On Friday, my second full day in Derry, I went down to the Center Street Market. I waited until five in the afternoon, because I thought that was when the place would be busiest—Friday’s payday, after all, and for a lot of people (by which I mean wives; one of the rules of life in 1958 is Men Don’t Buy Groceries) that meant shopping day. Lots of shoppers would make it easier for me to blend in. To help in that regard, I went to W. T. Grant’s and supplemented my wardrobe with some chinos and blue workshirts. Remembering No Suspenders and his buddies outside the Sleepy Silver Dollar, I also bought a pair of Wolverine workboots. On my way to the market, I kicked them repeatedly against the curbing until the toes were scuffed.
The place was every bit as busy as I’d hoped, with a line at all three cash registers and the aisles full of women pushing shoppingcarts. The few men I saw only had baskets, so that was what I took. I put a bag of apples in mine (dirt cheap), and a bag of oranges (almost as expensive as 2011 oranges). Beneath my feet, the oiled wooden floor creaked.
What exactly did Mr. Dunningdoin the Center Street Market? Bevvie-on-the-levee hadn’t said. He wasn’t the manager; a glance into the glassed-in booth just beyond the produce section showed a white-haired gentleman who could have claimed Ellen Dunning as a granddaughter, perhaps, but not as a daughter. And the sign on his desk said MR. CURRIE.
As I walked along the back of the store, past the dairy case (I was amused by a sign reading HAVE YOU TRIED “YOGHURT?” IF NOT YOU WILL LOVE IT WHEN YOU DO), I began to hear laughter. Female laughter of the immediately identifiable oh-you-rascal variety. I turned into the far aisle and saw a covey of women, dressed in much the same style as the ladies in the Kennebec Fruit, clustered around the meat counter. THE BUTCHERY, read the handmade wooden sign hanging down on decorative chrome chains. HOME-STYLE CUTS. And, at the bottom: FRANK DUNNING, HEAD BUTCHER.
Sometimes life coughs up coincidences no writer of fiction would dare copy.
It was Frank Dunning who was making the ladies laugh. The resemblance to the janitor who had taken my GED English course was close enough to be eerie. He was Harry to the life, except this version’s hair was almost completely black instead of almost all gray, and the sweet, slightly puzzled smile had been replaced by a raffish, razzle-dazzle grin. It was no wonder the ladies were all aflutter. Even Bevvie-on-the-levee thought he was the cat’s meow, and why not? She might only be twelve or thirteen, but she was female, and Frank Dunning was a charmer. He knew it, too. There had to be reasons for the flowers of Derry womanhood to spend their husbands’ paychecks at the downtown market instead of at the slightly cheaper A&P, and one of them was right here. Mr. Dunning was handsome, Mr. Dunning wore spandy-clean cleanwhites (slightly bloodstained at the cuffs, but he was a butcher, after all), Mr. Dunning wore a stylish white hat that looked like a cross between a chef’s toque and an artist’s beret. It hung down to just above one eyebrow. A fashion statement, by God.
All in all, Mr. Frank Dunning, with his rosy, clean-shaven cheeks and his immaculately barbered black hair, was God’s gift to the Little Woman. As I strolled toward him, he tied off a package of meat with a length of string drawn from a roll on a spindle beside his scale and wrote the price on it with a flourish of his black marker. He handed it to a lady of about fifty summers who was wearing a housedress with big pink roses blooming on it, seamed nylons, and a schoolgirl blush.
“There you are, Mrs. Levesque, one pound of German bologna, sliced thin.” He leaned confidentially over the counter, close enough so that Mrs. Levesque (and the other ladies) would be able to whiff on the entrancing aroma of his cologne. Was it Aqua Velva, Fred Toomey’s brand? I thought not. I thought a fascinator like Frank Dunning would go for something a little more expensive. “Do you know the problem with German bologna?”
“No,” she said, dragging it out a little so it becameNoo-oo.The other ladies twittered in anticipation.
Dunning’s eyes flicked briefly to me and saw nothing to interest him. When he looked back at Mrs. Levesque, they once more picked up their patented twinkle.
“An hour after you eat some, you’re hungry for power.”
I’m not sure all the ladies got it, but they all shrieked with appreciation. Dunning sent Mrs. Levesque happily on her way, and as I passed out of hearing, he was turning his attention to a Mrs. Bowie. Who would, I was sure, be equally happy to receive it.
He’s a nice man. Always joking around and stuff.
But the nice man had cold eyes. When interacting with his fascinated lady-harem, they had been blue. But when he turned his attention to me—however briefly—I could have sworn that they turned gray, the color of water beneath a sky from which snow will soon fall.
