by Stephen King
“Yes, I suppose she is. And thinks I’m a damned fool.”
This time Old Bill’s boy—call him Young Jackie—did his squinting at the tall pines to one side of the road and said nothing. Yankees did not, as a rule, comment on other folks’ marital situations.
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Drew said. “How about you follow me back to my dad’s cabin? Have you got time to do that?”
“Ayuh, got the day.”
“I’ll pack up my stuff—won’t take long—and we can caravan back to the store. There’s no cell coverage, but I can use the pay phone. If the storm didn’t knock it out, that is.”
“Nah, it’s okay. I called Ma from there. You probably don’t know about DeWitt, do you?”
“Only that he was sick.”
“Not anymore,” Jackie said. “Died.” He hawked, spat, and looked at the sky. “Gonna miss a pretty nice day, by the look. Jump in your truck, Mr. Larson. Follow me half a mile up to the Patterson place. You can turn around there.”
26
Drew found the sign and picture in the window of the Big 90 both sad and amusing. Amusement was a fairly shitty way to feel, given the circumstances, but a person’s interior landscape was sometimes—often, even—fairly shitty. CLOSED FOR FUNNERAL, the sign said. The picture was of Roy DeWitt next to a plastic backyard pool. He was wearing flip-flops and a pair of low-riding Bermuda shorts beneath the considerable overhang of his belly. He was holding a can of beer in one hand and appeared to have been caught in the middle of a dance step.
“Roy liked his Bud-burgers, all right,” Jackie Colson observed. “You be okay from here, Mr. Larson?”
“Sure,” Drew said. “And thank you.” He held out his hand. Jackie Colson gave it a shake, jumped into his 4X4, and headed down the road.
Drew mounted the porch, put a handful of change on the ledge beneath the pay phone, and called home. Lucy answered.
“It’s me,” Drew said. “I’m at the store, and headed home. Still mad?”
“Get here and find out for yourself.” Then: “You sound better.”
“I am better.”
“Can you make it tonight?”
Drew looked at his wrist and realized he’d brought the manuscript (of course!) but left his watch in the bedroom at Pop’s cabin. Where it would stay until next year. He gauged the sun. “Not sure.”
“If you get tired, don’t try. Stop in Island Falls or Derry. We can wait another night.”
“All right, but if you hear someone coming in around midnight, don’t shoot.”
“I won’t. Did you get any work done?” He could hear hesitance in her voice. “I mean, getting sick and all?”
“I did. And it’s good, I think.”
“No problems with the… you know…”
“The words? No. No problems.” At least not after that weird dream. “I think this one’s a keeper. I love you, Luce.”
The pause after he said it seemed very long. Then she sighed and said, “I love you, too.”
He didn’t like the sigh but would take the sentiment. There had been a bump in the road—not the first, and it wouldn’t be the last—but they were past it. That was fine. He racked the phone and got rolling.
As the day was winding down (a pretty nice one, just as Jackie Colson had predicted), he began seeing signs for the Island Falls Motor Lodge. He was tempted, but decided to press on. The Suburban was running well—some of the thumps and bumps on Shithouse Road actually seemed to have knocked the front end back into line—and if he shaded the speed limit a little and didn’t get stopped by a state cop, he might be able to get home by eleven. Sleep in his own bed.
And work the next morning. That, too.
27
He came into their bedroom at just past eleven-thirty. He’d taken his muddy shoes off downstairs, and was trying to be quiet, but he heard the rustle of bedclothes in the dark and knew she was awake.
“Get in here, Mister.”
For once that word didn’t sting. He was glad to be home, and even gladder to be with her. Once he was in bed she put her arms around him, gave him a hug (brief, but strong), then turned over and went back to sleep. As Drew was drowsing toward sleep himself—those borderline transition moments when the mind becomes plastic—an odd thought came.
What if the rat had followed him? What if it was under the bed right now?
There was no rat, he thought, and slept.
