Chapter 5

Half an hour later, nibbling the ham and cheese sandwich snuck downstairs for her by Gary, and sipping a cold Coca Cola, Camilla tapped the map on the coffee table and said: “You changed the name and moved it a state away, but Marshall is identical to the maps I’ve seen of Derry, Maine. The Amazon is called the Barrens, and East Palmer Street is Kansas Street.” She located her fingertip directly across the street from the huge, white, water tower in Crescent Park dubbed the Derry Standpipe in the novels. “This is where we climbed up from the Amazon this afternoon, into the little picnic area with the tables and benches.”

She glanced uncertainly at Maggie, and then over to Gary. She had to explain Derry’s place in the narrative of 11/22/63, and Maggie’s and Gary’s involvement in 1958. She sat back, not sure how it even factored it in, if events unfolded in Marshall the way that Bill, Maggie and Gary said they had in 1958. Notwithstanding her unexplained presence in the past, nothing her cousin had told her made sense. Was Stephen a raving loony bird, she wondered.

She relocated her fingertip to Lothe Road, renamed Kossuth Lane in the novels. “Do you know anyone who lives here? At the end, maybe?”

Her three companions all nodded. Tapping the map with his blackened fingertip, Bill said: “The Kay’s, the Essex’s, and the Morris’s ... they all live on Lothe.”

“Anyone that worked in a supermarket? Maybe a butcher?”

Maggie and Gary exchanged a glance, and then shrugged. It was Bill that answered.

“Rory’s father, Mr. Morris. At the Hubbell Street Market. Here,” he said, indicating the intersection of Hubbell and Llewelyn Street. “Right next to the Rexall. I heard he half-owns the market, but I’m not sure who said that, or if it’s true.” He glanced at Maggie and Gary, who both shrugged. Regardless, Camilla felt her pulse quicken with excitement. It seemed that Harry Dunning’s father existed, in the person of...

“What was his first name?” she asked. “And did he have four kids?”

Bill shook his head, but then ventured: “Arthur?”

Maggie said, “He only has three kids, though: Rory, David, and—”

Camilla sat upright. “He’s alive? Mr. Morris is alive?”

Bill glanced at her skeptically. “Why wouldn’t he be alive?”

Camilla thought, Crap. If Arthur Morris was alive in 1963, then everything that happened in 11/22/63 was cast into doubt. Morris was the why and what-for of her cousin’s trip to Derry in 1958. It meant that everything pertaining to Derry was fabricated.

“Are his kids okay?” she asked.

Bill, Maggie, and Gary exchanged looks.

“Yeah,” Gary confirmed, “as far as I know. What’s going on, Camilla? How does this figure into our esteemed President taking one in the head two weeks from now?”

Maggie shot him an outraged “Gary!” while Bill kicked him on the shin and called him a fool. “Can’t you see she’s upset? Do you have to be a total asshole, asshole?”

Wounded, Gary rubbed his leg. “I only meant—”

“I know what you meant, dork! You don’t have to be so flippant about it.” He turned to Camilla. “Did someone die in the book? Here in Marshall? Before Jake went to Florida?”

Without revealing much of anything else, Camilla had given a quick rundown on Jake’s movements in the novel: Lisbon Falls to Derry, Derry to Florida, Sunset Point to Jodie, Texas. Though flustered by her reticence to dive deeper into Jake’s activities and motivations, knowing how fragile she was mentally, Bill was allowing her to unspool her thoughts at her own pace. Camilla nodded shakily in response.

“She’s talking about Winston Porter, isn’t she?” Maggie said in a hushed voice. Gary’s eyes popped wide, while Bill reacted with a grimace.

“Who’s Winston Porter?” Camilla questioned anxiously.

“He worked in the slaughterhouse, managed it, really. He had four kids. They locked him up twice in 1958 for beating his wife and kids. Got drunk and broke Phillip’s arm in two places one night after work; the second time, he put his wife in the hospital with fractured ribs and a broken nose. I heard you couldn’t even recognize her she was bruised so bad.”

Gary’s relating this made Maggie wring her hands anxiously. “He was not a nice man when he drank. He once chased Gary and me in his car for no reason, other than we were on our bikes in the road, yelling at us out his window. He almost ran over some other little kid on a bike that day. Missed her by inches when he ran up over the curb trying to get us.”

