by Stephen King
NO PROBLEM, MAN.
He had transferred from electrical engineering to general engineering, and when his grades still hadn’t risen past that magical 2.0 point, he had packed his bags and gone down the road to Boston University, having decided to give up the sterile halls of science for the green fields of English Lit. Coleridge, Keats, Hardy, a little T. S. Eliot. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor of the universe, here we go round the prickly pear; twentieth-century angst, man. He had done okay at BU for a while, then had flunked out in his junior year, as much a victim of obsessive bridge-playing as of booze and Panama Red. But
NO PROBLEM, MAN.
He had drifted around Cambridge, hanging out, playing guitar and getting laid. He wasn’t much of a guitar-player and did better at getting laid, but
NO PROBLEM, MAN,
really. When Cambridge began to get a tad elderly, he had simply cased his guitar and ridden his thumb down to New York City.
In the years since, he had scuttled his ragged claws through salesman’s jobs, gone around the prickly pear as a disc jockey at a short-lived heavy metal station in Fishkill, New York, gone around again as a radio-station engineer, a rock-show promoter (six good shows followed by a nightmaris h exit from Providence in the middle of the night-he’d left owing some pretty hard guys about $60,000, but
NO REAL PROBLEM, MAN),
as a palmistry guru on the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey, and then as a guitar tech. That felt like home, somehow, and he became a gun for hire in upstate New York and eastern Pennsylvania. He liked tuning and repairing guitars-it was peaceful. Also, he was a lot better at repairing them than he was at playing them. During this period he had also quit smoking dope and playing bridge, which simplified things even further. Two years before, living in Albany, he had become friends with Deke Ableson, who owned Club Smile, a good roadhouse where you could get a bellyful of blues almost any night you wanted. Steve had first shown up at Smile in his capacity as a freelance guitar tech, then had stepped up when the guy running the board had a minor heart attack. At first that had been a problem, maybe the first real one of Steve’s adult life, but for some reason he had stuck with it in spite of his fear of fucking up and being lynched by drunk cycle-wolves. Part of it was Deke, who was unlike every club owner Steve had known up until then: he was not a thief, a lecher, or a fellow who could validate his own existence only by making others miserable and afraid. Also, he actually liked rock and roll, while most club owners Steve had known loathed it, preferring Yanni or Zanfir and his Pan Flute when they were alone in their cars. Deke was exactly the sort of guy that Steve, who had remembered to file a 1040 form exactly once in his life, really liked: a
ZERO PROBLEMS
kind of guy. His wife was also a good sort, easygoing and equipped with mild, sleepy eyes, a good sense of humor, beautiful breasts and not, so far as Steve could tell, an unfaithful bone in her body. Best of all, Sandy was also a recovering bridge addict. Steve had had many deep conversations with her about the almost uncontrollable urge to overbid, especially in a money game.
In May of this year, Deke had purchased a very large club-a House of Blues kind of deal-in San Francisco. He and Sandy had left the east coast three weeks ago. He had promised Steve a good job if Steve would pack up all their shit (albums, mostly, over two thousand of them, anachronisms like Hot Tuna and Quicksilver Messenger Service and Canned Heat) and drive it out in a rental truck. Steve’s response:
NO PROBLEM, DEKE.
Hey, he hadn’t been out to the West Coast in almost seven years, and he reckoned the change would do him good. Recharge those old Duracells.
It had taken him a little longer than he had expected to settle his Albany shit, get the truck, load the truck, and get rolling. There had been several phone calls from Deke, the last one sort of testy, and when Steve had mentioned this, Deke had said, well, that was what three weeks of sleeping bags and making do with the same half a dozen tee-shirts did to a person-was he coming or not? I’m coming, I’m coming, Steve had replied. Cool it, big guy. And he had. Left three days ago, in fact. Everything groovy at first. Then, this afternoon, he had blown a hose or something, he had taken the Wentworth exit in search of the Great American Service Station, and then-whoa, dude-there had come a big bang from under the hood and all the dials on the dashboard started showing bad news. He hoped it was just a blown seal, but it had actually sounded more like a piston. In any case, the Ryder truck, which had been a beauty ever since he had left New York, had suddenly turned into a beast. Still,
NO PROBLEM;
just find Mr Goodwrench and let him do his thing.