28
“Wow,” Brandon said. His tone was respectful and a little awed. He and his sister were in the driveway waiting for the bus, their backpacks shouldered.
“What did you do to it, Dad?” Stacey asked.
They were looking at the Suburban, which was splattered with dried mud all the way up to the doorhandles. The windshield was opaque except for the crescents that had been cut by the windshield wipers. And there was the missing passenger side mirror, of course.
“There was a storm,” Drew said. He was wearing pajama bottoms, bedroom slippers, and a Boston College tee. “And that road out there isn’t in very good shape.”
“Shithouse Road,” Stacey said, clearly relishing the name.
Now Lucy came out as well. She stood looking at the hapless Suburban with her hands on her hips. “Holy crow.”
“I’ll get it washed this afternoon,” Drew said.
“I like it that way,” Brandon said. “It’s cool. You must have done some crazy driving, Dad.”
“Oh, he’s crazy, all right,” Lucy said. “Your crazy daddy. No doubt about that.”
The schoolbus appeared then, sparing him a comeback.
“Come inside,” Lucy said after they’d watched the kids get on. “I’ll fix you some pancakes or something. You look like you’ve lost weight.”
As she turned away, he caught her hand. “Have you heard anything about Al Stamper? Talked to Nadine, maybe?”
“I talked to her the day you left for the cabin, because you told me he was sick. Pancreatic, that’s so awful. She said he was doing pretty well.”
“You haven’t talked to her since?”
Lucy frowned. “No, why would I?”
“No reason,” he said, and that was true. Dreams were dreams, and the only rat he’d seen at the cabin was the stuffed one in the toybox. “Just concerned about him.”
“Call him yourself, then. Cut out the middle man. Now do you want some pancakes or not?”
What he wanted to do was work. But pancakes first. Keep things quiet on the home front.
29
After pancakes, he went upstairs to his little study, plugged in his laptop, and looked at the hard copy he’d done on Pop’s typewriter. Start by keyboarding it in, or just press on? He decided on the latter. Best to find out right away if the magic spell that had been over Bitter River still held, or if it had departed when he left the cabin.
It did hold. For the first ten minutes or so he was in the upstairs study, vaguely aware of reggae from downstairs, which meant that Lucy was in her study, crunching numbers. Then the music was gone, the walls dissolved, and moonlight was shining down on DeWitt Road, the rutted, potholed track running between Bitter River and the county seat. The stagecoach was coming. Sheriff Averill would hold his badge high and flag it down. Pretty soon he and Andy Prescott would be onboard. The kid had a date in county court. And not long after with the hangman.
Drew knocked off at noon and called Al Stamper. There was no need to be frightened, and he told himself he wasn’t, but he couldn’t deny that his pulse had kicked up several notches.
“Hey, Drew,” Al said, sounding just like himself. Sounding strong. “How did it go up in the wilderness?”
“Pretty well. I got almost ninety pages before a storm came along—”
“Pierre,” Al said, and with a clear distaste that warmed Drew’s heart. “Ninety pages, really? You?”
“I know, hard to believe, and another ten this morning, but never mind that. What I really want to know is how you’re doing.”
“P
retty damn good,” Al said. “Except I’ve got this damn rat to contend with.”
Drew had been sitting in one of the kitchen chairs. Now he bolted to his feet, suddenly feeling sick again. Feverish. “What?”
“Oh, don’t sound so concerned,” Al said. “It’s a new medication the doctors put me on. Supposed to have all kinds of side effects, but the only one I’ve got, at least so far, is the goddam rash. All over my back and sides. Nadie swore it was shingles, but I had the test and it’s just a rash. Itches like hell, though.”
“Just a rash,” Drew echoed. He wiped a hand across his mouth. CLOSED FOR FUNNERAL, he thought. “Well, that’s not so bad. You take care of yourself, Al.”
“I will. And I want to see that book when you finish it.” He paused. “Notice I said when, not if.”
