by Stephen King
My three friends shook their heads. So did I, but gingerly. Kenny had caught me with a pretty good roundhouse to the left temple. I hoped the bullying bastard had hurt his hand.
Ms. Hargensen brought out a little bottle of Aleve. “My private stock. Billy, get him some water.”
Billy brought me a Dixie cup. I swallowed the pill and felt better immediately. Such is the power of suggestion, especially when the one doing the suggesting is a gorgeous young woman.
“You three, make like bees and buzz,” Ms. Hargensen said. “Billy, go in the gym and tell Mr. Taylor I’ll be back in ten minutes. Girls, go outside and wait for Craig’s father. Wave him over to the staff door.”
They went. Ms. Hargensen leaned over me, close enough so I could smell her perfume, which was wonderful. I fell in love with her. I knew it was sappy but couldn’t help it. She held up two fingers. “Please tell me you don’t see three or four.”
“No, just two.”
“Okay.” She straightened up. “Was it Yanko? It was, wasn’t it?”
“No.”
“Do I look stupid? Tell me the truth.”
How she looked was beautiful, but I could hardly say that. “No, you don’t look stupid, but it wasn’t Kenny. Which is good. Because, see, if it was him, I bet he’d get arrested, because he’s already expelled. Then there’d be a trial and I’d have to go in court and tell how he beat me up. Everyone would know. Think how embarrassing that would be.”
“And if he beats somebody else up?”
I thought of Mr. Harrigan then—channeled him, you could even say. “That’s their problem. All I care is that he’s done with me.”
She tried to scowl. Her lips curved in a big smile instead, and I fell more in love with her than ever. “That’s cold.”
“I just want to get along,” I said. Which was the God’s honest truth.
“You know what, Craig? I think you will.”
* * *
When my dad got there, he looked me over and complimented Ms. Hargensen on her work.
“I was a prizefight cut-man in my last life,” she said. That made him laugh. Neither of them suggested a trip to the emergency room, which was a relief.
Dad took the four of us home, so we missed the second half of the dance, but none of us minded. Billy, Margie, and Regina had had an experience more interesting than waving their hands in the air to Beyoncé and Jay-Z. As for me, I kept reliving the satisfying shock that had gone up my arm when my fist connected with Kenny Yanko’s eye. It was going to leave a splendid shiner, and I wondered how he’d explain it. Duh, I ran into a door. Duh, I ran into a wall. Duh, I was jerking off and my hand slipped.
When we were back at the house, Dad asked me again if I knew who had done it. I said I didn’t.
“Not sure I believe that, son.”
I said nothing.
“You just want to let this go? Is that what I’m hearing?”
I nodded.
“All right.” He sighed. “I guess I get it. I was young once myself. That’s a thing parents always tell their kids sooner or later, but I doubt if any of them believe it.”
“I believe it,” I said, and I did, although it was amusing to visualize my father as a five-foot-five shrimpsqueak back in the age of landlines.
“Tell me one thing, at least. Your mother would be mad at me for even asking, but since she’s not here . . . did you hit him back?”
“Yes. Only once, but it was a good one.”
That made him grin. “Okay. But you need to understand that if he comes after you again, it’s going to be a police matter. Are we clear?”
I said we were.
“Your teacher—I like her—said I should keep you up at least an hour and make sure you don’t go all woozy. Want a piece of pie?”
“Sure.”
“Cup of tea to go with it?”
“Absolutely.”
