by Stephen King
It could be the devil, he thought as Richards suddenly boosted himself out of the manhole and leaned for a second on the seamed and split cement to get his breath back. No tail and no horns, not red like in that book, but the mother looked crazy and mean enough.
Now he was pushing the cover back, and now—
—now holy Jesus he was running toward the alley.
The boy grunted, tried to run, and fell over his own feet.
He was trying to get up, scrambling and dropping things, and the devil suddenly grabbed him.
“Doan stick me wif it!” he screamed in a throat-closed whisper. “Doan stick me wif no fork, you sumbitch—”
“Shhh! Shut up! Shut up!” The devil shook him, making his teeth rattle like marbles in his head, and the boy shut up. The devil peered around in an ecstacy of apprehension. The expression on his face was almost farcical in its extreme fear. The boy was reminded of the comical fellows on that game show Swim the Crocodiles. He would have laughed if he hadn’t been so frightened himself.
“You ain’t the devil,” the boy said.
“You’ll think I am if you yell.”
“I ain’t gonna,” the boy said contemptuously. “What you think, I wanna get my balls cut off? Jesus, I ain’t even big enough to come yet.”
“You know a quiet place we can go?”
“Doan kill me, man. I ain’t got nothin.” The boy’s eyes, white in the darkness, rolled up at him.
“I’m not going to kill you.”
Holding his hand, the boy led Richards down the twisting, littered alley and into another. At the end, just before the alley opened onto an airshaft between two faceless highrise buildings, the boy led him into a lean-to built of scrounged boards and bricks. It was built for four feet, and Richards banged his head going in.
The boy pulled a dirty swatch of black cloth across the opening and fiddled with something. A moment later a weak glow lit their faces; the boy had hooked a small lightbulb to an old cracked car battery.
“I kifed that battery myself,” the boy said. “Bradley tole me how to fix it up. He’s got books. I got a nickel bag, too. I’ll give it to you if you don’t kill me. You better not. Bradley’s in the Stabbers. You kill me an he’ll make you shit in your boot an eat it.”
“I’m not doing any killings,” Richards said impatiently. “At least not little kids.”
“I ain’t no little kid! I kifed that fuckin battery myself!”
The look of injury forced a dented grin to Richards’s face. “All right. What’s your name, kid?”
“Ain’t no kid.” Then, sulkily: “Stacey.”
“Okay. Stacey. Good. I’m on the run. You believe that?”
“Yeah, you on the run. You dint come outta that manhole to buy dirty pos’cards.” He stared speculatively at Richards. “You a honky? Kinda hard to tell wif all that dirt.”
“Stacey, I—” He broke off and ran a hand through his hair. When he spoke again, he seemed to be talking to himself. “I got to trust somebody and it turns out to be a kid. A kid. Hot Jesus, you ain’t even six, boy.”
“I’m eight in March,” the boy said angrily. “My sister Cassie’s got cancer,” he added. “She screams a lot. Thass why I like it here. Kifed that fuckin battery myself. You wanna toke up, mister?”
“No, and you don’t either. You want two bucks, Stacey?”
“Chris’ yes!” Distrust slid over his eyes. “You dint come outta no manhole with two fuckin bucks. Thass bullshit.”
Richards produced a New Dollar and gave it to the boy. He stared at it with awe that was close to horror.
“There’s another one if you bring your brother,” Richards said, and seeing his expression, added swiftly: “I’ll give it to you on the side so he won’t see it. Bring him alone.”
“Won’t do no good to try an kill Bradley, man. He’ll make you shit in your boot—”
“And eat it. I know. You run and get him. Wait until he’s alone.”
“Three bucks.”
“No.”
“Lissen man, for three bucks I can get Cassie some stuff at the drug. Then she won’t scream so fuckin much.”
The man’s face suddenly worked as if someone the boy couldn’t see had punched him. “All right. Three.”
“New Dollars,” the boy persisted.
“Yes, for Christ’s sake, yes. Get him. And if you bring the cops you won’t get anything.”
The boy paused, half in and half out of his little cubbyhole. “You stupid if you think I do that. I hate them fuckin oinkers worse than anyone. Even the devil.”
