by Stephen King
“Girls,” she says. “We need you at the hospital.”
“Those are the ones, Mrs. Tomlinson!” Gina shouts. She has to shout to be heard over the chanting crowd. She’s pointing at the cops and beginning to cry—partly from fear and tiredness, mostly from outrage. “Those are the ones who raped her!”
This time Ginny looks beyond the uniforms, and realizes Gina’s right. Ginny Tomlinson isn’t afflicted with Piper Libby’s admittedly vile temper, but she has a temper, and there’s an aggravating factor at work here: unlike Piper, Ginny saw the Bushey girl with her pants off. Her vagina lacerated and swelled. Huge bruises on her thighs that couldn’t be seen until the blood was washed off. Such a lot of blood.
Ginny forgets about the girls being needed at the hospital. She forgets about getting them out of a dangerous and volatile situation. She even forgets about Wanda Crumley’s heart attack. She strides forward, elbowing someone out of her way (it happens to be Bruce Yardley, the cashier-cum -bagboy, who is shaking his fist like everyone else), and approaches Mel and Frank. They are both studying the ever more hostile crowd, and they don’t see her coming.
Ginny raises both hands, looking for a moment like the bad guy surrendering to the sheriff in a Western. Then she brings both hands around and slaps both young men at the same time. “You bastards !” she shouts. “How could you? How could you be so cowardly ? So catdirt mean ? You’ll go to jail for this, all of y—”
Mel doesn’t think, just reacts. He punches her in the center of her face, breaking her glasses and her nose. She goes stumbling backward, bleeding, crying out. Her old-fashioned RN cap, shocked free of the bobbypins holding it, tumbles from her head. Bruce Yardley, the young cashier, tries to grab her and misses. Ginny hits a line of shopping carts. They go rolling like a little train. She drops to her hands and knees, crying in pain and shock. Bright drops of blood from her nose—not just broken but shattered—begin falling on the big yellow RK of NO PARKING ZONE.
The crowd goes temporarily silent, shocked, as Gina and Harriet rush to where Ginny crouches.
Then Lissa Jamieson’s voice rises, a clear perfect soprano: “YOU PIG BASTARDS!”
That’s when the chunk of rock flies. The first rock-thrower is never identified. It may be the only crime Sloppy Sam Verdreaux ever got away with.
Junior dropped him off at the upper end of town, and Sam, with visions of whiskey dancing in his head, went prospecting on the east bank of Prestile Stream for just the right rock. Had to be big but not too big, or he wouldn’t be able to throw it with any accuracy, even though once—a century ago, it seems sometimes; at others it seems very close—he was the starting pitcher for the Mills Wildcats in the first game of the Maine state tourney. He had found it at last, not far from the Peace Bridge: a pound, pound and a half, and as smooth as a goose egg.
One more thing, Junior had said as he dropped Sloppy Sam off. It wasn’t Junior’s one more thing, but Junior did not tell Sam this any more than Chief Randolph had told Wettington and Morrison, who had ordered them to stay on station. Wouldn’t have been politic.
Aim for the chick. That was Junior’s final word to Sloppy Sam before leaving him. She deserves it, so don’t miss.
As Gina and Harriet in their white uniforms kneel beside the sobbing, bleeding RN on her hands and knees (and while everyone else’s attention is there too), Sam winds up just as he did on that long-ago day in 1970, lets fly, and throws his first strike in over forty years.
In more ways than one. The twenty-ounce chunk of quartz-shot granite strikes Georgia Roux dead in the mouth, shattering her jaw in five places and all but four of her teeth. She goes reeling back against the plate-glass window, her jaw sagging grotesquely almost to her chest, her yawning mouth pouring blood.
An instant later two more rocks fly, one from Ricky Killian, one from Randall. Ricky’s connects with the back of Bill Allnut’s head and knocks the janitor to the pavement, not far from Ginny Tomlinson. Shit! Ricky thinks. I was supposed to hit a fuckin cop! Not only were those his orders; it’s sort of what he has always wanted to do.
Randall’s aim is better. He nails Mel Searles square in the forehead. Mel goes down like a bag of mail.
