Extracto
1. Publicado por Simonsay, el 3/3/2001 Extracto
1. Publicado por Simonsay, el 3/3/2001
FIRST,
THE NEWS
From the East Oregonian, June 25th, 1947
FIRE CONTROL OFFICER SPOTS
"FLYING SAUCERS"
Kenneth Arnold Reports 9 Disc-Shaped Objects
"Shiny, Silvery, Moved Incredibly Fast"
From the Roswell (N.M.) Daily Record, July 8th, 1947
AIR FORCE CAPTURES "FLYING SAUCER"
ON RANCH IN ROSWELL REGION
Intelligence Officers Recover Crashed Disc
From the Roswell (N.M.) Daily Record, July 9th, 1947
AIR FORCE DECLARES "SAUCER"
WEATHER BALLOON
From the Chicago Daily Tribune, August 1st, 1947
USAF SAYS "CANNOT EXPLAIN"
ARNOLD SIGHTING
850 Additional Sightings Since Original Report
From the Roswell (N.M.) Daily Record, October 19th, 1947
SO-CALLED SPACE WHEAT A HOAX,
ANGRY FARMER DECLARES
Andrew Hoxon Denies "Saucer Connection"
Red-Tinged Wheat "Nothing but a Prank," He Insists
From the (Ky.) Courier Journal, January 8th, 1948
AIR FORCE CAPTAIN KILLED CHASING UFO
Mantell's Final Transmission:
"Metallic, Tremendous in Size"
Air Force Mum
From the Brazilian Nacional, March 8th, 1957
STRANGE RINGED CRAFT CRASHES
IN MATO GROSSO!
2 WOMEN MENACED NEAR PONTO PORAN!
"We Heard Squealing Sounds from Within,"
They Declare
From the Brazilian Nacional, March 12th, 1957
MATO GRASSO HORROR!
Reports of Gray Men with Huge Black Eyes
Scientists Scoff! Reports Persist!
VILLAGES IN TERROR!
From the Oklahoman, May 12th, 1965
STATE POLICEMAN FIRES AT UFO
Claims Saucer Was 40 Feet Above Highway 9
Tinker AFB Radar Confirms Sightings
From the Oklahoman, June 2nd, 1965
"ALIEN GROWTH" A HOAX,
FARM BUREAU REP DECLARES
"Red Weeds" Said to Be Work
of Spray-Gun, Teenagers
From the Portland (Me.) Press-Herald, September 14th, 1965
NEW HAMPSHIRE UFO SIGHTINGS MOUNT
Most Sightings in Exeter Area
Some Residents Express Fear of Alien Invasion
From the Manchester (N.H.) Union-Leader, September 19th, 1965
ENORMOUS OBJECT SIGHTED NEAR EXETER
WAS OPTICAL ILLUSION
Air Force Investigators Refute State Police Sighting
Officer Cleland Adamant: "I Know What I Saw"
From the Manchester (N.H.) Union-Leader, September 30th, 1965
FOOD POISONING EPIDEMIC IN PLAISTOW
STILL UNEXPLAINED
Over 300 Affected, Most Recovering
FDA Officer Says May Have Been
Contaminated Wells
From the Michigan Journal, October 9th, 1965
GERALD FORD CALLS
FOR UFO INVESTIGATION
Republican House Leader Says "Michigan Lights"
May Be Extraterrestrial in Origin
From the Los Angeles Times, November 19th, 1978
CALTECH SCIENTISTS REPORT SIGHTING
HUGE DISC-SHAPED OBJECT IN MOJAVE
Tickman: "Was Surrounded by Small Bright Lights"
Morales: "Saw Red Growth Like Angel Hair"
From the Los Angeles Times, November 24th, 1978
STATE POLICE, USAF INVESTIGATORS FIND
NO "ANGEL HAIR" AT MOJAVE SITE
Tickman and Morales Take, Pass, Lie Tests
Possibility of Hoax Discounted
From the New York Times, August 16th, 1980
"ALIEN ABDUCTEES" REMAIN CONVINCED
Psychologists Question Drawings of So-Called Gray Men
From the Wall Street Journal, February 9th, 1985
CARL SAGAN: "NO, WE ARE NOT ALONE"
Prominent Scientist Reaffirms Belief in ETs
Says, "Odds of Intelligent Life Are Enormous"
From the Phoenix Sun, March 14th, 1997
HUGE UFO SIGHTED NEAR PRESCOTT
DOZENS DESCRIBE "BOOMERANG-SHAPED" OBJECT
Switchboard at Luke AFB Deluged with Reports
From the Phoenix Sun, March 20th, 1997
"PHOENIX LIGHTS" REMAIN UNEXPLAINED
Photos Not Doctored, Expert Says
Air Force Investigators Mum
From the Paulden (Ariz.) Weekly, April 9th, 1997
FOOD POISONING OUTBREAK UNEXPLAINED
REPORTS OF "RED GRASS" DISCOUNTED AS HOAX
From the Derry (Me.) Daily News, May 15th, 2000
MYSTERY LIGHTS ONCE AGAIN REPORTED
IN JEFFERSON TRACT
Kineo Town Manager: "I Don't Know What They Are,
but They Keep Coming Back"
Copyright (c) 2001 by Stephen King
Extracto 2. Publicado por TIME, el 5/3/2001
That it was a man never so much as crossed Jonesy's mind. This was an unincorporated township fifty miles north of Rangely, and the nearest hunters were two hours' walk away. The nearest paved road, the one which eventually took you to Gosselin's Market (BEER BAIT OUT OF STATE LICS LOTTERY TIX), was at least sixteen miles away.
Well, he thought, it isn't as if I took a vow, or anything.
No, he hadn't taken a vow. Next November he might be up here with a Nikon instead of a Garand, but it wasn't next year yet, and the rifle was at hand. He had no intention of looking a gift deer in the mouth.
Jonesy screwed the red stopper into the Thermos of coffee and put it aside. Then he pushed the sleeping-bag off his lower body like a big quilted sock (wincing at the stiffness in his hip as he did it) and grabbed his gun. There was no need to chamber a round, producing that loud, deer-frightening click; old habits died hard, and the gun was ready to fire as soon as he thumbed off the safety. This he did when he was solidly on his feet. The old wild excitement was gone, but there was a residue his pulse was up and he welcomed the rise. In the wake of his accident, he welcomed all such reactions it was as if there were two of him now, the one before he had been knocked flat in the street and the warier, older fellow who had awakened in Mass General . . . if you could call that slow, drugged awareness being awake. Sometimes he still heard a voice whose he didn't know, but not his calling out Please stop, I can't stand it, give me a shot, where's Marcy, I want Marcy. He thought of it as death's voice death had missed him in the street and had then come to the hospital to finish the job, death masquerading as a man (or perhaps it had been a woman, it was hard to tell) in pain, someone who said Marcy but meant Jonesy.
