by Stephen King
She trailed off artfully and he thought: Ow, you bitch, you got me. Bull's eye.
"Yes, I guess it does," he said. "Divorce."
"Have you thought about it?" she asked earnestly, phonily. "Have you really-"
"I've thought about it a lot."
"So have I. It seems like the only thing left to do. But I don't hold anything against you, Bart. I'm not mad at you."
My God, she's been reading all those paperback novels. Next she'll tell me she's going back to school. He was surprised at his bitterness. He thought he had gotten past that part.
"What will you do?"
"I'm going back to school," she said, and now there was no phoniness in her voice, now it was excited, shining. "I dug out my old transcript, it was still up in Mamma's attic with all my old clothes, and do you know I only need twenty-four credits to graduate? Bart, that's hardly more than a year!"
He saw Mary crawling through her mother's attic and the image blended with one of himself sitting bewildered in a pile of Charlie's clothes. He shut it out.
"Bart? Are you still there?"
"Yes. I'm glad being single again is going to fulfill you so nicely."
"Bart," she said reproachfully.
But there was no need to snap at her now, to tease her or make her feel bad.
Things had gone beyond that. Mr. Piazzi's dog, having bitten, moves on. That struck him funny and he giggled.
"Bart, are you crying?" She sounded tender. Phony, but tender.
"No," he said bravely.
"Bart, is there anything I can do? If there is, I want to. "
"No. I think I'm going to be fine. And I'm glad you're going back to school. Listen, this divorce-who gets it? You or me?"
"I think it would look better if I did," she said timidly.
"Okay. Fine."
There was a pause between them and suddenly she blurted into it, as if the words had escaped without her knowledge or approval: "Have you slept with anyone since I left?"
He thought the question over, and ways of answering: the truth, a lie, an evasion that might keep her awake tonight.
"No," he said carefully, and added: "Have you?"
"Of course not, " she said, managing to sound shocked and pleased at the same time. "I wouldn't."
"You will eventually."
"Bart, let's not talk about sex."
"All right, " he said placidly enough, although it was she who had brought the subject up. He kept searching for something nice to say to her, something that she would remember. He couldn't think of a thing, and furthermore didn't know why he would want her to remember him at all, at least at this stage of things. They had had good years before. He was sure they must have been good because he couldn't remember much of what had happened in them, except maybe the crazy TV bet.
He heard himself say: "Do you remember when we took Charlie to nursery school the first time?"
"Yes. He cried and you wanted to take him back with us. You didn't want to let him go, Bart. "
"And you did."
She was saying something disclaiming in a slightly wounded tone, but he was remembering the scene. The lady who kept the nursery school was Mrs. Ricker. She had a certificate from the state, and she gave all the children a nice hot lunch before sending them home at one o'clock. School was kept downstairs in a madeover basement and as they led Charlie down between them, he felt like a traitor; like a farmer petting a cow and saying Soo, Bess on the way to the slaughterhouse. He had been a beautiful boy, his Charlie. Blond hair that had darkened later, blue, watchful eyes, hands that had been clever even as a toddler. And he had stood between them at the bottom of the stairs, stock-still, watching the other children who were whooping and running and coloring and cutting colored paper with bluntnosed scissors, so many of them, and Charlie had never looked so vulnerable as he did in that instant, just watching the other children. There was no joy or fear in his eyes, only the watchfulness, a kind of outsiderness, and he had never felt so much his son's father as then, never so close to the actual run of his thoughts. And Mrs. Ricker came over, smiling like a barracuda and she said: We'll have such fun, Chuck, making him want to cry out: That's not his name! And when she put out her hand Charlie did not take it but only watched it so she stole his hand and began to pull him a little toward the others, and he went willingly two steps and then stopped, looked back at them, and Mrs. Young said very quietly: Go right along, he'll be fine. And Mary finally had to poke him and say Come ON, Bart because he was frozen looking at his son, his son's eyes saying, Are you going to let them do this to me, George? and his own eyes saying back, Yes, I guess 1 am, Freddy and he and Mary started up the stairs, showing Charlie their backs, the most dreadful thing a little child can see, and Charlie began to wail. But Mary's footsteps never faltered because a woman's love is strange and cruel and nearly always clear-sighted, love that sees is always horrible love, and she knew walking away was right and so she walked, dismissing the cries as only another part of the boy's development, like smiles from gas or scraped knees. And he had felt a pain in his chest so sharp, so physical, that he had wondered if he was having a heart attack, and then the pain had just passed, leaving him shaken and unable to interpret it, but now he thought that the pain had been plain old prosaic good-bye. Parents' backs aren't the most dreadful thing. The most dreadful thing of all is the speed with which children dismiss those same backs and turn to their own affairs-to the game, the puzzle, the new friend, and eventually to death. Those were the awful things he had come to know now. Charlie had begun dying long before he got sick, and there was no putting a stop to it.
