He was thinking about Polly; Polly and her poor hands. What to do about Polly?
If it had been just a matter of money, he would have had her checked into a room at the Mayo Clinic by tomorrow afternoonsigned, sealed, and delivered. He would have done it even if it meant wrapping her in a straitjacket and shooting her full of sedative But it wasn't just a matter of money. Ultrasound as a treatment for degenerative arthritis was in its infancy. It might eventually turn out to be as effective as the Salk vaccine, or as bogus as the science of phrenology. Either way, it didn't make sense right now. The chances were a thousand to one that it was a dry hole. It was not the loss of money he dreaded, but Polly's dashed hopes.
A crow-as limber and lifelike as a crow in a Disney animated cartoon-flapped slowly across his framed Albany Police Academy graduation certificate. Its wings lengthened and it became a prehistoric pterodactyl, triangular head cocked as it cruised toward the filing cabinets in the corner and out of the spotlight.
The door opened. The doleful basset-hound face of Norris Ridgewick poked through. "I did it, Alan," he said, sounding like a man confessing to the murder of several small children.
"Good, Norris," Alan said. "You're not going to get hit with the shit on this, either. I promise."
Norris looked at him for a moment longer with his moist eyes, then nodded doubtfully. He glanced at the wall. "Do Buster, Alan."
Alan grinned, shook his head, and reached for the lamp.
"Come on," Norris coaxed. "I ticketed his damn car-I deserve it.
Do Buster, Alan. Please. That wipes me out."
Alan glanced over Norris's shoulder, saw no one, and curled one hand against the other. On the wall, a stout shadow-man stalked across the spotlight, belly swinging. He paused once to hitch up his to get her out there. shadow-pants in the back and then stalked on, head turning truculently from side to side.
Norris's laughter was high and happy-the laughter of a child.
For one moment Alan was reminded forcibly of Todd, and then he shoved that away. There had been enough of that for one night, please God.
"Jeer, that slays me," Norris said, still laughing. "You were born too late, Alan-you coulda had a career on The Ed Sullivan Show."
"Go on," Alan said. "Get out of here."
Still laughing, Norris pulled the door closed.
Alan made Norris-skinny and a little self-important-walk across the wall, then snapped off the lamp and took a battered notebook from his back pocket. He thumbed through it until he found a blank page, and wrote Needful Things. Below that he jotted: Leland Gaunt, Cleveland, Ohio. Was that right? No. He scratched out Cleveland and wrote Akron. Maybe I really am losing my mind, he thought. On a third line he printed: Check it out.
He put his notebook back in his pocket, thought about going home, and turned on the lamp again instead. Soon the shadowparade was marching across the wall once more: lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
Like Sandburg's fog, the depression crept back on small feline feet.
The voice began speaking about Annie and Todd again. After awhile, Alan Pangborn began to listen to it. He, did it against his will... but with growing absorption.
4
Polly was lying on her bed, and when she finished talking with Alan, she turned over on her left side to hang up the telephone. It fell out of her hand and crashed to the floor instead. The Princess phone's base slid slowly across the nighttable, obviously meaning to join its other half She reached for it and her hand struck the edge of the table instead. A monstrous bolt of pain broke through the thin web the painkiller had stretched over her nerves and raced all the way up to her shoulder. She had to bite down on her lips to stifle a cry.
The telephone base fell off the edge of the table and crashed with a single cling! of the bell inside. She could hear the steady idiot buzz of the open line drifting up. It sounded like a hive of insects being broadcast via shortwave.
She thought of picking the telephone up with the claws which were now cradled on her chest, having to do it not by graspingtonight her fingers would not bend at all-but by pressing, like a woman playing the accordion, and suddenly it was too much, even something as simple as picking up a telephone which had fallen on the floor was too much, and she began to cry.
The pain was fully awake again, awake and raving, turning her hands-especially the one she had bumped-into fever-pits. She lay on her bed, looking up at the ceiling through her blurry eyes, and wept.