The idea passed all of the funny ideas he'd had in the hospital eventually passed but it left a residue. Caution was the residue. He had no memory of Henry's calling and telling him to watch himself for the next little while (and Henry hadn't reminded him), but since then Jonesy had watched himself. He was careful. Because maybe death was out there, and maybe sometimes it called your name.
But the past was the past. He had survived his brush with death, and nothing was dying here this morning but a deer (a buck, he hoped) who had strolled in the wrong direction.
The sound of the rustling brush and snapping twigs was coming toward him from the southwest, which meant he wouldn't have to shoot around the trunk of the maple good and put him upwind. Even better. Most of the maple's leaves had fallen, and he had a good, if not perfect, sightline through the interlacing branches. Jonesy raised the Garand, settled the buttplate into the hollow of his shoulder, and prepared to shoot himself a conversation-piece.
What saved McCarthy at least temporarily was
Jonesy's disenchantment with hunting. What almost got McCarthy killed was a
phenomenon George Kilroy, a friend of his father's, had called
"eye-fever." Eye-fever, Kilroy claimed, was a form of buck-fever, and
was probably the second most common cause of hunting accidents. "First is
drink," said George Kilroy . . . and like Jonesy's father, Kilroy knew a
bit on that subject, as well. "First is always drink."
Kilroy said that victims of eye-fever were uniformly astounded to discover they
had shot a fencepost, or a passing car, or the broad side of a barn, or their
own hunting partner (in many cases the partner was a spouse, a sib, or a child).
"But I saw it," they would protest, and most of them, according
to Kilroy, could pass a lie-detector test on the subject. They had seen the deer
or the bear or the wolf, or just the grouse flip-flapping through the high
autumn grass. They had seen it.
What happened, according to Kilroy, was that these hunters were afflicted by an anxiety to make the shot, to get it over with, one way or the other. This anxiety became so strong that the brain persuaded the eye that it saw what was not yet visible, in order to end the tension. This was eye-fever. And although Jonesy was aware of no particular anxiety his fingers had been perfectly steady as he screwed the red stopper back into the throat of the Thermos he admitted later to himself that yes, he might have fallen prey to the malady.
For one moment he saw the buck clearly at the end of the tunnel made by the interlocking branches as clearly as he had seen any of the previous sixteen deer (six bucks, ten does) he had brought down over the years at Hole in the Wall. He saw its brown head, one eye so dark it was almost the black of jeweler's velvet, even part of its rack.
Shoot now! part of him cried it was the Jonesy from the other side of the accident, the whole Jonesy. That one had spoken more frequently in the last month or so, as he began to approach some mythical state which people who had never been hit by a car blithely referred to as "total recovery," but he had never spoken as loudly as he did now. This was a command, almost a shout.
And his finger did tighten on the trigger. It never put on that last pound of pressure (or perhaps it only would have taken another half, a paltry eight ounces), but it did tighten. The voice that stopped him was that second Jonesy, the one who had awakened in Mass General, doped and disoriented and in pain, not sure of anything anymore except that someone wanted something to stop, someone couldn't stand it not without a shot, anyway that someone wanted Marcy.
No, not yet wait, watch, this new cautious Jonesy said, and that was the voice he listened to. He froze in place, most of his weight thrown forward on his good left leg, rifle raised, barrel angled down that interlacing tunnel of light at a cool thirty-five degrees.
The first flakes of snow came skating down out of the white sky just then, and as they did, Jonesy saw a bright vertical line of orange below the deer's head it was as if the snow had somehow conjured it up. For a moment perception simply gave up and what he was seeing over the barrel of his gun became only an unconnected jumble, like paints swirled all together on an artist's palette. There was no deer and no man, not even any woods, just a puzzling and untidy jumble of black, brown, and orange.
Then there was more orange, and in a shape that made sense: it was a hat, the kind with flaps you could fold down to cover your ears. The out-of-staters bought them at L. L. Bean's for forty-four dollars, each with a little tag inside that said PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA BY UNION LABOR. Or you could pick one up at Gosselin's for seven bucks. The tag in a Gosselin's cap just said MADE IN BANGLADESH.
The hat brought everything into horrible oh-God focus:
the brown he had mistaken for a buck's head was the front of a man's wool
jacket, the black jeweler's velvet of the buck's eye was a button, and the
antlers were only more branches branches belonging to the very tree in which
he was standing. The man was unwise (Jonesy could not quite bring himself to use
the word crazy) to be wearing a brown coat in the woods, but Jonesy was
still at a loss to understand how he himself could have made a mistake of such
potentially horrifying consequence. Because the man was also wearing an orange
cap, wasn't he? And a bright orange flagman's vest as well, over the admittedly
unwise brown coat. The man was
was a pound of finger-pressure from death. Maybe less.
It came home to him in a visceral way then, knocking him clean out of his own body. For a terrible, brilliant moment he never forgot, he was neither Jonesy Number One, the confident pre-accident Jonesy, or Jonesy Number Two, the more tentative survivor who spent so much of his time in a tiresome state of physical discomfort and mental confusion. For that moment he was some other Jonesy, an invisible presence looking at a gunman standing on a platform in a tree. The gunman's hair was short and already graying, his face lined around the mouth, beard-speckled on the cheeks, and haggard. The gunman was on the verge of using his weapon. Snow had begun to dance around his head and light on his untucked brown flannel shirt, and he was on the verge of shooting a man in an orange cap and vest of the very sort he would have been wearing himself if he had elected to go into the woods with the Beaver instead of up into this tree.
He fell back into himself with a thud, exactly as one fell back into one's seat after taking a car over a bad bump at a high speed. To his horror, he realized he was still tracking the man below with the Garand, as if some stubborn alligator deep in his brain refused to let go of the idea that the man in the brown coat was prey. Worse, he couldn't seem to make his finger relax on the rifle's trigger. There was even an awful second or two when he thought he was actually still squeezing, inexorably eating up those last few ounces between him and the greatest mistake of his life. He later came to accept that that at least had been an illusion, something akin to the feeling you get of rolling backward in your stopped car when you glimpse a slowly moving car beside you, out of the corner of your eye.
No, he was just frozen, but that was bad enough, that was hell. Jonesy, you think too much, Pete liked to say when he caught Jonesy staring out into the middle distance, no longer tracking the conversation, and what he probably meant was Jonesy, you imagine too much, and that was very likely true. Certainly he was imagining too much now as he stood up here in the middle of the tree and the season's first snow, hair leaping up in tufts, finger locked on the Garand's trigger not tightening still, as he had for a moment feared, but not loosening, either, the man almost below him now, the Garand's gunsight on the top of the orange cap, the man's life on an invisible wire between the Garand's muzzle and that cap, the man maybe thinking about trading his car or cheating on his wife or buying his oldest daughter a pony (Jonesy later had reason to know McCarthy had been thinking about none of those things, but of course not then, not in the tree with his forefinger a frozen curl around the trigger of his rifle) and not knowing what Jonesy had not known as he stood on the curb in Cambridge with his briefcase in one hand and a copy of the Boston Phoenix under his arm, namely that death was in the neighborhood, or perhaps even Death, a hurrying figure like something escaped from an early Ingmar Bergman film, something carrying a concealed implement in the coarse folds of its robe. Scissors, perhaps. Or a scalpel.