There is a pause, a moment of indrawn breath. Think of a car teetering on two wheels, deciding whether or not to go over. See Rose Twitchell looking around, bewildered and frightened, not sure what’s happening, let alone what to do about it. See Anson put his arm around her waist. Listen to Georgia Roux howl through her hanging mouth, her cries weirdly like the sound the wind makes slipping across the waxed string of a tin-can mooseblower. Blood pours over her lacerated tongue as she hollers. See the reinforcements. Toby Whelan and Rupert Libby (he’s Piper’s cousin, though she doesn’t brag on the connection) are first to arrive on the scene. They survey it … then hang back. Next comes Linda Everett. She’s on foot with another part-time cop, Marty Arsenault, puffing along in her wake. She starts to push through the crowd, but Marty—who didn’t even put on his uniform this morning, just rolled out of bed and slipped into an old pair of bluejeans—grabs her by the shoulder. Linda almost breaks away from him, then thinks of her daughters. Ashamed of her own cowardice, she allows Marty to lead her over to where Rupe and Toby are watching developments. Of these four, only Rupe is wearing a gun this morning, and would he shoot? Balls he would; he can see his own wife in that crowd, holding hands with her mother (the mother-in-law Rupe wouldn’t have minded shooting). See Julia arrive just behind Linda and Marty, gasping for breath but already grabbing her camera, dropping the lenscap in her hurry to start shooting. See Frank DeLesseps kneel down beside Mel just in time to avoid another rock, which whizzes over his head and shatters a hole in one of the supermarket doors.
Then …
Then someone yells. Who will never be known, not even the sex of the shouter will ever be agreed upon, although most think a woman, and Rose will tell Anson later she’s almost sure it was Lissa Jamieson.
“GET THEM!”
Someone else bellows “GROCERIES!” and the crowd surges forward.
Freddy Denton fires his pistol once, into the air. Then he lowers it, in his panic about to empty it into the crowd. Before he can, someone wrests it from his hand. He goes down, shouting in pain. Then the toe of a big old farmer’s boot—Alden Dinsmore’s—connects with his temple. The lights don’t go completely out for Officer Denton, but they dim considerably, and by the time they come back up to bright, the Great Supermarket Riot is over.
Blood seeps through the bandage on Carter Thibodeau’s shoulder and small rosettes are blooming on his blue shirt, but he is—for the time being, at least—unaware of the pain. He makes no attempt to run. He sets his feet and unloads on the first person to come into range. This happens to be Charles “Stubby” Norman, who runs the antique shop on the 117 edge of town. Stubby drops, clutching his spouting mouth.
“Get back, you fucks!” Carter snarls. “Back, you sons of bitches! No looting! Get back!”
Marta Edmunds, Rusty’s babysitter, tries to help Stubby, and gets a Frank DeLesseps fist to the cheekbone for her pains. She staggers, holding the side of her face and looking unbelievingly at the young man who has just hit her … and is then knocked flat, with Stubby beneath her, by a wave of charging would-be shoppers.
Carter and Frank start punching at them, but they land only three blows before they are distracted by a weird, ululating scream. It’s the town librarian, her hair hanging around her usually mild face. She’s pushing a line of shopping carts, and she might be screaming banzai. Frank leaps out of her way, but the carts take care of Carter, sending him flying. He waves his arms, trying to stay up, and might actually manage to do so, except for Georgia’s feet. He trips over them, lands on his back, and is trampled. He rolls over on his stomach, laces his hands over his head, and waits for it to be over.
Julia Shumway clicks and clicks and clicks. Perhaps the pictures will reveal the faces of people she knows, but she sees only strangers in the viewfinder. A mob
.
Rupe Libby draws his sidearm and fires four shots into the air. The gunfire rolls off into the warm morning, flat and declamatory, a line of auditory exclamation points. Toby Whelan dives back into the car, bumping his head and knocking off his cap (CHESTER’S MILL DEPUTY on the front in yellow). He snatches the bullhorn off the back seat, puts it to his lips, and shouts: “STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING! BACK OFF! POLICE! STOP! THAT IS AN ORDER!”
Julia snaps him.
The crowd pays no attention to the gunshots or the bullhorn. They pay no attention to Ernie Calvert when he comes around the side of the building with his green duster churning about his pumping knees. “Come in the back!” he yells. “You don’t need to do that, I’ve opened up the back!”
