If It Bleeds

by Stephen King

  “Do you understand what you just read?” Mr. Harrigan asked me after one particularly steamy passage. Again, just curious.

  “No,” I said, but that wasn’t strictly true. I understood a lot more of what was going on between Ollie Mellors and Connie Chatterley in the woods than I did about what was going on between Marlow and Kurtz down there in the Belgian Congo. Sex is hard to figure out—something I learned even before I got to college—but crazy is even harder.

  “Fine,” Mr. Harrigan said, “but if your father asks what we’re reading, I suggest you tell him Dombey and Son. Which we’re going to read next, anyway.”

  My father never did ask—about that one, anyway—and I was relieved when we moved on to Dombey, which was the first adult novel I remember really liking. I didn’t want to lie to my dad, it would have made me feel horrible, although I’m sure Mr. Harrigan would have had no problem with it.

  * * *

  Mr. Harrigan liked me to read to him because his eyes tired easily. He probably didn’t need me to weed his flowers; Pete Bostwick, who mowed his acre or so of lawn, would have been happy to do that, I think. And Edna Grogan, his housekeeper, would have been happy to dust his large collection of antique snow-globes and glass paperweights, but that was my job. He mostly just liked having me around. He never told me that until shortly before he died, but I knew it. I just didn’t know why, and am not sure I do now.

  Once, when we were coming back from dinner at Marcel’s in the Rock, my dad said, very abruptly: “Does Harrigan ever touch you in a way you don’t like?”

  I was years from even being able to grow a shadow mustache, but I knew what he was asking; we had learned about “stranger danger” and “inappropriate touching” in the third grade, for God’s sake.

  “Do you mean does he grope me? No! Jeez, Dad, he’s not gay.”

  “All right. Don’t get all mad about it, Craigster. I had to ask. Because you’re up there a lot.”

  “If he was groping me, he could at least send me two-dollar scratch tickets,” I said, and that made Dad laugh.

  Thirty dollars a week was about what I made, and Dad insisted I put at least twenty of it in my college savings account. Which I did, although I considered it mega-stupid; when even being a teenager seems an age away, college might as well be in another lifetime. Ten bucks a week was still a fortune. I spent some of it on burgers and shakes at the Howie’s Market lunch counter, most of it on old paperbacks at Dahlie’s Used Books in Gates Falls. The ones I bought weren’t heavy going, like the ones I read to Mr. Harrigan (even Lady Chatterley was heavy when Constance and Mellors weren’t steaming the place up). I liked crime novels and westerns like Shoot-Out at Gila Bend and Hot Lead Trail. Reading to Mr. Harrigan was work. Not sweat-labor, but work. A book like One Monday We Killed Them All, by John D. MacDonald, was pure pleasure. I told myself I ought to save up the money that didn’t go into the college fund for one of the new Apple phones that went on sale in the summer of 2007, but they were expensive, like six hundred bucks, and at ten dollars a week, that would take me over a year. And when you’re just eleven going on twelve, a year is a very long time.

  Besides, those old paperbacks with their colorful covers called to me.

  * * *

  On Christmas morning of 2007, three years after I started working for Mr. Harrigan and two years before he died, there was only one package for me under the tree, and my dad told me to save it for last, after he had duly admired the paisley vest, the slippers, and the briar pipe I’d gotten him. With that out of the way, I tore off the wrappings on my one present, and shrieked with delight when I saw he’d gotten me exactly what I’d been lusting for: an iPhone that did so many different things it made my father’s car-phone look like an antique.

