by Stephen King
“My gun. He made me leave it at the bottom of that post. It’s got my fingerprints on it.”
“Oh my God, that’s right. I’m stupid.”
“Not stupid, woozy. And in shock. It will wear off.”
She turned to me, now looking older than her years instead of younger. “Will it? Do you promise?”
“It will and I do.”
I got out of the car and started around the hood. I was still in the glare thrown by the headlights, like an actor on a stage, when the woman came out of the trees ten feet from the gate. She was wearing camo pants and a camo jacket instead of a blue dress, it was a pistol instead of a trowel in her hand, she had no business being on this side of the continental United States or anywhere except at her damaged son’s bedside, but I knew who it was. There wasn’t even a second’s doubt. I raised the Sig, but she was faster.
“You fucking fuck,” Marge said, and fired. I fired a second later and her head snapped back. She went down with her sneakers sticking out into the road.
Alice was screaming and running to me. “Are you hurt? Billy, are you hurt?”
“No. She missed me.” Then I felt the pain start in my side. Not a clean miss after all.
“Who was that?”
“An angry woman named Marge.”
That struck me funny because it sounded like the title of the kind of film smart people go to see in the art cinemas. I laughed and that made my side hurt more.
“Billy?”
“She must have guessed where I was going. Or maybe Nick told her about Klerke, but I don’t think so. I think she was just good at keeping her ears peeled while she served lunch and dinner.”
“The woman who was gardening when you drove up to the service gate?”
“Yes. Her.”
“Is she dead?” Alice’s hands were at her mouth. “If she’s not, please don’t kill her the way you… the way…”
“I’m not going to kill her if she’s still alive.”
I could say that because I knew she wasn’t. It was all in the way her head snapped back. I knelt beside her, but only briefly.
“She’s gone.” I winced when I stood up. I couldn’t help it.
“You said she didn’t hit you!”
“In the heat of the moment I didn’t think she did. It’s just a graze.”
“I want to see!”
I did too, but not right then. “We have to get out of here before we do anything else. Five gunshots is four too many. Get my Glock from where I put it.”
While Alice did that, I took the gun Marge had used—a Smith & Wesson ACP—and replaced it with the Sig Sauer, after first wiping it clean on my shirt and then curling her dead fingers around it. I wiped the aerosol cannister, put her prints on it, and tucked it into one of her jacket pockets. When I got up the second time, the pain in my side was a little worse. Not terrible, but I could feel the seep of blood staining my high-class pimp’s shirt. Worn once and ruined, I thought. What a shame. Maybe I should have stuck with the green one.
I said, “This is done. Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
We drove back to Riverhead, stopping on the way for Band-Aids, a roll of gauze, tape, hydrogen peroxide, and Betadine ointment. Alice went into the Walgreens while I waited in the car. By the time we got to the hotel, my midsection and left arm had stiffened up considerably. Alice used her key to let us in the side door. In my room, she had to help me off with the bomber jacket. She looked at the hole in it, then at the left side of my shirt. “Oh my God.”
I told her it looked worse than it probably was. Most of the blood had dried.
She helped me with the shirt and invoked God again, but this time it was a bit muffled because her hand was over her mouth. “That’s not just a graze.”
True. The bullet had slashed through me just above the hipbone, parting the skin and the flesh. The wound was maybe half an inch deep. Fresh blood oozed and seeped.
“In the bathroom,” she said. “If you don’t want to leave a lot of blood around—”
“It’s almost stopped.”
“Bullshit! Every time you move it starts again. You need to get undressed and then stand in the tub while I dress the wound. Which I’ve never done before, if you want to know. Although my sister did it to me once when I crashed my bike into the Simeckis’ mailbox.”
We went into the bathroom and I sat on the toilet lid while she took off my shoes and socks. I stood up, provoking fresh seepage, and she unbuckled my pants. I wanted to take them off myself but she wouldn’t let me. She made me sit on the toilet again, then knelt and pulled them off by the legs.