The crowd is intent upon breaking and entering. They smash against the doors with their stickers reading IN and OUT and EVERYDAY LOW PRICES. The doors hold at first, then the lock snaps under the crowd’s combined weight. The first to arrive are crushed against the doors and suffer injuries: two people with broken ribs, one sprained neck, two broken arms.
Toby Whelan starts to raise the bullhorn again, then just sets it down, with exquisite care, on the hood of the car in which he and Rupe arrived. He picks up his DEPUTY cap, brushes it off, puts it back on. He and Rupe walk toward the store, then stop, helpless. Linda and Marty Arsenault join them. Linda sees Marta and leads her back to the little cluster of cops.
“What happened?” Marta asks, dazed. “Did someone hit me? The side of my face is all hot. Who’s watching Judy and Janelle?”
“Your sister took them this morning,” Linda says, and hugs her. “Don’t worry.”
“Cora?”
“Wendy.” Cora, Marta’s older sister, has been living in Seattle for years. Linda wonders if Marta has suffered a concussion. She thinks that Dr. Haskell should check her, and then remembers that Haskell is either in the hospital morgue or the Bowie Funeral Home. Rusty is on his own now, and today he is going to be very busy.
Carter is half-carrying Georgia toward unit Two. She is still howling those eerie mooseblower cries. Mel Searles has regained some soupy semblance of consciousness. Frankie leads him toward Linda, Marta, Toby, and the other cops. Mel tries to raise his head, then drops it back to his chest. His split forehead is pouring blood; his shirt is soaked.
People stream into the market. They race along the aisles, pushing shopping carts or grabbing baskets from a stack beside the charcoal briquets display (HAVE YOURSELF A FALL COOKOUT! the sign reads). Manuel Ortega, Alden Dinsmore’s hired man, and his good friend Dave Douglas go straight to the checkout cash registers and start punching NO SALE buttons, grabbing money and stuffing it into their pockets, laughing like fools as they do so.
The supermarket is full now; it is sale day. In frozen foods, two women are fighting over the last Pepperidge Farm Lemon Cake. In deli, one man baffs another man with a kielbasa, telling him to leave some of that goddam lunchmeat for other folks. The lunchmeat shopper turns and biffs the kielbasa wielder in the nose. Soon they are rolling on the floor, fists flying.
Other brawls are breaking out. Rance Conroy, proprietor and sole employee of Conroy’s Western Maine Electrical Service & Supplies (“Smiles Our Specialty”), punches Brendan Ellerbee, a retired University of Maine science teacher, when Ellerbee beats him to the last large sack of sugar. Ellerbee goes down, but he holds onto the ten-pound bag of Domino’s, and when Conroy bends to take it, Ellerbee snarls “Here, then!” and smacks him in the face with it. The sugarsack bursts wide open, enveloping Rance Conroy in a white cloud. The electrician falls against one of the shelves, his face as white as a mime’s, screaming that he can’t see, he’s blind. Carla Venziano, with her baby goggling over her shoulder from the carrier on her back, pushes Henrietta Clavard away from the display of Texmati Rice—Baby Steven loves rice, he also loves to play with the empty plastic containers, and Carla means to make sure she has plenty. Henrietta, who was eighty-four in January, goes sprawling on the hard knot of scrawn that used to be her butt. Lissa Jamieson shoves Will Freeman, who owns the local Toyota dealership, out of her way so she can get the last chicken in the coldcase. Before she can grab it, a teenage girl wearing a PUNK RAGE tee-shirt snatches it, sticks out her pierced tongue at Libby, and hies gaily away.
There’s a sound of shattering glass followed by a hearty cheer made up mostly (but not entirely) of men’s voices. The beer cooler has been breached. Many shoppers, perhaps planning on HAVING THEMSELVES A FALL COOKOUT, stream in that direction. Instead of Oh-pun UP, the chant is now “Beer! Beer! Beer!”
Other folks are streaming into the storerooms below and out back. Soon men and women are packing wine out by the jug and the case. Some carry cartons of vino on their heads like native bearers in an old jungle movie.
Julia, her shoes crunching on crumbles of glass, shoots shoots shoots.
Outside, the rest of the town cops are pulling up, including Jackie Wettington and Henry Morrison, who have abandoned their post at the Gas & Grocery by mutual consent. They join the other cops in a huddled worry-cluster off to one side and simply watch. Jackie sees Linda Everett’s stricken face and folds Linda into her arms. Ernie Calvert joins them, yelling “So unnecessary! So completely unnecessary!” with tears streaming down his chubby cheeks.
