The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet by Stephen King
The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet by Stephen King
The barbecue was over. It had been a good one; drinks, charcoaled T-bones, rare, a green salad and Meg’s special dressing. They had started at five. Now it was eight-thirty and almost dusk — the time when a big party is just starting to get rowdy. But they weren’t a big party. There were just the five of them: the agent and his wife, the celebrated young writer and his wife, and the magazine editor, who was in his early sixties and looked older. The editor stuck to Fresca. The agent had told the young writer before the editor arrived that there had once been a drinking problem there. It was gone now, and so was the editor’s wife… which was why they were five instead of six.
Instead of getting rowdy, an introspective mood fell over them as it started to get dark in the young writer’s backyard, which fronted the lake. The young writer’s first novel had been well reviewed and had sold a lot of copies. He was a lucky young man, and to his credit he knew it.
The conversation had turned with playful gruesomeness from the young writer’s early success to other writers who had made their marks early and had then committed suicide. Ross Lockridge was touched upon, and Tom Hagen. The agent’s wife mentioned Sylvia Plain and Anne Sexton, and the young writer said that he didn’t think Plath qualified as a successful writer. She had not committed suicide because of success, he said; she had gained success because she had committed suicide. The agent smiled.
“Please, couldn’t we talk about something else?” the young writer’s wife asked, a little nervously.
Ignoring her, the agent said, “And madness. There have been those who have gone mad because of success.” The agent had the mild but nonetheless rolling tones of an actor offstage.
The writer’s wife was about to protest again — she knew that her husband not only liked to talk about these things so he could joke about them, and he wanted to joke about them because he thought about them too much — when the magazine editor spoke up. What he said was so odd she forgot to protest.
“Madness is a flexible bullet.”
The agent’s wife looked startled. The young writer leaned forward quizzically. He said, “That sounds familiar — ”
“Sure,” the editor said. “That phrase, the image, ‘flexible bullet,’ is Marianne Moore’s. She used it to describe some car or other. I’ve always thought it described the condition of madness very well. Madness is a kind of mental suicide. Don’t the doctors say now that the only way to truly measure death is by the death of the mind? Madness is a kind of flexible bullet to the brain.”
The young writer’s wife hopped up. “Anybody want another drink?” She had no takers.
“Well, I do, if we’re going to talk about this,” she said, and went off to make herself one.
The editor said: “I had a story submitted to me once, when I was working over at Lagan’s. Of course it’s gone the way of Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post now, but we outlasted both of them.” He said this with a trace of pride. “We published thirty-six short stories a year, or more, and every year four or five of them would be in somebody’s collection of the year’s best. And people read them. Anyway, the name of this story was ‘The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,’ and it was written by a man named Reg Thorpe. A young man about
this young man’s age, and about as successful.”
“He wrote Underworld Figures, didn’t he?” the agent’s wife asked.
“Yes. Amazing track record for a first novel. Great reviews, lovely sales in hardcover and paperback, Literary Guild, everything. Even the movie was pretty good, although not as good as the book. Nowhere near.”
“I loved that book,” the author’s wife said, lured back into the conversation against her better judgment.
She had the surprised, pleased look of someone who has just recalled something which has been out of mind for too long. “Has he written anything since then? I read Underworld Figures back in college and that was… well, too long ago to think about.”