"Bart?" she was saying. "Are you still there, Bart?"
"I'm here."
"What good are you doing yourself thinking about Charlie all the time? It's eating you up. You're his prisoner."
"But you're free," he said. "Yes."
"Shall I see the lawyer next week?"
"Okay. Fine."
"It doesn't have to be nasty, does it, Bart?"
"No. It will be very civilized."
"You won't change your mind and contest it?"
"No."
"I'll . . . I'll be talking to you, then."
"You knew it was time to leave him and so you did. I wish to God I could be that instinctive."
"What?"
"Nothing. Good-bye, Mary. I love you." He realized he had said it after he hung up. He had said it automatically, with no feeling-verbal punctuation. But it wasn't such a bad ending. Not at all.
January 18, 1974
The secretary's voice said: "Who shall I say is calling?"
"Bart Dawes."
"Will you hold for a moment?"
"Sure."
She put him in limbo and he held the blank receiver to his ear, tapping his foot and looking out the window at the ghost town of Crestallen Street West. It was a bright day but very cold, temperature about 10 above with a chill factor making it 10 below. The wind blew skirls of snow across the street to where the Hobarts' house stood broodingly silent, just a shell waiting for the wrecking ball. They had even taken their shutters.
There was a click and Steve Ordner's voice said: "Bart, how are you?"
"Fine. "
"What can I do for you?"
"I called about the laundry," he said. "I wondered what the corporation had decided to do about relocation."
Ordner sighed and then said with good-humored reserve: "A little late for that, isn't it?"
"I didn't call to be beaten with it, Steve. "
"Why not? You've surely beaten everyone else with it. Well, never mind. The board has decided to get out of the industrial laundry business, Bart. The Laundromats will stay; they're all doing well. We're going to change the chain name, though. To Handi-Wash. How does that sound?"
"Terrible," he said remotely. "Why don't you sack Vinnie Mason?"
"Vinnie?" Ordner sounded surprised. "Vinnie's doing a great job for us. Turning into quite the mogul. I must say I didn't expect such bitterness
-'
"Come on, Steve. That job's got no more future than a tenement airshaft. Give him something worthwhile or let him out. "
"I handy think that's your business, Bart. "
"You've got a dead chicken tied around his neck and he doesn't know it yet because it hasn't started to rot. He still thinks it's dinner."
"I understand he punched you up a little before Christmas. "
"I told him the truth and he didn't like it. "
"Truth's a slippery word, Bart. I would think you'd understand that better than anyone, after all the lies you told me.
"That still bugs you, doesn't it?"
"When you discover that a man you thought was a good man is full of shit, it does tend to bug one, yes."
"Bug one," he repeated. "Do you know something, Steve? You're the only person I've ever known in my life that would say that. Bug one. It sounds like something that comes in a fucking aerosol can."
"Was there anything else, Bart?"
"No, not really. I wish you'd stop beating Vinnie, that's all. He's a good man. You're wasting him. And you know goddam well you're wasting him."
"I repeat: why would I want to 'beat' Vinnie?"
"Because you can't get to me."
"You're getting paranoid, Bart. I've got no desire to do anything to you but forget you."
