When Paul was revealed that day he was wearing his bib overalls and a red-and-white-checked shirt. His beard was splendidly black, splendidly full, splendidly lumber jack-y. A plastic axe, surely the Godzilla of all plastic axes, was slung over one shoulder, and he grinned unceasingly at the northern skies, which on the day of the unveiling had been as blue as the skin of Paul's reputed companion (Babe was not present at the unveiling, however; the cost estimate of adding a blue ox to the tableau had been prohibitive).

The children who attended the ceremonies (there were hundreds of them, and ten-year-old Richie Tozier, in the company of his dad, had been among them) were totally and uncritically delighted by the plastic giant. Parents boosted toddlers up onto the square pedestal on which Paul stood, took photos, and then watched with mixed apprehension and amusement as the kids climbed and crawled, laughing, over Paul's huge black boots (correction: huge black plastic boots).

It had been March of the following year when Richie, exhausted and terrified, had finished up on one of the benches in front of the statue after eluding-by the barest of margins-Messrs. Bowers, Criss, and Huggins in a chase that had led from Derry Elementary School across most of the downtown area. He had finally ditched them in the toy department of Freese's Department Store.

The Derry branch of Freese's was a poor thing compared with the grand downtown department store in Bangor, but Richie had been far past caring about such things-by then it was a case of any port in a storm. Henry Bowers had been right behind him and by then Richie had been flagging badly. He had dodged into the mouth of the department store's revolving door as a last resort. Henry, who apparently didn't understand the physics of such devices, had nearly lost the tips of his fingers trying to grab Richie as Richie trundled around and into the store.

Pelting downstairs, shirttail flying out behind him, he had heard the revolving door give off a series of reports almost as loud as TV gunfire and understood that Larry, Moe, and Curly were still after him. He was laughing as he went down the stairs to the basement level but that was only a nervous tic; he was as full of terror as a rabbit caught in a wire snare. They really meant to beat him up good this time (he had no idea that in another ten weeks or so he would believe the three of them, Henry in particular, capable of anything short of murder, and he surely would have whitened with shock if he had known of the apocalyptic rockfight in July, when even that last qualification would disappear from his mind). And the whole thing had been so utterly, typically stupid.

Richie and the other boys in his fifth-grade class had been filing into the gym. A sixth-grade class, Henry hulking among them like an ox among cows, had been coming out. Although he was still in the fifth grade, Henry went to gym with the older boys. The overhead pipes had been dripping again and Mr Fazio hadn't yet gotten around to putting up his CAUTION! WET FLOOR! sign on its little easel. Henry had slipped in a puddle and had landed on his keister.

Before he could stop it Richie's traitor mouth had bugled: "Way to go, banana-heels!"

There had been an explosion of laughter from both Henry's classmates and Richie's, but there had been no laughter on Henry's face as he picked himself up-only a dull flush the color of freshly fired brick.

"Later for you, four-eyes," he said, and walked on.

The laughter died at once. The boys in the hall looked at Richie as one already dead. Henry did not pause to check reactions; he simply walked off, head down, elbows red from catching the fall, a large wet place on the seat of his pants. Looking at that wet spot, Richie felt his suicidally witty mouth drop open again... but this time he snapped it shut again, so fast he almost amputated the tip of his tongue with the falling gate of his teeth.

Well, but he'll forget, he told himself uneasily as he changed up for gym. Sure he will. Ole Hank just hasn't got that many memory circuits working. Every time he takes a shit he probably has to look up the directions in the instruction booklet, ha-ha.

Ha-ha.

"You're dead, Trashmouth," Vince "Boogers" Taliendo told him, pulling his jock up over a dork roughly the size and shape of an anemic peanut. He said it with a certain sad respect. "don't worry, though. I'll bring flowers."

"Cut off your ears and bring cauliflowers," Richie had come back smartly, and everyone laughed, even ole "Boogers" Taliendo laughed, why not, they could all afford to laugh. What, me worry? They would all be home watching Jimmy Dodd and the Mouseketeers on the Mickey Mouse Club or Frankie Lymon singing "I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent" on American Bandstand while Richie went shagging ass through ladies" lingerie and housewares on his way to the toy department with sweat pouring down his back into the crack of his ass and his terrified balls strung up so high they felt like they might be hung over his bellybutton. Sure, they could laugh. Har-de-har-har-har.

Henry hadn't forgotten. Richie had left by the door at the kindergarten end of the school building just in case, but Henry had stuck Belch Huggins there, also just in case. Har-de-har-har-har.

