Ray Brower Character Analysis

No, it’s not a very good story—its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to his own […] But it was the first time I had ever really used the place I knew and the things I felt in a piece of fiction, and there was a kind of dreadful exhilaration in seeing things that had troubled me for years come out in a new form, a form over which I had imposed control. It had been years since that childhood idea of Denny being in the closet of his spookily preserved room had occurred to me; I would have honestly believed I had forgotten it. Yet there it is in “Stud City,” only slightly changed…but controlled.

And as I thought about the body of Ray Brower in this light—or lack of it—what I felt was not queasiness or fear that he would suddenly appear before us, a green and gibbering banshee whose purpose was to drive us back the way we had come before we could disturb his—its—peace, but a sudden and unexpected wash of pity that he should be so alone and so defenseless in the dark that was now coming over our side of the earth. If something wanted to eat on him, it would. His mother wasn’t here to stop that from happening, and neither was his father, nor Jesus Christ in the company of all the saints. He was dead and he was all alone, and I realized that if I didn’t stop thinking about it I was going to cry.

“Jesus H Baldheaded Christ,” Teddy whispered, and he talked no more of going into the woods to see what was making that screaming noise. All four of us huddled up together and I thought of running. I doubt if I was the only one. If we had been tenting in Vern’s field—where our folks thought we were—we probably would have run. But Castle Rock was too far, and the thought of trying to run across that trestle in the dark made my blood freeze. Running deeper into Harlow and closer to the corpse of Ray Brower was equally unthinkable. We were stuck. If there was a ha’ant out there in the woods—what my dad called a Goosalum—and it wanted us, it would probably get us.

We looked into each others’ tired, sweaty faces. We were hungry and out of temper. The big adventure had turned into a long slog—dirty and sometimes scary. We would have been missed back home by now, too, and if Milo Pressman hadn’t already called the cops on us, the engineer of the train crossing the trestle might have done it. We had been planning to hitchhike back to Castle Rock, but four o’clock was just three hours from dark, and nobody gives four kids on a back country road a lift after dark.

I tried to summon up the cool image of my deer, cropping at green morning grass, but even that seemed dusty and no good, no better than a stuffed trophy over the mantle in some guy’s hunting lodge, the eyes sprayed to give them a phony lifelike shine.

Finally Chris said: “It’s still closer out going ahead. Let’s go.”

There’s a high ritual to all fundamental events, the rites of passage, the magic corridor where the change happens. Buying the condoms. Standing before the minister. Raising your hand and taking the oath. Or, if you please, walking down the railroad tracks to meet a fellow your own age halfway, the same as I’d walk halfway over to Pine Street to meet Chris if he was coming over to my house, or the way Teddy would walk halfway down Gates Street to meet me if I was going to his. It seemed right to do it this way because the rite of passage is a magic corridor and so we always provide an aisle […] Our corridor was those twin rails, and we walked between them, just hopping along toward whatever this was supposed to mean […]

I looked in the direction Vern was pointing and saw a blue-white fireball bowling its way up the lefthand rail of the GS&WM tracks, crackling and hissing for all the world like a scalded cat. It hurried past us as we turned to watch it go, dumbfounded, aware for the first time that such things could exist. Twenty feet beyond us it made a sudden—pop!!—and just disappeared, leaving a greasy smell of ozone behind.

“What am I doin here, anyway?” Teddy muttered.

“What a pisser!” Chris exclaimed happily, his face upturned. “This is gonna be a pisser like you wouldn’t believe!” But I was with Teddy. Looking up at that sky gave me a dismaying sense of vertigo. It was like looking into some deeply mysterious marbled gorge.

Then the storm came all at once, as if a shower chain had been pulled in the sky. The whispering sound changed to loud contention. It was as if we were being rebuked for our discovery, and it was frightening. Nobody tells you about the pathetic fallacy until you’re in college…and even then I noticed that nobody but the total dorks completely believed it was a fallacy.

He was wrong to mention Denny. I had wanted to reason with him, to point out what Ace knew perfectly well, that we had every right to take Billy and Charlie’s dibs since Vern had heard them giving said dibs away. I wanted to tell them how Vern and I had almost gotten run down by a freight train on the trestle which spans the Castle River. About Milo Pressman and his fearless—if stupid—sidekick, Chopper the Wonder-Dog. About the bloodsuckers, too. I guess all I really wanted to tell him was Come on, Ace, fair is fair. You know that. But he had to bring Denny into it, and what I heard coming from my mouth was my own death-warrant: “Suck my fat one, you cheap dimestore hood.”

Still, it’s mostly just the idea of holding that pail in my two hands, I guess—as much a symbol of my living as his dying, proof that I really do know which boy it was—which boy of the five of us. Holding it. Reading every year in its cake of rust and the fading of its bright shine. Feeling it, trying to understand the suns that shone on it, the rains that fell on it, the snows that covered it. And to wonder where I was when each thing happened to it in its lonely place, where I was, what I was doing, who I was loving, how I was getting along where I was. I’d hold it, read it, feel it…and look at my own face in whatever reflection might be left. Can you dig it?