And the worst of it was that the man would not die, or at least not at once. He would fall down and lie there screaming, as Jonesy had lain screaming in the street. He couldn't remember screaming, but of course he had; he had been told this and had no reason to disbelieve it. Screamed his fucking head off, most likely. And what if the man in the brown coat and orange accessories started screaming for Marcy? Surely he would not not really but Jonesy's mind might report screams of Marcy. If there was eye-fever if he could look at a man's brown coat and see it as a deer's head then there was likely the auditory equivalent, as well. To hear a man screaming and know you were the reason dear God, no. And still his finger would not loosen.
What broke his paralysis was both simple and unexpected: about ten paces from the base of Jonesy's tree, the man in the brown coat fell down. Jonesy heard the pained, surprised sound he made mrof! was what it sounded like and his finger released the trigger without his even thinking about it.
The man was down on his hands and knees, his brown-gloved fingers (brown gloves, another mistake, this guy almost could have gone out with a sign reading SHOOT ME taped to his back, Jonesy thought) spread on the ground, which had already begun to whiten. As the man got up again, he began to speak aloud in a fretful, wondering voice. Jonesy didn't realize at first that he was also weeping.
"Oh dear, oh dear," the man said as he worked his way back to a standing position. He swayed on his feet as if drunk. Jonesy knew that men in the woods, men away from their families for a week or a weekend, got up to all sorts of small wickedness drinking at ten in the morning was one of the most common. But Jonesy didn't think this guy was drunk. No reason; just a vibe.
"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear." And then, as he began to walk again: "Snow. Now it's snow. Please God, oh God, now it's snow, oh dear."
His first couple of steps were lurching and unsure. Jonesy had about decided that his vibe was incorrect, the guy was loaded, and then the fellow's gait smoothed out and he began to walk a little more evenly. He was scratching at his right cheek.
He passed directly beneath the stand, for a moment he wasn't a man at all but only a round circle of orange cap with brown shoulders to either side of it. His voice drifted up, liquid and full of tears, mostly Oh dear with the occasional Oh God or Now it's snow thrown in for salt.
Jonesy stood where he was, watching as the guy first disappeared directly beneath the stand, then came out on the other side. He pivoted without being aware of it to keep the plodding man in view nor was he aware that he had lowered his rifle to his side, even pausing long enough to put the safety back on.
Jonesy didn't call out, and he supposed he knew why: simple guilt. He was afraid that the man down there would take one look at him and see the truth in Jonesy's eyes even through his tears and the thickening snow, the man would see that Jonesy had been up there with his gun pointed, that Jonesy had almost shot him.
Twenty paces beyond the tree, the man stopped and only stood there, his gloved right hand raised to his brow, shielding his eyes from the snow. Jonesy realized he had seen Hole in the Wall. Had probably realized he was on an actual path, too. Oh dear and Oh God stopped, and the guy began to run toward the sound of the generator, rocking from side to side like a man on the deck of a ship. Jonesy could hear the stranger's short, sharp gasps for breath as he pounded toward the roomy cabin with the lazy curl of smoke rising from the chimney and fading almost at once into the snow.
Jonesy began to work his way down the rungs nailed to the trunk of the maple with his gun slung over his shoulder (the thought that the man might present some sort of danger did not occur to him, not then; he simply didn't want to leave the Garand, which was a fine gun, out in the snow). His hip had stiffened, and by the time he got to the foot of the tree, the man he'd almost shot had made it nearly all the way to the cabin door . . . which was unlocked, of course. No one locked up, not way out here.
Extracto 3. Publicado por Simonsay, el 3/3/2001
1993: Pete Helps a Lady in Distress
Pete sits behind his desk just off the showroom of Macdonald Motors in Bridgton,
twirling his keychain. The fob consists of four enameled blue letters: NASA.
Dreams age faster than dreamers, that is a fact of life Pete has discovered as
the years pass. Yet the last ones often die surprisingly hard, screaming in low,
miserable voices at the back of the brain. It's been a long time since Pete
slept in a bedroom papered with pictures of Apollo and Saturn rockets and
astronauts and space-walks (EVAs, to those in the know) and space capsules with
their shields smoked and fused by the fabulous heat of re-entry and LEMs and
Voyagers and one photograph of a shiny disc over Interstate 80, people standing
in the breakdown lane and looking up with their hands shielding their eyes, the
photo's caption reading THIS OBJECT, PHOTOGRAPHED NEAR ARVADA, COLORADO, IN
1971, HAS NEVER BEEN EXPLAINED. IT IS A GENUINE UFO.
A long time.
Yet he still spent one of his two weeks of vacation this year in Washington,
D.C., where he went to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum every day
and spent nearly all of his time wandering among the displays with a wondering
grin on his face. And most of that time he spent looking at the moon rocks and
thinking, Those rocks came from a place where the skies are always black and the
silence is everlasting. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took twenty kilograms of
another world and now here it is.
And here he is, sitting behind his desk on a day when he hasn't sold a single
car (people don't like to buy cars when it's raining, and it has been drizzling
in Pete's part of the world ever since first light), twirling his NASA keychain
and looking up at the clock. Time moves slowly in the afternoons, ever more
slowly as the hour of five approaches. At five it will be time for that first
beer. Not before five; no way. You drank during the day, maybe you had to look
at how much you were drinking, because that's what alcoholics did. But if you
could wait...just twirl your keychain and wait...
As well as that first beer of the day, Pete is waiting for November. Going to
Washington in April had been good, and the moon rocks had been stunning (they
still stun him, every time he thinks about them), but he had been alone. Being
alone wasn't so good. In November, when he takes his other week, he'll be with
Henry and Jonesy and the Beav. Then he'll allow himself to drink during the day.
When you're off in the woods, hunting with your friends, it's all right to drink
during the day. It's practically a tradition. It --
The door opens and a good-looking brunette comes in. About five-ten (and Pete
likes them tall), maybe thirty. She glances around at the showroom models (the
new Thunderbird, in dark burgundy, is the pick of the litter, although the
Explorer isn't bad), but not as if she has any interest in buying. Then she
spots Pete and walks toward him.
Pete gets up, dropping his NASA keychain on his desk-blotter, and meets her at
the door of his office. He's wearing his best professional smile by now -- two
hundred watts, baby, you better believe it -- and has his hand outstretched. Her
grip Is cool and firm, but she's distracted, upset.
"This probably isn't going to work," she says.
