Salem’s Lot (27 page)

5

When Nolly brought Floyd his breakfast from the Excellent Café, Floyd was fast asleep. It seemed to Nolly that it would be a meanness to wake him up just to eat a couple of Pauline Dickens’s hard-fried eggs and five or six pieces of greasy bacon, so Nolly disposed of it himself in the office and drank the coffee, too. Pauline did make nice coffee you could say that for her. But when he brought in Floyd’s lunch and Floyd was still sleeping and still in the same position, Nolly got a little scared and set the tray on the floor and went over and banged on the bars with a spoon.

‘Hey! Floyd! Wake up, I got y’dinner.’

Floyd didn’t wake up, and Nolly took his key ring out of his pocket to open the drunk-tank door. He paused just before inserting the key. Last week’s’
Gunsmoke
’ had been about a hard guy who pretended to be sick until he jumped the turnkey. Nolly had never thought of Floyd Tibbits as a particularly hard guy, but he hadn’t exactly rocked that Mears guy to sleep.

He paused indecisively, holding the spoon in one hand and the key ring in the other, a big man whose open-throat white shirts always sweat-stained around the armpits by noon of a warm day. He was a league bowler with an average of 151 and a weekend bar-hopper with a list of Portland red-light bars and motels in his wallet right behind his Lutheran Ministry pocket calendar. He was a friendly man, a natural fall guy, slow of reaction and also slow to anger. For all these not inconsiderable advantages, he was not particularly agile on his mental feet and for several minutes he stood wondering how to proceed, beating on the bars with the spoon, hailing Floyd, wishing he would move or snore or do something. He was just thinking he better call Parkins on the citizen’s band and get instructions when Parkins himself said from the office doorway:

‘What in hell are you doin’, Nolly? Callin’ the hogs?’

Nolly blushed. ‘Floyd won’t move, Park. I’m afraid that maybe he’s… you know, sick.’

‘Well, do you think beatin’ the bars with that goddamn spoon will make him better?’ Parkins stepped by him and unlocked the cell.

‘Floyd?’ He shook Floyd’s shoulder. ‘Are you all r-’

Floyd fell off the chained bunk and onto the floor.

‘Goddamn,’ said Nolly. ‘He’s dead, ain’t he?’

But Parkins might not have heard. He was staring down at Floyd’s uncannily reposeful face. The fact slowly dawned on Nolly that Parkins looked as if someone had scared the bejesus out of him.

‘What’s the matter, Park?’

‘Nothin’,’ Parkins said. ‘Just… let’s get out of here.’ And then, almost to himself, he added: ‘Christ, I wish I hadn’t touched him.’

Nolly looked down at Floyd’s body with dawning horror.

‘Wake up,’ Parkins said. ‘We’ve got to get the doctor down here.’

6

It was midafternoon when Franklin Boddin and Virgil Rathbun drove up to the slatted wooden gate at the end of the Burns Road fork, two miles beyond Harmony Hill Cemetery. They were in Franklin’s 1957 Chevrolet pickup, a vehicle that had been Corinthian ivory back in the first year of Ike’s second term but which was now a mixture of shit brown and primer-paint red. The back of the truck was filled with what Franklin called Crappie. Once every month or so, he and Virgil took a load of Crappie to the dump, and a great deal of said Crappie consisted of empty beer bottles, empty beer cans, empty half-kegs, empty wine bottles, and empty Popov vodka bottles.

‘Closed,’ Franklin Boddin said, squinting to read the sign nailed to the gate. ‘Well I’ll be dipped in shit.’ He took a honk off the bottle of Dawson’s that had been resting comfortably against the bulge of his crotch and wiped his mouth with his arm. ‘This is Saturday, ain’t it?’

‘Sure is,’ Virgil Rathbun said. Virgil had no idea if it was Saturday or Tuesday. He was so drunk he wasn’t even sure what month it was.

‘Dump ain’t closed on Saturday, is it’?’ Franklin asked. There was only one sign, but he was seeing three. He squinted again. All three signs said ‘Closed’. The paint was barn-red and had undoubtedly come out of the can of paint that rested inside the door of Dud Rogers’s caretaker shack.

‘Never was closed on Saturday,’ Virgil said. He swung his bottle of beer toward his face, missed his mouth, and poured a blurt of beer on his left shoulder. ‘God, that hits the spot.’

‘Closed,’ Franklin said, with mounting irritation. ‘That son of a whore is off on a toot, that’s what. I’ll close
him.
’ He threw the truck into first gear and popped the clutch. Beer foamed out of the bottle between his legs and ran over his pants.

‘Wind her, Franklin!’ Virgil cried, and let out a massive belch as the pickup crashed through the gate, knocking it onto the can-littered verge of the road. Franklin shifted into second and shot up the rutted, chuck-holed road. The truck bounced madly on its worn springs. Bottles fell off the back end and smashed. Sea gulls took to the air in screaming, circling waves.