"Is that why you were checking to see if I ever had personal laundry done free? Or took kickbacks from the motels? I understand you even took the petty cash vouchers for the last five years or so."
"Who told you that?" Ordner barked. He sounded startled, off balance.
"Somebody in your organization," he lied joyfully. "Someone who doesn't like you much. Someone who thought I might be able to get the ball rolling a little in time for the next director's meeting."
"Who?"
"Good-bye, Steve. You think about Vinnie Mason, and I'll think about who I might or might not talk to."
"Don't you hang up on me! Don't you-"
He hung up, grinning. Even Steve Ordner had the proverbial feet of clay. Who was it Steve reminded him of? Ball bearings. Strawberry ice cream stolen from the food locker. Herman Wouk. Captain Queeg, that was it. Humphrey Bogart had played him in the movie. He laughed aloud and sang:
"We all need someone to Queeg on,
And if you want to, why don'tcha Queeg all over me?"
I'm crazy all right, he thought, still laughing. But it does seem there are certain advantages. It came to him that one of the surest signs of insanity was a man all alone, laughing in the middle of silence, on an empty street filled with empty houses. But the thought could not still his humor and he laughed louder, standing by the telephone and shaking his head and grinning.
January 19, 1974
After dark he went out to the garage and brought in the guns. He loaded the Magnum carefully, according to the directions in the instruction pamphlet, after dryfiring it several times. The Rolling Stones were on the stereo, singing about the Midnight Rambler. He couldn't get over what a fine album that was. He thought about himself as Barton George Dawes, Midnight Rambler, Visits by Appointment Only.
The .460 Weatherbee took eight shells. They looked big enough to fit a medium howitzer. When the rifle was loaded he looked at it curiously, wondering if it was as powerful as Dirty Harry Swinnerton had claimed. He decided to take it out behind the house and fire it. Who was there on Crestallen Street West to report gunshots?
He put on his jacket and started out the back door through the kitchen, then went back to the living room and got one of the small pillows that lay on the couch. Then he went outside, pausing to flick on the 200-watt yard light that he and Mary had used in the summer for backyard barbecues. Back here, the snow was as he had pictured it in his mind a little more than a week ago-untouched, unmarred, totally virgin. No one had foot-fucked this snow. In past years Don Upslinger's boy Kenny sometimes used the backyard express to get up to his friend Ronnie's house. Or Mary used the line he had strung kitty-corner between the house and garage to hang a few things (usually unmentionables) on days when it was too warm for them to freeze. But he himself always went to the garage by the breezeway and now it struck him as sort of marvelous-no one had been in his backyard since snow first fell, in late November. Not even a dog, by the look of it.
He had a sudden crazy urge to stride out into the middle, about where he set the hibachi every summer, and make a snow angel.
Instead he tucked the pillow up against his right shoulder, held it for a moment with his chin, and then pressed the butt plate of the Weatherbee against it. He glared down the sight with his left eye shut, and tried to remember the advice the actors always gave each other just before the gyrenes hit the beaches in the late-night war movies. Usually it was some seasoned veteran like Richard Widmark talking to some green private-Martin Milner, perhaps: Don't jerk that trigger, son - SQUEEZE it.
Okay, Fred. Let's see if I can hit my own garage.
He squeezed the trigger.
The rifle did not make a report. It made an explosion. At first he was afraid it had blown up in his hands. He knew he was alive when the recoil knocked him back against the kitchen storm door. The report traveled off in all directions with a curious rolling sound, like jet exhaust. The pillow fell in the snow. His shoulder throbbed.
"Jesus, Fred!" he gasped.
He looked at his garage and was hardly able to believe it. There was a splintered hole in the siding big enough to fit a teacup through.
He leaned the gun against the kitchen storm door and walked through the snow, never minding the fact that he had his low shoes on. He examined the hole for a minute, bemusedly prying up loose splinters with his forefinger, and then he went around and inside.