"Now, you never want to start that way with a car salesman," Pete
says. "We love a challenge. I'm Pete Moore."
"Hello," she says, but doesn't give her name, which is Trish. "I
have an appointment in Fryeburg in just" -- she glances at the clock which
Pete watches so closely during the slow afternoon hours -- "in just
forty-five minutes. It's with a client who wants to buy a house, and I think I
have the right one, there's a sizeable commission involved, and..." Her
eyes are now brimming with tears and she has to swallow to get rid of the
thickness creeping into her voice. "...and I've lost my goddam keys! My
goddam car keys!"
She opens her purse and rummages in it.
"But I have my registration...plus some other papers...there are all sorts
of numbers, and I thought maybe, just maybe, you could make me a new set and I
could be on my way. This sale could make my year, Mr. -- " She has
forgotten. He isn't offended. Moore is almost as common as Smith or Jones.
Besides, she's upset. Losing your keys will do that. He's seen it a hundred
times.
"Moore. But I answer just as well to Pete."
"Can you help me, Mr. Moore? Or is there someone in the service department
who can?"
Old Johnny Damon's back there and he'd be happy to help her, but she wouldn't
make her appointment in Fryeburg, that's for sure.
"We can get you new car keys, but it's liable to take at least twenty-four
hours and maybe more like forty-eight," he says.
She looks at him from her brimming eyes, which are a velvety brown, and lets out
a dismayed cry. "Damn it! Damn it!"
An odd thought comes to Pete then: she looks like a girl he knew a long time
ago. Not well, they hadn't known her well, but well enough to save her life.
Josie Rinkenhauer, her name had been.
"I knew it!" Trish says, no longer trying to keep that husky thickness
out of her voice. "Oh boy, I just knew it!" She turns away from him,
now beginning to cry in earnest.
Pete walks after her and takes her gently by the shoulder. "Wait, Trish.
Wait just a minute."
That's a slip, saying her name when she hasn't given it to him, but she's too
upset to realize they haven't been properly introduced, so it's okay.
"Where did you come from?" he asks. "I mean, you're not from
Bridgton, are you?"
"No," she says. "Our office is in Westbrook. Dennison Real
Estate. We're the ones with the lighthouse?"
Pete nods as if this means something to him.
"I came from there. Only I stopped at the Bridgton Pharmacy for some
aspirin because I always get a headache before a big presentation...it's the
stress, and oh boy, it's pounding like a hammer now..."
Pete nods sympathetically. He knows about headaches. Of course most of his are
caused by beer rather than stress, but he knows about them, all right.
"I had some time to kill, so I also went into tile little store next to the
pharmacy for a coffee...the caffeine, you know, when you have a headache the
caffeine can help..."
Pete nods again. Henry's the headshrinker, but as Pete has told him more than
once, you have to know a fair amount about how the human mind works in order to
succeed at selling. Now he's pleased to see that his new friend is calming down
a little. That's good. He has an idea he can help her, if she'll let him. He can
feel that little click wanting to happen. He likes that little click. It's no
big deal, it'll never make his fortune, but he likes it.
"And I also went across the street to Renny's. I bought a scarf...because
of the rain, you know..." She touches her hair. "Then I went back to
my car...and my son-of-a-damn-bitch keys were gone! I retraced my steps...went
backward from Renny's to the store to the pharmacy, and they're not anywhere!
And now I'm going to miss my appointment!"
Distress is creeping back into her voice. Her eyes go to the clock again.
Creeping for him; racing for her. That's the difference between people, Pete
reflects. One of them, anyway.
"Calm down," he says. "Calm down just a few seconds and listen to
me. We're going to walk back to the drugstore, you and I, and look for your car
keys."
"They're not there! I checked all the aisles, I looked on the shelf where I
got the aspirin, I asked the girl at the counter -- "
"It won't hurt to check again," he says. He's walking her toward the
door now, his hand pressed lightly against the small of her back, getting her to
walk with him. He likes the smell of her perfume and he likes her hair even
more, yes he does. And if it looks this pretty on a rainy day, how might it look
when the sun is out?
"My appointment -- "
"You've still got forty minutes," he says. "With the summer
tourists gone, it only takes twenty to drive up to Fryeburg. We'll take ten
minutes to try and find your keys, and if we can't, I'll drive you myself."
She peers at him doubtfully.
He looks past her, into one of the other offices. "Dick!" he calls.
"Hey, Dickie M.!"
Dick Macdonald looks up from a clutter of invoices.
"Tell this lady I'm safe to drive her up to Fryeburg, should it come to
that. "
"Oh, he's safe enough, ma'am," Dick says. "Not a sex maniac or a
fast driver. He'll just try to sell you a new car."
"I'm a tough sell," she says, smiling a little, "but I guess
you're on."
"Cover my phone, would you, Dick?" Pete asks.
"Oh yeah, that'll be a hardship. Weather like this, I'll be beatin the
customers off with a stick."
Pete and the brunette woman -- Trish -- go out, cross the alley, and walk the
forty or so feet back to Main Street. The Bridgton Pharmacy is the second
building on their left. The drizzle has thickened; now it's almost rain. The
woman puts her new scarf up over her hair and glances at Pete, who's
bare-headed. "You're getting all wet," she says.
"I'm from upstate," he says. "We grow em tough up there."
"You think you can find them, don't you?" she asks.
Pete shrugs. "Maybe. I'm good at finding things. Always have been."
"Do you know something I don't?" she asks.
No bounce, no play, he thinks. I know that much, ma'am.
"Nope," he says. "Not yet."
They walk into the pharmacy, and the bell over the door jingles. The girl behind
the counter looks up from her magazine. At three-twenty on a rainy
late-September afternoon, the pharmacy is deserted except for the three of them
down here and Mr. Diller up behind the prescription counter.
"Hi, Pete," the counter-girl says.
"Yo, Cathy, how's it going?"
"Oh, you know -- slow." She looks at the brunette. "I'm sorry,
ma'am, I checked around again, but I didn't find them."
"That's all right," Trish says with a wan smile. "This gentleman
has agreed to give me a ride to my appointment."
"Well," Cathy says, "Pete's okay, but I don't think I'd go so far
as to call him a gentleman."
"You want to watch what you say, darlin," Pete tells her with a grin.
"There's a Rexall just down 302 in Naples." Then he glances up at the
clock. Time has sped up for him, too. That's okay, that makes a nice change.
Pete looks back at Trish. "You came here first. For the aspirin."
"That's right. I got a bottle of Anacin. Then I had some time to kill, so
--"
"I know, you got a coffee next door at Christie's, then went across to
Renny's."
"Yes. "
"You didn't take your aspirin with hot coffee, did you?"
"No, I had a bottle of Poland water in my car." She points out the
window at a green Taurus. "I took them with some of that. But I checked the
seat, too, Mr. -- Pete. I also checked the ignition." She gives him
an impatient look which says, I know what you're thinking: daffy woman.