Oh I would give anything to be free of this, she thought. I would give anything, anything, anything at all,
5
By ten o'clock on an autumn weeknight, Castle Rock's Main Street was as tightly locked up as a Chubb safe. The streetlamps threw circles of white light on the sidewalk and the fronts of the business buildings in diminishing perspective, making downtown look like a deserted stage-set. Soon, you might think, a lone figure dressed in tails and a top-hat-Fred Astaire, or maybe Gene Kelly-would appear and dance his way from one of those spots to the next, singing about how lonely a fellow could be when his best girl had given him the air and all the bars were closed. Then, from the other end of Main Street, another figure would appear-Ginger Rogers or maybe Cyd Charisse-dressed in an evening gown. She would dance toward Fred (or Gene), singing about how lonely a gal could be when her best guy had stood her up.
They would see each other, pause artistically, and then dance together in front of the bank or maybe You Sew and Sew.
Instead, Hugh Priest hove into view.
He did not look like either Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, there was no girl at the far end of Main Street advancing toward a romantic chance meeting with him, and he most definitely did not dance. He did drink, however, and he had been drinking steadily in The Mellow Tiger since four that afternoon. At this point in the festivities just walking was a trick, and never mind any fancy dance-steps.
He walked slowly, passing through one pool of light after another, his shadow running tall across the fronts of the barber shop, the Western Auto, the video-rental shop. He was weaving slightly, his reddish eyes fixed stolidly in front of him, his large belly pushing out his sweaty blue tee-shirt (on the front was a drawing of a huge mosquito above the words MAINE STATE BIRD) in a long, sloping curve.
The Castle Rock Public Works pick-up truck he had been driving was still sitting at the rear of the Tiger's dirt parking lot. Hugh Priest was the not-so-proud possessor of several D.U.I driving violations, and following the last one-which had resulted in a sixmonth suspension of his privilege to [email protected] bastard Keeton, his co-bastards Fullerton and Samuels, and their co-bitch Williams had made it clear that they had reached the end of their patience with him. The next D.U.I would probably result in the permanent loss of his license, and would certainly result in the loss of his job.
This did not cause Hugh to stop drinking-no power on earth could do that-but it did cause him to form a firm resolution: no more drinking and driving. He was fifty-one years old, and that was a little late in life to be changing jobs, especially with a long drunkdriving rap-sheet following him around like a tin can tied to a dog's tail.
That was why he was walking home tonight, and one f**k of a long walk it was, and there was a certain Public Works employee named Bobby Dugas who was going to have some tall explaining to do tomorrow, unless he wanted to go home with a few less teeth than he had come to work with.
As Hugh passed Nan's Luncheonette, a light drizzle began to mist down. This did not improve his temper.
He had asked Bobby, who had to drive right past Hugh's place on his way home every night, if he was going to drop down to the Tiger that evening for a few brewskis. Bobby Dugas had said, Why shore, Hubert-Bobby always called him Hubert, which was not his f**king name, and you could bet that shit was going to change, too, and soon. Why shore, Hubert, I'll prob'ly be down around seven, same as always.
So Hugh, confident of a ride if he got a little too pixillated to drive, had pulled into the Tiger at just about five minutes of four (he'd knocked off a little early, [email protected] an hour and a half early, actually, but what the hell, Deke Bradford hadn't been around), and had waded right in. And come seven o'clock, guess what? No Bobby Dugas!
Golly-gosh-wow! Come eight and nine and ninethirty, guess further what? More of the same, by God!
At twenty to ten, Henry Beaufort, bartender and owner of The Mellow Tiger, had invited Hugh to put an egg in his shoe and beat it, to make like a tree and leave, to imitate an amoeba and split-in other words, to get the f**k out. Hugh had been outraged.
It was true he had kicked the jukebox, but the goddam Rodney Crowell record had been skipping again.
"What was I supposed to do, just sit here and listen to it?" he demanded of Henry. "You oughtta take that record off, that's all.
Guy sounds like he's havin a f**kin pepileptic fit."
"You haven't had enough, I can see that," Henry said, "but you ve had all you're going to get here. You'll have to get the rest out of your own refrigerator."
"What if I say no?" Hugh demanded.
"Then I call Sheriff Pangborn," Henry said evenly.
The other patrons of the Tiger-there weren't many this late on a weeknight-were watching this exchange with interest. Men were careful to be polite around Hugh Priest, especially when he was in his cups, but he was never going to win Castle Rock's Most Popular Fella contest.