by Stephen King
“Harold,” he said, almost into Harold’s ear.
“Let me go.” His heavy body seemed light in its tension; he was thrumming like a live wire.
“Harold, are you sleeping with her?”
Harold’s body gave a shivering jerk and Stu knew he was not.
“None of your business!”
“No. Except to get things out where we can see them. She’s not mine, Harold. She’s her own. I’m not going to try to take her away from you. I’m sorry to have to speak so blunt, but it’s best for us to know where we stand. We’re two and one now and if you go off, we’re two and one again. No gain.”
Harold said nothing, but his trembling had subsided.
“I’ll be just as plain as I have to. You know and I know that there’s no need for a man to be rapin women. Not if he knows what to do with his hand.”
“That’s—” Harold licked his lips and then looked over at the side of the road where Fran was still standing, hands cupping elbows, arms crossed just below her breasts, watching them anxiously. “That’s pretty disgusting.”
“Well maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but when a man’s around a woman who doesn’t want him in bed, that man’s got his choice. I pick the hand every time. I guess you do too since she’s still with you of her own free will. I just want to speak plain, between you and me. I’m not here to squeeze you out like some bully at a county fair dance.”
Harold’s hand relaxed on the gun and he looked at Stu. “You mean that? I. . . you promise you won’t tell?”
Stu nodded.
“I love her,” Harold said hoarsely. “She doesn’t love me, I know that, but I’m speaking plainly, like you said.”
“That’s best. I don’t want to cut in. I just want to come along.” Compulsively, Harold repeated: “You promise?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“All right.”
He got slowly off the Honda. He and Stu walked back to Fran.
“He can come,” Harold said. “And I . . He looked at Stu and said with difficult dignity, “I apologize for being such an asshole.” “Hooray!” Fran said, and clapped her hands. “Now that that’s settled, where are we going?”
In the end they went in the direction Fran and Harold had been headed in, west. Stu said he thought Glen Bateman would be glad to have them overnight, if they could reach Woodsville by dark—and he might agree to tag along with them in the morning (at this Harold began to glower again). Stu drove Fran’s Honda, and she rode pillion behind Harold. They stopped in Twin Mountain for lunch and began the slow, cautious business of getting to know each other. Their accents sounded funny to Stu, the way they broadened their a’s and dropped or modified their r’s. He supposed he sounded just as funny to them, maybe funnier.
They ate in an abandoned lunchroom and Stu found his gaze was drawn again and again to Fran’s face—her lively eyes, the small but determined set of her chin, the way that line formed between her eyes, indexing her emotions. He liked the way she looked and talked; he even liked the way her dark hair was drawn back from her temples. And that was the beginning of his knowing that he did want her, after all.
BOOK II ON THE BORDER
July 5—September 6, 1980
“We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed . .
—Paul Simon
“Lookin hard for a drive-in
Searching for a parking space
Where hamburgers sizzle on an open grille night and day
Yes! Juke-box is jumpin with records back in the U.S.A.
Well I’m so glad I’m living in the U.S.A.
Anything you want we got it right here in the U.S.A.”
—Chuck Berry
Chapter 34
There was a dead man lying in the middle of Main Street in May, Oklahoma.
Nick wasn’t surprised. He had seen a lot of corpses since leaving Shoyo, and he suspected he hadn’t seen a thousandth of all the dead people he must have passed. In places, the rich smell of death on the air was enough to make you feel like swooning. One more dead man, more or less, wasn’t going to make any difference.
But when the dead man sat up, such an explosion of terror rose in him that he again lost control of his bike. It wavered, then wobbled, then crashed, spilling Nick violently onto the pavement of Oklahoma Route 3. He cut his hands and scraped his forehead.
“Holy gee, mister, but you took a tumble,” the corpse said, coming toward Nick at a pace best described as an amiable stagger. “Didn’t you just? My laws!”
Nick got none of this. He was wondering how badly he was hurt from this second spill in less than a week. Blood from his cut forehead splattered on the pavement. When the hand touched him on the shoulder he remembered the corpse and scrambled away on the palms of his hands and the soles of his shoes, his eyes bright with terror.
