He had always been a sunshiny sort of boy, but that sun was gone now, buried behind heavy banks of cloud which were still building.
The clouds had begun to gather on the afternoon he had thrown the mud at Wilma jerzyck’s sheets, they had thickened when Mr.
Gaunt had come to him in a dream, dressed in a Dodger uniform, and told him he wasn’t done paying for his Sandy Koufax card yet… but the overcast had not become total until he had come down to breakfast this morning.
His father, dressed in the gray fatigues he wore to work at the Dick Perry Siding and Door Company in South Paris, was seated at the kitchen table with the Portland Press-Herald open in front of him.
“Goddam Patriots,” he said from behind his newspaper barricade.
“When the hell are they gonna get a quarterback that can throw the goddam ball?”
“Don’t swear in front of the boys,” Cora said from the stove, but she didn’t speak with her usual exasperated forcefulness-she sounded distant and preoccupied.
Brian slipped into his chair and poured milk on his corn flakes.
“Hey Bri!” Sean said cheerfully. “You wanna go downtown today?
Play some video games?”
“Maybe,” Brian said. “I guess-” Then he saw the headline on the front page of the paper and stopped talking.
DEAD IN CASTLE ROCK “It was a duel,” State Police Source Claims There were photographs of two women, side by side. Brian recognized both of them. One was Nettle Cobb, who lived around the corner on Ford Street. His mom said she was a nut, but she had always seemed okay to Brian. He had stopped a couple of times to pet her dog when she was walking him, and she seemed pretty much like anyone else.
The other woman was Wilma jerzyck.
He poked at his cereal but didn’t actually eat any of it. After his father left for work, Brian dumped the soggy corn flakes into the garbage pail and then crept upstairs to his room. He expected his mother to come cawing after him, asking how come he was throwing away good food while children were starving in Africa (she seemed to believe the thought of starving kids could improve your appetite), but she didn’t; she seemed lost in a world of her own this morning.
Sean was right there, however, bugging him just like always.
“So what do you say, Bri? You want to go downtown? Do you?”
He was almost dancing from one foot to the other in his excitement.
“We could play some video games, maybe check out that new store with all the neat stuff in the window-”
“You stay out of there!” Brian shouted, and his little brother recoiled, a look of shock and dismay spreading over his face.
“Hey,” Brian said, “I’m sorry. But you don’t want to go in there, Sean-o. That place sucks.”
Sean’s lower lip was trembling. “Kevin Pelkey says-”
“Who are you going to believe? That wet end or your own brother? It’s no good, Sean. It’s…” He wet his lips and then said what he understood as the bottom of the truth: “It’s bad.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Sean asked. His voice was fierce and teary.
“You’ve been acting like a dope all weekend! Mom, too!”
“I don’t feel so good, that’s all.”
"Well-”
Sean considered.
Then he brightened.
"Maybe some
video games would make you feel better. We can play Air Raid, Bri!
They got Air Raid! The one where you sit right inside, and it tilts back and forth! It’s awesome!”
Brian considered it briefly. No. He couldn’t imagine going down to the video arcade, not today, maybe not ever again. All the other kids would be there-today you’d have to wait in line to get at the good games like Air Raid-but he was different from them now, and he might always be different.
After all, he had a 1956 Sandy Koufax card.
Still, he wanted to do something nice for Sean, for anyone-something that would make up a little for the monstrous thing he had done to Wilma jerzyck. So he told Sean he might want to play some video games that afternoon, but to take some quarters in the meantime.
Brian shook them out of his big plastic Coke bottle bank.
“Jeepers!” Sean said, his eyes round. “There’s eight… nine… ten quarters here! You really must be sick!”
“Yeah, I guess I must be. Have fun, Sean-o. And don’t tell Mom, or she’ll make you put them back.”
“She’s in her room, moonin around in those dark glasses,” Sean said. “She doesn’t even know we’re alive.” He paused for a moment and then added: “I hate those dark glasses. They’re totally creepy.”
He looked more closely at his big brother. “You really don’t look so great, Bri.”
“I don’t feel so great,” Brian said truthfully. “I think I’ll lie down.”
“Well… I’ll wait for you awhile. See if you feel any better.
I’ll be watchin cartoons on channel fifty-six. Come on down if you feel better.” Sean shook the quarters in his cupped hands.
“I will,” Brian said, and closed his door softly as his little brother walked away.
But he hadn’t felt any better. As the day drew on, he just went on feeling (cloudier) worse and worse. He thought of Mr. Gaunt. He thought of Sandy Koufax. He thought of that glaring newspaper headlineMURDEROUS SPAT LEAVES TWO WOMEN DEAD IN CASTLE ROCK. He thought of those pictures, familiar faces swimming up from clumps of black dots.
Once he almost fell asleep, and then the little record player started up in his mother and father’s bedroom. Mom was playing her scratchy Elvis 45s again. She had been doing it almost all weekend.
Thoughts went whirling and rocking through Brian’s head like bits of clutter caught up in a cyclone.
MURDEROUS SPAT.
“You know they said you was high-class… but that was just a lie… “It was a duel.
MURDEROus: Nettle Cobb, the lady with the dog.
“You ain’t never caught a rabbit… “When you deal with me, you want to remember two things, SPA T: Wilma jerzyck, the lady with the sheets.
Mr. Gaunt knows hest…
“… and you ain’t no friend of mine… and the duelling isn’t done until Mr. Gaunt SAYS it’s done.
Around and around these thoughts went, a jumble of terror, guilt, and misery set to the beat of Elvis Presley’s golden hits. By noon, Brian’s stomach had begun to roil and knot. He hurried down to the bathroom at the end of the hall in his stocking feet, closed the door, and vomited into the toilet bowl as quietly as he could.
His mother didn’t hear. She was still in her room, where Elvis was now telling her he wanted to be her teddy bear.
As Brian walked slowly back to his room, feeling more miserable than ever, a horrible, haunting certainty came to him: his Sandy Koufax card was gone. Someone had stolen it last night while he slept. He had participated in a murder because of that card, and now it was gone.
He broke into a run, almost slipped on the rug in the middle of his bedroom floor, and snatched his baseball-card book from the top of the dresser. He turned through the pages with such terrified speed that he tore several loose from the ring-binders. But the card-the card-was still there: that narrow face looking out at him from beneath its plastic covering on the last page. Still there, and Brian felt a great, miserable relief sweep through him.
He slipped the card from its pocket, went over to the bed, and lay down with it in his hands. He didn’t see how he could ever let go of it again. It was all he had gotten out of this nightmare. The only thing. He didn’t like it anymore, but it was his. If he could have brought Nettle Cobb and Wilma jerzyck back to life by burning it up, he would have been hunting for matches at once (or so he really believed), but he couldn’t bring them back, and since he couldn’t, the thought of losing the card and having nothing at all was insupportable.