Stephen King: Mr. Mercedes

He had put his sleeping bag down next to Patti’s diaper bag. Now he squatted, pulled the ties, unrolled it, and unzipped it. “Slide in there. Get warm and get her warm. Then I’ll hand in whatever doodads you need.”

She gazed at him, holding the squirming, crying baby. “Are you married, Augie?”

“Divorced.”

“Children?”

He shook his head.

“Why are you being so kind to us?”

“Because we’re here,” he said, and shrugged.

She looked at him a moment longer, deciding, then handed him the baby. Augie held her out at arms’ length, fascinated by the red, furious face, the bead of snot on the tiny upturned nose, the bicycling legs in the flannel onesie. Janice squirmed into the sleeping bag, then lifted her hands. “Give her to me, please.”

Augie did, and the woman burrowed deeper into the bag. Beside them, where the line had doubled back on itself for the first time, two young men were staring.

“Mind your business, guys,” Augie said, and they looked away.

“Would you give me a diaper?” Janice said. “I should change her before I feed her.”

He dropped one knee to the wet pavement and unzipped the quilted bag. He was momentarily surprised to find cloth diapers instead of Pampers, then understood. The cloth ones could be used over and over. Maybe the woman wasn’t entirely hopeless.

“I see a bottle of Baby Magic, too. Do you want that?”

From inside the sleeping bag, where now only a tuft of her brownish hair showed: “Yes, please.”

He passed in the diaper and the lotion. The sleeping bag began to wiggle and bounce. At first the crying intensified. From one of the switchbacks farther down, lost in the thickening fog, someone said: “Can’t you shut that kid up?” Another voice added: “Someone ought to call Social Services.”

Augie waited, watching the sleeping bag. At last it stopped moving around and a hand emerged, holding a diaper. “Would you put it in the bag? There’s a plastic sack for the dirty ones.” She looked out at him like a mole from its hole. “Don’t worry, it’s not pooey, just wet.”

Augie took the diaper, put it in the plastic bag (COSTCO printed on the side), then zipped the diaper bag closed. The crying from inside the sleeping bag ( so many bags , he thought) continued for another minute or so, then abruptly cut out as Patti began to nurse in the City Center parking lot. From above the ranked doors that wouldn’t open for another six hours, the banner gave a single lackadaisical flap. 1000 JOBS GUARENTEED!

Sure, Augie thought. Also, you can’t catch AIDS if you load up on vitamin C .

Twenty minutes passed. More cars came up the hill from Marlborough Street. More people joined the line. Augie estimated there already had to be four hundred people waiting. At that rate, there would be two thousand by the time the doors opened at nine, and that was a conservative estimate.

If someone offers me fry-cook at McDonald’s, will I take it?

Probably.

What about a greeter at Walmart?

Oh, mos def. Big smile and how’re you today? Augie thought he could wallop a greeter job right out of the park.

I’m a people person, he thought. And laughed.

From the bag: “What’s funny?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Cuddle that kid.”

“I am.” A smile in her voice.

At three-thirty he knelt, lifted the flap of the sleeping bag, and peered inside. Janice Cray was curled up, fast asleep, with the baby at her breast. This made him think of The Grapes of Wrath . What was the name of the girl who had been in it? The one who ended up nursing the man? A flower name, he thought. Lily? No. Pansy? Absolutely not. He thought of cupping his hands around his mouth, raising his voice, and asking the crowd, WHO HERE HAS READ THE GRAPES OF WRATH ?

As he was standing up again (and smiling at this absurdity), the name came to him. Rose. That had been the name of the Grapes of Wrath girl. But not just Rose; Rose of Sharon . It sounded biblical, but he couldn’t say so with any certainty; he had never been a Bible reader.

He looked down at the sleeping bag, in which he had expected to spend the small hours of the night, and thought of Janice Cray saying she wanted to apologize for Columbine, and 9/11, and Barry Bonds. Probably she would cop to global warming as well. Maybe when this was over and they had secured jobs—or not; not was probably just as likely—he would treat her to breakfast. Not a date, nothing like that, just some scrambled eggs and bacon. After that they would never see each other again.

More people came. They reached the end of the posted switchbacks with the self-important DO NOT CROSS tape. Once that was used up, the line began to stretch into the parking lot. What surprised Augie—and made him uneasy—was how silent they were. As if they all knew this mission was a failure, and they were only waiting to get the official word.

The banner gave another lackadaisical flap.

The fog continued to thicken.

Shortly before five A.M., Augie roused from his own half-doze, stamped his feet to wake them up, and realized an unpleasant iron light had crept into the air. It was the furthest thing in the world from the rosy-fingered dawn of poetry and old Technicolor movies; this was an anti-dawn, damp and as pale as the cheek of a day-old corpse.

He could see the City Center auditorium slowly revealing itself in all its nineteen-seventies tacky architectural glory. He could see the two dozen switchbacks of patiently waiting people and then the tailback of the line disappearing into the fog. Now there was a little conversation, and when a janitor clad in gray fatigues passed through the lobby on the other side of the doors, a small satiric cheer went up.

“Life is discovered on other planets!” shouted one of the young men who had been staring at Janice Cray—this was Keith Frias, whose left arm would shortly be torn from his body.

There was mild laughter at this sally, and people began to talk. The night was over. The seeping light wasn’t particularly encouraging, but it was marginally better than the long small hours just past.

Augie knelt beside his sleeping bag again and cocked an ear. The small, regular snores he heard made him smile. Maybe his worry about her had been for nothing. He guessed there were people who went through life surviving—perhaps even thriving—on the kindness of strangers. The young woman currently snoozing in his sleeping bag with her baby might be one of them.

It came to him that he and Janice Cray could present themselves at the various application tables as a couple. If they did that, the baby’s presence might not seem an indicator of irresponsibility but rather of joint dedication. He couldn’t say for sure, much of human nature was a mystery to him, but he thought it was possible. He decided he’d try the idea out on Janice when she woke up. See what she thought. They couldn’t claim marriage; she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and he’d taken his off for good three years before, but they could claim to be… what was it people said now? Partners.

Cars continued to come up the steep incline from Marlborough Street at steady tick-tock intervals. There would soon be pedestrians as well, fresh off the first bus of the morning. Augie was pretty sure they started running at six. Because of the thick fog, the arriving cars were just headlights with vague shadow-shapes lurking behind the windshields. A few of the drivers saw the huge crowd already waiting and turned around, discouraged, but most kept on, heading for the few remaining parking spaces, their taillights dwindling.