"Just one more question," he says. "If I find your car keys,
would you go out to dinner with me? I could meet you at The West Wharf. It's on
the road between here and -- "
"I know The West Wharf," she says, looking amused in spite of her
distress. At the counter, Cathy isn't even pretending to read her magazine. This
is better than Redbook, by far. "How do you know I'm not married, or
something?"
"No wedding ring," he replies promptly, although he hasn't even looked
at her hands yet, not closely, anyway. "Besides, I was just talking about
fried clams, cole slaw, and strawberry shortcake, not a lifetime
commitment."
She looks at the clock. "Pete...Mr. Moore...I'm afraid that at this minute
I have absolutely no interest in flirting. If you want to give me a ride, I
would be very happy to have dinner with you. But -- "
"That's good enough for me," he says. "But you'll be driving your
own car, I think, so I'll meet you. Would five-thirty be okay?"
"Yes, fine, but -- "
"Okay." Pete feels happy. That's good; happy is good. A lot of days
these last couple of years he hasn't felt within a holler of happy, and he
doesn't know why. Too many late and soggy nights cruising the bars along 302
between here and North Conway? Okay, but is that all? Maybe not, but this isn't
the time to think about it. The lady has an appointment to keep. If she keeps it
and sells the house, who knows how lucky Pete Moore might get? And even if he
doesn't get lucky, he's going to be able to help her. He feels it.
"I'm going to do something a little weird now," he says, "but
don't let it worry you, okay? It's just a little trick, like putting your finger
under your nose to stop a sneeze or thumping your forehead when you're trying to
remember someone's name. Okay?"
"Sure, I guess," she says, totally mystified.
Pete closes his eyes, raises one loosely fisted hand in front of his face, then
pops up his index finger. He begins to tick it back and forth in front of him.
Trish looks at Cathy, the counter-girl. Cathy shrugs as if to say Who knows?
"Mr. Moore?" Trish sounds uneasy now. "Mr. Moore, maybe I just
ought to -- "
Pete opens his eyes, takes a deep breath, and drops his hand. He looks past her,
to the door.
"Okay," he says. "So you came in. His eyes move as if watching
her come in. "And you went to the counter..." His eyes go there.
"You asked, probably, 'Which aisle's the aspirin in?' Something like
that."
"Yes, I -- "
"Only you got something, too." He can see it on the candy-rack, a
bright yellow mark something like a handprint. "Snickers bar?"
"Mounds." Her brown eyes are wide. "How did you know that?"
"You got the candy, then you went up to get the aspirin..." He's
looking up Aisle 2 now. "After that you paid and went out...let's go
outside a minute. Seeya, Cathy."
Cathy only nods, looking at him with wide eyes.
Pete walks outside, ignoring the tinkle of the bell, ignoring the rain, which
now really is rain. The yellow is on the sidewalk, but fading. The rain's
washing it away. Still, he can see it and it pleases him to see it. That feeling
of click. Sweet. It's the line. It has been a long time since he's seen it so
clearly.
"Back to your car," he says, talking to himself now. "Back to
take a couple of your aspirin with your water..."
He crosses the sidewalk, slowly, to the Taurus. The woman walks behind him, eyes
more worried than ever now. Almost frightened.
"You opened the door. You've got your purse...your keys...your
aspirin...your candy...all this stuff...juggling it around from hand to
hand...and that's when..."
He bends, fishes in the water flowing along the gutter, hand in it all the way
up to the wrist, and brings something up. He gives it a magician's flourish.
Keys flash silver in the dull day.
"...you dropped your keys."
She doesn't take them at first. She only gapes at him, as if he has performed an
act of witchcraft (warlock-craft, in his case, maybe) before her eyes.
"Go on," he says, smile fading a little. "Take them. It wasn't
anything too spooky, you know. Mostly just deduction. I'm good at stuff like
that. Hey, you should have me in the car sometime when you're lost. I'm great at
getting unlost."
She takes the keys, then. Quickly, being careful not to touch his fingers, and
he knows right then that she isn't going to meet him later. It doesn't take any
special gift to figure that; he only has to look in her eyes, which are more
frightened than grateful.
"Thank...thank you," she says. All at once she's measuring the space
between them, not wanting him to use too much of it up.
"Not a problem. Now don't forget. The West Wharf, at five-thirty. Best
fried clams in this part of the state." Keeping up the fiction. You have to
keep it up, sometimes, no matter how you feel. And although some of the joy has
gone out of the afternoon, some is still there; he has seen the line, and that
always makes him feel good. It's a minor trick, but it's nice to know it's still
there.
"Five-thirty," she echoes, but as she opens her car door, the glance
she throws back over her shoulder is the kind you'd give to a dog that might
bite if it got off its leash. She is very glad she won't be riding up to
Fryeburg with him. Pete doesn't need to be a mind-reader to know that, either.
He stands there in the rain, watching her back out of the slant parking space,
and when she drives away he tosses her a cheerful car-salesman's wave. She gives
him a distracted little flip of the fingers in return, and of course when he
shows up at The West Wharf (at five-fifteen, just to be Johnny on the spot, just
in case) she isn't there and an hour later she's still not there. He stays for
quite awhile just the same, sitting at the bar and drinking beer, watching the
traffic out on 302. He thinks he sees her go by without slowing at about
five-forty, a green Taurus busting past in a rain which has now become heavy, a
green Taurus that might or might not be pulling a light yellow nimbus behind it
that fades at once in the graying air.
Same shit, different day, he thinks, but now the joy is gone and the sadness is
back, the sadness that feels like something deserved, the price of some
not-quite-forgotten betrayal. He lights a cigarette -- in the old days, as a
kid, he used to pretend to smoke but now he doesn't have to pretend anymore --
and orders another beer.
Milt brings it, but says, "You ought to lay some food on top of that,
Peter."
So Pete orders a plate of fried clams and even eats a few dipped in tartar sauce
while he drinks another couple of beers, and at some point, before moving on up
the line to some other joint where he isn't so well-known, he tries to call
Jonesy, down there in Massachusetts. But Jonesy and Carla are enjoying the rare
night out, he only gets the baby-sitter, who asks him if he wants to leave a
message.
Pete almost says no, then reconsiders. "Just tell him Pete called. Tell him
Pete said SSDD."
"S...S...D...D." She is writing it down. "Will he know what --
"
"Oh yeah," Pete says, "he'll know."
By midnight he's drunk in some New Hampshire dive, the Muddy Rudder or maybe
it's the Ruddy Mother, he's trying to tell some chick who's as drunk as he is
that once he really believed he was going to be the first man to set foot on
Mars, and although she's nodding and saying yeah-yeah-yeah, he has an idea that
all she understands is that she'd like to get outside of one more coffee brandy
before closing. And that's okay. It doesn't matter. Tomorrow he'll wake up with
a headache but he'll go in to work just the same and maybe he'll sell a car and
maybe he won't but either way things will go on. Maybe he'll sell the burgundy
Thunderbird, goodbye, sweetheart. Once things were different, but now they're
the same. He reckons he can live with that; for a guy like him, the rule of
thumb is just SSDD, and so fucking what. You grew up, became a man, had to
adjust to taking less than you hoped for; you discovered the dream-machine had a
big OUT OF ORDER sign on it.