So we had pie and big mugs of tea and Dad told me stories that weren’t about party telephone lines, or going to a one-room school where there was just a woodstove for heat, or TVs that only got the three stations (and none at all if the wind blew down the roof antenna). He told me about how he and Roy DeWitt found some fireworks in Roy’s cellar and when they shot them off one went into Frank Driscoll’s kindling box and set it on fire and Frank Driscoll said if they didn’t cut him a cord of wood, he’d tell their parents. He told me about how his mother overheard him call old Philly Loubird from Shiloh Church Big Chief Wampum and washed his mouth out with soap, ignoring his promises to never say anything like that again. He told me about fights at the Auburn Rollodrome—rumbles, he called them—where the kids from Lisbon High and those from Edward Little, Dad’s school, got into it just about every Friday night. He told me about getting his bathing suit pulled off by a couple of big kids at White’s Beach (“I walked home with my towel wrapped around me”), and the time some kid chased him down Carbine Street in Castle Rock with a baseball bat (“He said I put a hickey on his sister, which I never did”).
He really had been young once.
* * *
I went upstairs to my room feeling good, but the Aleve Ms. Hargensen had given me was wearing off, and by the time I got undressed, the good feeling was wearing off with it. I was pretty sure Kenny Yanko wouldn’t come back on me, but not positive. What if his friends started getting on his case about the shiner? Teasing him about it? Laughing about it, even? What if he got pissed and decided Round 2 was in order? If that happened, I would most likely not even get in one good blow; the shot to his eye had been kind of a sucker punch, after all. He could put me in the hospital, or worse.
I washed my face (very gently), brushed my teeth, got into bed, turned off the light, and then just lay there, reliving what had happened. The shock of being grabbed from behind and shoved down the hallway. Being punched in the chest. Being punched in the mouth. Telling my legs to hold me up and my legs saying maybe later.
Once I was in the dark, it seemed more and more likely that Kenny wasn’t done with me. Logical, even, the way things lots crazier than that can seem logical when it’s dark and you’re alone.
So I turned on the light again and called Mr. Harrigan.
I never expected to hear his voice, I only wanted to pretend I was talking to him. What I expected was silence, or a recorded message telling me the number I’d called was no longer in service. I’d slipped his phone into the pocket of his burial suit three months previous, and those first iPhones had a battery life of only 250 hours, even in standby mode. Which meant that phone had to be as dead as he was.
But it rang. It had no business ringing, reality was totally against the idea, but beneath the ground of Elm Cemetery, three miles away, Tammy Wynette was singing “Stand By Your Man.”
Halfway through the fifth ring, his slightly scratchy old man’s voice was in my ear. The same as always, straight to business, not even inviting his caller to leave a number or a message. “I’m not answering my phone now. I will call you back if it seems appropriate.”
The beep came, and I heard myself talking. I don’t remember thinking about the words; my mouth seemed to be operating completely on its own.
“I got beat up tonight, Mr. Harrigan. By a big stupid kid named Kenny Yanko. He wanted me to shine his shoes and I wouldn’t. I didn’t snitch on him because I thought that would end it, I was trying to think like you, but I’m still worried. I wish I could talk to you.”
I paused.
“I’m glad your phone is still working, even though I don’t know how it can be.”
I paused.
“I miss you. Goodbye.”
I ended the call. I looked in Recents to make sure I had called. His number was there, along with the time—11:02 P.M. I turned off my phone and put it on the night table. I turned off my lamp and was asleep almost at once. That was on a Friday night. The next night—or maybe early on Sunday morning—Kenny Yanko died. He hung himself, although I didn’t know that, or any of the details, for another year.
* * *
The obituary for Kenneth James Yanko wasn’t in the Lewiston Sun until Tuesday, and all it said was “passed away suddenly, as the result of a tragic accident,” but the news was all over the school on Monday and of course the rumor mill was in full operation.
He was huffing glue and died of a stroke.
He was cleaning one of his daddy’s shotguns (Mr. Yanko was said to have a regular arsenal in his house) and it went off.
He was playing Russian roulette with one of his daddy’s pistols and blew his head off.
He got drunk, fell down the stairs, and broke his neck.
None of these stories was true.
Billy Bogan was the one who told me, as soon as he got on the Short Bus. He was all but bursting with the news. He said one of his ma’s friends from Gates Falls had called and told her. The friend lived across the street and had seen the body coming out on a stretcher with a passel of Yankos surrounding it, crying and screaming. Even expelled bullies had people who loved them, it seemed. As a Bible reader I could even imagine them rending their clothes.