No, it’s not a very good story—its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to his own […] But it was the first time I had ever really used the place I knew and the things I felt in a piece of fiction, and there was a kind of dreadful exhilaration in seeing things that had troubled me for years come out in a new form, a form over which I had imposed control. It had been years since that childhood idea of Denny being in the closet of his spookily preserved room had occurred to me; I would have honestly believed I had forgotten it. Yet there it is in “Stud City,” only slightly changed…but controlled.

And as I thought about the body of Ray Brower in this light—or lack of it—what I felt was not queasiness or fear that he would suddenly appear before us, a green and gibbering banshee whose purpose was to drive us back the way we had come before we could disturb his—its—peace, but a sudden and unexpected wash of pity that he should be so alone and so defenseless in the dark that was now coming over our side of the earth. If something wanted to eat on him, it would. His mother wasn’t here to stop that from happening, and neither was his father, nor Jesus Christ in the company of all the saints. He was dead and he was all alone, and I realized that if I didn’t stop thinking about it I was going to cry.

“Jesus H Baldheaded Christ,” Teddy whispered, and he talked no more of going into the woods to see what was making that screaming noise. All four of us huddled up together and I thought of running. I doubt if I was the only one. If we had been tenting in Vern’s field—where our folks thought we were—we probably would have run. But Castle Rock was too far, and the thought of trying to run across that trestle in the dark made my blood freeze. Running deeper into Harlow and closer to the corpse of Ray Brower was equally unthinkable. We were stuck. If there was a ha’ant out there in the woods—what my dad called a Goosalum—and it wanted us, it would probably get us.

We looked into each others’ tired, sweaty faces. We were hungry and out of temper. The big adventure had turned into a long slog—dirty and sometimes scary. We would have been missed back home by now, too, and if Milo Pressman hadn’t already called the cops on us, the engineer of the train crossing the trestle might have done it. We had been planning to hitchhike back to Castle Rock, but four o’clock was just three hours from dark, and nobody gives four kids on a back country road a lift after dark.

I tried to summon up the cool image of my deer, cropping at green morning grass, but even that seemed dusty and no good, no better than a stuffed trophy over the mantle in some guy’s hunting lodge, the eyes sprayed to give them a phony lifelike shine.

Finally Chris said: “It’s still closer out going ahead. Let’s go.”

There’s a high ritual to all fundamental events, the rites of passage, the magic corridor where the change happens. Buying the condoms. Standing before the minister. Raising your hand and taking the oath. Or, if you please, walking down the railroad tracks to meet a fellow your own age halfway, the same as I’d walk halfway over to Pine Street to meet Chris if he was coming over to my house, or the way Teddy would walk halfway down Gates Street to meet me if I was going to his. It seemed right to do it this way because the rite of passage is a magic corridor and so we always provide an aisle […] Our corridor was those twin rails, and we walked between them, just hopping along toward whatever this was supposed to mean […]

I looked in the direction Vern was pointing and saw a blue-white fireball bowling its way up the lefthand rail of the GS&WM tracks, crackling and hissing for all the world like a scalded cat. It hurried past us as we turned to watch it go, dumbfounded, aware for the first time that such things could exist. Twenty feet beyond us it made a sudden—pop!!—and just disappeared, leaving a greasy smell of ozone behind.

“What am I doin here, anyway?” Teddy muttered.

“What a pisser!” Chris exclaimed happily, his face upturned. “This is gonna be a pisser like you wouldn’t believe!” But I was with Teddy. Looking up at that sky gave me a dismaying sense of vertigo. It was like looking into some deeply mysterious marbled gorge.

Then the storm came all at once, as if a shower chain had been pulled in the sky. The whispering sound changed to loud contention. It was as if we were being rebuked for our discovery, and it was frightening. Nobody tells you about the pathetic fallacy until you’re in college…and even then I noticed that nobody but the total dorks completely believed it was a fallacy.

He was wrong to mention Denny. I had wanted to reason with him, to point out what Ace knew perfectly well, that we had every right to take Billy and Charlie’s dibs since Vern had heard them giving said dibs away. I wanted to tell them how Vern and I had almost gotten run down by a freight train on the trestle which spans the Castle River. About Milo Pressman and his fearless—if stupid—sidekick, Chopper the Wonder-Dog. About the bloodsuckers, too. I guess all I really wanted to tell him was Come on, Ace, fair is fair. You know that. But he had to bring Denny into it, and what I heard coming from my mouth was my own death-warrant: “Suck my fat one, you cheap dimestore hood.”

Still, it’s mostly just the idea of holding that pail in my two hands, I guess—as much a symbol of my living as his dying, proof that I really do know which boy it was—which boy of the five of us. Holding it. Reading every year in its cake of rust and the fading of its bright shine. Feeling it, trying to understand the suns that shone on it, the rains that fell on it, the snows that covered it. And to wonder where I was when each thing happened to it in its lonely place, where I was, what I was doing, who I was loving, how I was getting along where I was. I’d hold it, read it, feel it…and look at my own face in whatever reflection might be left. Can you dig it?