The Sun Dog

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  THIS IS IN MEMORY OF JOHN D. MACDONALD. I MISS YOU, OLD FRIEND—AND YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT THE TIGERS.

  A NOTE ON THE SUN DOG

  * * *

  Every now and then someone will ask me, “When are you going to get tired of this horror stuff, Steve, and write something serious?”

  I used to believe the implied insult in this question was accidental, but as the years go by I have become more and more convinced that it is not. I watch the faces of the people who drop that particular dime, you see, and most of them look like bombardiers waiting to see if their last stick of bombs is going to fall wide or hit the targeted factory or munitions dump dead on.

  The fact is, almost all of the stuff I have written—and that includes a lot of the funny stuff—was written in a serious frame of mind. I can remember very few occasions when I sat at the typewriter laughing uncontrollably over some wild and crazy bit of fluff I had just finished churning out. I’m never going to be Reynolds Price or Larry Woiwode—it isn’t in me—but that doesn’t mean I don’t care as deeply about what I do. I have to do what I can do, however—as Nils Lofgren once put it, “I gotta be my dirty self . . . I won’t play no jive.”

  If real—meaning!! SOMETHING THAT COULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN!!—is your definition of serious, you are in the wrong place and you should by all means leave the building. But please remember as you go that I’m not the only one doing business at this particular site; Franz Kafka had an office here, and George Orwell, and Shirley Jackson, and Jorge Luis Borges, and Jonathan Swift, and Lewis Carroll. A glance at the directory in the lobby shows the present tenants include Thomas Berger, Ray Bradbury, Jonathan Carroll, Thomas Pynchon, Thomas Disch, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Peter Straub, Joyce Carol Oates, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Katherine Dunn, and Mark Halpern.

  I am doing what I do for the most serious reasons: love, money, and obsession. The tale of the irrational is the sanest way I know of expressing the world in which I live. These tales have served me as instruments of both metaphor and morality; they continue to offer the best window I know on the question of how we perceive things and the corollary question of how we do or do not behave on the basis of our perceptions. I have explored these questions as well as I can within the limits of my talent and intelligence. I am no one’s National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize winner, but I’m serious, all right. If you don’t believe anything else, believe this: when I take you by your hand and begin to talk, my friend, I believe every word I say.

  A lot of the things I have to say—those Really Serious Things—have to do with the small-town world in which I was raised and where I still live. Stories and novels are scale models of what we laughingly call “real life,” and I believe that lives as they are lived in small towns are scale models of what we laughingly call “society.” This idea is certainly open to argument, and argument is perfectly fine (without it, a lot of literature teachers and critics would be looking for work); I’m just saying that a writer needs some sort of launching pad, and aside from the firm belief that a story may exist with honor for its own self, the idea of the small town as social and psychological microcosm is mine. I began experimenting with this sort of thing in Carrie, and continued on a more ambitious level with ’Salem’s Lot. I never really hit my stride, however, until The Dead Zone.

  That was, I think, the first of my Castle Rock stories (and Castle Rock is really just the town of Jerusalem’s Lot without the vampires). In the years since it was written, Castle Rock has increasingly become “my town,” in the sense that the mythical city of Isola is Ed McBain’s town and the West Virginia village of Glory was Davis Grubb’s town. I have been called back there time and time again to examine the lives of its residents and the geographies which seem to rule their lives—Castle Hill and Castle View, Castle Lake and the Town Roads which lie around it in a tangle at the western end of the town.

  As the years passed, I became more and more interested in—almost entranced by—the secret life of this town, by the hidden relationships which seemed to come clearer and clearer to me. Much of this history remains either unwritten or unpublished: how the late Sheriff George Bannerman lost his virginity in the back seat of his dead father’s car, how Ophelia Todd’s husband was killed by a walking windmill, how Deputy Andy Clutterbuck lost the index finger on his left hand (it was cut off in a fan and the family dog ate it).

  Following The Dead Zone, which is partly the story of the psychotic Frank Dodd, I wrote a novella called “The Body”; Cujo, the novel in which good old Sheriff Bannerman bit the dust; and a number of short stories and novelettes about the town (the best of them, at least in my mind, are “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” and “Uncle Otto’s Truck”). All of which is very well, but a state of entrancement with a fictional setting may not be the best thing in the world for a writer. It was for Faulkner and J. R. R. Tolkien, but sometimes a couple of exceptions just prove the rule, and besides, I don’t play in that league.

  So at some point I decided—first in my subconscious mind, I think, where all that Really Serious Work takes place—that the time had come to close the book on Castle Rock, Maine, where so many of my own favorite characters have lived and died. Enough, after all, is enough. Time to move on (maybe all the way next door to Harlow, ha-ha). But I didn’t just want to walk away; I wanted to finish things, and do it with a bang.

  Little by little I began to grasp how that could be done, and over the last four years or so I have been engaged in writing a Castle Rock Trilogy, if you please—the last Castle Rock stories. They were not written in order (I sometimes think “out of order” is the story of my life), but now they are written, and they are serious enough . . . but I hope that doesn’t mean that they are sober-sided or boring.

