Stephen King - Under the Dome

Got a little leftover pantry space for you, if you fuck with me, Jackie, he thought, and laughed. God, the heat and light on his face felt good! How long since it had felt so good?

Freddy looked over. “Something funny, Junes?”

“Nothing in particular,” Junior said. “I’m just on a roll, that’s all.”

Their job—this morning, at least—was to foot-patrol Main Street (“To announce our presence,” Randolph had said), first up one side and down the other. Pleasant enough duty in the warm October sunshine.

They were passing Mill Gas & Grocery when they heard raised voices from inside. One belonged to Johnny Carver, the manager and part owner. The other was too slurry for Junior to make out, but Freddy Denton rolled his eyes.

“Sloppy Sam Verdreaux, as I live and breathe,” he said. “Shit! And not even nine-thirty.”

“Who’s Sam Verdreaux?” Junior asked.

Freddy’s mouth tightened down to a white line Junior recognized from his football days. It was Freddy’s Ah fuck, we’re behind look. Also his Ah fuck, that was a bad call look. “You’ve been missing the better class of Mill society, Junes. But you’re about to get introduced.”

Carver was saying, “I know it’s past nine, Sammy, and I see you’ve got money, but I still can’t sell you any wine. Not this morning, not this afternoon, not tonight. Probably not tomorrow either, unless this mess clears itself up. That’s from Randolph himself. He’s the new Chief.”

“Like fuck he is!” the other voice responded, but it was so slurry it came to Junior’s ears sounding as Li-fuh hizz. “Pete Randolph ain’t but shitlint on Duke Perkins’ asshole.”

“Duke’s dead and Randolph says no booze sales. I’m sorry, Sam.”

“Just one bottle of T-Bird,” Sam whined. Juz one barf T-Burr. “I need it. Annd, I can pay for it. Come on. How long I been tradin here?”

“Well shit.” Although he sounded disgusted with himself, Johnny was turning to look at the wall-long case of beer and vino as Junior and Freddy came up the aisle. He had probably decided a single bottle of Bird would be a small price to get the old rumpot out of his store, especially since a number of shoppers were watching and avidly awaiting further developments.

The hand-printed sign on the case said absolutely NO ALCOHOL SALES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, but the wussy was reaching for the booze just the same, the stuff in the middle. That was where the cheapass popskull lived. Junior had been on the force less than two hours, but he knew that was a bad idea. If Carver caved in to the straggle-haired wino, other, less disgusting customers would demand the same privilege.

Freddy Denton apparently agreed. “Don’t do that,” he told Johnny Carver. And to Verdreaux, who was looking at him with the red eyes of a mole caught in a brushfire: “I don’t know if you have enough working brain cells left to read the sign, but I know you heard the man: no alcohol today. So get in the breeze. Quit smelling up the place.”

“You can’t do that, Officer,” Sam said, drawing himself up to his full five and a half feet. He was wearing filthy chinos, a Led Zeppelin tee-shirt, and old slippers with busted backs. His hair looked as if it had last been cut while Bush II was riding high in the polls. “I got my rights. Free country. Says so right in the Constitution of Independence.”

“The Constitution’s been canceled in The Mill,” Junior said, with absolutely no idea that he was speaking prophecy. “So put an egg in your shoe and beat it.” God, how fine he felt! In barely a day he had gone from doom and gloom to boom and zoom!

“But…”

Sam stood there for a moment with his lower lip trembling, trying to muster more arguments. Junior observed with disgust and fascination that the old fuck’s eyes were getting wet. Sam held out his hands, which were trembling far worse than his loose mouth. He only had one more argument to make, but it was a hard one to bring out in front of an audience. Because he had to, he did.

“I really need it, Johnny. No joke. Just a little, to stop the shakes. I’ll make it last. And I won’t get up to no dickens. Swear on my mother’s name. I’ll just go home.” Home for Sloppy Sam was a shack sitting in a gruesomely bald dooryard dotted with old auto parts.

“Maybe I ought to—” Johnny Carver began.

Freddy ignored him. “Sloppy, you never made a bottle last in your life.”

“Don’t you call me that!” Sam Verdreaux cried. The tears over-spilled his eyes and slid down his cheeks.

“Your fly’s unzipped, oldtimer,” Junior said, and when Sam looked down at the crotch of his grimy chinos, Junior stroked a finger up the flabby underside of the old man’s chin and then tweaked his beak. A grammar school trick, sure, but it hadn’t lost its charm. Junior even said what they’d said back then: “Dirty clothes, gotcha nose!”

Freddy Denton laughed. So did a couple of other people. Even Johnny Carver smiled, although he didn’t look as if he really wanted to.

“Get outta here, Sloppy,” Freddy said. “It’s a nice day. You don’t want to spend it in a cell.”

But something—maybe being called Sloppy, maybe having his nose tweaked, maybe both—had relit some of the rage that had awed and frightened Sam’s mates when he’d been a lumber-jockey on the Canadian side of the Merimachee forty years before. The tremble disappeared from his lips and hands, at least temporarily. His eyes lighted on Junior, and he made a phlegmy but undeniably contemptuous throat-clearing sound. When he spoke, the slur had left his voice.

“Fuck you, kid. You ain’t no cop, and you was never much of a football player. Couldn’t even make the college B-team is what I heard.”

His gaze switched to Officer Denton.

“And you, Deputy Dawg. Sunday sales legal after nine o’clock. Has been since the seventies, and that’s the end of that tale.”

Now it was Johnny Carver he was looking at. Johnny’s smile was gone, and the watching customers had grown very silent. One woman had a hand to her throat.

“I got money, coin of the realm, and I’m takin what’s mine.”

He started around the counter. Junior grabbed him by the back of the shirt and the seat of the pants, whirled him around, and ran him toward the front of the store.

“Hey!” Sam shouted as his feet bicycled above the old oiled boards. “Take your hands off me! Take your fucking hands—”

Out through the door and down the steps, Junior holding the old man out in front of him. He was light as a bag of feathers. And Christ, he was farting ! Pow-pow-pow, like a damn machine gun!

Stubby Norman’s panel truck was parked at the curb, the one with FURNITURE BOUGHT & SOLD and TOP PRICES FOR ANTIQUES on the side. Stubby himself stood beside it with his mouth open. Junior didn’t hesitate. He ran the blabbering old drunk headfirst into the side of the truck. The thin metal gave out a mellow BONNG!

It didn’t occur to Junior that he might have killed the smelly fuck until Sloppy Sam dropped like a rock, half on the sidewalk and half in the gutter. But it took more than a smack against the side of an old truck to kill Sam Verdreaux. Or silence him. He cried out, then just began to cry. He got to his knees. Scarlet was pouring down his face from his scalp, where the skin had split. He wiped some away, looked at it with disbelief, then held out his dripping fingers.

Foot traffic on the sidewalk had halted so completely that someone might have called a game of Statues. Pedestrians stared with wide eyes at the kneeling man holding out a palmful of blood.

“I’ll sue this whole fuckin town for police brutality!” Sam bawled. “AND I’LL WIN!”