Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (67 page)

The story has a Bachman flavor to it, with its dark, unrelenting spin deeper and deeper into disaster. This Bachman feel is not unexpected, considering a number of the novels later published as Bachman paperback originals were written very early in King’s career. 

Another major flaw in the novel is the multitude of characters, which tend to overwhelm the reader and make it hard to keep all in focus. The gang members in particular go by a series of complicated nicknames and their gangs are hard to keep apart. The reader may also find it unclear which groups and characters are white and which black, something of a problem in a race riot novel. On the positive side King does a great job of showing the motivations of almost every character, a skill he would quickly refine, and presents Harding as a fully-fledged, living city through skilful and observant description. 

King has made it quite clear that this novel will never be published, even in a revised form. The subject matter, a race riot, is highly dated and would perhaps even lead to accusations about King’s motives in choosing such subject matter. At one point in his career there were ridiculous implications that King was somehow racist in his portrayal of African-American characters. These accusations did not stand even the simplest scrutiny. 

In the authors’ opinion King’s decision never to publish this novel is the correct one. While epic in scope and a compelling story it suffers from a certain lack of literary maturity. It
is
immensely interesting to observe the early developmental stages of the style that would become King’s and shows us something of the writer who was to take the publishing world by storm. 

¹³³
Stephen King: The Art of Darkness
p.21
 

Chapter 71 – Sword in the Darkness 

By Stephen King 

Editor’s Note: For more detail of King’s unpublished novel,
Sword in the Darkness,
see the previous chapter. We thank Stephen King for allowing the publication of the Chapter below. 

As the Chapter opens on June 29 of 1969 disaster is about to visit the mid-western city of Harding. A criminal gang, led by the psychopathic Webs McCullough, is about to set off a race riot by creating a disturbance at a speech by black activist Marcus Slade. During the riot they plan to commit a series of robberies while the police are otherwise engaged. 

As these events are about to unfold two teachers from Harding High School, Edie Rowsmith and John Edgars meet at Rowsmith’s apartment before heading to dinner. Edgars had recently been dismissed from the school after being falsely accused of sexual harassment by a student and intended to leave town to remake his life. He and Rowsmith, some twenty years older than Edgars, had formed a casual romantic attachment. 

He was five minutes early and sat in the living-room leafing idly through a copy of
Newsweek
while she carefully applied her lipstick. It had taken her almost a half-hour to make up; maybe she wasn’t old (no maybe about it), but habits and fears were hard to reverse. She had a horror of making herself look garish, had been subconsciously afraid all afternoon that she would end up looking like Bette Davis in
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
--that she would see herself in a sudden pained wince of his eyes. 

“Well, this is the big night,” John called in to her. 

“It is?” She blotted the lipstick and looked at it anxiously; it was really too red. And yet anything pinker
would
be too young, perhaps make him think she was trying to be kittenish. 

“Marcus Slade,” Edgars said. “He speaks at South City Manual Trades tonight.” 

“I’d forgotten,” she said, unhappily slipping her lipstick back into its holder. “Do you think he’ll get a big crowd?” She ventured timidly through the door. She had worn the green dress with the low back--worn it almost defiantly. She had studied her neck and shoulders in the mirror. It looked good. Dammit, it looked good. The skin was smooth, unmarked. The skin of a girl, still. 

He got up. “Yes, I think they’ll turn them away at the doors. You look fine, Edie.” 

She felt the weight slip from her shoulders. “I look like what I am,” she said dryly. “A lady French teacher on a hot night. But I’ll take the compliment--I worked for it.” 

John grinned. He was wearing a light gray suit of some shiny fabric and a pale blue tie and he looked very fine indeed. She said so. 

“Yah,” he said. “Suit takes off ten pounds. But let’s go.” 

He had parked his car in front of her building, and he drove through the heavy downtown traffic casually but well. The streets seemed oddly deserted, and the sun hung halfway over the horizon like a drop of blood. 

“Red sun at night, sailor’s delight,” John said. 

She nodded, but her thoughts were far off. Partly on Don and the evening in Gates Falls, Maine (the sun had been red that evening too, but it had been winter, a cold sun), and partly somewhere else, in a casual kind of limbo. 

“John?” 

“Yes.” 

“I think you’re the nicest person I’ve met in Harding. And I’ve been here a long time.”  

“You’re New England, aren’t you?” 

She was startled, then amused. “It still shows?” 

“Only a little.” They had skirted The Circle and were now approaching the docks; she could smell the salt, the fish odor, could see the dusty pigeons that flapped and wheeled against the darkening sky. “The way you go light on your r’s. The way you drop your g’s on some of your -ing words.” 

