” I screamed, and grabbed him by the shirt.
As we ran, the back door of the Blue Point jerked open and Francine Tupper stepped out in her white rayon waitress’s uniform. “Who did that? Who’s letting off cherry-bombs back here?”
We ran like hell, cutting behind the drugstore and the hardware store and the Emporium Galorium, which sold antiques and junk and dime books. We climbed a fence, spiking our palms with splinters, and finally came out on Curran Street. I threw the .45 at Chris as we ran; he was killing himself laughing but caught it and somehow managed to stuff it back into his knapsack and close one of the snaps. Once around the corner of Curran and back on Carbine Street, we slowed to a walk so we wouldn’t look suspicious, running in the heat. Chris was still giggling.
“Man, you shoulda seen your face. Oh man, that was priceless. That was really fine. My fucking-A.” He shook his head and slapped his leg and howled.
“You knew it was loaded, didn’t you? You wet! I’m gonna be in trouble. That Tupper babe saw me.”
“Shit, she thought it was a firecracker. Besides, ole Thunderjugs Tupper can’t see past the end of her own nose, you know that. Thinks wearing glasses would spoil her pret-ty face.” He put one palm against the small of his back and bumped his hips and got laughing again.
“Well, I don’t care. That was a mean trick, Chris. Really.”
“Come on, Gordie.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t know it was loaded, honest to God, I swear on my mother’s name I just took it out of my dad’s bureau. He always unloads it. He must have been really drunk when he put it away the last time.”
“You really didn’t load it?”
“No sir.”
“You swear it on your mother’s name even if she goes to hell for you telling a lie?”
“I swear.” He crossed himself and spit, his face as open and repentant as any choirboy’s. But when we turned into the vacant lot where our treehouse was and saw Vern and Teddy sitting on their bedrolls waiting for us, he started to laugh again. He told them the whole story, and after everybody had had their yucks, Teddy asked him what Chris thought they needed a pistol for.
“Nothin,” Chris said. “Except we might see a bear. Something like that. Besides, it’s spooky sleeping out at night in the woods.”
Everybody nodded at that. Chris was the biggest, toughest guy in our gang, and he could always get away with saying things like that. Teddy, on the other hand, would have gotten his ass ragged off if he even hinted he was afraid of the dark.
“Did you set your tent up in the field?” Teddy asked Vern.
“Yeah. And I put two turned-on flashlights in it so it’ll look like we’re there after dark.”
“Hot shit!” I said, and clapped Vern on the back. For him, that was thinking. He grinned and blushed.
“So let’s go,” Teddy said. “Come on, it’s almost twelve already!”
Chris got up and we gathered around him.
“We’ll walk across Beeman’s field and behind that furniture place by Sonny’s Texaco,” he said. “Then we’ll get on the railroad tracks down by the dump and just walk across the trestle into Harlow.”
“How far do you think it’s gonna be?” Teddy asked.
Chris shrugged. “Harlow’s big. We’re gonna be walking at least twenty miles. That sound right to you, Gordie?”
“Yeah. It might even be thirty.”
“Even if it’s thirty we ought to be there by tomorrow afternoon, if no one goes pussy.”
“No pussies here,” Teddy said at once.
We all looked at each other for a second.
“Miaoww,” Vern said, and we all laughed.
“Come on, you guys,” Chris said, and shouldered his pack.
We walked out of the vacant lot together, Chris slightly in the lead.
10
By the time we got across Beeman’s field and had struggled up the cindery embankment to the Great Southern and Western Maine tracks, we had all taken our shirts off and tied them around our waists. We were sweating like pigs. At the top of the embankment we looked down the tracks, toward where we’d have to go.
I’ll never forget that moment, no matter how old I get. I was the only one with a watch—a cheap Timex I’d gotten as a premium for selling Cloverine Brand Salve the year before. Its hands stood at straight up noon, and the sun beat down on the dry, shadeless vista before us with savage heat. You could feel it working to get in under your skull and fry your brains.
Behind us was Castle Rock, spread out on the long hill that was known as Castle View, surrounding its green and shady common. Further down Castle River you could see the stacks of the woollen mill spewing smoke into a sky the color of gunmetal and spewing waste into the water. The Jolly Furniture Barn was on our left. And straight ahead of us the railroad tracks, bright and heliographing in the sun. They paralleled the Castle River, which was on our left. To our right was a lot of overgrown scrubland (there’s motorcycle track there today—they have scrambles every Sunday afternoon at 2:00 p.m.). An old abandoned water tower stood on the horizon, rusty and somehow scary.
