by Stephen King
He pushed the door open and went in. She was a vague hump in the bed and Johnny thought, That’s what I looked like. A nurse was taking her pulse; she turned when the door opened and the dim hall lights flashed on her spectacles.
“Are you Mrs. Smith’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Johnny?” Her voice rose from the hump in the bed, dry and hollow, rattling with death as a few pebbles will rattle in an empty gourd. The voice—God help him—made his skin crawl. He moved closer. Her face was twisted into a snarling mask on the left-hand side. The hand on the counterpane was a claw. Stroke, he thought. What the old people call a shock. Yes. That’s better. That’s what she looks like. Like she’s had a bad shock.
“Is that you, John?”
“It’s me, Ma.”
“Johnny? Is that you?”
“Yes, Ma.”
He came closer yet, and forced himself to take the bony claw.
“I want my Johnny,” she said querulously.
The nurse shot him a pitying look, and he found himself wanting to smash his fist through it.
“Would you leave us alone?” he asked.
“I really shouldn’t while ...”
“Come on, she’s my mother and I want some time alone with her,” Johnny said. “What about it?”
“Well ...”
“Bring me my juice, Dad!” his mother cried hoarsely. “Feel like I could drink a quart!”
“Would you get out of here?” he cried at the nurse. He was filled with a terrible sorrow of which he could not even find the focus. It seemed like a whirlpool going down into darkness.
The nurse left.
“Ma,” he said, sitting beside her. That weird feeling of doubled time, of reversal, would not leave him. How many times had she sat over his bed like this, perhaps holding his dry hand and talking to him? He recalled the timeless period when the room had seemed so close to him—seen through a gauzy placental membrane, his mother’s face bending over him, thundering senseless sounds slowly into his upturned face.
“Ma,” he said again, and kissed the hook that had replaced her hand.
“Gimme those nails, I can do that,” she said. Her left eye seemed frozen in its orbit; the other rolled wildly. It was the eye of a gutshot horse. “I want Johnny.”
“Ma, I’m here.”
“John-ny! John-ny! JOHN-NY!”
“Ma,” he said, afraid the nurse would come back.
“You ...” She broke off and her head turned toward him a little. “Bend over here where I can see,” she whispered.
He did as she asked.
“You came,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you.” Tears began to ooze from the good eye. The bad one, the one on the side of her face that had been frozen by the shock, stared indifferently upward.
“Sure I came.”
“I saw you,” she whispered. “What a power God has given you, Johnny! Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say it was so?”
“Yes, you did.”
“He has a job for you,” she said. “Don’t run from him, Johnny. Don’t hide away in a cave like Elijah or make him send a big fish to swallow you up. Don’t do that, John.”
“No. I won’t.” He held her claw-hand. His head throbbed.
“Not the potter but the potter’s clay, John. Remember.”
“All right.”
“Remember that!” she said stridently, and he thought, She’s going back into nonsense land. But she didn’t; at least she went no further into nonsense land than she had been since he came out of his coma.
“Heed the still, small voice when it comes,” she said.
“Yes, Ma. I will.”
Her head turned a tiny bit on the pillow, and—was she smiling?
“You think I’m crazy, I guess.” She twisted her head a little more, so she could look directly at him. “But that doesn’t matter. You’ll know the voice when it comes. It’ll tell you what to do. It told Jeremiah and Daniel and Amos and Abraham. It’ll come to you. It’ll tell you. And when it does, Johnny ... do your duty.”
“Okay, Ma.”
“What a power,” she murmured. Her voice was growing furry and indistinct. “What a power God has given you ... I knew ... I always knew ...” Her voice trailed off. The good eye closed. The other stared blankly forward.
Johnny sat with her another five minutes, then got up to leave. His hand was on the doorknob and he was easing the door open when her dry, rattling voice came again, chilling him with its implacable, positive command.
“Do your duty, John.”
“Yes, Ma.”
