Stephen King - Under the Dome

“Ma’am, didn’t your husband—?”

“Howie rarely talked about his cases, but this one he did talk about. It troubled him, I think. I want to see if your story matches his. If it does, we can talk about other matters. If it doesn’t, I’ll invite you to leave, although you may take your bottle of water with you.”

Barbie pointed to the little red shed by the left corner of the house. “That your gennie?”

“Yes.”

“If I change out the canister while we talk, will you be able to hear me?”

“Yes.”

“And you want the whole deal, right?”

“Yes indeed. And if you call me ma’am again, I may have to brain you.”

The door of the little generator shed was held shut with a hook-and-eye of shiny brass. The man who had lived here until yesterday had taken care of his things… although it was a shame about that lone canister. Barbie decided that, no matter how this conversation went, he would take it upon himself to try and get her a few more tomorrow.

In the meantime, he told himself, tell her everything she wants to know about that night. But it would be easier to tell with his back turned; he didn’t like saying the trouble had happened because Angie McCain had seen him as a slightly overage boy-toy.

Sunshine Rule, he reminded himself, and told his tale.

What he remembered most clearly about last summer was the James McMurtry song that seemed to be playing everywhere—“Talkin’ at the Texaco,” it was called. And the line he remembered most clearly was the one about how in a small town “we all must know our place.” When Angie started standing too close to him while he was cooking, or pressing a breast against his arm while she reached for something he could have gotten for her, the line recurred. He knew who her boyfriend was, and he knew that Frankie DeLesseps was part of the town’s power structure, if only by virtue of his friendship with Big Jim Rennie’s son. Dale Barbara, on the other hand, was little more than a drifter. In the Chester’s Mill scheme of things, he had no place.

One evening she had reached around his hip and given his crotch a light squeeze. He reacted, and he saw by her mischievous grin that she’d felt him react.

“You can have one back, if you want,” she said. They’d been in the kitchen, and she’d twitched the hem of her skirt, a short one, up a little, giving him a quick glimpse of frilly pink underwear. “Fair’s fair.”

“I’ll pass,” he said, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

He’d seen similar hijinks in half a dozen restaurant kitchens, had even played along from time to time. It might have amounted to no more than a young girl’s passing letch for an older and moderately good-looking co-worker. But then Angie and Frankie broke up, and one night when Barbie was dumping the swill in the Dumpster out back after closing, she’d put a serious move on him.

He turned around and she was there, slipping her arms around his shoulders and kissing him. At first he kissed her back. Angie unlocked one arm long enough to take his hand and put it on her left breast. That woke his brain up. It was good breast, young and firm. It was also trouble. She was trouble. He tried to pull back, and when she hung on one-handed (her nails now biting into the nape of his neck) and tried to thrust her hips against him, he pushed her away with a little more force than he had intended. She stumbled against the Dumpster, glared at him, touched the seat of her jeans, and glared harder.

“Thanks! Now I’ve got crap all over my pants!”

“You should know when to let go,” he said mildly.

“You liked it!”

“Maybe,” he said, “but I don’t like you.” And when he saw the hurt and anger deepen on her face, he added: “I mean I do, just not that way.” But of course people have a way of saying what they really mean when they’re shaken up.

Four nights later, in Dipper’s, someone poured a glass of beer down the back of his shirt. He turned and saw Frankie DeLesseps.

“Did you like that, Baaarbie ? If you did, I can do it again—it’s two-buck pitcher night. Of course, if you didn’t, we can take it outside.”

“I don’t know what she told you, but it’s wrong,” Barbie said. The jukebox had been playing—not the McMurtry song, but that was what he heard in his head: We all must know our place.

“What she told me is she said no and you went ahead and fucked her anyway. What do you outweigh her by? Hunnert pounds? That sounds like rape to me.”

“I didn’t.” Knowing it was probably hopeless.

“You want to go outside, motherfuck, or are you too chicken?”

“Too chicken,” Barbie said, and to his surprise, Frankie went away. Barbie decided he’d had enough beer and music for one night and was getting up to go when Frankie returned, this time not with a glass but a pitcher.

“Don’t do that,” Barbie said, but of course Frankie paid no attention. Splash, in the face. A Bud Light shower. Several people laughed and applauded drunkenly.

“You can come out now and settle this,” Frankie said, “or I can wait. Last call’s comin, Baaarbie. ”

Barbie went, realizing it was then or later, and believing that if he decked Frankie fast, before a lot of people could see, that would end it. He could even apologize and repeat that he’d never been with Angie. He wouldn’t add that Angie had been coming on to him, although he supposed a lot of people knew it (certainly Rose and Anson did). Maybe, with a bloody nose to wake him up, Frankie would see what seemed so obvious to Barbie: this was the little twit’s idea of payback.

At first it seemed that it might work out that way. Frankie stood flat-footed on the gravel, his shadow cast two different ways by the glare of the sodium lights at either end of the parking lot, his fists held up like John L. Sullivan. Mean, strong, and stupid: just one more smalltown brawler. Used to putting his opponents down with one big blow, then picking them up and hitting them a bunch of little ones until they cried uncle.

He shuffled forward and uncorked his not-so-secret weapon: an uppercut Barbie avoided by the simple expedient of cocking his head slightly to one side. Barbie countered with a straight jab to the solar plexus. Frankie went down with a stunned expression on his face.

“We don’t have to—” Barbie began, and that was when Junior Rennie hit him from behind, in the kidneys, probably with his hands laced together to make one big fist. Barbie stumbled forward. Carter Thibodeau was there to meet him, stepping from between two parked cars and throwing a roundhouse. It might have broken Barbie’s jaw if it had connected, but Barbie got his arm up in time. That accounted for the worst of his bruises, still an unlovely yellow when he tried to leave town on Dome Day.

He twisted to one side, understanding this had been a planned ambush, knowing he had to get out before someone was really hurt. Not necessarily him. He was willing to run; he wasn’t proud. He got three steps before Melvin Searles tripped him up. Barbie sprawled in the gravel on his belly and the kicking started. He covered his head, but a squall of bootleather pounded his legs, ass, and arms. One caught him high in the rib cage just before he managed to knee-scramble behind Stubby Norman’s used-furniture panel truck.

His good sense left him then, and he stopped thinking about running away. He got up, faced them, then held out his hands to them, palms up and fingers wiggling. Beckoning. The slot he was standing in was narrow. They’d have to come one by one.

Junior tried first; his enthusiasm was rewarded with a kick in the belly. Barbie was wearing Nikes rather than boots, but it was a hard kick and Junior folded up beside the panel truck, woofing for breath. Frankie scrambled over him and Barbie popped him twice in the face—stinging shots, but not quite hard enough to break anything. Good sense had begun to reassert itself.