In November he'll go hunting with his friends, and that's enough to look forward
to...that, and maybe a big old sloppy-lipstick blowjob from this drunk chick out
in his car. Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.
Dreams are for kids.
Copyright (c) 2001 by Stephen King
Extracto 4. Publicado por TIME, el 12/3/2001
About ten feet from the granite slab that served as Hole in the Wall's front stoop, the man in the brown coat and orange hat fell down again. His hat tumbled off, revealing a sweaty clump of thinning brown hair. He stayed on one knee for a moment, head lowered. Jonesy could hear his harsh, fast breathing.
The man picked up his cap, and just as he set it back on his head, Jonesy hailed him.
The man staggered to his feet and turned tipsily. Jonesy's first impression was that the man's face was very long that he was almost what people meant when they called someone "horsefaced." Then, as Jonesy got closer, hitching a little but not really limping (and that was good, because the ground underfoot was getting slippery fast), he realized the guy's face wasn't particularly long at all he was just very scared and very very pale. The red patch on his cheek where he had been scratching stood out brightly. The relief that came over him when he saw Jonesy hurrying toward him was large and immediate. Jonesy almost laughed at himself, standing up there on the platform in the tree and worrying about the guy reading his eyes. This man wasn't into reading faces, and he clearly had no interest in where Jonesy had come from or what he might have been doing. This man looked like he wanted to throw his arms around Jonesy's neck and cover him with big gooey kisses.
"Thank God!" the man cried. He held out one hand toward Jonesy and shuffled toward him through the thin icing of new snow. "Oh gee, thank God, I'm lost, I've been lost in the woods since yesterday, I thought I was going to die out here. I . . . I . . ."
His feet slipped and Jonesy grabbed his upper arms. He was a big man, taller than Jonesy, who stood six-two, and broader, as well. Nevertheless, Jonesy's first impression was of insubstantialness, as if the man's fear had somehow scooped him out and left him light as a milkweed pod.
"Easy, fella," Jonesy said. "Easy, you're all right now, you're okay. Let's just get you inside and get you warm, how would that be?"
As if the word warm had been his cue, the man's teeth began to chatter. "S-S-Sure." He tried to smile, without much success. Jonesy was again struck by his extreme pallor. It was cold out here this morning, upper twenties at best, but the guy's cheeks were all ashes and lead. The only color in his face, other than the red patch, was the brown crescents under his eyes.
Jonesy got an arm around the man's shoulders, suddenly swept by an absurd and sappy tenderness for this stranger, an emotion so strong it was like his first junior-high-school crush Mary Jo Martineau in a sleeveless white blouse and straight knee-length denim skirt. He was now absolutely sure the man hadn't been drinking it was fear (and maybe exhaustion) rather than booze that had made him unsteady on his feet. Yet there was a smell on his breath something like bananas. It reminded Jonesy of the ether he'd sprayed into the carburetor of his first car, a Vietnam-era Ford, to get it to crank over on cold mornings.
"Get you inside, right?"
"Yeah. C-Cold. Thank God you came along. Is this "
"My place? No, a friend's." Jonesy opened the varnished oak door and helped the man over the threshold. The stranger gasped at the feel of the warm air, and a flush began to rise in his cheeks. Jonesy was relieved to see there was some blood in him, after all.
Hole in the Wall was pretty grand by deep-woods standards. You came in on the single big downstairs room kitchen, dining room, and living room, all in one but there were two bedrooms behind it and another upstairs, under the single eave. The big room was filled with the scent of pine and its mellow, varnished glow. There was a Navajo rug on the floor and a Micmac hanging on one wall which depicted brave little stick-hunters surrounding an enormous bear. A plain oak table, long enough to accommodate eight places, defined the dining area. There was a woodstove in the kitchen and a fireplace in the living area; when both were going, the place made you feel stupid with the heat even if it was twenty below outside. The west wall was all window, giving a view of the long, steep slope which fell off to the west. There had been a fire there in the seventies, and the dead trees stood black and twisted in the thickening snow. Jonesy, Pete, Henry, and the Beav called this slope The Gulch, because that's what the Beav's Dad and his friends had called it.
"Oh God, thank God, and thank you, too," the man in the orange hat said to Jonesy, and when Jonesy grinned that was a lot of thank-you's the man laughed shrilly as if to say yes, he knew it, it was a funny thing to say but he couldn't help it. He began to take deep breaths, for a few moments looking like one of those exercise gurus you saw on high-number cable. On every exhale, he talked.
"God, I really thought I was done-for last night . . . it was so cold . . . and the damp air, I remember that . . . remember thinking Oh boy, oh dear, what if there's snow coming after all . . . I got coughing and couldn't stop . . . something came and I thought I have to stop coughing, if that's a bear or something I'll . . . you know . . . provoke it or something . . . only I couldn't and after awhile it just . . . you know, went away on its own "
"You saw a bear in the night?" Jonesy was both fascinated and appalled. He had heard there were bears up here Old Man Gosselin and his pickle-barrel buddies at the store loved to tell bear stories, particularly to the out-of-staters but the idea that this man, lost and on his own, had been menaced by one in the night, was keenly horrible. It was like hearing a sailor talk about a sea monster.
"I don't know that it was," the man said, and suddenly shot Jonesy a sideward look of cunning that Jonesy didn't like and couldn't read. "I can't say for sure, by then there was no more lightning."
"Lightning, too? Man!" If not for the guy's obviously genuine distress, Jonesy would have wondered if he wasn't getting his leg pulled. In truth, he wondered it a little, anyway.
"Dry lightning, I guess," the man said. Jonesy could almost see him shrugging it off. He scratched at the red place on his cheek, which might have been a touch of frostbite. "See it in winter, it means there's a storm on the way."
"And you saw this? Last night?"
"I guess so." The man gave him another quick, sideways glance, but this time Jonesy saw no slyness in it, and guessed he had seen none before. He saw only exhaustion. "It's all mixed up in my mind . . . my stomach's been hurting ever since I got lost . . . it always hurts when I'm ascairt, ever since I was a little kid . . ."
And he was like a little kid, Jonesy thought, looking everywhere at once with perfect unselfconsciousness. Jonesy led the guy toward the couch in front of the fireplace and the guy let himself be led. Ascairt. He even said ascairt instead of afraid, like a kid. A little kid.
"Give me your coat," Jonesy said, and as the guy first unbuttoned the buttons and then reached for the zipper under them, Jonesy thought again of how he had thought he was looking at a deer, at a buck for Chrissake he had mistaken one of those buttons for an eye and had damned near put a bullet through it.