  Things have changed a lot since then. Now it’s the iPhone my father gave me for Christmas in 2007 that’s the antique, like the five-family party line he told me about from back when he was a kid. There’s been so many changes, so many advances, and they happened so fast. My Christmas iPhone had just sixteen apps, and they came pre-loaded. One of them was YouTube, because back then Apple and YouTube were friends (that changed). One was called SMS, which was primitive text messaging (no emojis—a word not yet invented—unless you made them yourself). There was a weather app that was usually wrong. But you could make phone calls from something small enough to carry in your hip pocket, and even better, there was Safari, which linked you to the outside world. When you grew up in a no-stoplight, dirt-road town like Harlow, the outside world was a strange and tempting place, and you longed to touch it in a way network TV couldn’t match. At least I did. All these things were at your fingertips, courtesy of AT&T and Steve Jobs.

  There was another app, as well, one that made me think of Mr. Harrigan even on that first joyful morning. Something much cooler than the satellite radio in his car. At least for guys like him.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said, and hugged him. “Thank you so much!”

  “Just don’t overuse it. The phone charges are sky-high, and I’ll be keeping track.”

  “They’ll come down,” I said.

  I was right about that, and Dad never gave me a hard time about the charges. I didn’t have many people to call anyway, but I did like those YouTube videos (Dad did, too), and I loved being able to go on what we then called the three w’s: the worldwide web. Sometimes I would look at articles in Pravda, not because I understood Russian but just because I could.

  * * *

  Not quite two months later, I came home from school, opened the mailbox, and found an envelope addressed to me in Mr. Harrigan’s old-fashioned script. It was my Valentine’s Day card. I went into the house, dropped my schoolbooks on the table, and opened it. The card wasn’t flowery or sappy, that wasn’t Mr. Harrigan’s style. It showed a man in a tuxedo holding out a tophat and bowing in a field of flowers. The Hallmark message inside said, May you have a year filled with love and friendship. Below that: Good Wishes from Mr. Harrigan. A bowing man with his hat held out, a good wish, no sticky stuff. That was Mr. Harrigan all over. Looking back, I’m surprised he considered Valentine’s Day worth a card.

  In 2008, the Lucky Devil one-dollar scratchers had been replaced by ones called Pine Tree Cash. There were six pine trees on the little card. If the same amount was beneath three of them when you scratched them off, you won that amount. I scratched away the trees and stared at what I had uncovered. At first I thought it was either a mistake or some kind of joke, although Mr. Harrigan was not the joke-playing type. I looked again, running my fingers along the uncovered numbers, brushing away crumbles of what my dad called (always with the eye-roll) “scratch-dirt.” The numbers stayed the same. I might have laughed, that I can’t recall, but I remember screaming, all right. Screaming for joy.

  I grabbed my new phone out of my pocket (that phone went everywhere with me) and called Parmeleau Tractors. I got Denise, the receptionist, and when she heard how out of breath I was, she asked me what was wrong.

  “Nothing, nothing,” I said, “but I have to talk to my dad right now.”

  “All right, just hold on.” And then: “You sound like you’re calling from the other side of the moon, Craig.”

  “I’m on my cell phone.” God, I loved saying that.

  Denise made a humph sound. “Those things are full of radiation. I’d never own one. Hold on.”

  My dad also asked me what was wrong, because I’d never called him at work before, even on the day the schoolbus left without me.

  “Dad, I got my Valentine’s Day scratch ticket from Mr. Harrigan—”

  “If you called to tell me you won ten dollars, it could have waited until I—”

  “No, Daddy, it’s the big prize!” Which it was, for dollar scratch-offs back then. “I won three thousand dollars!”

  Silence from the other end of the line. I thought maybe I’d lost him. In those days cell phones, even the new ones, dropped calls all the time. Ma Bell wasn’t always the best mother.

  �
��Dad? Are you still there?”

  “Uh-huh. Are you sure?”

  “Yes! I’m looking right at it! Three three thousands! One in the top row and two in the bottom!”

  Another long pause, then I heard my father telling someone I think my kid won some money. A moment later he was back to me. “Put it somewhere safe until I get home.”

  “Where?”

  “How about the sugar cannister in the pantry?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Craig, are you positive? I don’t want you to be disappointed, so check again.”