Steve had taken a wrong turn, though, away from the turnpike business area and into a much more suburban neighborhood, not the sort of place where Mr Goodwrench was apt to hang out during working hours. He had really been babying the truck by then, steam coming out through the grille, oil-pressure dropping, temperature rising, an unpleasant fried smell coming in through the air vents… but really
NO PROBLEM, MAN.
Well… maybe a very small problem for the Ryder people, that was true, but Steve had an idea they’d be able to bear up under the burden. Then-hey, beautiful, baby-a little neighborhood store with a blue pay-phone sign hung over the door… and the number to call if you had engine trouble was right up there on the driver’s side sun-visor.
ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM,
story of his life.
Only now there was a problem. One that made learning the sound-board at Club Smile look like a minor annoyance in comparison.
He was in a little house that smelled of pipe tobacco, he was in a living room with framed photos of animals-pretty special ones, according to the captions-on the walls, a living room where only the huge, shapeless chair in front of the TV looked really used, and he had just tied his bandanna around his leg where he had sustained a bullet-wound, shallow but a bona fide bullet-wound just the same, and people were yelling, scared and yelling, and the skinny woman in the sleeveless blouse was also wounded (nothing shallow about hers, either) and outside people were dead, and if all this wasn’t a problem, then Steve guessed that “problem” was a concept without meaning.
His arm was grabbed above the wrist, and painfully. He wasn’t just being grabbed, actually; he was being pinched. He looked down and saw the girl in the blue store duster, the one with the crazed hair. “Don’t you freak on me,” she said in a ragged voice. “That lady needs help or she’s going to die, so do not freak on me.”
“No problem, cookie,” he said, and just hearing the words-any words-coming out of his mouth made him feel a little stronger.
“Don’t call me cookie and I won’t call you cake,” she said in a prim little no-nonsense voice.
He burst out laughing. It sounded extremely weird in this room, but he didn’t care. She didn’t seem to, either. She was looking back at him with just the faintest touch of a smile at the corners of her mouth. “Okay,” he said. “I won’t call you cookie, you don’t call me cake, and neither of us’ll freak, fair enough?”
“Yeah. What about your leg?”
“It’s okay. Looks more like a floor-burn than a bullet-wound.”
“Lucky you.”
“Yeah. I might dump a little disinfectant on it if I get a chance, but compared to her-”
“Gary!” the object of comparison bawled. The arm, Steve saw, was now hardly attached to the rest of her body at all; it seemed to be hanging by a thin strap of flesh. Her husband, also skinny (but with a blooming suburban potbelly just beginning to take shape), did a kind of helpless, panicky dance around her. He reminded Steve of a native in an old jungle flick doing the Cool Jerk around a brooding stone idol.
“Gary!” she screamed again. Blood was running out of her mangled shoulder in a steady stream, turning the left side of her pink top to a muddy maroon. Her paper-white face was drenched with sweat; her hair clung to the curve of her skull in clumps. “Gary, quit acting like a dog looking f
or a place to piss and help me-”
She collapsed back against the wall between the living room and the kitchenette, panting for breath. Steve expected her knees to buckle, but they didn’t. Instead, she grasped her left wrist with her right hand and lifted her wounded arm carefully toward Steve and Cynthia. The blood-glistening twist of gristle that was still connecting it to the rest of her made a squelchy sound, like a wet dishrag when you wring it out, and Steve wanted to tell her not to do that, to stop fooling with herself before she tore the goddam thing off like a wing off a baked chicken.
Then Gary was doing the Cool Jerk in front of Steve, going up and down like a man on a pogo stick, patches of hectic red standing out on his pale face. Gimme a little bass with those eighty-eights, Steve thought.
“Help her!” Gary cried. “Help my wife! Bleeding to death!”
“I can’t-” Steve began.
Gary reached out and seized the front of Steve’s tee-shirt. When there’s no more room in hell, this artifact said, the dead will walk the earth. He thrust his thin and feverish face up toward Steve’s. His eyes glittered with gin and panic. “Are you with them? Are you one of them?”