I thought immediately—and guiltily—of the call I’d made to Mr. Harrigan’s phone. I told myself he was dead and couldn’t have had anything to do with it. I told myself that even if stuff like that were possible outside of comic book horror stories, I hadn’t specifically wished Kenny dead, I just wanted to be left alone, but that seemed somehow lawyerly. And I kept remembering something Mrs. Grogan had said the day after the funeral, when I called Mr. Harrigan a good guy for putting us in his will.
Not so sure about that. He was square-dealing, all right, but you didn’t want to be on his bad side.
Dusty Bilodeau had gotten on Mr. Harrigan’s bad side, and surely Kenny Yanko would have been, too, for beating me up when I wouldn’t shine his fucking boots. Only Mr. Harrigan no longer had a bad side. I kept telling myself that. Dead people don’t have bad sides. Of course phones that haven’t been charged for three months can’t ring and then play messages (or take them), either . . . but Mr. Harrigan’s had rung, and I had heard his rusty old man’s voice. So I felt guilty, but I also felt relieved. Kenny Yanko would never come back on me. He was out of my road.
Later that day, during my free period, Ms. Hargensen came down to the gym where I was shooting baskets and took me into the hall.
“You were moping in class today,” she said.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“You were and I know why, but I’m going to tell you something. Kids your age have a Ptolemaic view of the universe. I’m young enough to remember.”
“I don’t know what—”
“Ptolemy was a Roman mathematician and astrologer who believed the earth was the center of the universe, a stillpoint everything else revolved around. Children believe their entire worlds revolve around them. That sense of being at the center of everything usually starts to fade by the time you’re twenty or so, but you’re a long way from that.”
She was leaning close to me, very serious, and she had the most beautiful green eyes. Also, the smell of her perfume was making me a little dizzy.
“I can see you’re not following me, so let me dispense with the metaphor. If you’re thinking you had something to do with the Yanko boy’s death, forget it. You didn’t. I’ve seen his records, and he was a kid with serious problems. Home problems, school problems, psychological problems. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t want to know, but I see a blessing here.”
“What?” I asked. “That he can’t beat me up anymore?”
She laughed, exposing teeth as pretty as the rest of her. “There’s that Ptolemaic view of the world again. No, Craig, the blessing is that he was too young to get a license. If he’d been old enough to drive, he might have taken some other kids with him. Now go back to gym and shoot some baskets.”
I started away, but she grabbed my wrist. Eleven years later I can still remember the electricity I felt. “Craig, I could never be glad when a child dies, not even a bad actor like Kenneth Yanko. But I can be glad it wasn’t you.”
Suddenly I wanted to tell her everything, and I might have done it. But just then the bell rang, classroom doors opened, and the hall was full of chattering kids. Ms. Hargensen went her way and I went mine.
* * *
That night I turned on my phone and at first just stared at it, gathering my courage. What Ms. Hargensen had said that morning made sense, but Ms. Hargensen didn’t know that Mr. Harrigan’s phone still worked, which was impossible. I hadn’t had a chance to tell her and believed—erroneously, as it turned out—that I never would.
It won’t work this time, I told myself. It had one last spurt of energy, that’s all. Like a lightbulb that flashes bright just before burning out.
I hit his contact, expecting—hoping, actually—for silence or a message telling me the phone was no longer in service. But it rang, and after a few more rings, Mr. Harrigan was once more in my ear. “I’m not answering my phone now. I will call you back if it seems appropriate.”
“It’s Craig, Mr. Harrigan.”
Feeling foolish, talking to a dead man—one who would be growing mold on his cheeks by now (I had done my research, you see). At the same time not feeling foolish at all. Feeling scared, like someone treading on unhallowed ground.