  I did, somehow convinced that my dad’s doubt would change what I had seen; at least one of those $3000s would now be something else. But they were the same.

  I told him that, and he laughed. “Well, then, congratulations. Marcel’s tonight, and you’re buying.”

  That made me laugh. I can’t remember ever feeling such pure joy. I needed to call someone else, so I called Mr. Harrigan, who answered on his Luddite landline.

  “Mr. Harrigan, thank you for the card! And thank you for the ticket! I—”

  “Are you calling on that gadget of yours?” he asked. “You must be, because I can barely hear you. You sound like you’re on the other side of the moon.”

  “Mr. Harrigan, I won the big prize! I won three thousand dollars! Thank you so much!”

  There was a pause, but not as long as my father’s, and when he spoke again, he didn’t ask me if I was sure. He did me that courtesy. “You struck lucky,” he said. “Good for you.”

  “Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome, but thanks really aren’t necessary. I buy those things by the roll. Send em off to friends and business acquaintances as a kind of . . . mmm . . . calling-card, you could say. Been doing it for years. One was bound to pay off big sooner or later.”

  “Dad will make me put most of it in the bank. I guess that’s okay. It will certainly perk up my college fund.”

  “Give it to me, if you like,” Mr. Harrigan said. “Let me invest it for you. I think I can guarantee a better return than bank interest.” Then, speaking more to himself than to me: “Something very safe. This isn’t going to be a good year for the market. I see clouds on the horizon.”

  “Sure!” I reconsidered. “At least probably. I have to talk to my dad.”

  “Of course. Only proper. Tell him I’m willing to also guarantee the base sum. Are you still coming to read for me this afternoon? Or will you put that aside, now that you’re a man of means?”

  “Sure, only I have to be back when Dad gets home. We’re going out to dinner.” I paused. “Would you like to come?”

  “Not tonight,” he said, with no hesitation. “You know, you could have told me all of this in person, since you’re coming up, anyway. But you enjoy that gadget of yours, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for me to answer that; he didn’t need to. “What would you think of investing your little windfall in Apple stock? I believe that company is going to be quite successful in the future. I’m hearing the iPhone is going to bury the BlackBerry. Pardon the pun. In any case, don’t answer now; discuss it with your father first.”

  “I will,” I said. “And I’ll be right up. I’ll run.”

  “Youth is a wonderful thing,” said Mr. Harrigan. “What a shame it’s wasted on children.”

  “Huh?”

  “Many have said it, but Shaw said it best. Never mind. Run, by all means. Run like the dickens, because Dickens awaits us.”

  * * *

  I ran the quarter of a mile to Mr. Harrigan’s house, but walked back, and on the way I had an idea. A way to thank him, even though he said no thanks were necessary. Over our fancy dinner at Marcel’s that night, I told Dad about Mr. Harrigan’s offer to invest my windfall, and I also told him my idea for a thank-you gift. I thought Dad would have his doubts, and I was right.

  “By all means let him invest the money. As for your idea . . . you know how he feels about stuff like that. He’s not only the richest man in Harlow—in the whole state of Maine, for that matter—he’s also the only one who doesn’t have a television.”

  “He’s got an elevator,” I said. “And he uses it.”

  “Because he has to.” Then Dad gave me a grin. “But it’s your money, and if this is what you want to do with twenty per cent of it, I’m not going to tell you no. When he turns it down, you can give it to me.”

  “You really think he will?”

  “I do.”

  “Dad, why did he come here in the first place? I mean, we’re just a little town. We’re nowhere.”

  “Good question. Ask him sometime. Now what about some dessert, big spender?”

  * * *

  Just about a month later, I gave Mr. Harrigan a brand-new iPhone. I didn’t wrap it up or anything, partly because it wasn’t a holiday and partly because I knew how he liked things done: with no foofaraw.

  He turned the box over a time or two in his arthritis-gnarled hands, looking bemused. Then he held it out to me. “Thank you, Craig, I appreciate the sentiment, but no. I suggest you give it to your father.”