“Don’t you take on so,” the corpse repeated, and Nick saw he was looking happily at Nick. He had most of a bottle of whiskey in one hand, and now Nick understood. Not a corpse but a man who had gotten drunk and had passed out in the middle of the road.
Nick nodded at him and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. Just then a drop of blood oozed warmly into the eye that Ray Booth had worked over, making it smart. He swiped his forearm across it, then walked slowly to the curb and sat beside a Plymouth with Kansas plates which was slowly settling on its tires. He could see the gash on his forehead reflected in the Plymouth’s bumper. It looked ugly but not deep. He would find the local drugstore, disinfect it, and slap a Band-Aid over it. He thought he still must have enough penicillin in his system to fight off almost anything, but his close call from the scrape on his leg had given him a horror of infection. He picked scraps of gravel out of his palms, wincing.
The man with the bottle of whiskey had been watching all of this with no expression at all. If Nick had looked up, it would have struck him as queer immediately. When he had turned away to examine his wound in the bumper’s reflection, the animation had leaked out of the man’s face. It became empty and clean and unlined. He was wearing bib-alls that were clean but faded and heavy workshoes. He stood about five-nine, and his hair was so blond it was nearly white. His eyes were a bright, empty blue, and with the cornsilk hair, his Swedish or Norwegian descent was unmistakable. He looked no more than twenty-three, but Nick found out later he had to be forty or close to it because he could remember the end of World War II, and how his daddy had come home in uniform a month later. There was no question that he might have made it all up. Invention was not Tom Cullen’s long suit.
He stood there, empty of face, like a robot whose plug has been pulled. Then, little by little, animation seeped back into his face. His whiskey-reddened eyes began to twinkle. He smiled. He had remembered again what this situation called for.
“Holy gee, mister, but you took a tumble. Didn’t you just? My laws!” He blinked at the amount of blood on Nick’s forehead.
Nick had a pad of paper and a Bic in his shirt pocket; neither had been jarred loose by the fall. He wrote: “You just scared me. I saw two people east of here but no one since then. Thought you were dead until you sat up. I’m okay. Is there a drugstore in town?”
He showed the pad to the man in the bib-alls. The man took it. Looked at what was written there. Handed it back. Smiling, he said, ‘Tm Tom Cullen. But I can’t read. I only got to third grade but then I was sixteen and my daddy made me quit. He said I was too big.”
Retarded, Nick thought. I can’t talk and he can’t read. For a moment he was utterly nonplussed.
“Holy gee, mister, but you took a tumble!” Tom Cullen exclaimed. In a way, it was the first time for both of them. “My laws, didn’t you just!”
Nick nodded. Replaced the pad and pen. Put a hand over his mo
uth and shook his head. Cupped his hands over his ears and shook his head. Placed his left hand against his throat and shook his head.
Cullen grinned, puzzled. “Got a toothache? I had one once. Gee, it hurt. Didn’t it just? My laws!”
Nick shook his head and went through his dumbshow again. Cullen guessed earache this time. Nick threw his hands up and went over to his bike. The paint was scraped, but it didn’t seem hurt. He got on and pedaled a little way up the street. Yes, it was all right. Cullen jogged alongside, smiling happily. His eyes never left Nick. He hadn’t seen anyone for most of a week.
“Don’t you feel like talkin?” He asked, but Nick didn’t look around or appear to have heard. Tom tugged at his sleeve and repeated his question.
The man on the bike put his hand over his mouth again and shook his head. Tom frowned. Now the man had put his bike on its kickstand and was looking at the storefronts. He seemed to see what he wanted, because he went over to the sidewalk and then to Mr. Norton’s drugstore. If he wanted to go in there it was just too bad, because the drug was locked up. Mr. Norton had left town. Just about everybody had locked up and left town, it seemed like, except for Mom and her friend Mrs. Blakely, and they were both dead.