“Underwear, too. They’re soaked through on the left side.”
“Alice—”
“Don’t argue. You’ve seen me naked, right? Think of it as balancing the scales. Get in the tub.”
I stood up, dropped my shorts, and stepped into the tub. She kept a steadying hand on my elbow while I did it. There was blood down my left leg to the knee. I reached for the shower handle and she pushed my hand away. “Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. Not tonight.”
She started the tub faucet, wetted a washcloth, and cleaned me up, avoiding the wound. Blood and small clots ran down the drain. “Dear God, she cut you wide open. Like with a knife.”
“I saw worse in Iraq,” I said, “and guys were back clearing blocks the next day.”
“Is that really true?”
“Well… two days. Maybe three.”
She wrung out the washcloth and tossed it into the plastic-lined wastebasket, then gave me another to wipe the sweat off my face. She took it and tossed it in with the other one. “Those go with us.” She patted me dry with a hand towel, tossed that into the wastebasket, then helped me out of the tub. It was harder getting out than it had been getting in.
Alice walked with me to the bed, where I sat down—carefully, trying to stay straight from the waist up. She helped me on with my last pair of clean undershorts, then disinfected the wound, which hurt worse than the bullet had when it clipped through me. The Band-Aids were no good. The wound was too long and the edges had spread, creating a wedge-shaped divot in my side. She used the gauze and tape instead. At last she sat back on her heels. Her fingers were stained with my blood.
“Try to lie still tonight,” she said. “On your back. Don’t roll around and break it open and get blood on the sheets. Maybe you ought to lie on a towel.”
“Probably a good idea.”
She went to get one, a bath towel this time. She also brought the plastic bag with the towel and washcloth in it. “I’ve got Tylenol in my purse. I’ll give you two and leave two for later, okay?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
She looked straight at me. “No thanks needed. I’d do anything for you, Billy.”
I wanted to tell her not to say that, but I didn’t. I said, “We need to get out of here in the morning. Early. It’s a long drive back to Sidewinder, and—”
“Just shy of two thousand miles,” Alice said. “I googled it.”
“—and I don’t know how much of the driving I can do.”
“None would be good, at least to start with. Unless you want to open that wound up again. You need stitches, but I’m not trying that.”
“I don’t expect you to. I can live with some scarring. A couple of inches farther in and I would have been in real trouble. Marge. Jesus. Fucking Marge. Don’t turn down the bedspread, Alice, I’ll sleep on top of it.” If I could sleep, that was. The pain wasn’t terribly intense now that the sting of the hydrogen peroxide had worn off, but it was steady. “Just spread the towel.”
She did, then sat where I had been sitting. “Maybe I should stay. Sleep on the other side.”
I shook my head. “No. Bring me the Tylenol, then sleep in your own room. You’ll need to sleep if you’re going to be doing the driving.” I glanced at my watch and saw it was quarter past eleven. “I’d like to be out of here by eight, at the latest.”
* * *
&
nbsp; We were out by seven. Alice took the wheel as far as the New York metro area, then turned the driving chore over to me, with obvious relief. I got us across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania. At the welcome area just over the state line, we changed places again. The wound in my side was seeping again, and before we stopped for the night—at another off-the-grid motel—we’d have to pick up more gauze. I was going to be okay, but I was going to have one hell of a battle scar to go with my half-missing big toe. And no Purple Heart this time.
That night we stayed at Jim and Melissa’s Roadside Cabins, 10% Discount For Cash. The following day I felt better, my side not so stiff and painful, and I was able to do some of the driving. We stopped on the outskirts of Davenport, at a ramshackle motel called the Bide-A-Wee.
I had spent most of that day thinking and deciding what came next. There was money in three separate accounts, one of them accessible only to me as Dalton Smith, an identity that was (by the grace of God) still clean. At least as far as I knew. There would be more in the Woodley account if Nick came through, and I thought he would. His Roger Klerke problem had been solved, after all, and to his great financial benefit.