It was the last time he ever spoke to her. She died at five minutes past eight on the morning of August 20. Somewhere north of them, Walt and Sarah Hazlett were having a discussion about Johnny that was almost an argument, and somewhere south of them, Greg Stillson was cutting himself some prime asshole.
Chapter 13
1
“You don’t understand,” Greg Stillson said in a voice of utter, reasonable patience to the kid sitting in the lounge at the back of the Ridgeway police station. The kid, shirtless, was tilted back in a padded folding chair and drinking a bottle of Pepsi. He was smiling indulgently at Greg Stillson, not understanding that twice was all Greg Stillson ever repeated himself, understanding that there was one prime asshole in the room, but not yet understanding who it was.
That realization would have to be brought home to him.
Forcibly, if necessary.
Outside, the late August morning was bright and warm. Birds sang in the trees. And Greg felt his destiny was closer than ever. That was why he would be careful with this prime asshole. This was no long-haired bike-freak with a bad case of bowlegs and B.O.; this kid was a college boy, his hair was moderately long but squeaky clean, and he was George Harvey’s nephew. Not that George cared for him much (George had fought his way across Germany in 1945, and he had two words for these long-haired freaks, and those two words were not Happy Birthday), but he was blood. And George was a man to be reckoned with on the town council. See what you can do with him, George had told Greg when Greg informed him that Chief Wiggins had arrested his sister’s kid. But his eyes said, Don’t hurt him. He’s blood.
The kid was looking at Greg with lazy contempt. “I understand,” he said. “Your Deputy Dawg took my shirt and I want it back. And you better understand something. If I don’t get it back, I’m going to have the American Civil Liberties Union down on your red neck.”
Greg got up, went to the steel-gray file cabinet opposite the soda machine, pulled out his keyring, selected a key, and opened the cabinet. From atop a pile of accident and traffic forms, he took a red T-shirt. He spread it open so the legend on it was clear: BABY LET’S FUCK.
“You were wearing this,” Greg said in that same mild voice. “On the street.”
The kid rocked on the back legs of his chair and swigged some more Pepsi. The little indulgent smile playing around his mouth—almost a sneer—did not change. “That’s right,” he said. “And I want it back. It’s my property.”
Greg’s head began to ache. This smartass didn’t realize how easy it would be. The room was soundproofed, and there had been times when that soundproofing had muffled screams. No—he didn’t realize. He didn’t understand.
But keep your hand on it. Don’t go overboard. Don’t upset the applecart.
Easy to think. Usually easy to do. But sometimes, his temper—his temper got out of hand.
Greg reached into his pocket and pulled out his Bic lighter.
“So you just go tell your gestapo chief and my fascist uncle that the First Amendment ...” He paused, eyes widening a little. “What are you ... ? Hey! Hey!”
Taking no notice and at least outwardly calm, Greg struck a light. The Bic’s gas flame vroomed upward, and Greg lit the kid’s T-shirt on fire. It burned quite well, actually.
The front legs of the kid’s chair came down with a bang and he leaped toward Greg with his bottle of Pepsi still in his hand. The se
lf-satisfied little smirk was gone, replaced with a look of wide-eyed shock and surprise—and the anger of a spoiled brat who has had everything his own way for too long.
No one ever called him runt, Greg Stillson thought, and his headache worsened. Oh. he was going to have to be careful.
“Gimme that!” the kid shouted. Greg was holding the shirt out, pinched together in two fingers at the neck, ready to drop it when it got too hot. “Gimme that, you asshole! That’s mine! That’s ...”
Greg planted his hand in the middle of the kid’s bare chest and shoved him as hard as he could—which was hard indeed. The kid went flying across the room, the anger dissolving into total shock, and—at last—what Greg needed to see: fear.
He dropped the shirt on the tile floor, picked up the kid’s Pepsi, and poured what was left in the bottle onto the smouldering T-shirt. It hissed balefully.
The kid was getting up slowly, his back pressed against the wall. Greg caught his eyes with his own. The kid’s eyes were brown and very, very wide.
