“I worry about you,” he said.
Her hands moved gently, delicately, in his. “I know,” she said.
“It does no good, but I appreciate it, Alan. More than you know.”
2
Hugh Priest slowed as he passed The Mellow Tiger on his way home from the Castle Rock motor pool… then sped up again.
He drove home, parked his Buick in the driveway, and went inside.
His place had two rooms: the one where he slept and the one where he did everything else. A chipped Formica table, covered with aluminum frozen dinner trays (cigarette butts had been crushed in congealing gravy in most of them) stood in the center of this latter room. He went to the open closet, stood on tiptoe, and felt along the top shelf.
For a moment he thought the fox-tail was gone, that somebody had come in and stolen it, and panic ignited a ball of heat in his belly. Then his hand encountered that silky softness, and he let out his breath in a long sigh.
He had spent most of the day thinking about the fox-tail, thinking about how he was going to tie it to the Buick’s antenna, thinking about how it would look, fluttering cheerfully up there. He had almost tied it on that morning, but it had still been raining then, and he didn’t like the idea of the dampness turning it into a soggy fur rope that just hung there like a carcass. Now he took it back outside, absently kicking an empty juice can out of his way as he went, stroking the rich fur through his fingers. God, it felt good!
He entered the garage (which had been too full of junk to admit his car since 1984 or so) and found a sturdy piece of wire after some hunting about. He had made up his mind: first he would wire the fox-tail to the antenna, then he would have some supper, and afterward he would finally drive over to Greenspark. A.A. met at the American Legion Hall there at seven o’clock. Maybe it was too late to start a new life… but it wasn’t too late to find out for sure, one way or another.
He made a sturdy little slip-loop in the wire and fastened it around the thick end of the brush. He started to wrap the other end of the wire around the antenna, but his fingers, which had moved with rapid surety at first, began to slow down. He felt his confidence slipping away and, filling the hole it left behind, doubt began to seep in.
He saw himself parking in the American Legion parking lot, and that was okay. He saw himself going in to the meeting, and that was okay, too. But then he saw some little kid, like the asshole who had stepped in front of his truck the other day, walking past the Legion Hall while he was inside saying his name was Hugh P. and he was powerless over alcohol. Something catches the kid’s eye a flash of bright orange in the blue-white glare thrown by the arc-sodiums which light the parking lot. The kid approaches his Buick and examines the fox-tail… first touching, then stroking.
He looks around, sees no one, and yanks on the fox-tail, breaking the wire. Hugh saw this kid going down to the local video-game arcade and telling one of his buddies: Hey, look what I hawked out of the Legion parking lot. Not bad, huh?
Hugh felt a frustrated anger creep into his chest, as if this were not simply speculation but something which had already happened.
He stroked the fox-tail, then looked around in the growing gloom of five o’clock, as if he expected to see a crowd of l’ lit-fingered 19
kids gathering already on the far side of Castle Hill Road, just waiting for him to go back inside and stuff a couple of Hungry Man dinners into the oven so they could take his fox-tail.
No. It was better not to go. Kids had no respect these days.
Kids would steal anything, just for the joy of stealing it. Keep it for a day or two, then lose interest and toss it in a ditch or a vacant lot. The picture-and it was a very clear picture, almost a visionof his lovely brush lying abandoned in a trashy gully, growing sodden in the rain, losing its color amid the Big Mac wrappers and discarded beer cans, filled Hugh with a feeling of angry agony.
It would be crazy to take a risk like that.
He untwisted the wire which held the tail to the antenna, took the brush into the house again, and put it back on the high shelf in the closet. This time he closed the closet door, but it wouldn’t latch tightly.
Have to get a lock for that, he thought. Kids’ll break in anyplace.
There’s no respect for authority these days. None at all.
He went to the refrigerator, got a can of beer, looked at it for a moment, then put it back. A beer-even four or five beerswouldn’t do much to put him back on an even keel. Not the way he felt tonight. He opened one of the lower cupboards, pawed past the assortment of rummage-sale pots and pans stacked there, and found the half-full bottle of Black Velvet he kept for emergencies.
He filled a jelly-glass to the halfway mark, considered for a moment, then filled it all the way to the top. He took a swallow or two, felt the heat explode in his belly, and filled the glass again.
He started to feel a little better, a little more relaxed. He looked toward the closet and smiled. It was safe up there, and would be safer as soon as he got a good strong Kreig padlock at the Western Auto and put it on. Safe. It was good when you had something you really wanted and needed, but it was even better when that thing was safe. That was the best of all.
Then the smile faded a little.
Is that what you bought it for? To keep i’t on a high shelf behind a locked door?
He drank again, slowly. All right, he thought, maybe that’s not so good. But it’s better than losing it to some light-fingered kid.
“After all,” he said aloud, “it’s not 1955 anymore. This is modern days.”
He nodded for emphasis. Still, the thought lingered. What good was the fox-tail doing in there? What good for him, or anyone else?
But two or three drinks took care of that thought. Two or three drinks made putting the fox-tail back seem like the most reasonable, rational decision in the world. He decided to put off dinner; such a sensible decision deserved to be rewarded by another drink or two.
He filled the jelly-glass again, sat down in one of the kitchen chairs with its tubular steel legs, and lit a cigarette. And as he sat there, drinking and tapping curls of ash into one of the frozen dinner trays, he forgot about the fox-tail and started thinking about Nettle Cobb. Crazy Nettle. He was going to play a trick on Crazy Nettle.
Maybe next week, maybe the week after that… but this week seemed most likely. Mr. Gaunt had told him he was a man who didn’t like to waste time, and Hugh was willing to take his word for it.
He looked forward to it.
It would break up the monotony.
He drank, he smoked, and when he finally passed out on the filthy sheets of the narrow bed in the other room at quarter of ten, he did it with a smile on his face.
3
Wilma jerzyck’s shift at Hemphill’s Market ended when the store closed at seven. She pulled into her own driveway at seven-fifteen.
Soft light spilled out through the drawn drapes across the livingroom window. She went in and sniffed. She could smell macaroni and cheese. Good enough… at least, so far.
Pete was sprawled on the couch with his shoes off, watching Wheel of Fortune. The Portland Press-Herald was in his lap.
“I read your note,” he said, sitting up quickly and putting the paper aside. “I put in the casserole. It’ll be ready by seven-thirty.”
He looked at her with earnest and slightly anxious brown eyes.
Like a dog with a strong urge to please, Pete jerzyck had been house-trained early and quite well. He had his lapses, but it had been a long time since she’d come in and found him lying on the couch with his shoes on, a longer one since he’d dared to light up his pipe in the house, and it would be a snowy day in August when he took a piss without remembering to put the ring back down after he was through.