Different Seasons(138)

Nowadays writing is my work and the pleasure has diminished a little, and more and more often that guilty, masturbatory pleasure has become associated in my head with the coldly clinical images of artificial insemination: I come according to the rules and regs laid down in my publishing contract. And although no one is ever going to call me the Thomas Wolfe of my generation, I rarely feel like a cheat: I get it off as hard as I can every f**king time. Doing less would, in an odd way, be like going faggot—or what that meant to us back then. What scares me is how often it hurts these days. Back then I was sometimes disgusted by how damned good it felt to write. These days I sometimes look at this typewriter and wonder when it’s going to run out of good words. I don’t want that to happen. I guess I can stay cool as long as I don’t run out of good words, you know?

“What’s this story?” Vern asked uneasily. “It ain’t a horror story, is it, Gordie? I don’t think I want to hear no horror stories. I’m not up for that, man.”

“No, it ain’t a horror,” Chris said. “It’s really funny. Gross, but funny. Go on, Gordie. Hammer that f**ker to us.”

“Is it about Le Dio?” Teddy asked.

“No, it ain’t about Le Dio, you psycho,” Chris said, and rabbit-punched him. “It’s about this pie-eatin contest.”

“Hey, I didn’t even write it down yet,” I said.

“Yeah, but tell it.”

“You guys want to hear it?”

“Sure,” Teddy said. “Boss.”

“Well, it’s about this made-up town. Gretna, I call it. Gretna, Maine.”

“Gretna?” Vern said, grinning. “What kind of name is that? There ain’t no Gretna in Maine.”

“Shut up, fool,” Chris said. “He just toldja it was made-up, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, but Gretna, that sounds pretty stupid—”

“Lots of real towns sound stupid,” Chris said. “I mean, what about Alfred, Maine? Or Saco, Maine? Or Jerusalem’s Lot? Or Castle-f*ckin-Rock? There ain’t no castle here. Most town names are stupid. You just don’t think so because you’re used to em. Right, Gordie?”

“Sure,” I said, but privately I thought Vern was right—Gretna was a pretty stupid name for a town. I just hadn’t been able to think of another one. “So anyway, they’re having their annual Pioneer Days, just like in Castle Rock—”

“Yeah, Pioneer Days, that’s a f**kin blast,” Vern said earnestly.

“I put my whole family in that jail on wheels they have, even f**kin Billy. It was only for half an hour and it cost me my whole allowance but it was worth it just to know where that sonofawhore was—”

“Will you shut up and let him tell it?” Teddy hollered.

Vern blinked. “Sure. Yeah. Okay.”

“Go on, Gordie,” Chris said.

“It’s not really much—”

“Naw, we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,” Teddy said, “but tell it anyway.”

I cleared my throat. “So anyway. It’s Pioneer Days, and on the last night they have these three big events. There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine, and then there’s the pie-eating contest. And the main guy of the story is this fat kid nobody likes named Davie Hogan.”

“Like Charlie Hogan’s brother if he had one,” Vern said, and then shrank back as Chris rabbit-punched him again.

“This kid, he’s our age, but he’s fat. He weighs like one-eighty and he’s always gettin beat up and ranked out. And all the kids, instead of callin him Davie, they call him Lard Ass Hogan and rank him out wherever they get the chance.”

They nodded respectfully, showing the proper sympathy for Lard Ass, although if such a guy ever showed up in Castle Rock, we all would have been out teasing him and ranking him to the dogs and back.

“So he decides to take revenge because he’s, like, fed up, you know? He’s only in the pie-eating contest, but that’s like the final event during Pioneer Days and everyone really digs it. The prize is five bucks—”

“So he wins it and gives the finger to everybody!” Teddy said. “Boss!”

“No, it’s better than that,” Chris said. “Just shut up and listen.”

“Lard Ass figures to himself, five bucks, what’s that? If anybody remembers anything at all in two weeks, it’ll just be that f**kin pig Hogan out-ate everybody, well, it figures, let’s go over his house and rank the shit out of him, only now we’ll call him Pie Ass instead of Lard Ass.”

They nodded some more, agreeing that Davie Hogan was a thinking cat. I began to warm to my own story.

“But everybody expects him to enter the contest, you know. Even his mom and dad. Hey, they practically got that five bucks spent for him already.”

“Yeah, right,” Chris said.

“So he’s thinkin about it and hating the whole thing, because being fat isn’t really his fault. See, he’s got these weird f**kin glands, somethin, and—”

“My cousin’s like that!” Vern said excitedly. “Sincerely! She weighs close to three hundred pounds! Supposed to be Hyboid Gland or somethin like that. I dunno about her Hyboid Gland, but what a f**kin blimp, no shit, she looks like a f**kin Thanksgiving turkey, and this one time—”