The guy got the zipper halfway down and then it stuck, one side of the little gold mouth choking on the cloth. He looked at it gawked at it, really as if he had never seen such a thing before. And when Jonesy reached for the zipper, the man dropped his hands to his sides and simply let Jonesy reach, as a first-grader would stand and let the teacher put matters right when he got his galoshes on the wrong feet or his jacket on inside out.
Jonesy got the little gold mouth started again and pulled it the rest of the way down. Outside the window-wall, The Gulch was disappearing, although you could still see the black scrawled shapes of the trees. Almost twenty-five years they had come up here together for the hunting, almost twenty-five years without a single miss, and in none of that time had there been snow heavier than the occasional squall. It looked like all that was about to change, although how could you tell? These days the guys on radio and TV made four inches of fresh powder sound like the next Ice Age.
For a moment the guy only stood there with his jacket hanging open and snow melting around his boots on the polished wooden floor, looking up at the rafters with his mouth open, and yes, he was like a great big six-year-old or like Duddits. You almost expected to see mittens dangling from the cuffs of his jacket on clips. He shrugged out of his coat in that perfectly recognizable child's way, simply slumping his shoulders once it was unzipped and letting it fall. If Jonesy hadn't been there to catch it, it would have gone on the floor and gotten right to work sopping up the puddles of melting snow.
"What's that?" he asked.
For a moment Jonesy had no idea what the guy was talking about, and then he traced the stranger's gaze to the bit of weaving which hung from the center rafter. It was colorful red and green, with shoots of canary yellow, as well and it looked like a spiderweb.
"It's a dreamcatcher," Jonesy said. "An Indian charm. Supposed to keep the nightmares away, I guess."
"Is it yours?"
Jonesy didn't know if he meant the whole place (perhaps the guy hadn't been listening before) or just the dreamcatcher, but in either case the answer was the same. "No, my friend's. We come up hunting every year."
"How many of you?" The man was shivering, holding his arms crisscrossed over his chest and cupping his elbows in his palms as he watched Jonesy hang his coat on the tree by the door.
"Four. Beaver this is his camp is out hunting now. I don't know if the snow'll bring him back in or not. Probably it will. Pete and Henry went to the store."
"Gosselin's? That one?"
"Uh-huh. Come on over here and sit down on the couch."
Jonesy led him to the couch, a ridiculously long sectional. Such things had gone out of style decades ago, but it didn't smell too bad and nothing had infested it. Style and taste didn't matter much at Hole in the Wall.
"Stay put now," he said, and left the man sitting there, shivering and shaking with his hands clasped between his knees. His jeans had the sausagey look they get when there are longjohns underneath, and still he shook and shivered. But the heat had brought on an absolute flood of color; instead of looking like a corpse, the stranger now looked like a diphtheria victim.
Pete and Henry were doubling in the bigger of the two downstairs bedrooms. Jonesy ducked in, opened the cedar chest to the left of the door, and pulled out one of the two down comforters folded up inside. As he recrossed the living room to where the man sat shivering on the couch, Jonesy realized he hadn't asked the most elementary question of all, the one even six-year-olds who couldn't get their own zippers down asked.
As he spread the comforter over the stranger on the outsized camp couch, he said: "What's your name?" And realized he almost knew. McCoy? McCann?
The man Jonesy had almost shot looked up at him, at once pulling the comforter up around his neck. The brown patches under his eyes were filling in purple.
"McCarthy," he said. "Richard McCarthy." His hand, surprisingly plump and white without its glove, crept out from beneath the coverlet like a shy animal. "You are?"
"Gary Jones," he said, and took the hand with the one which had almost pulled the trigger. "Folks mostly call me Jonesy."
"Thanks, Jonesy." McCarthy looked at him earnestly. "I think you saved my life."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Jonesy said. He looked at that red patch again. Frostbite, just a small patch. Frostbite, had to be.
Extracto 5. Publicado por Simonsay, el 14/3/2001
From Chapter 6: Duddits, Part Two
When they get to the driveway -- not much of a driveway, weeds are growing even
in the gravelly wheelruts now -- Beaver is in the lead. Beaver is, indeed,
almost foaming at the jaws. Henry guesses that Pete is nearly as wrought-up,
but Pete is holding it in better, even though he's a year younger. Beaver
is...what's the word? Agog. Henry almost laughs at the aptness of it, and then
the Beav stops so suddenly Pete almost runs into him.
"Hey!" Beaver says. "Fuck me Freddy! Some kid's shirt!"
It is indeed. Red and white, and not old and dirty, as if it had been there a
thousand years. In fact, it looks almost new.
"Shirt, schmirt, who gives a shit?" Jonesy wants to know. "Let's
just -- "
"Hold your horses," the Beav says. "This is a good shirt."
Except when he picks it up, they see that it isn't. New, yes -- a brandnew
Derry Tigers shirt, with 19 on the back. Pete doesn't give a shit for football,
but the rest of them recognize it as Richie Grenadeau's number. Good, no -- not
anymore. It's ripped deeply at the back collar, as if the person wearing it had
tried to run away, then been grabbed and hauled back.
"Guess I was wrong," the Beav says sadly, and drops it again.
"Come on."
But before they get very far, they come across something else -- this time it's
yellow instead of red, that bright yellow plastic only a kid could love. Henry
trots ahead of the others and picks it up. It's a lunchbox with Scooby-Doo and
his friends on it, all of them running from what appears to be a haunted house.
Like the shirt it looks new, not anything that's been lying out here for any
length of time, and all at once Henry is starting to have a bad feeling about
this, starting to wish they hadn't detoured into this deserted driveway by this
deserted building at all...or at least had saved it for another day. Which,
even at fourteen, he realizes is stupid. When it comes to pussy, he thinks, you
either go or you don't, there's no such thing as saving it for another day.
"I hate that fuckin' show," Pete says, looking over Henry's shoulder
at the lunchbox. "They never change their clothes, did you ever notice
that? Wear the same fuckin' thing, show in and show out,"
Jonesy takes the Scooby-Doo lunchbox from Henry and turns it to look at
something he's seen pasted on the end. The wild look has gone out of Jonesy's
eyes, he's frowning slightly, and Henry has an idea Jonesy is also wishing
they'd just gone on and played some two-on-two.
The sticker on the side reads: I BELONG TO DOUGLAS CAVELL, 19 MAPLE LANE,
DERRY,
MAINE. IF THE BOY I BELONG TO IS LOST, CALL 949-1864. THANKS!
Henry opens his mouth to say the lunchbox and the shirt must belong to a kid
who goes to The Retard Academy -- he's sure of it just looking at the sticker,
which is almost like the tag their fucking dog wears -- but before he can,
there is a scream from the far side of the building, over where the big kids
play baseball
in the summer. It's full of hurt, that scream, but what starts Henry running
before he can even think about it is the surprise in it, the awful surprise of
someone who has been hurt or scared (or both) for the very first time.