3
The market closed at 6:00P.M., and when I left with my few items, it was only twenty past five. There was a U-Needa-Lunch on Witcham Street, just around the corner. I ordered a hamburger, a fountain Coke, and a piece of chocolate pie. The pie was excellent—real chocolate, real cream. It filled my mouth the way Frank Anicetti’s root beer had. I dawdled as long as I could, then strolled down to the canal, where there were some benches. There was also a sightline—narrow but adequate—to the Center Street Market. I was full but ate one of my oranges anyway, casting bits of peel over the cement embankment and watching the water carry them away.
Promptly at six, the lights in the market’s big front windows went out. By quarter past, the last of the ladies had exited, toting their carry-alls either up Up-Mile Hill or clustering at one of those phone poles with the painted white stripe. A bus marked ROUNDABOUT ONE FARE came along and scooped them up. At quarter to seven, the market employees began leaving. The last two to exit were Mr. Currie, the manager, and Dunning. They shook hands and parted, Currie going up the alley between the market and the shoe store next to it, probably to get his car, and Dunning to the bus stop.
By then there were only two other people there and I didn’t want to join them. Thanks to the one-way traffic pattern in the Low Town, I didn’t have to. I walked to another white-painted pole, this one handy to The Strand (where the current double feature wasMachine-Gun KellyandReform School Girl; the marquee promised BLAZING ACTION), and waited with some working joes who were talking about possible World Series matchups. I could have told them plenty about that, but kept my mouth shut.
A city bus came along and stopped across from the Center Street Market. Dunning got on. It came the rest of the way down the hill and pulled up at the movie-theater stop. I let the working joes go ahead of me, so I could watch how much money they put in thepole-mounted coin receptacle next to the driver’s seat. I felt like an alien in a science fiction movie, one who’s trying to masquerade as an earthling. It was stupid—I wanted to ride the city bus, not blow up the White House with a death-ray—but that didn’t change the feeling.
One of the guys who got on ahead of me flashed a canary-colored bus pass that made me think fleetingly of the Yellow Card Man. The others put fifteen cents into the coin receptacle, which clicked and dinged. I did the same, although it took me a bit longer because my dime was stuck to my sweaty palm. I thought I could feel every eye on me, but when I looked up, everyone was either reading the newspaper or staring vacantly out the windows. The interior of the bus was a fug of blue-gray smoke.
Frank Dunning was halfway down on the right, now wearing tailored gray slacks, a white shirt, and a dark blue tie. Natty. He was busy lighting a cigarette and didn’t look at me as I passed him and took a seat near the back. The bus groaned its way around the circuit of Low Town one-way streets, then mounted Up-Mile Hill on Witcham. Once we were in the west side residential area, riders began to get off. They were all men; presumably the women were back at home putting away their groceries or getting supper on the table. As the bus emptied and Frank Dunning went on sitting where he was, smoking his cigarette, I wondered if we were going to end up being the last two riders.
I needn’t have worried. When the bus angled toward the stop at the corner of Witcham Street and Charity Avenue (Derry also had Faith and Hope Avenues, I later learned), Dunning dropped his cigarette on the floor, crushed it with his shoe, and rose from his seat. He walked easily up the aisle, not using the grab-handles but swaying with the movements of the slowing bus. Some men don’t lose the physical graces of their adolescence until relatively late in life. Dunning appeared to be one of them. He would have made an excellent swing-dancer.
He clapped the bus driver on the shoulder and started telling him a joke. It was short, and most of it was lost in the chuff of theairbrakes, but I caught the phrasethree jigs stuck in an elevatorand decided it wasn’t one he’d have told to his Housedress Harem. The driver exploded with laughter, then yanked the long chrome lever that opened the front doors. “See you Monday, Frank,” he said.
“If the creek don’t rise,” Dunning responded, then ran down the two steps and jumped across the grass verge to the sidewalk. I could see muscles ripple under his shirt. What chance would a woman and four children have against him?Not muchwas my first thought on the subject, but that was wrong. The correct answer wasnone.
As the bus drew away, I saw Dunning mount the steps of the first building down from the corner on Charity Avenue. There were eight or nine men and women sitting in rockers on the wide front porch. Several of them greeted the butcher, who started shaking hands like a visiting politician. The house was a three-story New England Victorian, with a sign hanging from the porch eave. I just had time to read it:
EDNA PRICE ROOMS
BY THE WEEK OR THE MONTH
EFFICIENCY KITCHENS AVAILABLE
NO PETS!
Below this, hanging from the big sign on hooks, was a smaller orange sign reading NO VACANCY.
