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4
On the following Tuesday, I rented an apartment advertised in the Derry News as “semi-furnished, in
a good neighborhood,” and on Wednesday the seventeenth of September, Mr. George Amberson
moved in. Goodbye, Derry Town House, hello Harris Avenue. I had been living in 1958 for over a
week, and was beginning to feel comfortable there, if not exactly a native.
The semi-furnishings consisted of a bed (which came with a slightly stained mattress but no linen),
a sofa, a kitchen table with one leg that needed to be shimmed so it didn’t teeter, and a single chair
with a yellow plastic seat that made a weird smook sound as it reluctantly released its grip on the seat
of one’s pants. There was a stove and a clattery fridge. In the kitchen pantry, I discovered the
apartment’s air-conditioning unit: a GE fan with a frayed plug that looked absolutely lethal.
I felt that the apartment, which was directly beneath the flight path of planes landing at Derry
Airport, was a bit overpriced at sixty-five dollars a month, but agreed to it because Mrs. Joplin, the
landlady, was willing to overlook Mr. Amberson’s lack of references. It helped that he could offer
three months’ rent in cash. She nevertheless insisted on copying the information from my driver’s
license. If she found it strange that a real estate freelancer from Wisconsin was carrying a Maine
license, she didn’t say so.
I was glad Al had given me lots of cash. Cash is so soothing to strangers.
It goes a lot farther in ’58, too. For only three hundred dollars, I was able to turn my semifurnished
apartment into one that was fully furnished. Ninety of the three hundred went for a
secondhand RCA table-model television. That night I watched The Steve Allen Show in beautiful blackand-white,
then turned it off and sat at the kitchen table, listening to a plane settle earthward in a
roar of propellers. From my back pocket I took a Blue Horse notebook I’d bought in the Low Town
drugstore (the one where shoplifting was not a kick, groove, or gasser). I turned to the first page and
clicked out the tip of my equally new Parker ballpoint. I sat that way for maybe fifteen minutes—
long enough for another plane to clatter earthward, seemingly so close that I almost expected to feel a
thump as the wheels scraped the roof.
The page remained blank. So did my mind. Every time I tried to throw it into gear, the only
coherent thought I could manage was the past doesn’t want to be changed.
Not helpful.
At last I got up, took the fan from its shelf in the pantry, and set it on the counter. I wasn’t sure it
would work, but it did, and the hum of the motor was strangely soothing. Also, it masked the fridge’s
annoying rumble.
When I sat down again, my mind was clearer, and this time a few words came.
OPTIONS
1. Tell police
2. Anonymous call to butcher (Say “I’m watching you, mf, if you do something I’ll tell”)
3. Frame butcher for something
4. Incapacitate butcher somehow
I stopped there. The fridge clicked off. There were no descending planes and no traffic on Harris
Avenue. For the time being it was just me and my fan and my incomplete list. At last I wrote the
final item:
5. Kill butcher