She smiled. “I was born in Scarborough, Maine. My mother was a school-teacher and my father was a carpenter. They were quite a couple. Quite a couple.” She looked down at her hands, plain, rather long-fingered, unringed. “I was the fifth of thirteen children. Eight of them died before they were five. My only brother, John, died of peritonitis when he was fifteen. He kept a journal. I have it. It’s remarkable. I think he might have been quite a writer one day.” 

“And your sisters?” 

“One died of breast cancer two years ago. Cal and Lois are both married. Pennsylvania and California.” 

“Why did you never marry, Edie?” 

“I almost did. His name was Donald Knowles. He--” she hesitated only fractionally--“he was a great deal like you, John. Very nice. Gentle.” 

“What happened?” 

“He died.” 

“I’m sorry,” John said. He put on his blinker and she looked up to see they were turning into the parking-lot of Uncle Pete’s. She blinked, a little surprised. She had all but forgotten where they were going. 

“At times I am too,” she said. “Sorry, that is. Sometimes not. I’ve had a reasonably good life. Not an exciting one, but good. I am satisfied.” She told the lie with a calm ease. 

“You’re a remarkable woman, Edie.” He stopped, and the car-park boy came over. 

“You’ve said that before,” she said, suddenly grinning. It wasn’t an easy grin. The memory of Don, unquiet in its grave for so long, seemed to be stirring with a disquieting life of its own. Things better left covered were shifting. It frightened her. 

John gave the car-park boy a dollar and they went inside. Uncle Pete’s was all done in blue--blue tables, blue chairs, blue lights. An unobtrusive band dressed in midnight-blue tuxedos was playing an unobtrusive tune which also sounded blue. No one was dancing. 

The headwaiter, also tricked out in blue, seated them, produced menus, then retired. “My God, the prices are unbelievable!” she said. “John, you can’t--” 

He put a finger across her lips. 

“No more,” he said. “This is my night, Edie. Give me what I want.” 

She smiled. “All right, Mr. Edgars. You asked for it.” John beckoned the waiter, and she proceeded to order a huge steak (Maine or no Maine, she had always detested seafood), shoestring potatoes, peas, a small salad, and ice cream to follow. John ordered lobster. 

“And to drink?” 

Edie hesitated for a moment, at a loss, and John said promptly: “Martinis. Wine with the meal, which I leave to your discretion.” The waiter nodded and melted away. 

She was about to say something about martinis making her giddy when she stopped, hesitated, and said: “Isn’t that Arnie Kalowski over there?” 

“Where?” 

“To your right.” 

He turned a little and looked. It was Arnie. He was with a stunning blonde girl who was wearing a low-cut blue minidress that had half the men in the room watching every twitch of her nyloned legs. And Arnie was looking at her with a kind of low-key lust that she could feel from where she sat. It was as if she had put her face perhaps two feet from an open fireplace. 

“It’s him, all right,” John said. “I wasn’t sure at first. He’s aged five years since his people died. The girl’s a knockout, isn’t she? I’ve seen her around school, I think.” 

“She’s Kitty Longtin,” Miss Rowsmith said. “Mr. Coolidge’s niece. She has a reputation.” 

“Oh?” 

“Yes.” She was about to say more but just then the waiter appeared with the drinks and she decided not to. She remembered Janet Cross, sitting beside her on the green bench, and how they had talked and looked at the bronzed people on the littered beach. 

“He looks strung out,” John said thoughtfully. “He wouldn’t be taking drugs, would he?” 

“Arnie?” The question surprised her, and she was upset to realize that she didn’t know. “I don’t think so. It’s…everything, I think. Everything that’s happened to him. It’s too bad.” 

They tried to pick up the threads of conversation, but something had gone out of it. She felt Arnie’s presence behind them like a dull pressure on her back, and could see it in John’s eyes, too--that baffled, frustrated look that comes when you had to face something indecipherable, off the tracks, wrong. Failure.
Too bad.
The words echoed in her mind, and she thought of the day Earl Neiman had called Arnie a hunky in class. 

The food came, and they ate. The band played old standards, and not many people danced. The steak was excellent, but she only tasted it in an absent way. The dessert was slow in coming and nowhere near excellent. 

After, John lit a cigarette and said, “Well, it was a bust, wasn’t it?” 

“It was fine, John Edgars, and you know it.” 

“It was a bust. I wanted us to have a good meal and a good time and Arnie Kalowski and his girl with a reputation spoiled it.” 

“Not your fault, John.” 

“It
is
,” he said softly. “It
is
. He came to me, Edie. For help. He wanted somebody to get him off dead center…somebody to make him move again. In any direction. And that was a bust, too. He walked out just like he walked in.” 

“I doubt that,” she said softly. 

He put his hand over hers and she shivered a little. “I’m going to miss you, Edie. Very much.” 

She felt her eyes sting, and suddenly she was crying. She dabbled at her eyes with a napkin. “You shouldn’t go, John. You’re running away. Stay here and fight their lousy system. That’s what young men are for. Fighting lousy systems.”