The exit hole was bigger. He looked at his station wagon. There was a bullet hole in the driver's side door, and the paint had been seared off to show bare metal around the concave hole, which was big enough for him to stick the tips of two fingers in. He opened the door and looked across the seat at the passenger door. Yes, the bullet had gone through there too, just below the door handle.
He walked around to the passenger side and saw where the bullet had exited, leaving another big hole, this time with tines of metal sticking balefully out. He turned and looked at the garage wall opposite where the bullet had entered. It had gone through that too. For all he knew, it was still going.
He heard Harry the gun shop proprietor saying: So your cousin gut-shoots . . . this baby will spread his insides over twenty feet. And what would it do to a man? Probably the same. It made him feel ill.
He walked back to the kitchen door, stooped to pick up his pillow, and went back into the house, pausing automatically to stamp his feet so he wouldn't track across Mary's kitchen. In the living room he took off his shirt. There was a red welt in the shape of the rifle's butt plate on his shoulder in spite of the pillow.
He went into the kitchen with his shirt still off and fixed a pot of coffee and a TV dinner. When he finished his meal he went into the living room and laid down on the couch and began to cry, and the crying rose to a jagged, breaking hysteria which he heard and feared but could not control. At last it began to trail off and he fell heavily asleep, breathing harshly. In his sleep he looked old and some of the stubble on his cheeks was white.
January 20, 1974
He woke with a guilty start, afraid it was morning and too late. His sleep had been as sodden and dark as old coffee, the kind of sleep he always woke from feeling stupid and cottonheaded. He looked at his watch and saw it was quarter past two.
The rifle was where he had left it, leaning nonchalantly in the easy chair. The Magnum was on the end table.
He got up, went into the kitchen, and splashed cold water on his face. He went upstairs and put on a fresh shirt. He went back downstairs tucking it in. He locked all the downstairs doors, and for reasons he did not wish to examine too closely, his heart felt a tiny bit lighter as each tumbler clicked. He began to feel like himself again for the first time sinc
e that damnable woman had collapsed in front of him in the supermarket. He put the Weatherbee on the floor by the living room picture window and stacked the shells beside it, opening each box as he set it down. He dragged the easy chair over and set it on its side.
He went into the kitchen and locked the windows. He took one of the dining room chairs and propped it under the kitchen doorknob. He poured himself a cup of cold coffee, sipped it absently, grimaced, and dashed it into the sink. He made himself a drink.
He went back into the living room and brought out the automobile storage battery. He put it behind the overturned easy chair, then got the jumper cables and coiled them beside the battery.
He carried the case of explosive upstairs, grunting and puffing. When he got to the landing he set it down with a thump and blew out his breath. He was getting too old for this sort of bullshit, even though a lot of the laundry muscle from the days when he and his partner had lifted four-hundred-pound lots of ironed sheets onto the delivery trucks, was still there. But muscle or no muscle, when a man got to be forty, some things were tempting fate. By forty it was attack time.
He went from room to room upstairs, turning on all the lights: The guest bedroom, the guest bathroom, master bedroom, the study that had once been Charlie's room. He put a chair under the attic trapdoor and went up there, turning on the dusty bulb. Then he went down to the kitchen and got a roll of electrician's tape, a pair of scissors, and a sharp steak knife.
He took two sticks of explosive from the crate (it was soft, and if you pressed it, you left fingerprints) and took them up to the attic. He cut two lengthy of fuse and peeled the white insulation back from the copper core with the steak knife. Then he pressed each bare wire into one of the candles. In the closet, standing below the trapdoor now, he peeled the insulation from the other ends of the fuses and carefully attached two more sticks, taping the fuse firmly to each so that the peeled wire wouldn't pull free.
Humming now, he strung more fuse from the attic into the master bedroom and left a stick on each of the twin beds. He strung more fuse from there down the hall and left a stick in the guest bathroom, two more in the guest bedroom. He turned off the lights as he left. In Charlie's old room he left four sticks, taped together in a cluster. He trailed fuse out the door and dropped a coil of it over the stairway railing. Then he went downstairs.