“We’re going to reach an understanding,” Greg said, and the words seemed distant to him, behind the sick thud in his head. “We’re going to have a little seminar right here in this back room about just who’s the asshole. You got my meaning? We’re gonna reach some conclusions. Isn’t that what you college boys like to do? Reach conclusions?”
The kid drew breath in hitches. He wet his lips, seemed about to speak, and then yelled: “Help!”
“Yeah, you need help, all right,” Greg said. “I’m going to give you some, too.”
“You’re crazy,” George Harvey’s nephew said, and then yelled again, louder: “HELP!”
“I may be,” Greg said. “Sure. But what we got to find out, Sonny, is who the prime asshole is. See what I mean?”
He looked down at the Pepsi bottle in his hand, and suddenly he swung it savagely against the corner of the steel cabinet. It shattered, and when the kid saw the scatter of glass on the floor and the jagged neck in Greg’s hand pointing toward him, he screamed. The crotch of his jeans, faded almost white, suddenly darkened. His face went the color of old parchment. And as Greg walked toward him, gritting glass under the workboots he wore summer and winter, he cringed against the wall.
“When I go out on the street, I wear a white shirt,” Greg said. He was grinning, showing white teeth. “Sometimes a tie. When you go out on the street, you wear some rag with a filthy saying on it. So who’s the asshole, kiddo?”
George Harvey’s nephew whined something. His bulging eyes never left the spears of glass jutting from the bottle neck in Greg’s hand.
“I’m standing here high and dry,” Greg said, coming a little closer, “and you got piss running down both legs into your shoes. So who’s the asshole?”
He began to jab the bottle neck lightly toward the kid’s bare and sweaty midriff, and George Harvey’s nephew began to cry. This was the sort of kid that was tearing the country in two, Greg thought. The thick wine of fury buzzed and coursed in his head. Stinking yellow lowbelly crybaby assholes like this.
Ah, but don’t hurt him—don’t kick over the applecart—
“I sound like a human being,” Greg said, “and you sound like a pig in a grease-pit, boy. So who’s the asshole?”
He jabbed with the bottle again; one of the jagged glass points dimpled the kid’s skin just below the right nipple and brought a tiny bead of blood. The kid howled.
“I’m talking to you,” Greg said. “You better answer up, same as you’d answer up one of your professors. Who’s the asshole?”
The kid sniveled but made no coherent sound.
“You answer up if you want to pass this exam,” Greg said. “I’ll let your guts loose all over this floor, boy.” And in that instant, he meant it. He couldn’t look directly at this welling drop of blood; it would send him crazy if he did, George Harvey’s nephew or not. “Who’s the asshole?”
“Me,” the kid said, and began to sob like a small child afraid of the bogeyman, the Allamagoosalum that waits behind the closet door in the dead hours of the night.
Greg smiled. The headache thumped and flared. “Well, that’s pretty good, you know. That’s a start. But it’s not quite good enough. I want you to say, ‘I’m an asshole.’ ”
“I’m an asshole,” the kid said, still sobbing. Snot flowed from his nose and hung there in a runner. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“Now I want you to say, ‘I’m a prime asshole.’ ”
“I ... I’m a prime asshole.”
“Now you just say one more thing and maybe we can be done here. You say, ‘Thank you for burning up that dirty shirt, Mayor Stillson.’ ”
The kid was eager now. The kid saw his way clear. “Thanks for burning up that dirty shirt.”
In a flash, Greg ran one of the jagged points from left to right across the kid’s soft belly, bringing a line of blood. He barely broke the skin, but the kid howled as if all the devils of hell were behind him.
“You forgot to say ‘Mayor Stillson,’ ” Greg said, and just like that it broke. The headache gave one more massive beat right between his eyes and was gone. He looked down stupidly at the bottle neck in his hand and could barely remember how it had gotten there. Stupid damn thing. He had almost thrown everything away over one numbnuts kid.
“Mayor Stillson!” The kid was screaming. His terror was perfect and complete. “Mayor Stillson! Mayor Stillson! Mayor Still ...”