A quarter of a mile beyond the gate, the Burns Road fork (now known as the Dump Road) ended in a widening clearing that was the dump. The close-pressing alders and maples gave way to reveal a great flat area of raw earth which had been scored and runneled by the constant use of the old Case bulldozer which was now parked by Dud’s shack. Beyond this flat area was the gravel pit where current dumping went on. The trash and garbage, glittershot with bottles and aluminum cans, stretched away in gigantic dunes.

‘Goddamn no-account hunchbacked pisswah, looks like he ain’t plowed nor burned all the week long,’ Franklin said. He jammed both feet on the brake pedal, which sank all the way to the floor with a mechanical scream. After a while the truck stopped. ‘He’s laid up with a case, that’s what.’

‘I never knew Dud to drink much,’ Virgil said, tossing his empty out the window and pulling another from the brown bag on the floor. He opened it on the door latch, and the beer, crazied up from the bumps, bubbled out over his hand.

‘All them hunchbacks do,’ Franklin said wisely. He spat out the window, discovered it was closed, and swiped his shirt sleeve across the scratched and cloudy glass. ‘We’ll go see him. Might be somethin’ in it.’

He backed the truck around in a huge wandering circle and pulled up with the tailgate hanging over the latest accumulation of the Lot’s accumulated throwaway. He switched off the ignition, and silence pressed in on them suddenly. Except for the restless calling of the gulls, it was complete.

‘Ain’t it
quiet
,’ Virgil muttered.

They got out of the truck and went around to the back. Franklin unhooked the S-bolts that held the tailgate and let it drop with a crash. The gulls that had been feeding at the far end of the dump rose in a cloud, squalling and scolding.

The two of them climbed up without a word and began heaving the Crappie off the end. Green plastic bags spun through the clear air and smashed open as they hit. It was an old job for them. They were a part of the town that few tourists ever saw (or cared to)-firstly, because the town ignored them by tacit agreement, and secondly, because they had developed their own protective coloration. If you met Franklin’s pickup on the road, you forgot it the instant it was gone from your rear-view mirror. If you happened to see their shack with its tin chimney sending a pencil line of smoke into the white November sky, you overlooked it. If you met Virgil coming out of the Cumberland greenfront with a bottle of welfare vodka in a brown bag, you said hi and then couldn’t quite remember who it was you had spoken to; the face was familiar but the name just slipped your mind. Franklin’s brother was Derek Boddin, father of Richie (lately deposed king of Stanley Street Elementary School), and Derek had nearly forgotten that Franklin was still alive and in town. He had progressed beyond black sheepdom; he was totally gray.

Now, with the truck empty, Franklin kicked out a last can-clink!-and hitched up his green work pants. ‘Let’s go see Dud,’ he said.

They climbed down from the truck and Virgil tripped over one of his own rawhide lacings and sat down hard. ‘Christ, they don’t make these things half-right,’ he muttered obscurely.

They walked across to Dud’s tarpaper shack. The door was closed.

‘Dud!’ Franklin bawled. ‘Hey, Dud Rogers!’ He thumped the door once, and the whole shack trembled. The small hook-and-eye lock on the inside of the door snapped off, and the door tottered open. The shack was empty but filled with a sickish-sweet odor that made them look at each other and grimace-and they were barroom veterans of a great many fungoid smells. It reminded Franklin fleetingly of pickles that had lain in a dark crock for many years, until the fluid seeping out of them had turned white.

‘Son of a whore,’ Virgil said. ‘Worse than gangrene.’

Yet the shack was astringently neat. Dud’s extra shirt was hung on a hook over the bed, the splintery kitchen chair was pushed up to the table, and the cot was made up Army-style. The can of red paint, with fresh drips down the sides, was placed on a fold of newspaper behind the door.

‘I’m about to puke if we don’t get out of here,’ Virgil said. His face had gone a whitish-green.

Franklin, who felt no better, backed out and shut the door.

They surveyed the dump, which was as deserted and sterile as the mountains of the moon.

‘He ain’t here,’ Franklin said. ‘He’s back in the woods someplace, laying up snookered.’

‘Frank?’

‘What,’ Franklin said shortly. He was out of temper.

‘That door was latched on the inside. If he ain’t there, how did he get out?’

Startled, Franklin turned around and regarded the shack.
Through the window
, he started to say, and then didn’t. The window was nothing but a square cut into the tarpaper and buttoned up with all-weather plastic. The window wasn’t large enough for Dud to squirm through, not with the hump on his back.

‘Never mind,’ Franklin said gruffly. ‘If he don’t want to share, fuck him. Let’s get out of here.’