  I took the box. “He told me you’d say that.” I was disappointed but not surprised. And not ready to give up.

  “Your father is a wise man.” He leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands between his spread knees. “Craig, I rarely give advice, it’s almost always a waste of breath, but today I’ll give some to you. Henry Thoreau said that we don’t own things; things own us. Every new object—whether it’s a home, a car, a television, or a fancy phone like that one—is something more we must carry on our backs. It makes me think of Jacob Marley telling Scrooge, ‘These are the chains I forged in life.’ I don’t have a television, because if I did, I would watch it, even though almost all of what it broadcasts is utter nonsense. I don’t have a radio in the house because I would listen to it, and a little country music to break the monotony of a long drive is really all I require. If I had that—”

  He pointed to the box with the phone inside.

  “—I would undoubtedly use it. I get twelve different periodicals in the mail, and they contain all the information I need to keep up with the business world and the wider world’s sad doings.” He sat back and sighed. “There. I’ve not only given advice, I’ve made a speech. Old age is insidious.”

  “Can I show you just one thing? No, two.”

  He gave me one of the looks I’d seen him give his gardener and his housekeeper, but had never turned my way until that afternoon: piercing, skeptical, and rather ugly. These years later, I realize it’s the look a perceptive and cynical man gives when he believes he can see inside most people and expects to find nothing good.

  “This only proves the old saying that no good deed goes unpunished. I’m starting to wish that scratch ticket hadn’t been a winner.” He sighed again. “Well, go ahead, give me your demonstration. But you won’t change my mind.”

  Having received that look, so distant and so cold, I thought he was right. I’d end up giving the phone to my father after all. But since I’d come this far, I went ahead. The phone was charged to the max, I’d made sure of that, and was in—ha-ha—apple-pie working order. I turned it on and showed him an icon in the second row. It had jagged lines, sort of like an EKG print-out. “See that one?”

  “Yes, and I see what it says. But I really don’t need a stock market report, Craig. I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, as you know.”

  “Sure,” I agreed, “but the Wall Street Journal can’t do this.”

  I tapped the icon and opened the app. The Dow Jones average appeared. I had no idea what the numbers meant, but I could see they were fluctuating. 14,720 rose to 14,728, then dropped to 14,704, then bumped up to 14,716. Mr. Harrigan’s eyes widened. His mouth dropped open. It was as if someone had hit him with a juju stick. He took the phone and held it close to his face. Then he looked at me.

  “Are these numbers in real time?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Well, I guess they might be a
minute or two behind, I don’t know for sure. The phone’s pulling them in from the new phone tower in Motton. We’re lucky to have one so close.”

  He leaned forward. A reluctant smile touched the corners of his mouth. “I’ll be damned. It’s like the stock tickers magnates used to have in their own homes.”

  “Oh, way better than that,” I said. “Tickers sometimes ran hours behind. My dad said that just last night. He’s fascinated with this stock market thingy, he’s always taking my phone to look. He said one of the reasons the stock market tanked so bad back in 1929 was because the more people traded, the farther behind the tickers got.”

  “He’s right,” Mr. Harrigan said. “Things had gone too far before anyone could put on the brakes. Of course, something like this might actually accelerate a sell-off. It’s hard to tell because the technology is still so new.”

  I waited. I wanted to tell him some more, sell him on it—I was just a kid, after all—but something told me waiting was the right way to go. He continued to watch the miniscule gyrations of the Dow Jones. He was getting an education right in front of my eyes.

  “But,” he said, still staring.

  “But what, Mr. Harrigan?”

  “In the hands of someone who actually knows the market, something like this could . . . probably already does . . .” He trailed off, thinking. Then he said, “I should have known about this. Being retired is no excuse.”

  “Here’s the other thing,” I said, too impatient to wait any longer. “You know all the magazines you get? Newsweek and Financial Times and Fords?”