“I don’t-”
“Are you with the shooters? Tell me the truth!”
Angrier than he would have believed possible (anger was not, ordinarily, his thing at all), Steve knocked the man’s hands away from his old and much-loved tee-shirt, then pushed him. Gary took a stagger-step backward, his eyes first widening, then narrowing again.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, yeah. You asked for it. You asked for it and now you’re gonna get it.” He started forward again.
Cynthia got between them, glancing at Steve for a moment-probably to assure herself that he wasn’t in attack-mode yet-and then glaring at Gary. “What the fuc k’s wrong with you?” she asked him.
Gary smiled tightly. “He’s not from around here, is he?”
“Christ, neither am I! I’m from Bakersfield, California-does that make me one of them?”
“Gary!” It sounded like the yap of a dog that has run a long way on a dusty road and pretty much barked itself out. “Stop fucking around and help me! My arm…” She continued to hold it out, and what Steve thought of now-he didn’t want to but couldn’t help it-was Mucci’s Fine Meats in Newton. Guy in a white shirt, white cap, and bloodstained apron, holding out a peeled joint of meat to his mother. Serve it medium-rare with a little mint jelly on the side, Mrs Antes, and your family will never ask for roast chicken again. I guarantee it.
“Gary!”
The skinny guy with the gin on his breath took a step toward her, then looked back at Steve and Cynthia. The tight, knowing smile was gone. Now he only looked sick. “I don’t know what to do for her,” he said.
“Gary, you diseased ratbrain,” Marielle said in a low, hopeless voice. “You total dumbwit.” Her face was growing ever whiter. She had gone, in fact, that fabled faded whiter shade of pale. There were brown patches beneath her eyes-they seemed to be unfurling like wings-and her left sneaker was now a solid red instead of white.
She’s going to die if she doesn’t get help right away, Steve thought. The idea made him feel both amazed and somehow stupid. Professional help was what he was thinking about, he supposed, ER guys in green suits who said things like “ten cc’s of epi, stat”. But there were no guys like that around, and apparently none coming. He could still hear no sirens, only the sound of thunder retreating slowly into the east.
On the wall to his left was a framed photograph of a small brown dog with eerily intelligent eyes. On the matting beneath the photo, carefully printed in block letters, was DAISY, PEMBROKE CORGI, AGE 9. COULD COUNT. SHOWED APPARENT ABILITY TO ADD SMALL NUMBERS. To the left of Daisy, its glass now splattered with the thin woman’s blood, was a Collie that seemed to be grinning for the camera. The printed legend beneath this one read: CHARLOTTE, BORDER COLLIE, AGE 6. COULD SORT PHOTOS AND CULL OUT THOSE OF HUMANS KNOWN TO HER.
To the left of Charlotte was a photograph of a parrot which appeared to be smoking a Camel.
“None of this is happening,” Steve said in a conversational-almost jovial-tone of voice. He didn’t know if he was talking to Cynthia or to himself. “I think I’m in a hospital somewhere. I had a head-on in the truck out on the thruway, that’s what I think. It’s like Alice in Wonderland, only the Nine Inch Nails version.”
Cynthia opened her mouth to reply and then the old guy-the one who had presumably observed Daisy the Pembroke Corgi adding six and two and coming up with eight,
ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM FOR DAISY-
came in carrying an old black bag. The cop (was his name actually Collie, Steve wondered, or was that just some weird fantasy engendered by the photographs on the walls of this room?) followed him, pulling his belt out of its loops. Last in line, drifting, looking dazed, came Peter What’s-His-Face, husband of the woman who was lying dead out there.
“Help her!” Gary yelled, forgetting Steve and his conspiracy theories, at least for the time being. “Help her, Doc, she’s bleedin like a stuck pig!”
“You know I’m not a real physician, don’t you, Gary? Just an old horse-doctor is all I-”
“Don’t you call me a pig,” Marielle interrupted him. Her voice was almost too low to be heard, but her eyes, fixed on her husband, glowed with baleful life. She tried to straighten up, couldn’t, and slipped lower against the wall instead. “Don’t you… call me that.”