They walked back to the truck, and Franklin felt something seeping through the protective membrane of drunkenness-something he would not remember later, or want to: a creeping feeling; a feeling that something here had gone terribly awry. It was as if the dump had gained a heartbeat and that beat was slow yet full of terrible vitality. He suddenly wanted to go away very quickly.

‘I don’t see any rats,’ Virgil said suddenly.

And there were none to be seen; only the gulls. Franklin tried to remember a time when he had brought the Crappie to the dump and seen no rats. He couldn’t. And he didn’t like that, either.

‘He must have put out poison bait, huh, Frank?’

‘Come on, let’s go,’ Franklin said. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

7

After supper, they let Ben go up and see Matt Burke. It was a short visit; Matt was sleeping. The oxygen tent had been taken away, however, and the head nurse told Ben that Matt would almost certainly be awake tomorrow morning and able to see visitors for a short time.

Ben thought his face looked drawn and cruelly aged, for the first time an old man’s face. Lying still, with the loosened flesh of his neck rising out of the hospital johnny, he seemed vulnerable and defenseless. If it’s all true, Ben thought, these people are doing you no favors, Matt. If it’s all true, then we’re in the citadel of unbelief, where nightmares are dispatched with Lysol and scalpels and chemotherapy rather than with stakes and Bibles and wild mountain thyme. They’re happy with their life support units and hypos and enema bags filled with barium solution. If the column of truth has a hole in it, they neither know nor care.

He walked to the head of the bed and turned Matt’s head with gentle fingers. There were no marks on the skin of his neck; the flesh was blameless.

He hesitated a moment longer, then went to the closet and opened it. Matt’s clothes hung there, and hooked over the closet door’s inside knob was the crucifix he had been wearing when Susan visited him. It hung from a filigreed chain that gleamed softly in the room’s subdued light.

Ben took it back to the bed and put it around Matt’s neck.

‘Here, what are you doing?’

A nurse had come in with a pitcher of water and a bedpan with a towel spread decorously over the opening.

‘I’m putting his cross around his neck,’ Ben said.

‘Is he a Catholic?’

‘He is now,’ Ben said somberly.

8

Night had fallen when a soft rap came at the kitchen door of the Sawyer house on the Deep Cut Road. Bonnie Sawyer, with a small smile on her lips, went to answer it. She was wearing a short ruffled apron tied at the waist, high heels, and nothing else.

When she opened the door, Corey Bryant’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. ‘Buh,’ he said. ‘Buh… Buh… Bonnie?’

‘What’s the matter, Corey?’ She put a hand on the door jamb with light deliberation, pulling her bare breasts up to their sauciest angle. At the same time she crossed her feet demurely, modeling her legs for him.

‘Jeez, Bonnie, what if it had been-’

‘The man from the telephone company?’ she asked, and giggled. She took one of his hands and placed it on the firm flesh of her right breast. ‘Want to read my meter?’

With a grunt that held a note of desperation (the drowning man going down for the third time, clutching a mammary instead of a straw), he pulled her to him. His hands cupped her buttocks, and the starched apron crackled briskly between them.

‘Oh my,’ she said, wiggling against him. ‘Are you going to test my receiver, Mr Telephone Man? I’ve been waiting for an important call all day-’

He picked her up and kicked the door shut behind him. She did not need to direct him to the bedroom. He knew his way.

‘You’re sure he’s not going to be home?’ he asked.

Her eyes gleamed in the darkness. ‘Why, who can you mean, Mr Telephone Man? Not my handsome hubby… he’s in Burlington, Vermont.’

He put her down on the bed crossways with her legs dangling off the side.

‘Turn on the light,’ she said, her voice suddenly slow and heavy. ‘I want to see what you’re doing.’

He turned on the bedside lamp and looked down at her. The apron had been pulled away to one side. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and warm, the pupils large and brilliant.

‘Take that thing off,’ he said, gesturing.

‘You take it off,’ she said. ‘You can figure out the knots, Mr Telephone Man.’

He bent to do it. She always made him feel like a dry-mouth kid stepping up to the plate for the first time, and his hands always trembled when they got near her, as if her very flesh was transmitting a strong current into the air all around her. She never left his mind completely anymore. She was lodged in there like a sore inside the cheek which the tongue keeps poking and testing. She even cavorted through his dreams, golden-skinned, blackly exciting. Her invention knew no bounds.

‘No, on your knees,’ she said. ‘Get on your knees for me.’

He dropped clumsily onto his knees and crawled toward her, reaching for the apron ties. She put one high-heeled foot on each shoulder. He bent to kiss the inside of her thigh, the flesh firm and slightly warm under his lips.

‘That’s right, Corey, that’s just right, keep going up, keep-’

‘Well, this is cute, ain’t it?’

Bonnie Sawyer screamed.

Corey Bryant looked up, blinking and confused.