“Listen . . .” I licked my lips. “You didn’t have anything to do with Kenny Yanko dying, did you? If you did . . . um . . . knock on the wall.”
I ended the call.
I waited for a knock.
None came.
The next morning, I had a message from pirateking1. Just six letters: a a a. C C x.
Meaningless.
It scared the hell out of me.
* * *
That autumn I thought a lot about Kenny Yanko (the current story making the rounds was that he had fallen from the second floor of his house while trying to sneak out in the middle of the night). I thought even more about Mr. Harrigan, and about his phone, which I now wished I’d thrown into Castle Lake. There was a fascination, okay? The fascination with strange things we all feel. Forbidden things. On several occasions I almost called Mr. Harrigan’s phone, but I never did, at least not then. Once I’d found his voice reassuring, the voice of experience and success, the voice, you could say, of the grandfather I’d never had. Now I couldn’t remember that voice as it had been on our sunny afternoons, talking about Charles Dickens or Frank Norris or D. H. Lawrence or how the Internet was like a broken watermain. Now all I could think of was the old-man rasp, like sandpaper that’s almost worn out, telling me he would call me back if it seemed appropriate. And I thought of him in his coffin. The mortician from Hay & Peabody had no doubt gummed down his eyelids, but how long did that gum last? Were his eyes open down there? Were they staring up into the dark as they rotted in their sockets?
These things preyed on my mind.
A week before Christmas, Reverend Mooney asked me to come into the vestry so we could “have a chat.” He did most of the chatting. My father was worried about me, he said. I was losing weight, and my grades had slipped. Was there anything I wanted to tell him? I thought it over and decided there might be. Not everything, but some of it.
“If I tell you something, can it stay between us?”
“As long as it doesn’t have to do with self-harm or a crime—a serious crime—the answer is yes. I’m not a priest and this isn’t the Catholic confessional, but most men of faith are good at keeping secrets.”
So I told him that I’d had a fight with a boy from school, a bigger boy named Kenny Yanko, and he’d beat me up pretty good. I said I never wished Kenny dead, and I’d certainly not prayed for it, but he had died, almost right after our fight, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I told him what Ms. Hargensen had said about how kids believed everything had to do with them, and how it wasn’t true. I said that helped a little, but I still thought I might have played a part in Kenny’s death.
The Rev smiled. “Your teacher was right, Craig. Until I
was eight, I avoided stepping on sidewalk cracks so I wouldn’t inadvertently break my mother’s back.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.” He leaned forward. His smile went away. “I will keep your confidence if you will keep mine. Do you agree?”
“Sure.”
“I’m good friends with Father Ingersoll, of Saint Anne’s in Gates Falls. That is the church the Yankos attend. He told me that the Yanko boy committed suicide.”
I think I gasped. Suicide had been one of the rumors going around in the week after Kenny died, but I had never believed it. I would have said the thought of killing himself had never crossed the bullying son of a bitch’s mind.
Reverend Mooney was still leaning forward. He took one of my hands in both of his. “Craig, do you really believe that boy went home, thought to himself, ‘Oh my goodness, I beat up a kid younger and smaller than me, I guess I’ll kill myself’?”
“I guess not,” I said, and I let out a breath it felt like I’d been holding for two months. “When you put it like that. How did he do it?”
“I didn’t ask, and I wouldn’t tell you even if Pat Ingersoll had told me. You need to let this go, Craig. The boy had problems. His need to beat you up was only one symptom of those problems. You had nothing to do with it.”
“And if I’m relieved? That, you know, I don’t have to worry about him anymore?”
“I’d say that was you being human.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you feel better?”
“Yes.”
And I did.
* * *
Not long before the end of school, Ms. Hargensen stood before our earth science class with a big smile on her face. “You guys probably thought you were going to be rid of me in two weeks, but I have some bad news. Mr. de Lesseps, the high school biology teacher, is retiring, and I’ve been hired to take his place. You could say I’m graduating from middle school to high school.”