“What do we do now?” Linda asks, her cheek pressed against Jackie’s shoulder. Marta stands close beside her, gaping at the market and pressing a palm against the discolored, rapidly swelling bruise on the side of her face. Beyond them, Food City surges with yells, laughter, the occasional cry of pain. Objects are thrown; Linda sees a roll of toilet tissue unspooling like a party streamer as it arcs over the housewares aisle.
“Honey,” Jackie says, “I just don’t know.”
11
Anson snatched Rose’s shopping list and went running into the market with it before the lady herself could stop him. Rose hesitated beside the restaurant panel truck, clenching and unclenching her hands, wondering whether or not to go in after him. She had just decided to stay put when an arm slipped around her shoulders. She jumped, then turned her head and saw Barbie. The depth of her relief actually weakened her knees. She clutched his arm—partly for comfort, mostly so she wouldn’t faint.
Barbie was smiling, without much humor. “Some fun, huh, kid?”
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “Anson’s in there … everybody is … and the cops are just standing around. ”
“Probably don’t want to get beat up any worse than they already have been. And I don’t blame them. This was well planned and beautifully executed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. Want to take a shot at stopping it before it gets any worse?”
“How?”
He lifted the bullhorn, plucked from the hood of the car where Toby Whelan left it. When he tried to hand it to her, Rose drew back, holding her hands to her chest. “You do it, Barbie.”
“No. You’re the one who’s been feeding them for years, you’re the one they know, you’re the one they’ll listen to.”
She took the bullhorn, although hesitantly. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t think of a single thing that will make them stop. Toby Whelan already tried. They didn’t pay any attention.”
“Toby tried to give orders,” Barbie said. “Giving orders to a mob is like giving orders to an anthill.”
“I still don’t know what to—”
“I’m going to tell you.” Barbie spoke calmly, and that calmed her. He paused long enough to beckon Linda Everett. She and Jackie came together, their arms around each other’s waists.
“Can you get in touch with your husband?” Barbie asked.
“If his cell phone’s on.”
“Tell him to get down here—with an ambulance, if possible. If he doesn’t answer his phone, grab a police car and drive on up to the hospital.”
“He’s got patients….”
“He’s got some patients right here. He just doesn’t k
now it.” Barbie pointed to Ginny Tomlinson, now sitting with her back against the cinderblock side of the market and her hands pressed to her bleeding face. Gina and Harriet Bigelow crouched on either side of her, but when Gina tried to stanch the bleeding from Ginny’s radically altered nose with a folded handkerchief, Ginny cried out in pain and turned her head away. “Starting with one of his two remaining trained nurses, if I’m not mistaken.”
“What are you going to do?” Linda asked, taking her cell phone from her belt.
“Rose and I are going to make them stop. Aren’t we, Rose?”
12
Rose stopped inside the door, mesmerized by the chaos before her. The eye-watering smell of vinegar was in the air, mingled with the aromas of brine and beer. Mustard and ketchup were splattered like gaudy puke on the linoleum of aisle 3. A cloud of mingled sugar and flour arose from aisle 5. People pushed their loaded shopping carts through it, many coughing and wiping their eyes. Some of the carts slued as they rolled through a drift of spilled dry beans.
“Stay there a sec,” Barbie said, although Rose showed no sign of moving; she was hypnotized with the bullhorn clasped between her breasts.
Barbie found Julia shooting pictures of the looted cash registers. “Quit that and come with me,” he said.
“No, I have to do this, there’s no one else. I don’t know where Pete Freeman is, and Tony—”
“You don’t have to shoot it, you have to stop it. Before something a lot worse than that happens.” He was pointing to Fern Bowie, who was strolling past with a loaded basket in one hand and a beer in the other. His eyebrow was split and blood was dripping down his face, but Fern seemed content enough withal.
“How?”
He led her back to Rose. “Ready, Rose? Showtime.”
“I … well …”
“Remember, serene. Don’t try to stop them; just try to lower the temperature.”
Rose took a deep breath, then raised the bullhorn to her mouth. “HI, EVERYBODY, THIS IS ROSE TWITCHELL, FROM SWEETBRIAR ROSE.”