Richie saw Belch first or there would have been no contest at all. Belch was looking out toward Derry Park, holding an unlit cigarette in one hand and dreamily picking the seat of his chinos out of his ass with the other. Heart pounding hard, Richie had walked quietly across the playground and was most of the way down Charter Street before Belch turned his head and saw him. He yelled for Henry and Victor, and since then the chase had been on.

When Richie reached the toy department it had been utterly, horribly deserted. There wasn't even a sales clerk hanging out-a welcome adult to put a stop to things before they got entirely out of hand. He could hear the three dinosaurs of the apocalypse closing in now. And he simply couldn't run anymore. Each breath produced a deep hurting stitch in his left side.

His eye fixed on a door which read EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY\ ALARM WILL SOUND! Hope kindled in his chest.

Richie ran down an aisle crammed with Donald Duck jack-in-the-boxes, United States Army tanks made in Japan, Lone Ranger cap pistols, wind-up robots. He reached the door and slammed the push-bar as hard as he could. The door opened, letting in cool mid-March air. The alarm went off with a strident bray. Richie immediately doubled back and dropped to his hands and knees in the next aisle over. He was down before the door could settle closed again.

Henry, Belch, and Victor thundered into the toy department just as the door clicked shut and the alarm cut off. They raced for it, Henry in the lead, his face set and intent.

A sales clerk finally appeared, coming on the run. He wore a blue nylon duster over a plaid sportcoat of excruciating ugliness. The rims of his spectacles were as pink as the eyes of a white rabbit. Richie thought he looked like Wally Cox in his Mr Peepers role, and he had to slam his traitor mouth into the fat part of his forearm to keep from screaming out gales of exhausted laughter.

"You boys!" Mr Peepers exclaimed. "You boys can't go out there! That's an emergency exit! You! Hey! You boys!"

Victor glanced at him a little nervously, but Henry and Belch never turned from their course and Victor followed them. The alarm brayed again, longer this time as they charged into the alley. Before it stopped clanging Richie was on his feet and trotting back toward ladies" lingerie.

"You boys will be barred from the store!" the clerk yelled after him.

Looking back over his shoulder Richie squealed in his Granny Grunt Voice, "did anyone ever tell you you look just like Mr Peepers, young man?"

And so he had escaped. And so he had finished up almost a mile from Freese's, in front of City Center... and, he devoutly hoped, out of harm's way. At least for the time being. He was spent. He sat down on a bench just to the left of the Paul Bunyan statue, wanting only a little peace while he got himself back together. In a bit he would get up and head home, but for now it felt too good to just sit here in the afternoon sun. The day had opened in a cold drizzly gloom, but now you could believe spring might actually be on the way.

Farther up the lawn he could see the City Center marquee, which on that March day bore this message in large blue translucent letters:

HEY TEENS!

COMING MARCH 28TH

THE ARNIE "WOO-WOO" GINSBERG ROCK AND ROLL SHOW!

JERRY LEE LEWIS

THE PENGUINS

FRANKIE LYMON AND THE TEENAGERS

GENE VINCENT AND THE BLUE CAPS

 

 

FREDDY "BOOM-BOOM" CANNON

AN EVENING OF WHOLESOME ENTERTAINMENT!!

 

That was a show Richie really wanted to see, but he knew there wasn't a chance. His mother's idea of wholesome entertainment did not include Jerry Lee Lewis telling the young people of America we got chicken in the barn, whose barn, what barn, my barn. Nor, for that matter, did it include Freddy Cannon, whose Tallahassee lassie had a hi-fi chassis. She was willing to admit that she had done her share of screaming for Frank Sinatra (whom she now called Frankie the Snot) as a bobby-soxer, but, like Bill Denbrough's mother, she was death on rock and roll. Chuck Berry terrified her, and she declared that Richard Penniman, better known to his teen and subteen constituency as Little Richard, made her want to "barf like a chicken."

This was a phrase for which Richie had never asked a translation.

His dad was neutral on the subject of rock and roll and could perhaps have been swayed, but Richie knew in his heart that his mother's wishes would rule on this subject-until he was sixteen or seventeen, anyway-and by then, his mother was firmly convinced, the country's rock and roll mania would have passed.