Before she went into her room, I hugged Alice and kissed her on both cheeks.
She looked at me with dark blue eyes I’d come to love, just as I’d loved Shan Ackerman’s dark brown ones. “What was that for?”
“I just felt like doing it.”
“Okay.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed me on the mouth, firm and long. “And I felt like doing that.”
I don’t know what my expression was, but it made her smile.
“You’re not going to sleep with me, I understand that, but you need to understand that I’m not your daughter, and my feelings for you aren’t in the least bit daughterly.”
She started away. I wasn’t going to see her again, but there was one more thing I needed from her. “Hey Alice?” And when she turned back: “How are you doing with it? With Klerke?”
She thought it over, running a hand through her hair as she did it. She was back to black. “I’m getting there,” she said. “Trying.” I decided that was good enough.
That night I set my phone alarm for one AM, long after she would be asleep. When I got up, I checked the bandages. No blood and hardly any pain. Pain had been replaced by the deep dry itch of healing. There was no stationery in the Bide-A-Wee, of course, but I had a Staples pad from the Gerard Tower in my suitcase. I tore out a couple of pages and wrote my goodbye letter.
Dear Alice,
By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. One of the reasons I wanted to stop here is because of the truck stop, Happy Jack’s, half a mile down the road. There I’m sure I can find a long-haul independent who’ll let me ride along with him for a hundred dollars. It’s got to be west or north, either of those will be okay, just not south or east. I’ve been there and done that.
I am not deserting you. Believe it.
I rescued you when those three bad and stupid men dumped you on the side of Pearson Street, didn’t I? Now I’m rescuing you again. Trying, at least. Bucky said something I haven’t forgotten. He told me you’d follow me as long as I let you, and if I let you, I’d ruin you. I know he was right about the following part after what we did at Klerke’s estate in Montauk Point. I think he was right about the ruining part, too, but I don’t believe it’s happened yet. When I asked you how you were doing with Klerke, you said you were trying. I know that you are, and I’m sure that in time you will succeed in putting that behind you. But I hope it won’t be too soon. Klerke screamed, didn’t he? He screamed that it hurt, and I hope those screams will haunt you long after you’ve gotten over my going. Maybe he deserved to be hurt after what he did to the girl in Mexico. And his son. And the other girls—them, too. But when you administer pain to someone, not little pain like the healing wound in my side but a killing shot, it leaves a scar. Not on the body but on the mind and spirit. It should, because it’s no little thing.
I need to leave you because I too am a bad man. This was knowledge I pushed away from my heart before, mostly with books, but I can’t push it away any longer and I will not risk infecting you more than I already have.
Go to Bucky, but don’t stay with Bucky. He cares for you, he will be kind to you, but he is also a bad man. He will help you start a new life as Elizabeth Anderson, if that is what you want. There is money in the account of a man named Edward Woodley, and if Nick comes through there will be more. There is also money in the Bank of Bimini, in the name of James Lincoln. Bucky has both passwords and all the account information. He will give you advice on how to manage the flow into your own account and put you in touch with a tax advisor. That part is very important, because money that can’t be accounted for is a trapdoor that can open under your feet when you least expect it. Some of the money is for Bucky. The rest is yours, for school and for a start in life as a fine independent woman. Which is what you are, Alice, and what you will be.
Stay in the mountains if you want to. Boulder is nice. So is Greeley and Fort Collins and Estes Park. Enjoy your life. At some point, perhaps when you are in your forties and I’m in my sixties, you may get a call from me. We can go out for a drink. Make that two drinks! You can toast Daphne and I’ll toast Walter.
I have come to love you, Alice. So very much. If you love me as you have said, then bring that love into the world as a real thing by living a fine and useful life.
Yours,
Billy
PS: I’m taking my laptop—it’s an old friend—but leaving the thumb drive with my story on it. It’s in my room, along with the keys to the SUV. The story ends when we left for Montauk Point, but perhaps you could finish it. Certainly you must be very familiar with my style by now! Do with it as you will, just leave the Dalton Smith name out of it. And yours.