The others follow him. They run up the weedy right rut of the driveway, the one
closest to the building, in single file: Henry, Jonesy, the Beav, and Pete.
There is hearty male laughter. "Go on and eat it," someone says.
"Eat it and you can go. Duncan might even give you your pants back."
"Yeah, if you -- " Another boy, probably Duncan, begins and then he
stops, staring at Henry and his friends.
"Hey you guys, quit it!" Beaver shouts. "Just fucking quit
it!"
Duncan's friends -- there are two of them, both wearing Derry High School
jackets -- realize they are no longer unobserved at their afternoon's
entertainment, and turn. Kneeling on the gravel amid them, dressed only in
underpants and one sneaker, his face smeared with blood and dirt and snot and
tears, is a child of an age Henry cannot determine. He's not a little kid, not
with that powdering of hair on his chest, but he has the look of a little kid
just the same. His eyes have a Chinese tilt and are bright green, swimming with
tears.
On the red brick wall behind this little group, printed in large white letters
which are fading but still legible, is this message: NO BOUNCE, NO PLAY. Which
probably means keep the games and the balls away from the building and out in
the vacant lot where the deep ruts of the basepaths and the ragged hill of the
pitcher's mound can still be seen, but who can say for sure? NO BOUNCE, NO
PLAY. In the years to come they will say this often; it will become one of the
private catch-phrases of their youth and has no exact meaning. Who knows?
perhaps comes closest. Or What can you do? It is always best spoken with a
shrug, a smile, and
hands tipped up to the sky.
Copyright 2001 by Stephen King
Extracto 6. Publicado por TIME, el 19/3/2001
"You know I can't call anyone, don't you?" Jonesy said. "The phone lines don't come anywhere near here. There's a genny for the electric, but that's all."
McCarthy, only his head showing above the comforter, nodded. "I was hearing the generator, but you know how it is when you're lost noises are funny. Sometimes the sound seems to be coming from your left or your right, then you'd swear it's behind you and you better turn back."
Jonesy nodded, although he did not, in fact, know how it was. Unless you counted the week or so immediately after his accident, time he had spent wandering in a fog of drugs and pain, he had never been lost.
"I'm trying to think what'd be the best thing," Jonesy said. "I guess when Pete and Henry get back, we better take you out. How many in your party?"
It seemed McCarthy had to think. That, added to the unsteady way he had been walking, solidified Jonesy's impression that the man was in shock. He wondered that one night lost in the woods would do that; he wondered if it would do it to him.
"Four," McCarthy said, after that minute to think. "Just like you guys. We were hunting in pairs. I was with a friend of mine, Steve Otis. He's a lawyer like me, down in Skowhegan. We're all from Skowhegan, you know, and this week for us . . . it's a big deal."
Jonesy nodded, smiling. "Yeah. Same here."
"Anyway, I guess I just wandered off." He shook his head. "I don't know, I was hearing Steve over on my right, sometimes seeing his vest through the trees, and then I . . . I just don't know. I got thinking about stuff, I guess one thing the woods are great for is thinking about stuff and then I was on my own. I guess I tried to backtrack but then it got dark . . ." He shook his head yet again. "It's all mixed up in my mind, but yeah there were four of us, I guess that's one thing I'm sure of. Me and Steve and Nat Roper and Nat's sister, Becky."
"They must be worried sick."
McCarthy looked first startled, then apprehensive. This was clearly a new idea for him. "Yeah, they must be. Of course they are. Oh dear, oh gee."
Jonesy had to restrain a smile at this. When he got going, McCarthy sounded a little like a character in that movie, Fargo.
"So we better take you out. If, that is "
"I don't want to be a bother "
"We'll take you out. If we can. I mean, this weather came in fast." "It sure did," McCarthy said bitterly. "You'd think they could do better with all their darn satellites and doppler radar and gosh knows what else. So much for fair and seasonably cold, huh?"
Jonesy looked at the man under the comforter, just the flushed face and the thatch of thinning brown hair showing, with some perplexity. The forecasts he had heard he, Pete, Henry, and the Beav had been full of the prospect of snow for the last two days. Some of the prognosticators hedged their bets, saying the snow could change over to rain, but the fellow on the Castle Rock radio station that morning (WCAS was the only radio they could get up here, and even that was thin and jumbled with static) had been talking about a fast-moving Alberta Clipper, six or eight inches, and maybe a nor'easter to follow, if the temperatures stayed down and the low didn't go out to sea. Jonesy didn't know where McCarthy had gotten his weather forecasts, but it sure hadn't been WCAS. The guy was just mixed up, that was most likely it, and had every right to be.
"You know, I could put on some soup. How would that be, Mr. McCarthy?" McCarthy smiled gratefully. "I think that would be pretty fine," he said. "My stomach hurt last night and something fierce this morning, but I feel better now."
"Stress," Jonesy said. "I would have been puking my guts. Probably filling my pants, as well."
"I didn't throw up," McCarthy said. "I'm pretty sure I didn't. But . . ." Another shake of the head, it was like a nervous tic with him. "I don't know. The way things are jumbled, it's like a nightmare I had."
"The nightmare's over," Jonesy said. He felt a little foolish saying such a thing a little auntie-ish but it was clear the guy needed reassurance.
"Good," McCarthy said. "Thank you. And I would like some soup."
"There's tomato, chicken, and I think maybe a can of Chunky Sirloin. What do you fancy?"
"Chicken," McCarthy said. "My mother always said chicken soup was the thing when you're not feeling your best."
He grinned as he said it, and Jonesy tried to keep the shock off his face. McCarthy's teeth were white and even, really too even to be anything but capped, given the man's age, which had to be forty-five or thereabouts. But at least four of them were missing the canines on top (what Jonesy's father had called "the vampire teeth") and two right in front on the bottom Jonesy didn't know what those were called. He knew one thing, though: McCarthy wasn't aware they were gone. No one who knew about such gaps in the line of his teeth could expose them so unselfconsciously, even under circumstances like these. Or so Jonesy believed. He felt a sick little chill rush through his gut, a telephone call from nowhere. He turned toward the kitchen before McCarthy could see his face change and wonder what was wrong. Maybe ask what was wrong.
"One order chicken soup coming right up. How about a grilled cheese to go with it?"
"If it's no trouble. And call me Richard, will you? Or Rick, that's even better. When people save my life, I like to get on a first-name basis with them as soon as possible."
"Rick it is, for sure." Better get those teeth fixed before you step in front of another jury, Rick.
The feeling that something was wrong here was very strong. It was that click, just as almost guessing McCarthy's name had been. He was a long way from wishing he'd shot the man when he had the chance, but he was already starting to wish McCarthy had stayed the hell away from his tree and out of his life.
©2001 by Stephen King