He left, a seven-year-old boy with Richards’s life in his grubby, scabbed hands. Richards was too tired to be really afraid. He turned off the light, leaned back, and dozed off.
…Minus 065 and COUNTING…
Dreaming sleep had just begun when his tight-strung senses ripped him back to wakefulness. Confused, in a dark place, the beginning of the nightmare held him for a moment and he thought that some huge police dog was coming for him, a terrifying organic weapon seven feet high. He almost cried aloud before Stacey made the real world fall into place by hissing:
“If he broke my fuckin light I’m gonna—”
The boy was violently shushed. The cloth across the entrance rippled, and Richards turned on the light. He was looking at Stacey and another black. The new fellow was maybe eighteen, Richards guessed, wearing a cycle jacket, looking at Richards with a mixture of hate and interest.
A switchblade clicked out and glittered in Bradley’s hand. “If you’re heeled, drop it down.”
“I’m not.”
“I don’t believe that sh—” He broke off, and his eyes widened. “Hey. You’re that guy on the Free-Vee. You offed the Y.M.C.A. on Huntington Avenue.” The lowering blackness of his face was split by an involuntary grin. “They said you fried five cops. That probably means fifteen.”
“He come outta the manhole,” Stacey said importantly. “I knew it wasn’t the devil right away. I knew it was some honky sumbitch. You gonna cut him, Bradley?”
“Just shut up an let men talk.” Bradley came the rest of the way inside, squatting awkwardly, and sat across from Richards on a splintery orange crate. He looked at the blade in his hand, seemed surprised to see it still there, and closed it up.
“You’re hotter than the sun, man,” he said finally.
“That’s true.”
“Where you gonna get to?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got to get out of Boston.”
Bradley sat in silent thought. “You gotta come home with me an Stacey. We gotta talk, an we can’t do it here. Too open.”
“All right,” Richards said wearily. “I don’t care.”
“We go the back way. The pigs are cruising tonight. Now I know why.”
When Bradley led the way out, Stacey kicked Richards sharply in the shin. For a moment Richards stared at him, not understanding, and then remembered. He slipped the boy three New Dollars, and Stacey made it disappear.
…Minus 064 and COUNTING…
The woman was very old; Richards thought he had never seen anyone as old. She was wearing a cotton print housedress with a large rip under one arm; an ancient, wrinkled dug swayed back and forth against the rip as she went about making the meal that Richards’s New Dollars had purchased. The nicotine-yellowed fingers diced and pared and peeled. Her feet, splayed into grotesque boat shapes by years of standing, were clad in pink terrycloth slippers. Her hair looked as if it might have been self-waved by an iron held in a trembling hand; it was pushed back into a kind of pyramid by the twisted hairnet which had gone askew at the back of her head. Her face was a delta of time, no longer brown or black, but grayish, stitched with a radiating galaxy of wrinkles, pouches, and sags. Her toothless mouth worked craftily at the cigarette held there, blowing out puffs of blue smoke that seemed to hang above and behind her in little bunched blue balls. She puffed back and forth, describing a triangle between counter, skillet, and table. Her cotton stoc
kings were rolled at the knee, and above them and the flapping hem of her dress varicose veins bunched in clocksprings.
The apartment was haunted by the ghost of long-departed cabbage.
In the far bedroom, Cassie screamed, whooped, and was silent. Bradley had told Richards with a kind of angry shame that he should not mind her. She had cancer in both lungs and recently it had spread upward into her throat and down into her belly. She was five.
Stacey had gone back out somewhere.
As he and Bradley spoke together, the maddening aroma of simmering ground beef, vegetables, and tomato sauce began to fill the room, driving the cabbage back into the corners and making Richards realize how hungry he was.
“I could turn you in, man. I could kill you an steal all that money. Turn in the body. Get a thousand more bucks and be on easy street.”
“I don’t think you could do it,” Richards said. “I know I couldn’t.”
“Why’re you doing it, anyway?” Bradley asked irritably. “Why you being their sucker? You that greedy?”