We stood there for that one noontime moment and then Chris said impatiently, “Come on, let’s get going.”
We walked beside the tracks in the cinders, kicking up little puffs of blackish dust at every step. Our socks and sneakers were soon gritty with it. Vern started singing “Roll Me Over in the Clover” but soon quit it, which was a break for our ears. Only Teddy and Chris had brought canteens, and we were all hitting them pretty hard.
“We could fill the canteens again at the dump faucet,” I said. “My dad told me that’s a safe well. It’s a hundred and ninety feet deep.”
“Okay,” Chris said, being the tough platoon leader. “That’ll be a good place to take five, anyway.”
“What about food?” Teddy asked suddenly. “I bet nobody thought to bring something to eat. I know I didn’t.”
Chris stopped. “Shit! I didn’t, either. Gordie?”
I shook my head, wondering how I could have been so dumb.
“Vern?”
“Zip,” Vern said. “Sorry.”
“Well, let’s see how much money we got,” I said. I untied my shirt, spread it on the cinders, and dropped my own sixty-eight cents onto it. The coins glittered feverishly in the sunlight. Chris had a tattered dollar and two pennies. Teddy had two quarters and two nickels. Vern had exactly seven cents.
“Two-thirty-seven,” I said. “Not bad. There’s a store at the end of that little road that goes to the dump. Somebody’ll have to walk down there and get some hamburger and some tonics while the others rest.”
“Who?” Vern asked.
“We’ll match for it when we get to the dump. Come on.”
I slid all the money into my pants pocket and was just tying my shirt around my waist again when Chris hollered: “Train!”
I put my hand out on one of the rails to feel it, even though I could already hear it. The rail was thrumming crazily; for a moment it was like holding the train in my hand.
“Paratroops over the side!” Vern bawled, and leaped halfway down the embankment in one crazy, clownish stride. Vern was nuts for playing paratroops anyplace the ground was soft—a gravel pit, a haymow, an embankment like this one. Chris jumped after him. The train was really loud now, probably headed straight up our side of the river toward Lewiston. Instead of jumping, Teddy turned in the direction from which it was coming. His thick glasses glittered in the sun. His long hair flopped untidily over his brow in sweat-soaked stringers.
“Go on, Teddy,” I said.
“No, huh-uh, I’m gonna dodge it.” He looked at me, his magnified eyes frantic with excitement. “A train-dodge, dig it? What’s trucks after a fuckin train-dodge?”
“You’re crazy, man. You want to get killed?”
&n
bsp; “Just like the beach at Normandy!” Teddy yelled, and strode out into the middle of the tracks. He stood on one of the crossties, lightly balanced.
I stood stunned for a moment, unable to believe stupidity of such width and breadth. Then I grabbed him, dragged him fighting and protesting to the embankment, and pushed him over. I jumped after him and Teddy caught me a good one in the guts while I was still in the air. The wind whooshed out of me, but I was still able to hit him in the sternum with my knee and knock him flat on his back before he could get all the way up. I landed, gasping and sprawling, and Teddy grabbed me around the neck. We went rolling all the way to the bottom of the embankment, hitting and clawing at each other while Chris and Vern stared at us, stupidly surprised.
“You little son of a bitch!” Teddy was screaming at me. “You fucker! Don’t you throw your weight around on me! I’ll kill you, you dipshit!”
I was getting my breath back now, and I made it to my feet. I backed away as Teddy advanced, holding my open hands up to slap away his punches, half-laughing and half-scared. Teddy was no one to fool around with when he went into one of his screaming fits. He’d take on a big kid in that state, and after the big kid broke both of his arms, he’d bite.
“Teddy, you can dodge anything you want after we see what we’re going to see but
whack on the shoulder as one wildly swinging fist got past me
“until then no one’s supposed to see us, you
whack on the side of the face, and then we might have had a real fight if Chris and Vern
“stupid wet end!”
hadn’t grabbed us and kept us apart. Above us, the train roared by in a thunder of diesel exhaust and the great heavy clacking of boxcar wheels. A few cinders bounced down the embankment and the argument was over . . . at least until we could hear ourselves talk again.
It was only a short freight, and when the caboose had trailed by, Teddy said: “I’m gonna kill him. At least give him a fat lip.” He struggled against Chris, but Chris only grabbed him tighter.