  The first of these stories, The Dark Half, was published in 1989. While it is primarily the story of Thad Beaumont and is in large part set in a town called Ludlow (the town where the Creeds lived in Pet Sematary), the town of Castle Rock figures in the tale, and the book serves to introduce Sheriff Bannerman’s replacement, a fellow named Alan Pangborn. Sheriff Pangborn is at the center of the last story in this sequence, a long novel called Needful Things, which is scheduled to be published next year and will conclude my doings with what local people call The Rock.

  The connective tissue between these longer works is the story which follows. You will meet few if any of Castle Rock’s larger figures in “The Sun Dog,” but it will serve to introduce you to Pop Merrill, whose nephew is town bad boy (and Gordie LaChance’s bête noire in “The Body”) Ace Merrill. “The Sun Dog” also sets the stage for the final fireworks display . . . and, I hope, exists as a satisfying story on its own, one that can be read with pleasure even if you don’t give a hang about The Dark Half or Needful Things.

  One other thing needs to be said: every story has its own secret life, quite separate from its setting, and “The Sun Dog” is a story about cameras and photographs. About five years ago, my wife, Tabitha, became interested in photography, discovered she was good at it, and began to pursue it in a serious way, through study, experiment, and practice-practice-practice. I myself take bad photos (I’m one of those guys who always manage to cut off my subjects’ heads, get pictures of them with their mouths hanging open, or both), but I have a great deal of respect for those who take good ones . . . and the whole process fascinates me.

  In the course of her experiments, my wife got a Polaroid camera, a simple one accessible even to a doofus like me. I became fascinated with this camera. I had seen and used Polaroids before, of course, but I had never really thought about them much, nor had I ever looked closely at the images these cameras produce. The more I thought about them, the stranger they seemed. They are, after all, not just images but moments of time . . . and there is something so peculiar about them.

  This story came almost all at once one night in the summer of 1987, but the thinking which made it possible went on for almost a year. And that’s enough out of me, I think. It’s been great to be with all of you again, but that doesn’t mean I’m letting you go home just yet.

  I think we have a birthday party to attend in the little town of Castle Rock.

  CHAPTER ONE

  * * *

  September 15th was Kevin’s birthday, and he got exactly what he wanted: a Sun.

  The Kevin in question was Kevin Delevan, the birthday was his fifteenth, and the Sun was a Sun 660, a Polaroid camera which does everything for the novice photographer except make bologna sandwiches.

  There were other gifts, of course; his sister, Meg, gave him a pair of mittens she had knitted herself, there was ten dollars from his grandmother in Des Moines, and his Aunt Hilda sent—as she always did—a string tie with a horrible clasp. She had sent the first of these when Kevin was three, which meant he already had twelve unused string ties with horrible clasps in a drawer of his bureau, to which this would be added—lucky thirteen. He had never worn any of them but was not allowed to throw them away. Aunt Hilda lived in Portland. She had never come to one of Kevin’s or Meg’s birthday parties, but she might decide to do just that one o
f these years. God knew she could; Portland was only fifty miles south of Castle Rock. And suppose she did come . . . and asked to see Kevin in one of his other ties (or Meg in one of her other scarves, for that matter)? With some relatives, an excuse might do. Aunt Hilda, however, was different. Aunt Hilda presented a certain golden possibility at a point where two essential facts about her crossed: she was Rich, and she was Old.

  Someday, Kevin’s Mom was convinced, she might DO SOMETHING for Kevin and Meg. It was understood that the SOMETHING would probably come after Aunt Hilda finally kicked it, in the form of a clause in her will. In the meantime, it was thought wise to keep the horrible string ties and the equally horrible scarves. So this thirteenth string tie (on the clasp of which was a bird Kevin thought was a woodpecker) would join the others, and Kevin would write Aunt Hilda a thank-you note, not because his mother would insist on it and not because he thought or even cared that Aunt Hilda might DO SOMETHING for him and his kid sister someday, but because he was a generally thoughtful boy with good habits and no real vices.

  He thanked his family for all his gifts (his mother and father had, of course, supplied a number of lesser ones, although the Polaroid was clearly the centerpiece, and they were delighted with his delight), not forgetting to give Meg a kiss (she giggled and pretended to rub it off but her own delight was equally clear) and to tell her he was sure the mittens would come in handy on the ski team this winter—but most of his attention was reserved for the Polaroid box, and the extra film packs which had come with it.

  He was a good sport about the birthday cake and the ice cream, although it was clear he was itching to get at the camera and try it out. And as soon as he decently could, he did.

  That was when the trouble started.

  He read the instruction booklet as thoroughly as his eagerness to begin would allow, then loaded the camera while the family watched with anticipation and unacknowledged dread (for some reason, the gifts which seem the most wanted are the ones which so often don’t work). There was a little collective sigh—more puff than gust—when the camera obediently spat out the cardboard square on top of the film packet, just as the instruction booklet had promised it would.

  There were two small dots, one red and one green, separated by a zig-zag lightning-bolt on the housing of the camera. When Kevin loaded the camera, the red light came on. It stayed on for a couple of seconds. The family watched in silent fascination as the Sun 660 sniffed for light. Then the red light went out and the green light began to blink rapidly.