“After Lucy, you’ll be first in line,” Drew said, and hung up. Good news. All good news. Al sounded strong. Like his old self. All fine, except for that damn rat.
Drew found he could laugh at that.
30
November was cold and snowy, but Drew Larson barely noticed. On the last day of the month, he watched (through the eyes of Sheriff Jim Averill) as Andy Prescott climbed the stairs to the gallows in the county seat. Drew was curious as to how the boy would take it. As it turned out—as the words spilled out—he did just fine. He had grown up. The tragedy (Averill knew it) was that the kid would never grow old. One drunken night and a fit of jealousy over a dancehall girl had put paid to everything that might have been.
On the first of December, Jim Averill turned in his badge to the circuit judge who had been in town to witness the hanging, then rode back to Bitter River, where he would pack his few things (one trunk would be enough) and say goodbye to his deputies, who had done a damn good job when the chips were down. Yes, even Jep Leonard, who was about as smart as a rock. Or sharp as a marble, take your pick.
On the second of December, the sheriff harnessed his horse to a light buggy, threw his trunk and saddle in the back, and headed west, thinking he might try his luck in California. The gold rush was over, but he longed to see the Pacific Ocean. He was unaware of Andy Prescott’s grief-stricken father, laid up behind a rock two miles out of town and looking down the barrel of a Sharps Big Fifty, the rifle which would become known as “the gun that changed the history of the west.”
Here came a light wagon, and sitting up there on the seat, boots on the splashboard, was the man responsible for his grief and spoiled hopes, the man who had killed his son. Not the judge, not the jury, not the hangman. No. That man down there. If not for Jim Averill, his son would be in Mexico now, with his long life—all the way into a new century!—ahead of him.
Prescott cocked the hammer. He laid the sights on the man in the wagon. He hesitated with his finger curled on the cold steel crescent of the trigger, deciding what to do in the forty seconds or so before the wagon breasted the next hill and disappeared from sight. Shoot? Or let him go?
Drew thought of adding one more sentence—He made up his mind—and didn’t. That would lead some readers, perhaps many, to believe Prescott had decided to shoot, and Drew wanted to leave that issue unresolved. Instead, he hit the space bar twice and typed.
THE END
He looked at those two words for quite a long time. He looked at the pile of manuscript between his laptop and his printer; with the work of this final session added, it would come in at just under three hundred pages.
I did it. Maybe it will be published and maybe it won’t, maybe I’ll do another and maybe I won’t, it doesn’t matter. I did it.
He put his hands over his face.
31
Lucy turned the last page two nights later and looked at him in a way he hadn’t seen in a very long time. Maybe not since the first year or two of their marriage, before the kids came.
“Drew, it’s amazing.”
He grinned. “Really? Not just saying that because your hubby wrote it?”
She shook her head violently. “No. It’s wonderful. A western! I never would have guessed. How did you get the idea?”
He shrugged. “It just came to me.”
“Did that horrible rancher shoot Jim Averill?”
“I don’t know,” Drew said.
“Well, a publisher may want you to put that in.”
“Then the publisher—if there ever is one—will find his want unsatisfied. And you’re sure it’s okay? You mean it?”
“Much better than okay. Are you going to show Al?”
“Yes. I’ll take a copy of the script over tomorrow.”
“Does he know it’s a western?”
“Nope. Don’t even know if he likes them.”
“He’ll like this one.” She paused, then took his hand and said, “I was so pissed at you for not coming back when that storm was on the way. But I was wrong and you were rat.”
He took his hand back, once again feeling feverish. “What did you say?”
“That I was wrong. And you were right. What’s the trouble, Drew?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
32
“So?” Drew asked three days later. “What’s the verdict?”
They were in his old department head’s study. The manuscript was on Al’s desk. Drew had been nervous about Lucy’s reaction to Bitter River, but he was even more nervous about Al’s. Stamper was a voracious, omnivorous reader who had been analyzing and deconstructing prose his entire working life. He was the only person Drew knew who had dared to teach Under the Volcano and Infinite Jest in the same semester.