The old horse-doctor turned to the cop, who was standing just inside the kitchen doorway, barechested with the belt now stretched between his fists. He looked like the bouncer in a leather-bar where Steve had once worked the board for a group called The Big Chrome Holes.
“I have to?” the barechested cop asked. He was pretty pale himself, but Steve thought he looked game, at least so far.
Billingsley nodded and put his bag down on the big easy-chair that sprawled in front of the television. He snapped it open and began rummaging through it. “And hurry. The more blood she loses, the worse her chances become.” He looked up, a spool of suture in one gnarled old hand, a pair of bent-nosed surgical scissors in the other. “This is no fun for me, either. The last time I saw a patient in anything like this situation, it was a pony that had been mistaken for a deer and shot in the foreleg. Get it as high on her shoulder as you can. Turn the buckle in toward the breast and pull it tight!
“Where’s Mary?” Peter asked. “Where’s Mary? Where’s Mary? Where’s Mary?” Each time he asked the question his voice grew more plaintive. The fourth repetition was little more than a falsetto squeak. Abruptly he clutched his face in his hands and turned away from all of them, leaning his forehead against the wall between BARON, a Labrador Retriever that could spell its name with blocks, and DIRTYFACE, a morose-looking goat that was apparently able to play a number of rudimentary tunes on the harmonica. It occurred to Steve that if he ever heard a goat playing “The Yellow Rose of Texas” on a Hohner, he would probably fucking kill himself.
Marielle Soderson, meanwhile, was staring at Billingsley with the intensity of a vampire looking at a man with a shaving cut. “Hurts,” she croaked. “Give me something for it.”
“Yes,” Billingsley said, “but first we tourniquet.”
He nodded impatiently at the cop. The cop started forward. He had the tongue of his belt threaded through the buckle now, making a loop. He reached out gingerly to the skinny woman, whose blond hair had gone two shades darker with sweat. She reached out with her good arm and pushed him with surprising strength. The cop wasn’t expecting it. He went back two steps, hit the arm of the old guy’s sprawled-out easy-chair, and fell into it. He looked like a comic who’s just taken a pratfall in a movie.
The skinny woman didn’t give him a second glance. Her attention was focused on the old guy, and the old guy’s black bag.
“Now!” she barked at him, and it really did sound as if she were barking. “Give me something for it now you quacky old fuck, it’s killing me!”
&
nbsp; The cop struggled out of the chair and caught Steve’s eye. Steve got the message, nodded, and began edging toward the woman named Marielle, drifting in from the right, flanking her. Be careful, he told himself, she’s flipped out, apt to scratch or bite or any damn thing, so be careful.
Marielle thrust herself away from the wall, swayed, steadied, and advanced on the old guy. She was once more holding her arm out in front of her, as if it were Exhibit A in a trial. Billingsley backed up a step, looking nervously from the barechested cop to Steve.
“Give me some Demerol, you weasel!” she cried in her barking, exhausted voice. “You give it to me or I’ll choke you until you bark like a bloodhound! I’ll-”
The cop nodded to Steve again and sprang forward on the left. Steve moved with him and threw an arm around the woman’s neck. He didn’t want to choke her, but he was scared to go around her back, maybe grabbing her wounded arm by mistake and hurting it worse. “Hold still!” he shouted. He didn’t mean to shout, he meant to just say it, but that wasn’t how it came out. At the same moment the cop slipped the loop of his belt over her left hand and up her arm.
“Hold her, buddy!” the cop cried. “Hold her still!”
For a second or two Steve did, and then a drop of sweat, warm and stinging, ran into his eye, and he relaxed his choke-hold just as Collie Entragian ran the makeshift belt tourniquet tight. Marielle lurched to the right, her baleful falcon’s gaze still fixed on the old guy, and her arm came off in the barechested cop’s hands. Steve could see her wristwatch, an Indiglo with the second-hand stopped dead between the four and the five. The belt held on at her shoulder for a moment and then dropped to the floor, a loop with nothing in it. The counter-girl shrieked, her huge eyes fixed on the arm. The cop looked down at it with his mouth open.