Now the no-talking-man was trying the door. Tom could have told him it was no use even though the OPEN sign was on the door. The OPEN sign was a liar. Too bad, because Tom would dearly have loved an ice cream soda. It was a lot better than the whiskey, which had made him feel good at first and then made him sleepy and then had made his head ache fit to split. He had gone to sleep to get away from the headache but he had had a lot of crazy dreams about a man in a black suit like the one that Revrunt Deiffenbaker always wore. The man in the black suit chased him through the dreams. He seemed like a very bad man to Tom. The only reason he had gone to drinking in the first place was because he wasn’t supposed to, his daddy had told him that, and mom too, but now everyone was gone, so what? He would if he wanted to.
But what was the no-talking-man doing now? Picked up the litter basket from the sidewalk and he was going to . . . what? Break Mr. Norton’s window? CRASH! By God and by damn if he didn’t! And now he was reaching through, unlocking the door . . .
“Hey mister, you can’t do that!” Tom cried, his voice throbbing with outrage and excitement. “That’s illegal! M-O-O-N and that spells //-legal! Don’t you know—”
But the man was already inside and he never turned around.
“What are you, anyway, deaf?” Tom called indignantly. “My laws! Are you . .
He trailed off. The animation and excitement left his face. He was the robot with the pulled plug again. In May it had not been an uncommon sight to see Feeble Tom like this. He would be walking along the street, looking into shopwindows with that eternally happy expression on his slightly rounded Scandahoovian face, and all of a sudden he would stop dead and go blank. Someone might shout, "There goes Tom!” and there would be laughter. If Tom’s daddy was with him he would scowl and elbow Tom, perhaps even sock him repeatedly on the shoulder or the back until Tom came to life. But Tom’s daddy had been around less and less over the first half of 1979, because he was stepping out with a redheaded waitress who worked at Boomer’s Bar & Grille. Her name was DeeDee Packalotte (and weren’t there some jokes about that name), and about a year ago she and Don Cullen had run off together.
Most folks took Tom’s sudden blankouts as a further sign of retardation, but they were actually instances of nearly normal thinking. Tom Cullen was not severely retarded, and he was capable of making simple connections. Every now and then—during his blankouts —he would be capable of making a more sophisticated inductive or deductive connection. He would feel the possibility of making such a connection the way a normal person will sometimes feel a name dancing “right on the tip of his tongue.” When it happened, Tom would dismiss his real world, which was nothing more or less than an instant-by-instant flow of sensory input, and go into his mind. He would be like a man in a dark and unfamiliar room who holds the plug-end of a lampcord in one hand and who is crawling around on the floor, bumping into things and feeling with his free hand for the electrical socket. And if he found it—he didn’t always—there would be a burst of illumination and he would see the room (or the idea) plain. Tom was a sensory creature. A list of his favorite things would have included the taste of an ice cream soda at Mr. Norton’s fountain, watching a pretty girl in a short dress waiting on the comer to cross the street, the smell of lilac, the feel of silk. But more than any of these things he loved the intangible, he loved that moment when the connection would be made, the switch cleared (at least momentarily), the light would go on in the dark room. It didn’t always happen; often the connection eluded him. This time it didn’t.
He had said, What are you, anyway, deaf?
The man hadn’t acted like he heard what Tom was saying except for those times he had been looking right at him. And the man hadn’t said anything to him, not even hi. Sometimes people didn’t answer Tom when he asked questions because something in his face told them he was soft upstairs. But this man didn’t act like that was the reason. He had given Tom a circle made of his thumb and forefinger and Tom knew that meant Okey Dokey . . . but still he didn’t talk.
Hands over his ears and a shake of his head.
Hands over his mouth and the same.
Hands over his neck and the same again.
“My laws!” Tom said, and the animation came back into his face. His bloodshot eyes glowed. He rushed into Norton’s Drugstore, forgetting that it was illegal to do so. The bike-man was squirting something that smelled like Bactine onto cotton and then wiping the cotton on his forehead.
“Hey mister!” Tom said, rushing up. The bike-man didn’t turn around. Tom was momentarily puzzled, and then he remembered. He tapped Nick on the shoulder and Nick turned. “You’re deaf n dumb, right? Can’t hear! Can’t talk! Right?”