“That’s good,” Greg said.
“... son! Mayor Stillson! Mayor Stillson! Mayor ...”
Greg whacked him hard across the face, and the kid rapped his head on the wall. He fell silent, his eyes wide and blank.
Greg stepped very close to him. He reached out. He closed one hand around each of the kid’s ears. He pulled the kid’s face forward until their noses were touching. Their eyes were less than half an inch apart.
“Now, your uncle is a power in this town,” he said softly, holding the kid’s ears like handles. The kid’s eyes were huge and brown and swimming. “I’m a power too—coming to be one—but I ain’t no George Harvey. He was born here, raised here, everything. And if you was to tell your uncle what went on in here, he might take a notion to finish me in Ridgeway.”
The kid’s lips were twitching in a nearly soundless blubber. Greg shook the boy’s head slowly back and forth by the ears, banging their noses together.
“He might not ... he was pretty damn mad about that shirt. But he might. Blood ties are strong ties. So you think about this, son. If you was to tell your uncle what went on here and your uncle squeezed me out, I guess I would come along and kill you. Do you believe that?”
“Yeah,” the kid whispered. His cheeks were wet, gleaming.
“ ‘Yes sir, Mayor Stillson.’ ”
“Yessir, Mayor Stillson.”
Greg let go of his ears. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d kill you, but first I’d tell anybody that’d listen about how you pissed yourself and stood there crying with snot running out of your nose.”
He turned and walked away quickly, as if the kid smelled bad, and went to the cabinet again. He got a box of Band-Aids from one of the shelves and tossed them across to the kid, who flinched back and fumbled them. He hastened to pick them up off the floor, as if Stillson might attack him again for missing.
Greg pointed. “Bathroom over there. You clean yourself up. I’m gonna leave you a Ridgeway PAL sweatshirt. I want it mailed back, clean, no bloodstains. You understand?”
“Yes,” the kid whispered.
“SIR!”Stillson screamed at him. “SIR! SIR! SIR! Can’t you remember that?”
“Sir,” the kid moaned. “Yessir, yessir.”
“They don’t teach you kids respect for nothing,” Greg said. “Not for nothing.”
The headache was trying to come back. He took several deep breaths and quelled it—but his stomach felt miserably upset. “Okay, that’s the end. I just want to offer you one good piece of advice. Don’t you make the mis
take of getting back to your damn college this fall or whenever and start thinking this was some way it wasn’t. Don’t you try to kid yourself about Greg Stillson. Best forgotten, kid. By you, me, and George. Working this around in your mind until you think you could have another swing at it would be the worst mistake of your life. Maybe the last.”
With that Greg left, taking one last contemptuous look at the kid standing there, his chest and belly caked with a few minor smears of dried blood, his eyes wide, his lips trembling. He looked like an overgrown ten-year-old who has struck out in the Little League playoffs.
Greg made a mental bet with himself that he would never see or hear from this particular kid again, and it was a bet he won. Later that week, George Harvey stopped by the barbershop where Greg was getting a shave and thanked him for “talking some sense” into his nephew. “You’re good with these kids, Greg,” he said. “I dunno ... they seem to respect you.”
Greg told him not to mention it.
2
While Greg Stillson was burning a shirt with an obscene saying on it in New Hampshire, Walt and Sarah Hazlett were having a late breakfast in Bangor, Maine. Walt had the paper.
He put his coffee cup down with a clink and said, “Your old boyfriend made the paper, Sarah.”
Sarah was feeding Denny. She was in her bathrobe, her hair something of a mess, her eyes still only about a quarter open. Eighty percent of her mind was still asleep. There had been a party last night. The guest of honor had been Harrison Fisher, who had been New Hampshire’s third district congressman since dinosaurs walked the earth, and a sure candidate for reelection next year. It had been politic for her and Walt to go. Politic. That was a word that Walt used a lot lately. He had had lots more to drink than she had, and this morning he was dressed and apparently chipper while she felt buried in a pile of sludge. It wasn’t fair.
