The broken rubber band dropped onto the floor beside a smashed lettuce-crate. “You waste,” Skipper said. “You fucking longhair hippie waste.” Then he walked away. It was only a few days later that he mashed my fingers between two of the carts in the Korral, and a few days after that Skipper was lying on satin in the Methodist Church with the organ playing. He brought it on himself, though. At least that’s what I thought then.
“A little trip down Memory Lane?” Mr. Sharpton asked, and that jerked me back to the present. I was standing between his car and mine, standing by the Kart Korral where Skipper would never mash anyone else’s fingers.
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“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And it doesn’t matter. Hop in here, Dink, and let’s have a little talk.”
I opened the door of the Mercedes and got in. Man, that smell. It’s leather, but not just leather. You know how, in Monopoly, there’s a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card? When you’re rich enough to afford a car that smells like Mr. Sharpton’s gray Mercedes, you must have a Get-Out-of-Everything-Free card.
I took a deep breath, held it, then let it out and said, “This is eventual.”
Mr. Sharpton laughed, his clean-shaven cheeks gleaming in the dashboard lights. He didn’t ask what I meant; he knew. “Everything’s eventual, Dink,” he said. “Or can be, for the right person.”
“You think so?”
“Know so.” Not a shred of doubt in his voice.
“I like your tie,” I said. I said it just to be saying something, but it was true, too. The tie wasn’t what I’d call eventual, but it was good.
You know those ties that are printed all over with skulls or dinosaurs or little golf-clubs, stuff like that? Mr. Sharpton’s was printed all over with swords, a firm hand holding each one up.
He laughed and ran a hand down it, kind of stroking it. “It’s my lucky tie,” he said. “When I put it on, I feel like King Arthur.” The smile died off his face, little by little, and I realized he wasn’t joking.
“King Arthur, out gathering the best men there ever were. Knights to sit with him at the Round Table and remake the world.”
That gave me a chill, but I tried not to show it. “What do you want with me, Art? Help you hunt for the Holy Grail, or whatever they call it?”
“A tie doesn’t make a man a king,” he said. “I know that, in case you were wondering.”
I shifted, feeling a little uncomfortable. “Hey, I wasn’t trying to put you down—”
“It doesn’t matter, Dink. Really. The answer to your question is I’m two parts headhunter, two parts talent scout, and four parts walking, talking destiny. Cigarette?”
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“I don’t smoke.”
“That’s good, you’ll live longer. Cigarettes are killers. Why else would people call them coffin-nails?”
“You got me,” I said.
“I hope so,” Mr. Sharpton said, lighting up. “I most sincerely hope so. You’re top-shelf goods, Dink. I doubt if you believe that, but it’s true.”
“What’s this offer you were talking about?”
“Tell me what happened to Skipper Brannigan.”
Kabam, my worst fear come true. He couldn’t know, nobody could, but somehow he did. I only sat there feeling numb, my head pounding, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth like it was glued there.
“Come on, tell me.” His voice seemed to be coming in from far away, like on a shortwave radio late at night.
I got my tongue back where it belonged. It took an effort, but I managed. “I didn’t do anything.” My own voice seemed to be coming through on that same shitty shortwave band. “Skipper had an accident, that’s all. He was driving home and he went off the road.
His car rolled over and went into Lockerby Stream. They found water in his lungs, so I guess he drowned, at least technically, but it was in the paper that he probably would have died, anyway. Most of his head got torn off in the rollover, or that’s what people say. And some people say it wasn’t an accident, that he killed himself, but I don’t buy that. Skipper was . . . he was getting too much fun out of life to kill himself.”
“Yes. You were part of his fun, weren’t you?”
I didn’t say anything, but my lips were trembling and there were tears in my eyes.
Mr. Sharpton reached over and put his hand on my arm. It was the kind of thing you’d expect to get from an old guy like him, sitting with him in his big German car in a deserted parking lot, but I knew when he touched me that it wasn’t like that, he wasn’t hitting on me.
It was good to be touched the way he touched me. Until then, I didn’t know how sad I was. Sometimes you don’t, because it’s just, I don’t know, all around. I put my head down. I didn’t start bawling or any-229
STEPHEN KING
thing, but the tears went running down my cheeks. The swords on his tie doubled, then tripled—three for one, such a deal.
“If you’re worried that I’m a cop, you can quit. And I gave you money—that screws up any sort of prosecution that might come out of this. But even if that wasn’t the case, no one would believe what really happened to young Mr. Brannigan, anyway. Not even if you confessed on nationwide TV. Would they?”
“No,” I whispered. Then, louder: “I put up with a lot. Finally I couldn’t put up with any more. He made me, he brought it on himself.”
“Tell me what happened,” Mr. Sharpton said.
“I wrote him a letter,” I said. “A special letter.”
“Yes, very special indeed. And what did you put in it so it could only work on him?”
I knew what he meant, but there was more to it than that. When you personalized the letters, you increased their power. You made them lethal, not just dangerous.
“His sister’s name,” I said. I think that was when I gave up completely. “His sister, Debbie.”
IX
I’ve always had something, some kind of deal, and I sort of knew it, but not how to use it or what its name was or what it meant. And I sort of knew I had to keep quiet about it, because other people didn’t have it. I thought they might put me in the circus if they found out.
Or in jail.
I remember once—vaguely, I might have been three or four, it’s one of my first memories—standing by this dirty window and looking out at the yard. There was a wood-chopping block and a mailbox with a red flag, so it must have been while we were at Aunt Mabel’s, out in the country. That was where we lived after my father ran off. Ma got a job in the Harkerville Fancy Bakery and we moved back to town later on, when I was five or so. We were living in town when I started 230
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school, I know that. Because of Mrs. Bukowski’s dog, having to walk past that fucking canine cannibal five days a week. I’ll never forget that dog. It was a boxer with a white ear. Talk about Memory Lane.
Anyway, I was looking out and there were these flies buzzing around at the top of the window, you know how they do. I didn’t like the sound, but I couldn’t reach high enough, even with a rolled-up magazine, to swat them or make them go away. So instead of that, I made these two triangles on the windowpane, drawing in the dirt with the tip of my finger, and I made this other shape, a special circle-shape, to hold the triangles together. And as soon as I did that, as soon as I closed the circle, the flies—there were four or five of them—dropped dead on the windowsill. Big as jellybeans, they were—the black jellybeans that taste like licorice. I picked one up and looked at it, but it wasn’t very interesting, so I dropped it on the floor and went on looking out the window.
Stuff like that would happen from time to time, but never on purpose, never because I made it happen. The first time I remember doing something absolutely on purpose—before Skipper, I mean—
was when I used my whatever-it-was on Mrs. Bukowski’s dog. Mrs.
Bukowski lived on the corner of our street, when we rented on Dugway Avenue. Her dog was mean and dangerous, every kid on the West Side was afraid of that white-eared fuck. She kept it tied in her side yard—hell, staked out in her side yard is more like it—and it barked at everyone who went by. Not harmless yapping, like some dogs do, but the kind that says If I could get you in here with me or get out there with you, I’d tear your balls off, Brewster. Once the dog did get loose, and it bit the paperboy. Anyone else’s dog probably would have sniffed gas for that, but Mrs. Bukowski’s son was the police chief, and he fixed it up, somehow.