“A monster,” Brian said. His voice did not change, but a large tear had appeared in each of his eyes, growing on the lower arcs of the lids. “In my dream I knock on the door instead of riding away like I did and the door opens and it’s a monster and it eats… me… up.”
The tears brimmed, then rolled slowly down the disturbed skin of Brian Rusk’s cheeks.
And yes, Alan thought, it could be that, too-simple fright. The sort of fright a little kid might feel when he opens the bedroom door at the wrong time and sees his mother and father screwing.
Only because he’s too young to know the look of screwing, he thinks they’re fighting. Maybe he even thinks, if they’re making a lot of noise, that they’re trying to kill each other.
ButBut it didn’t feel right. It was just that simple. It felt as if this kid were lying his head off, in spite of the haggard look in his eyes, the look that said I want to tell you everything. What did that mean?
Alan didn’t know for sure, but experience taught him that the likeliest solution was that Brian knew whoever had thrown the rocks.
Maybe it was someone Brian felt obliged to protect. Or maybe the rock-thrower knew Brian had seen him, and Brian knew that. Maybe the kid was afraid of reprisals.
“A person threw a bunch of rocks into the jerzycks’ house,” Alan said in a low and (he hoped) soothing voice.
“Yes, sir,” Brian said-almost sighed. “I guess so. I guess it could have been that. I thought they were fighting, but it could have been someone throwing rocks. Crash, boom, bang.”
The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang, Alan thought but did not say. “You thought they were fighting?”
“Yes, sir.”
4 1is that what you really thought?”
“Yes, sir.”
Alan sighed. “Well, you know what it was now. And you know it was a bad thing to do. Throwing rocks through somebody’s windows is a pretty serious business, even if nothing else comes of it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But this time, something else did come of it. You know that, don’t you, Brian?”
“Yes, sir.”
Those eyes, looking up at him from that calm, pallid face. Alan began to understand two things: this boy did want to tell him what had happened, but he was almost certainly not going to do so.
“You look very unhappy, Brian.”
“Yes, sir?”
“’Yes, sir’. does that mean you are unhappy?”
Brian nodded, and two more tears spilled from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. Alan felt two strong, conflicting emotions: deep pity and wild exasperation.
“What are you unhappy about, Brian? Tell me.”
“I used to have this really nice dream,” Brian said in a voice which was almost too low to hear. “It was stupid, but it was nice, just the same. It was about Miss Ratcliffe, my speech teacher. Now I know it’s stupid. I didn’t used to know, and that was better. But guess what? I know more than that now.”
Those dark, terribly unhappy eyes rose to meet Alan’s again.
“The dream I have… the one about the monster who throws the rocks… it scares me, Sheriff Pangborn… but what makes me unhappy are the things I know now. It’s like knowing how the magician does his tricks.”
He nodded his head a little, and Alan could have sworn Brian was looking at the band of his watch.
“Sometimes it’s better to be dumb. I know that now.”
Alan put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Brian, let’s cut through the bullshit, all right? Tell me what happened. Tell me what you saw and what you did.”
“I came to see if they wanted their driveway shovelled this winter,” the boy said in a mechanical rote voice that frightened Alan badly. The kid looked like almost any American child of eleven or twelve-Converse sneakers, jeans, a tee-shirt with Bart Simpson on it-but he sounded like a robot which has been badly programmed and is now in danger of overloading. For the first time, Alan wondered if Brian Rusk had maybe seen one of his own parents throwing rocks at the jerzyck house.
“I heard noises,” the boy was continuing. He spoke in simple declarative sentences, talking as police detectives are trained to talk in court. “They were scary noises. Bangs and crashes and things breaking. So I rode away as fast as I could. The lady from next door was out on her stoop. She asked me what was going on. I think she was scared, too.”
“Yes,” Alan said. “Jillian Mislaburski. I talked to her.” He touched the Playmate cooler sitting crookedly in the basket of Brian’s bike. He was not unaware of the way Brian’s lips tightened when he did this. “Did you have this cooler with you on Sunday morning, Brian?”
“Yes, sir,” Brian said. He wiped his cheeks with the backs of his hands and watched Alan’s face warily.
“What was in it?”
Brian said nothing, but Alan thought his lips were trembling.
“What was in it, Brian?”
Brian said a little more nothing.
“Was it full of rocks?”
Slowly and deliberately, Brian shook his head-no.
For the third time, Alan asked: “What was in it?”
“Same thing that’s in it now,” Brian whispered.
“May I open it and see?”
“Yes, sir,” Brian said in his listless voice. “I guess so.”
Alan rotated the cover to one side and looked into the cooler.
It was full of baseball cards: Topps, Fleer, Donruss.
“These are my traders. I carry them with me almost everywhere,” Brian said.
“You… carry them with you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why, Brian? Why do you cart a cooler filled with baseball cards around with you?”
“I told you-they’re traders. You never know when you’ll get a chance to make a boss trade with someone. I’m still looking for a Joe Foy-he was on the Impossible Dream team in ’67-and a Mike Greenwell rookie card. The Gator’s my favorite player.” And now Alan thought he saw a faint, fugitive gleam of amusement in the boy’s eyes; could almost hear a telepathic voice chanting Fooled ya! Fooledya! But surely that was only him; only his own frustration mocking the boy’s voice.
Wasn’t it?
Well, what did you expect to find inside that cooler, anyway?
A pile of rocks with notes tied around them? Did you actually think he was on his way to do the same thing to someone else’s house?
Yes, he admitted. Part of him had thought exactly that. Brian Rusk, The Pint-Sized Terror of Castle Rock. The Mad Rocker. And the worst part was this: he was pretty sure Brian Rusk knew what was going through his head.
Fooledya! Fooledya, Sheriff.’ “Brian, please tell me what’s going on around here. If you know, please tell me.”
Brian closed the lid of the Playmate cooler and said nothing. It made a soft little snick! in the drowsy autumn afternoon.
“Can’t say?”
Brian nodded slowly-meaning, Alan thought, that he was right: he couldn’t say.
“Tell me this, at least: are you scared? Are you scared, Brian?”
Brian nodded again, just as slowly.
“Tell me what you’re scared of, son. Maybe I can make it go away.” He tapped one finger lightly against the badge he wore on the left side of his uniform shirt. “I think that’s why they pay me to lug this star around. Because sometimes I can make the scary stuff go away.”
“I-” Brian began, and then the police radio Alan had installed beneath the dash of the Town and Country wagon three or four years ago squawked to life.
“Unit One, Unit One, this is base. Do you copy? Over?”
Brian’s eyes broke away from Alan’s. They turned toward the station wagon and the sound of Sheila Brigham’s voice-the voice of authority, the voice of the police. Alan saw that, if the boy had been on the verge of telling him something (and it might only be wishful thinking to believe he had been), he wasn’t anymore. His face had closed up like a clamshell.
“You go on home now, Brian. We’re going to talk about this… this dream of yours… more later on. Okay?”