I folded the note around the key to my room, printed her name on it, and pushed it under her door. Goodbye, Alice.
I slung my laptop over my right shoulder, picked up my suitcase in my right hand, and left by the side door. Half a mile down the road I stopped to rest, and to do one other thing. I opened the suitcase and took out the two guns—my Glock and the ACP Marge had shot me with. I unloaded them and threw them as far as I could. The bullets would go into one of the trashcans at the truck stop.
With that taken care of, I started walking toward the lights and the big trucks and the rest of my life. Maybe even toward some kind of atonement, if that’s not too much to ask for. Probably it is.
CHAPTER 24
1
It’s November 21, 2019, a week from Thanksgiving, but the occupants of the house at the end of Edgewood Mountain Drive aren’t in a Thanksgiving frame of mind. It’s cold outside—colder than a welldigger’s belt-buckle, Bucky says—and snow is on the way. He has lit a fire in the kitchen stove and sits in one of his rocking chairs dragged in from the porch with his sock feet up on the fender. He’s got an open laptop, rather scratched and battered, balanced on his thighs. A door opens behind him and footsteps approach. Alice comes into the kitchen and sits at the table. She’s pale and at least ten pounds lighter than the first time Bucky saw her. Her cheeks are hollowed out, giving her the look of a half-starved fashion model.
“Finished, or still reading?”
“Finished. Just looking at the end again. That part doesn’t make much sense.”
Alice says nothing.
“Because if he left you the thumb drive, the part about him walking down the road and throwing away the guns couldn’t be on it.”
Alice says nothing. Since she arrived at Bucky’s place, she has said very little, and Bucky hasn’t pushed her. What she’s done, mostly, is sleep and write on the laptop Bucky now closes and holds up.
“MacBook Pro. Nice gadget, but this one has been around the block a few times.”
“Yes,” Alice says. “I guess that’s true.”
“So in the story Billy took his laptop with him, but here it is. Add the stuff that couldn’t be on the thumb
drive and it’s kind of a science fiction–type story.”
The young woman sitting at the kitchen table says nothing.
“Still, there’s no reason it shouldn’t hold together. No reason for people who read it to think he didn’t just walk away and is living out west somewhere. Or in Australia, he always talked about that. Maybe writing a book. Another one. He always talked about that too, but I never thought it would come to anything.”
He looks at her. Alice looks back. Outside a cold wind is blowing and it looks like snow, but it’s warm here in the kitchen. A knot pops in the stove.
At last Bucky says, “Will people read it, Alice?”
“I don’t know… I’d have to change the names…”
He shakes his head. “Klerke’s murder was world-wide news. Still…” He sees her disappointment and shrugs. “They’d maybe think it was a roman à clef. That’s French. I learned it from him. He said it while I was reading this old paperback I picked up at the Strand. Valley of the Dolls, it was called.” He shrugs again. “Just as long as you keep me out of it, I don’t care. Call me Trevor Wheatley or something and put me up in Saskatchewan or Manitoba. As for Nick Majarian, that motherfucker can take care of himself.”
“Is it any good, do you think?”
He puts the laptop—Billy’s old standby—on the kitchen table. “I think so, but I’m no literary critic.”
“Does it sound like him?”
Bucky laughs. “Sweetheart, I never read anything he wrote, so I can’t say for sure, but it sure sounds like his voice. And the voice stays the same all the way through. Put it this way, I can’t tell for sure where you took over.”
Smiles have been in short supply since Alice came back, but she gives him one now. “That’s good. I think it’s the most important part.”
“Did you make that up about me being a bad man, too?”
She doesn’t drop her eyes. “No. He said it.”
“You wrote what you wished had happened,” Bucky says. “The hero of the story walks away into the future toting his suitcase. Now tell me what really did happen.”