Gary muttered: “Someone shot him outside his rooming house on Madeline Street one night. Shot him right at the front steps as he was walking up the sidewalk from parking his car. It was late, after the bars closed down. They never caught who did it, either. The police thought it might have been Mrs. Porter did it for a while, but they never charged her with anything. She moved away a couple months after it happened.” He shrugged.

“This was...?”

“In the fall,” Bill answered. “Late September or early October. I remember wondering who hated Mr. Porter enough to shoot him dead in cold blood like that.” He gazed steadily at Camilla, who refused to look away.

“You had no choice. He would have killed most of his family on Halloween night if you hadn’t acted. He almost got you too, the first time around.”

Bill’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

Before he could question her further, Camilla turned to Maggie. “This is important, Maggie. Do you remember talking to a man named George Amberson in September of 1958, here at the little picnic area across from the standpipe?” She tapped the location where they had exited the Amazon earlier.

Flustered at the unexpected question, Maggie shook her head. “Who—”

“You, Gary?” Camilla interrupted.

Gary furrowed his brow, trying to remember. “Who is George Amberson?”

“Jake Epping, you moron.” Bill turned to Camilla. “He supposedly met Maggie and Gary at the picnic area?”

“They were dancing, yes. Practicing for some swing-dance competition at school.”

“It was the school talent show,” Gary corrected, growing excited at the memory. “We were teaching ourselves the Lindy-hop.” He suddenly winced and glanced at Maggie.

“You broke my arm, you doofus!” she exclaimed. “I was in a cast for six weeks because of you.”

Gary shrugged apologetically. “You were supposed to twist right, not left, Maggie.”

“We missed the talent show because of you,” she accused.

“That happened at the picnic spot?” Camilla questioned.

“We call it the overlook, and it was the only time we practiced there. Gary’s stupid idea. I was quite happy to practice in his back yard again, but no, he insisted the overlook would be better.”

Gary hunched his shoulders defensively. “The guy next door watched us the day before. I only wanted to—”

“Mr. Warfield was ninety years old! He could barely see! He had cataracts, Gary. His glasses were this thick!”

“He could see well enough,” he grumbled.

“Mr. Warfield died,” Maggie confided, dropping her hand. She’d held her thumb and forefinger a comical inch and a half apart. “He’d lived alone since Mrs. Warfield died in the 40s.”

“His daughter sold the place to the Kaminski’s in 1960. They got a couple of 3rd graders,” Gary said.

“Twins,” Maggie confirmed. “Alicia, and Beverly.”

Camilla blinked at the serendipitous name of the twin next door, but before she could say anything, Bill demanded: “It’s the only time you practiced at the overlook?”

Maggie nodded.

It occurred to Camilla, not for the first time, that none of the three 16-year-olds she sat with should be present in Marshall for this conversation. In the novel (and corroborated by her cousin in 2011), Bill and Gary both left Derry in 1959, Ben moved with his mom in 1960 to live with his Aunt Jean in Nebraska, and Maggie’s parents left in 1962, moving to Vermont, first, and then to Ohio, where Bill lost track of her until 1985.

“You didn’t talk to an adult that day at the overlook?” she questioned. “Any adult?”

Maggie and Gary exchanged a querulous glance, cocking their heads in opposite directions. “I woulda remembered that,” Gary said, uncertainly.

“Me too,” Maggie confirmed. “That was in the book? That’s supposed to have happened in 1958?”

Camilla shrugged. “Once, yeah.” She caught Bill’s eye. “There’s a scientific term for when you repeat an undertaking or an experiment.” She hadn’t yet divulged Bill’s multiple returns to Lisbon Falls in 1958, attempting to alter the past. Her mention of his near-death experience at the hands of Winston Porter/Frank Dunning was the closest she’d come so far.

“Yeah?” he said, eying her suspiciously.

“You didn’t travel back to 1958 just once, Bill. You went back four times, in all.”

He continued to stare at her, his face suffused with blood. He didn’t like having intel withheld, she thought. Frustrated, she glanced down at the map, and considered how different this younger Bill was from his older self. Only his great height had intimidated her in 2011.

Gary eyed her with a crooked grin. “Holding back on us, huh?” He wagged his finger playfully. “Not wise, Widlle Mizzy,” he chided. “We—”

“Give it a break,” Maggie cut in. To Camilla, she said. “Which time did we talk to him?” She shot a glance at Bill. “This, Mr. Amberson?”