Reggie Sawyer was leaning in the bedroom doorway He was holding a shotgun cradled loosely over his forearm barrels pointed at the floor.

Corey felt a warm gush as his bladder let go.

‘So it’s true,’ Reggie marveled. He stepped into the room. He was smiling. ‘How about that? I owe that tosspot Mickey Sylvester a case of Budweiser. Goddamn.’

Bonnie found her voice first.

‘Reggie, listen. It isn’t what you think. He broke in, be was like a crazyman, he, he was-’

‘Shut up, cunt.’ He was still smiling. It was a gentle smile. He was quite big. He was wearing the same steel-colored suit he had been wearing when she had kissed him good-by two hours before.

‘Listen,’ Corey said weakly. His mouth felt full of loose spit. ‘Please. Please don’t kill me. Not even if I deserve it. You don’t want to go to jail. Not over this. Beat me up, I got that coming, but please don’t-’

‘Get up off your knees, Perry Mason,’ Reggie Sawyer said, still smiling his gentle smile. ‘Your fly’s unzipped.’

‘Listen, Mr Sawyer-’

‘Oh, call me Reggie,’ Reggie said, smiling gently. ‘We’re almost best buddies. I’ve even been getting your sloppy seconds, isn’t that right?’

‘Reggie, this isn’t what you think, he raped me-’

Reggie looked at her and his smile was gentle and benign. ‘If you say another word, I’m going to jam this up inside you and let you have some special airmail.’

Bonnie began to moan. Her face had gone the color of unflavored yogurt.

‘Mr Sawyer… Reggie… ’

‘Your name’s Bryant, ain’t it? Your daddy’s Pete Bryant, ain’t be?’

Corey’s head bobbed madly in agreement. ‘Yeah, that’s right. That’s just right. Listen-’

‘I used to sell him number two fuel oil when I was driving for Jim Webber,’ Reggie said, smiling with gentle reminiscence. ‘That was four or five years before I met this high-box bitch here. Your daddy know you’re here?’

‘No, sir, it’d break his heart. You can beat me up, I got that coming, but if you kill me my daddy’d find out and I bet it’d kill him dead as shit and then you’d be responsible for two-’

‘No, I bet he don’t know. Come on out in the living room a minute. We got to talk this over. Come on.’ He smiled gently at Corey to show him that he meant him no harm and then his eyes flicked to Bonnie, who was staring at him with bulging eyes. ‘You stay right there, puss, or you ain’t never going to know how "Secret Storm" comes out. Come on, Bryant.’ He gestured with the shotgun.

Corey walked out into the living room ahead of Reggie, staggering a little. His legs were rubber. A patch between his shoulder blades began to itch insanely. That’s where he’s going to put it, he thought, right between the shoulder blades. I wonder if I’ll live long enough to see my guts hit the wall -

‘Turn around,’ Reggie said.

Corey turned around. He was beginning to blubber. He didn’t want to blubber, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He supposed it didn’t matter if he blubbered or not. He had already wet himself.

The shotgun was no longer dangling casually over Reggie’s forearm. The double barrels were pointing directly at Corey’s face. The twin bores seemed to swell and yawn until they were bottomless wells.

‘You know what you been doin’?’ Reggie asked. The smile was gone. His face was very grave.

Corey didn’t answer. It was a stupid question. He did keep on blubbering, however,

‘You slept with another guy’s wife, Corey. That your name?’

Corey nodded, tears streaming down his cheeks.

‘You know what happens to guys like that if they get caught?’

Corey nodded.

‘Grab the barrel of this shotgun, Corey. Very easy. It’s got a five-pound pull and I got about three on it now. So pretend… oh, pretend you’re grabbing my wife’s tit.’

Corey reached out one shaking hand and placed it on the barrel of the shotgun. The metal was cool against his flushed palm. A long, agonized groan came out of his throat. Nothing else was left. Pleading was done.

‘Put it in your mouth, Corey. Both barrels. Yes, that’s right. Easy!… that’s okay. Yes, your mouth’s big enough. Slip it right in there. You know all about slipping it in, don’t you?’

Corey’s jaws were open to their widest accommodation. The barrels of the shotgun were pushed back nearly to his palate, and his terrified stomach was trying to retch. The steel was oily against his teeth.

‘Close your eyes, Corey.’

Corey only stared at him, his swimming eyes as big as tea saucers.

Reggie smiled his gentle smile again. ‘Close those baby blue eyes, Corey.’

Corey closed them.

His sphincter let go. He was only dimly aware of it.

Reggie pulled both triggers. The hammers fell on empty chambers with a double
click-click.

Corey fell onto the floor in a dead faint.

Reggie looked down at him for a moment, smiling gently, and then reversed the shotgun so the butt end was up. He turned to the bedroom. ‘Here I come, Bonnie. Ready or not.’

Bonnie Sawyer began to scream.