Nick nodded. And to him, Tom’s reaction was nothing short of amazing. He jumped into the air and clapped his hands wildly.
“I thought of it! Hooray for me! I thought of it myself! Hooray for Tom Cullen!”
Nick had to grin. He couldn’t remember when his disability had brought someone so much pleasure.
Nick slept in the park that night. He didn’t know where Tom slept, but when he woke up the next morning, slightly dewy but feeling pretty good otherwise, the first thing he saw when he crossed the town square was Tom, crouched over a fleet of toy Corgi cars and a large plastic Texaco station. He walked across the street and tapped Tom on the arm. Tom jumped and looked over his shoulder. A large and guilty smile stretched his lips, and a blush climbed out of his shirt collar.
“I know it’s for little boys and not for grown men,” he said. “I know that, laws yes, Daddy tole me.”
Nick shrugged, smiled, spread his hands. Tom looked relieved.
“It’s mine now. Mine if I want it. If you could go in the drug and get something, so could 1.1 don’t have to put it back, do I?”
Nick shook his head.
“Mine,” Tom said happily, and turned back to the garage. Nick tapped him again and Tom looked back. “What?”
Nick tugged his sleeve and Tom stood up willingly enough. Nick led him down the street to where his bike leaned on its kickstand. He pointed to himself. Then at the bike. Tom nodded.
“Sure. That bike is yours. That Texaco garage is mine. I won’t take your bike and you won’t take my garage. Laws, no!”
Nick shook his head. He pointed at himself. At the bike. Then down Main Street. He waved his fingers: byebye.
Tom became very still. Nick waited. Tom said hesitantly: “You movin on, mister?”
Nick nodded.
“I don’t want you to!” Tom burst out. His eyes were wide and very blue, sparkling with tears. “I like you! I don’t want you to go!” Nick nodded. He pulled Tom next to him and put an arm around him. Pointed to himself. To Tom. To the bike. Out of town.
“I don’t getcha,” Tom s
aid.
Patiently, Nick went through it again. This time he added the byebye wave, and in a burst of inspiration he lifted Tom’s hand and made it wave byebye, too.
“Want me to go with you?” Tom asked. A smile of disbelieving delight lit up his face.
Relieved, Nick nodded.
“Sure!” Tom shouted. “Tom Cullen’s gonna go! Tom’s—” He halted, some of the happiness dying out of his face. '“Can I take my garage?” Nick thought about it a moment and then nodded his head. “Okay.” Tom’s grin reappeared like the sun from behind a cloud. “Tom Cullen’s going.”
Nick led him to the bike. He pointed at Tom, then at the bike.
“I never rode one like that,” Tom said doubtfully, eying the bike’s gearshift and the high, narrow seat. “I guess I better not. Tom Cullen would fall off a fancy bike like that.”
But Nick was provisionally encouraged. I never rode one like that meant that he had ridden some sort of bike. It was only a question of finding a nice simple one. Tom was going to slow him down, that was inevitable, but perhaps not too much after all. And what was the hurry, anyway? Dreams were only dreams. But he did feel an inner urge to hurry, something so strong yet indefinable that it amounted to a subconscious command.
He led Tom back to his filling station. He pointed at it, then smiled and nodded at Tom. Tom squatted down eagerly, and then
his hands paused in the act of reaching for a couple of cars. He looked up at Nick, his face troubled and transparently suspicious. “You ain’t gonna go without Tom Cullen, are you?”
Nick shook his head firmly.
“Okay,” Tom said, and turned confidently to his toys. Before he could stop himself, Nick had ruffled the man’s hair. Tom looked up and smiled shyly at him. Nick smiled back. No, he couldn’t just leave him. That was sure.
It was almost noon before he found a bike which he thought would suit Tom. He hadn’t expected it to take anywhere near as long as it did, but a surprising majority of people had locked their houses, garages, and outbuildings. In most cases he was reduced to peering into shadowy garages through dirty, cobwebby windows, hoping to spot the right bike. At one point he had gone back to recheck the Western Auto, but that was no good; the two bikes in the show window were his-and-hers three-speeds and everything else was unassembled.