Sandy Koufax caught Mr. Gaunt’s return toss, then glanced at Brian with flat eyes like brown glass. “The deal is whatever I say the deal is, bush.”
Sandy Koufax’s eyes weren’t brown at all, Brian had realized in his dream; they were also blue, which made perfect sense, since Sandy Koufax was also Mr. Gaunt.
“But-” Koufax/Gaunt raised his gloved hand. “Let me tell you something, bush: I hate that word. Of all the words in the English language, it is easily the worst. I think it’s the worst word in any language. You know what a butt is, bush? It’s the place shit comes out of.”
The man in the old-fashioned Brooklyn Dodgers uniform hid the baseball in his glove and turned to face Brian fully. It was Mr.
Gaunt, all right, and Brian felt a freezing, dismal terror grip his heart. “I did say I wanted you to play a trick on Wilma, Brian, that’s true, but I never said it was the one and only trick I wanted you to play on her. You just assumed, bush. Do you believe me, or would you like to hear the tape of our conversation?”
“I believe you,” Brian said. He was perilously close to blubbering now. “I believe you, but-”
“What did I just tell you about that word, bush?”
Brian dropped his head and swallowed hard.
“You’ve got a lot to learn about dickering,” Koufax/Gaunt said.
“You and everyone else in Castle Rock. But that’s one of the reasons I came-to conduct a seminar in the fine art of dickering.
There was one fellow in town, a gent named Merrill, who knew a little something about it, but he’s long gone and hard to find.” He grinned, revealing Leland Gaunt’s large, uneven teeth in Sandy Koufax’s narrow, brooding face. “And the word ’bargain,’ BrianI have some tall teaching to do on that subject, as well.”
“But-” The word was out of Brian’s mouth before he could call it back.
“No buts about it,” Koufax/Gaunt said. He leaned forward. His face stared solemnly at Brian from beneath the bill of his baseball cap. “Mr. Gaunt knows best. Can you say that, Brian?”
Brian’s throat worked, but no sound came out. He felt hot, loose tears behind his eyes.
A large, cold hand descended upon Brian’s shoulder. And gripped.
“Say it!”
“Mr. Gaunt. Brian had to swallow again to make room for the words. “Mr. Gaunt knows best.”
“That’s right, bush. That’s exactly right. And what that means is you’re going to do what I say… or else.”
Brian summoned all his will and made one final effort.
“What if I say no, anyway? What if I say no because I didn’t understand the whatdoyoucallems… the terms?”
Koufax/Gaunt picked the baseball out of his glove and closed his hand over it. Small drops of blood began to sweat out of the stitches.
“You really can’t say no, Brian,” he said softly. “Not anymore.
Why, this is the seventh game of the World Series. All the chickens have come home to roost, and it’s time to shit or git. Take a look around you. Go on and take a good look.”
Brian looked around and was horrified to see that Ebbets Field was so full they were standing in the aisles… and he knew them all. He saw his Ma and Pa sitting with his little brother, Sean, in the Commissioner’s Box behind home plate. His speech therapy class, flanked by Miss Ratcliffe on one end and her big dumb boyfriend, Lester Pratt, on the other, was ranged along the first-base line, drinking Royal Crown Cola and munching hotdogs. The entire Castle Rock Sheriff’s Office was seated in the bleachers, drinking beer from paper cups with pictures of this year’s Miss Rheingold contestants on them.
He saw his Sunday School class, the town selectmen, Myra and Chuck Evans, his aunts, his uncles, his cousins.
There, sitting behind third base, was Sonny jackett, and when Koufax/Gaunt threw the bleeding ball and it made that rifleshot crack in the catcher’s glove again, Brian saw that the face behind the mask now belonged to Hugh Priest.
“Run you down, little buddy,” Hugh said as he threw the ball back.
“Make you squeak.”
“You see, bush, it’s not just a question of the baseball card anymore,” Koufax/Gaunt said from beside him. “You know that, don’t you? When you slung that mud at Wilma jerzyck’s sheets, you started something. Like a guy who starts an avalanche just by shouting too loud on a warm winter day. Now your choice is simple.
You can keep going… or you can stay where you are and get buried.”
In his dream, Brian finally began to cry. He saw, all right. He saw)just fine, now that it was too late to make any difference.
Gaunt squeezed the baseball. More blood poured out, and his fingertips sank deep into its white, fleshy surface. “If you don’t want everybody In Castle Rock to know you were the one who started the avalanche, Brian, you had better do what I tell you.”
Brian wept harder.
“When you deal with me,” Gaunt said, winding up to throw, you want to remember two things: Mr. Gaunt knows best… and the dealing isn’t done until Mr. Gaunt sys the dealing’s done.”
He threw with that sinuous all-of-a-sudden delivery which had made Sandy Koufax so hard to hit (that was, at least, the humble opinion of
Brian’s father), and when the ball hit Hugh Priest’s glove this time, it exploded. Blood and hair and stringy gobbets of flesh flew up in the bright autumn sun. And Brian had awakened, weeping into his pillow.
8
Now he was off to do what Mr. Gaunt had told him he must do. it had been simple enough to get away; he simply told his mother and father he didn’t want to go to church that morning because he felt sick to his stomach (nor was this a lie. Once they were gone, he made his preparations.
It was hard to pedal his bike and even harder to keep it balanced, because of the Playmate picnic cooler in the bike basket. It was very heavy, and he was sweating and out of breath by the time he reached the jerzyck house. There was no hesitation this time, no ringing the doorbell, no preplanned story. No one was here. Sandy Koufax/Leland Gaunt had told him in the dream that the jerzycks would be staying late after the eleven o’clock Mass to discuss the upcoming Casino Nite festivities and would then be going to visit friends. Brian believed him. All he wanted now was to finish with this awful business just as fast as he could. And when it was done, he would go home, park his bike, and spend the rest of the day in bed.
He lifted the picnic cooler out of the bike basket, using both hands, and set it down on the grass. He was behind the hedge, where no one could see him. What he was about to do would be noisy, but Koufax/Gaunt had told him not to worry about that. He said most of the people on Willow Street were Catholics, and almost all of those not attending eleven o’clock Mass would have gone at eight and then left on their various Sunday day-trips. Brian didn’t know if that was true or not. He only knew two things for sure: Mr. Gaunt knew best, and the deal wasn’t done until Mr. Gaunt said the deal was done.
And this was the deal.
Brian opened the Playmate cooler. There were about a dozen good-sized rocks inside. Wrapped around each and held with a rubber band or two was a sheet of paper from Brian’s school notebook. Printed on each sheet in large letters was this simple message: I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME ALONE.
THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING Brian took one of these and walked up the lawn until he was less than ten feet from the jerzycks’ big living-room window-what had been called a “picture window” back in the early sixties, when this house had been built. He wound up, hesitated for only a moment, and then let fly like Sandy Koufax facing the lead-off batter in the seventh game of the World Series. There was a huge and unmusical crash, followed by a thud as the rock hit the living-room carpet and rolled across the floor.