“My little girl’s name is Cathy,” Richards said. “Younger than Cassie. Pneumonia. She cries all the time, too.”
Bradley said nothing.
“She could get better. Not like…her in there. Pneumonia’s no worse than a cold. But you have to have medicine and a doctor. That costs money. I went for the money the only way I could.”
“You still a sucker,” Bradley said with flat and somehow uncanny emphasis. “You suckin off half the world and they comin in your mouth every night at six-thirty. Your little girl would be better off like Cassie in this world.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Then you ballsier than me, man. I put a guy in the hospital once with a rupture. Some rich guy. Cops chased me three days. But you ballsier than me.” He took a cigarette and lit it. “Maybe you’ll go the whole month. A billion dollars. You’d have to buy a fuckin freight train to haul it off.”
“Don’t swear, praise Gawd,” the old woman said from across the room where she was slicing carrots.
Bradley paid no attention. “You an your wife an little girl would be on easy street then. You got two days already.”
“No,” Richards said. “The game’s rigged. You know those two things I gave Stacey to mail when he and your ma went out for groceries? I have to mail two of those every day before midnight.” He explained to Bradley about the forfeit clause, and his suspicion that they had traced him to Boston by postmark.
“Easy to beat that.”
“How?”
“Never mind. Later. How you gonna get out of Boston? You awful hot. Made ’em mad, blowin up their oinkers at the Y.M.C.A. They had Free-Vee on that tonight. An those ones you took with the bag over your head. That was pretty sharp, Ma!” he finished irritably, “when’s that stuff gonna be ready? We’re fallin away to shadows right before ya!”
“She comin on,” Ma said. She plopped a cover over the rich, slowly bubbling mass and walked slowly into the bedroom to sit by the girl.
“I don’t know,” Richards said. “I’ll try to get a car, I guess. I’ve got fake papers, but I don’t dare use them. I’ll do something—wear dark glasses—and get out of the city. I’ve been thinking about going to Vermont and then crossing over into Canada.”
Bradley grunted and got up to put plates on the table. “By now they got every highway going out of Beantown blocked. A man wearin dark glasses calls tention to himself. They’ll turn you into monkeymeat before you get six miles.”
“Then I don’t know,” Richards said. “If I stay here, they’ll get you for an accessory.”
Bradley began spreading dishes. “Suppose we get a car. You got the squeezin green. I got a name that isn’t hot. There’s a spic on Milk Street that’ll sell me a Wint for three hundred. I’ll get one of my buddies to drive it up to Manchester. It’ll be cool as a fool in Manchester because you’re bottled up in Boston. You eatin, Ma?”
“Yes an praise Gawd.” She waddled out of the bedroom. “Your sister is sleepin a little.”
“Good.” He ladled up three dishes of hamburger gumbo and then paused. “Where’s Stacey?”
“Said he was goin to the drug,” Ma said complacently, shoveling gumbo into her toothless maw at a blinding speed. “Said he goan to get medicine.”
“If he gets busted, I’ll break his ass,” Bradley said, sitting heavily.
“He won’t,” Richards said. “He’s got money.”
“Yeah, maybe we don’t need no charity money, graymeat.”
Richards laughed and salted his meal. “I’d probably be slabbed now if it wasn’t for him,” he said. “I guess it was earned money.”
Bradley leaned forward, concentrating on his plate. None of them said anything more until the meal was done. Richards and Bradley had two helpings; the old woman had three. As they were lighting cigarettes, a key scratched in the lock and all of them stiffened until Stacey came in, looking guilty, frightened, and excited. He was carrying a brown bag in one hand and he gave Ma a bottle of medicine.
“Thass prime dope,” he said. “That ol man Curry ast me where I got two dollars and semney-fi cents to buy prime dope an I tole him to go shit in his boot and eat it.”
“Doan swear or the devil will poke you,” Ma said. “Here’s dinner.”
They boy’s eyes widened. “Jesus, there’s meat in it!”
“Naw, we jus shat in it to make it thicker,” Bradley said. The boy looked up sharply, saw his brother was joking, giggled, and fell to.