Richie thought Danny and the Juniors were more right on that subject than his mom-rock and roll would never die. He himself loved it, although his sources were really only two-American Bandstand on Channel 7 in the afternoon and WMEX out of Boston at night, when the air had thinned and the hoarse enthusiastic voice of Arnie Ginsberg came wavering in and out like the voice of a ghost called up at a seance. The beat did more than make him happy. It made him feel bigger, stronger, more there. When Frankie Ford sang "sea Cruise" or Eddie Cochran sang "summertime Blues," Richie was actually transported with joy. There was power in that music, a power which seemed to most rightfully belong to all the skinny kids, fat kids, ugly kids, shy kids-the world's losers, in short. In it he felt a mad hilarious voltage which had the power to both kill and exalt. He idolized Fats Domino (who made even Ben Hanscom look sum and trim) and Buddy Holly, who, like Richie, wore glasses, and Screaming Jay Hawkins, who popped out of a coffin at his concerts (or so Richie had been told), and the Dovells, who danced as good as black guys.

Well, almost.

He would have his rock and roll someday if he wanted it-he was confident it would still be there for him when his mother finally gave in and let him have it-but that would not be on March 28th, 1958... or in 1959... or...

His eyes had drifted away from the marquee and then... well... then he must have fallen asleep. It was the only explanation that made sense. What had happened next could only happen in dreams.

And now here he was again a Richie Tozier who had finally gotten all the rock and roll he had ever wanted... and who had found, happily, that it still wasn't enough. His eyes went to the marquee in front of City Center and saw that, with a hideous kind of serendipity, those same blue letters spelled out:

JUNE 14TH

HEAVY METAL MANIA!

JUDAS PRIEST

IRON MAIDEN

 

BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE OR AT ANY TICKETRON OUTLET

Somewhere along the way they dropped the wholesome entertainment line, thought Richie, but as far as I can tell that's just about the only difference,

And heard Danny and the Juniors, dim and distant, like voices heard down a long corridor coming out of a cheap radio: Rock and roll will never die, I'll dig it to the end... It'll go down in history, just you watch my friend...

Richie looked back at Paul Bunyan, patron saint of Derry-Derry, which had come into being, according to the stories, because this was where the logs fetched up when they came downriver. There had been a time when, in the spring, both the Penobscot and the Kenduskeag would have been solid logs from one side to the other, their black bark hides glistening in the spring sun. A fellow who was fast on his feet could walk from Wally's Spa in Hell's Half-Acre over to Ramper's in Brewster (Ramper's was a tavern of such horrible repute that it was commonly called the Bucket of Blood) without getting his boots wet over the third crossing of his rawhide laces. Or so it had been storied in Richie's youth, and he supposed there was a bit of Paul Bunyan in all such stories.

Old Paul, he thought, looking up at the plastic statue. What you been doing since I've been gone? Made any new riverbeds coming home tired and dragging your axe behind you? Made any new lakes on account of wanting a bathtub big enough so you could sit in water up to your neck? Scared any more little kids the way you scared me that day?

Ah, and suddenly he remembered it all, the way you will sometimes suddenly remember a word which has been dancing on the tip of your tongue.

There he had been, sitting in that mellow March sunshine, drowsing a little, thinking about going home and catching the last half hour of Bandstand, and suddenly there had been a warm swash of air into his face. It blew his hair back from his forehead. He looked up and Paul Bunyan's huge plastic face had been right in front of his, bigger than a face on a movie screen, filling everything. The rush of air had been caused by Paul bending down... although he did not precisely look like Paul anymore. The forehead was now low and beetling; tufts of wiry hair poked from a nose as red as the nose of a long-time drunkard; his eyes were bloodshot and one had a slight cast to it.

The axe was no longer on his shoulder. Paul was leaning on its haft, and the blunt end of its head had crushed a trench in the concrete of the sidewalk. He was still grinning, but there was nothing cheery about it now. From between gigantic yellow teeth there drifted a smell like small animals rotting in hot underbrush.

"I'm going to eat you up," the giant had said in a low rumbling voice. It was the sound of boulders rocking against each other during an earthquake. "Unless you give me back my hen and my harp and my bags of gold, I'm going to eat you right the fuck up!"

The breath of these words made Richie's shirt flutter and flap like a sail in a hurricane. He shrank back against the bench, eyes bugging, hair standing out to all sides like quills, wrapped in a pocket of carrion-stink.

The giant began to laugh. It settled its hands on the haft of its axe the way Ted Williams might have laid hold of his favorite baseball bat (or ash-handle, if you prefer), and pulled it out of the hole it had made in the sidewalk. The axe began to rise into the air. It made a low lethal rushing sound. Richie suddenly understood that the giant meant to split him right down the middle.