“I think it’s very good.” Al not only sounded like his old self these days, he looked like it. His color was back and he had put on a few pounds. The chemo had taken his hair, but the Red Sox cap he was wearing covered his newly bald head. “It’s plot-driven, but the relationship between the sheriff and his young captive gives the story quite extraordinary resonance. It isn’t as good as The Ox-Bow Incident or Welcome to Hard Times, I’d say—”
“I know,” Drew said… who thought it was. “I’d never claim that.”
“But I think it ranks with Oakley Hall’s Warlock, which is just behind those two. You had something to say, Drew, and you said it very well. The book doesn’t pound the reader over the head with its thematic concerns, and I suppose most people will just read it for the strong story values—the what-happens-next thing—but those thematic elements are there, oh yes.”
“You think people will read it?”
“Sure.” Al seemed almost to wave this away. “Unless your agent’s a total dummocks, he or she will sell this easily. Maybe even for a fair bit of money.” He eyed Drew. “Although my guess is that was secondary to you, if you thought about it at all. You just wanted to do it, am I right? For once jump off the high board at the country club swimming pool without losing your nerve and slinking back down the ladder.”
“Nailed it,” Drew said. “And you… Al, you look terrific.”
“I feel terrific,” he said. “The doctors have stopped short of calling me a medical marvel, and I’ll be going back for tests every three weeks for the first year, but my last date with the fucking chemo IV is this afternoon. As of rat now all the tests are calling me cancer free.”
This time Drew didn’t jump, and he didn’t bother asking for a repeat. He knew what his old department head had actually said, just as he knew part of him would keep hearing that other word from time to time. It was like a splinter, one lodged in his mind instead of under his skin. Most splinters worked out without infecting. He was pretty sure this one would do that. After all, Al was fine. The deal-making rat at the cabin had been a dream. Or a stuffed toy. Or complete bullshit.
Take your pick.
33
To: [email protected]
THE ELISE DILDEN AGENCY
January 19, 2019
Drew, my love—How great to hear from you, I thought you were dead and I missed the obituary! (Joking! ) A novel after all these years, how exciting. Send
it posthaste, dear, and we’ll see what can be done. Although I must warn you the market is barely making half-steam these days unless it’s a book about Trump and his cohorts.
XXX,
Ellie
Sent from my electronic slave bracelet
To: [email protected]
THE ELISE DILDEN AGENCY
February 1, 2019
Drew! I finished last night! The book is WUNDERBAR! I hope you aren’t planning to get fabuloso rich from it, but I’m sure it will be published, and I feel I can get a decent advance. Perhaps more than decent. An auction is not entirely out of the question. Plus-plus-plus I feel that this book could (and should) be a reputation-maker. I believe when it’s published, the reviews of Bitter River will be sweet indeed. Thank you for a wonderful visit in the old west!
XXX,
Ellie
PS: You left me hanging! Did that rat of a rancher actually shoot Jim Averill????
E
Sent from my electronic slave bracelet
34
There was indeed an auction for Bitter River. It happened on March 15th, the same day the season’s final storm hit New England (Winter Storm Tania, according to the Weather Channel). Three of New York’s Big Five publishers participated, and Putnam came out the winner. The advance was $350,000. Not Dan Brown or John Grisham numbers, but enough, as Lucy said while she hugged him, to put Bran and Stacey through college. She broke out a bottle of Dom Pérignon, which she had been saving (hopefully). This was at three o’clock, while they still felt like celebrating.
They toasted the book, and the book’s author, and the book’s author’s wife, and the amazing wonderful kids that had sprung from the loins of the book’s author and the book’s author’s wife, and were fairly tipsy when the phone rang at four. It was Kelly Fontaine, the English Department’s administrative assistant since time out of mind. She was in tears. Al and Nadine Stamper were dead.