“Will the druggist go to the cops?” Richards asked quietly.
“Curry? Naw. Not if there might be some more squeezin green in this fambly. He knows Cassie’s got to have heavy dope.”
“What about this Manchester thing?”
“Yeah. Well, Vermont’s no good. Not enough of our kind of people. Tough cops. I get some good fella like Rich Goleon to drive that Wint to Manchester and park it in an automatic garage. Then I drive you up in another car.” He crushed out his cigarette. “In the trunk. They’re only using Jiffy Sniffers on the back road. We’ll go right up 495.”
“Pretty dangerous for you,” Richards said.
“Oh, I wasn’t gonna do it free. When Cassie goes, she’s gonna go out wrecked.”
“Praise Gawd,” Ma said.
“Still pretty dangerous for you.”
“Any pig grunts at Bradley, he make ’em shit in their boot an eat it,” Stacey said, wiping his mouth. When he looked at Bradley, his eyes glittered with the flat shine of hero worship.
“You’re dribblin on your shirt, Skinner,” Bradley said. He knuckled Stacey’s head. “You beatin your meat yet, Skinner? Ain’t big enough, are ya?”
“If they catch us, you’ll go in for the long bomb,” Richards said. “Who’s going to take care of the boy?”
“He’ll take care of himself if something happens,” Bradley said. “Himself and Ma here. He’s not hooked on nothin. Are you, Stace?”
Stacey shook his head emphatically.
“An he knows if I find any pricks in his arms I’ll beat his brains out. Ain’t that right, Stacey?”
Stacey nodded.
“Besides, we can use the money. This is a hurtin family. So don’t say no more about it. I guess I know what I’m doin.”
Richards finished his cigarette in silence while Bradley went in to give Cassie some medicine.
…Minus 063 and COUNTING…
When he awoke, it was still dark and the inner tide of his body put the time at about four-thirty. The girl, Cassie, had been screaming, and Bradley got up. The three of them were sleeping in the small, drafty back bedroom, Stacey and Richards on the floor. Ma slept with the girl.
Over the steady wheeze of Stacey’s deep-sleep respiration, Richards heard Bradley come out of the room. There was a clink of a spoon in the sink. The girl’s screams became isolated moans which trailed into silence. Richards could sense Bradley standing somewhere in the kitchen, immobile, waiting for the silence to c
ome. He returned, sat down, farted, and then the bedsprings shifted creakily as he lay down.
“Bradley?”
“What?”
“Stacey said she was only five. Is that so?”
“Yes.” The urban dialectic was gone from his voice, making him sound unreal and dreamlike.
“What’s a five-year-old kid doing with lung cancer? I didn’t know they got it. Leukemia, maybe. Not lung cancer.”
There was a bitter, whispered chuckle from the bed. “You’re from Harding, right? What’s the air-pollution count in Harding?”
“I don’t know,” Richards said. “They don’t give them with the weather anymore. They haven’t for…gee, I don’t know. A long time.”
“Not since 2020 in Boston,” Bradley whispered back. “They’re scared to. You ain’t got a nose filter, do you?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Richards said irritably. “The goddam things cost two hundred bucks, even in the cut-rate stores. I didn’t see two hundred bucks all last year. Did you?”
“No,” Bradley said softly. He paused. “Stacey’s got one. I made it. Ma and Rich Goleon an some other people got em, too.”
“You’re shitting me,” Richards said.
“No, man.” He stopped. Richards was suddenly sure that Bradley was weighing what he had said already against a great many more things which he might say. Wondering how much was too much. When the words came again, they came with difficulty. “We’ve been reading. That Free-Vee shit is for empty-heads.”
“The gang, you know. Some of the guys are just cruisers, you know? All they’re interested in is honky-stomping on Saturday night. But some of us have been going down to the library since we were twelve or so.”
“They let you in without a card in Boston?”
“No. You can’t get a card unless there’s someone with a guaranteed income of five thousand dollars a year in your family. We got some plump-ass kid an kifed his card. We take turns going. We got a gang suit we wear when we go.” Bradley paused. “You laugh at me and I’ll cut you, man.”