Insomnia | Page 2

a bustling metropolis at the best of
times-fell into a complete Stupor, and it was in this hot silence that
Ralph Roberts first heard the ticking of the deathwatch and understood
that in the passage from June's cool damp greens to the baked stillness
of July, Carolyn's slim chances had become no - chances at all. She was
going to die. Not this summer, probably-the doctors claimed to have
quite a few tricks up their sleeves yet, and Ralph was sure they did-but
this fall or this winter. His longtime companion, the only woman he had
ever loved, was going to die. He tried to deny the idea, scolding
himself for being a morbid old fool, but in the gasping silences of
those long hot days, Ralph heard that ticking everywhere-it even seemed
to be in the walls.

Yet it was loudest from within Carolyn herself, and when she turned her
calm white face toward him-perhaps to ask him to turn on the radio so
she could listen while she shelled some beans for their supper, or to
ask him if he would go across to the Red Apple and get her an ice cream
on a stick-he would see that she heard it, too. He would see it in her
dark eyes, at first only when she was straight, but later even when her
eyes were hazed by the pain medication she took.

By then the ticking had grown very loud, and when Ralph lay in bed
beside her on those hot summer nights when even a single sheet seemed to
weigh ten pounds and he believed every dog in Derry was barking at the
moon, he listened to it, to the deathwatch ticking inside Carolyn, and
it seemed to him that his heart would break with sorrow and terror.

How much would she be required to suffer before the end came? How much
would he be required to suffer? And how could he possibly live without
her-?

It was during this strange, fraught period that Ralph began to go for
increasingly long walks through the hot summer afternoons and slow,
twilit evenings, returning on many occasions too exhausted to eat. He
kept expecting Carolyn to scold him for these outings, to say Why don't
you stop it, You stupid old man? You'll kill yourself if you keep
walking in this heat! But she never did, and he gradually realized she
didn't even know. That he went out, yes-she knew that. But not all the
miles he went, or that when he came home he was often trembling with
exhaustion and near sunstroke. Once upon a time it had seemed to Ralph
she saw everything, even a change of half an inch in where he parted his
hair. Ne more; the tumor in her brain had stolen her powers of
observation, as it would soon steal her life.

So he walked, relishing the heat in spite of the way it sometimes made
his head swim and his ears ring, relishing it mostly because of the way
it made his ears ring; sometimes there were whole hours when they rang
so loudly and his head pounded so fiercely that he couldn't hear the
tick of Carolyn's deathwatch.

He walked over much of Derry that hot July, a narrow-shouldered old man
with thinning white hair and big hands that still looked capable of hard

work. He walked from Witcham Street to the Barrens, from Kansas Street
to Neibolt Street, from Main Street to the Kissing Bridge, but his feet
took him most frequently west along Harris Avenue, where the still
beautiful and much beloved Carolvil Roberts was now spending her last
year in a haze of headaches.

Avenue Extension and Derry County A' morphine, to the airport. He would
walk out the Extension-which was treeless and completely exposed to the
pitiless sun-until he felt his legs threatening to cave in beneath him,
and then double back.

He often paused to catch his second wind in a shady picnic area close to
the airport's service entrance. At night this place was a teenage
drinking and makeout spot, alive with the sounds of rap coming from
boombox radios, but during the days it was the more-or-less exclusive
domain of a group Ralph's friend Bill McGovern called the Harris Avenue
Old Crocks. The Old Crocks gathered to play chess, to play gin, or just
to shoot the shit. Ralph had known many of them for years (had, in
fact, gone to grammar school with Stan Eberty), and was comfortable with
them . . . as long as they didn't get too nosy. Most didn't.