  “It’s ready,” Kevin said, in the same straining-to-be-off-hand-but-not-quite-making-it tone with which Neil Armstrong had reported his first step upon the surface of Luna. “Why don’t all you guys stand together?”

  “I hate having my picture taken!” Meg cried, covering her face with the theatrical anxiety and pleasure which only sub-teenage girls and really bad actresses can manage.

  “Come on, Meg,” Mr. Delevan said.

  “Don’t be a goose, Meg,” Mrs. Delevan said.

  Meg dropped her hands (and her objections), and the three of them stood at the end of the table with the diminished birthday cake in the foreground.

  Kevin looked through the viewfinder. “Squeeze a little closer to Meg, Mom,” he said, motioning with his left hand. “You too, Dad.” This time he motioned with his right.

  “You’re squishing me!” Meg said to her parents.

  Kevin put his finger on the button which would fire the camera, then remembered a briefly glimpsed note in the instructions about how easy it was to cut off your subjects’ heads in a photograph. Off with their heads, he thought, and it should have been funny, but for some reason he felt a little tingle at the base of his spine, gone and forgotten almost before it was noticed. He raised the camera a little. There. They were all in the frame. Good.

  “Okay!” he sang. “Smile and say Intercourse!”

  “Kevin!” his mother cried out.

  His father burst out laughing, and Meg screeched the sort of mad laughter not even bad actresses often essay; girls between the ages of ten and twelve own sole title to that particular laugh.

  Kevin pushed the button.

  The flashbulb, powered by the battery in the film pack, washed the room in a moment of righteous white light.

  It’s mine, Kevin thought, and it should have been the surpassing moment of his fifteenth birthday. Instead, the thought brought back that odd little tingle. It was more noticeable this time.

  The camera made a noise, something between a squeal and a whirr, a sound just a little beyond description but familiar enough to most people, just the same: the sound of a Polaroid camera squirting out what may not be art but what is often serviceable and almost always provides instant gratification.

  “Lemme see it!” Meg cried.

  “Hold your horses, muffin,” Mr. Delevan said. “They take a little time to develop.”

  Meg was staring at the stiff gray surface of what was not yet a photograph with the rapt attention of a woman gazing into a crystal ball.

  The rest of the family gathered around, and there was that same feeling of anxiety which had attended the ceremony of Loading the Camera: still life of the American Family waiting to let out its breath.

  Kevin felt a terrible tenseness stealing into his muscles, and this time there was no question of ignoring it. He could not explain it . . . but it was there. He could not seem to take his eyes from that solid gray square within the white frame which would form the borders of the photograph.

  “I think I see me!” Meg cried brightly. Then, a moment later: “No. I guess I don’t. I think I see—”

  They watched in utter silence as the gray cleared, as the mists are reputed to do in a seer’s crystal when the vibrations or feelings or whatever they are are right, and the picture became visible to them.

  Mr. Delevan was the first to break the silence.

  “What is this?” he asked no one in particular. “Some kind of joke?”

  Kevin had absently put the camera down rather too close to the edge of the table in order to watch the picture develop. Meg saw what the picture was and took a single step away. The expression on her face was neither fright nor awe but just ordinary surprise. One of her hands came up as she turned toward her father. The rising hand struck the camera and knocked it off the table and onto the floor. Mrs. Delevan had been looking at the emerging picture in a kind of trance, the expression on her face either that of a woman who is deeply puzzled or who is feeling the onset of a migraine headache. The sound of the camera hitting the floor startled her. She uttered a little scream and recoiled. In doing this, she tripped over Meg’s foot and lost her balance. Mr. Delevan reached for her, propelling Meg, who was still between them, forward again, quite forcefully. Mr. Delevan not only caught his wife, but did so with some grace; for a moment they would have made a pretty picture indeed: Mom and Dad, showing they still know how to Cut A Rug, caught at the end of a spirited tango, she with one hand thrown up and her back deeply bowed, he bent over her in that ambiguous male posture which may be seen, when divorced from circumstance, as either solicitude or lust.

  Meg was eleven, and less graceful. She went flying back toward the table and smacked into it with her stomach. The hit was hard enough to have injured her, but for the last year and a half she had been taking ballet lessons at the YWCA three afternoons a week. She did not dance with much grace, but she enjoyed ballet, and the dancing had fortunately toughened the muscles of her stomach enough for them to absorb the blow as efficiently as good shock absorbers absorb the pounding a road full of potholes can administer to a car. Still, there was a band of black and blue just above her hips the next day. These bruises took almost two weeks to first purple, then yellow, then fade . . . like a Polaroid picture in reverse.

  At the moment this Rube Goldberg accident happened, she didn’t even feel it; she simply banged into the table and cried out. The table tipped. The birthday cake, which should have been in the foreground of Kevin’s first picture with his new camera, slid off the table. Mrs. Delevan didn’t even have time to start her Meg, are you all right? before the remaining half of the cake fell on top of the Sun 660 with a juicy splat! that sent frosting all over their shoes and the baseboard of the wall.