Stephen King - The Stand

Baker looked apologetically at Nick. “You know,” he said, “I do feel kind of dragged out. Maybe some rest—”

“Go home and lie down,” Nick wrote. “I’ll be careful. Besides, I have to earn enough to pay for those pills.”

“Nobody works so hard for you as a junkie,” Soames said, and cackled.

Baker picked up the two sheets of paper with Nick’s background on them. “Could I take these home for Janey to read? She took a real shine to you, Nick.”

Nick scrawled on the pad, “Sure can. She’s very nice.”

“One of a kind,” Baker said, and sighed as he buttoned his shirt back up.

“This fever’s comin on strong again. Thought I had it licked.”

“Take aspirin,” Soames said, latching his bag. “It’s that glandular infection I don’t like.”

“There’s a cigar box in the bottom desk drawer,” Baker said. “Petty cash fund. You can go out for lunch and get your medication on the way. Those boys are more dildoes than desperadoes. They’ll be okay. Just leave a voucher for how much money you take. I’ll get in touch with the State Police and you’ll be shut of them by late this afternoon.”

Nick made a thumb-and-forefinger circle.

“I’ve been trusting you a lot on short notice,” Baker said soberly, “but Janey says it’s all right. You have a care.”

Nick nodded.

Jane Baker had come in around six yesterday evening with a covered dish supper and a carton of milk.

Nick wrote, “Thanks very much. How’s your husband?”

She laughed, a small woman with chestnut brown hair, dressed prettily in a checked shirt and faded jeans. “He wanted to come down himself, but I talked him out of it. His fever was up so high this afternoon that it scared me, but it’s almost normal tonight. I think it’s because of the State Patrol. Johnny’s never really happy unless he can be mad at the State Patrol.”

Nick looked at her quizzically.

“They told him they couldn’t send anybody down for his prisoners until nine tomorrow morning. They’ve had a bad sick-day, twenty or more troopers out. And a lot of the people who are on have been fetching people to the hospital up at Camden or even Pine Bluff. There’s a lot of this sickness around. I think Am Soames is a lot more worried than he’s letting on.”

She looked worried herself. Then she took the two folded sheets of memo paper from her breast pocket.

“This is quite a story,” she said quietly, handing the papers back to him. “You’ve had just about the worst luck of anyone I ever heard of. I think the way you’ve risen above your handicaps is admirable. And I have to apologize again for my brother.”

Nick, embarrassed, could only shrug.

“I hope you’ll stay on in Shoyo,” she said, standing. “My husband likes you, and I do, too. Be careful of those men in there.”

“I will,” Nick wrote. “Tell the sheriff I hope he feels better.”

“I’ll take him your good wishes.”

She left then, and Nick passed a night of broken rest, getting up occasionally to check on his three wards. Desperadoes they were not; by ten o’clock they were all sleeping. Two town fellows came in to check and make sure Nick was all right, and Nick noticed that both of them seemed to have colds.

He dreamed oddly, and all he could remember upon waking was that he seemed to have been walking through endless rows of green corn, looking for something and terribly afraid of something else that seemed to be behind him.

This morning he was up early, carefully sweeping out the back of the jail and ignoring Billy Warner and Mike Childress. As he went out, Billy called after him: “Ray’s gonna be back, you know. And when he catches you, you’re gonna wish you were blind as well as deaf and dumb!”

Nick, his back turned, missed most of this.

Back in the office, he picked up an old copy of Time magazine and began to read. He considered putting his feet up on the desk and decided that would be a very good way to get in trouble if the sheriff came by.

By eight o’clock he was wondering uneasily if Sheriff Baker might have had a relapse in the night. Nick had expected him by now, ready to turn the three prisoners in his jail over to the county when the State Patrol came for them. Also, Nick’s stomach was rumbling uncomfortably. No one had showed up from the truck-stop down the road, and he looked at the telephone, more with disgust than with longing. He was quite fond of science fiction, picking up falling-apart paperbacks from time to time on the dusty back shelves of antique barns for a nickel or a dime, and he found himself thinking, not for the first time, that it was going to be a great day for the deaf-mutes of the world when the telephone viewscreens the science fiction novels were always predicting finally came into general use.

By quarter of nine he was acutely uneasy. He went to the door which gave on the cells and looked in.

Billy and Mike were both standing at their cell doors. Both of them had been banging on the bars with their shoes… which just went to show you that people who can’t talk only made up a small percentage of the world’s dummies. Vince Hogan was lying down. He only turned his head and stared at Nick when he came to the door. Hogan’s face was pallid except for a hectic flush on his cheeks, and there were dark patches under his eyes. Beads of sweat were standing out on his forehead. Nick met his apathetic, fevered gaze and realized that the man was sick. His uneasiness deepened.

“Hey, dummy, how about some brefus?” Mike called down to him. “An ole Vince there seems like he could use a doctor. Tattle-talein don’t agree with him, does it, Bill?”

Bill didn’t want to banter. “I’m sorry I yelled at you before, man. Vince, he’s sick, all right. He needs the doctor.”

Nick nodded and went out, trying to figure out what he should do next. He bent over the desk and wrote on the memo pad: “Sheriff Baker, or Whoever: I’ve gone to get the prisoners some breakfast and to see if I can hunt Dr. Soames up for Vincent Hogan. He appears to be really sick, not just playing possum. Nick Andros.”

He tore the sheet off the pad and left it in the middle of the desk. Then, tucking the pad into his pocket, he went out into the street.

The first thing that struck him was the still heat of the day and the smell of greenery. By afternoon it was going to be a scorcher. It was the sort of day when people like to get their chores and errands done early so they can spend the afternoon as quietly as possible, but to Nick, Shoyo’s main street looked strangely indolent this forenoon, more like a Sunday than a workday.

Most of the diagonal parking spaces in front of the stores were empty. A few cars and farm trucks were going up and down the street, but not many. The hardware store looked open, but the shades of the Mercantile Bank were still drawn, although it was past nine now.

Nick turned right, toward the truck-stop, which was five blocks down. He was on the corner of the third block when he saw Dr. Soames’s car moving slowly up the street toward him, weaving a little from side to side, as if with exhaustion. Nick waved vigorously, not sure if Soames would stop, but Soames pulled in at the curb, indifferently taking up four of the slanted parking spaces. He didn’t get out but merely sat behind the wheel. The look of the man shocked Nick. Soames had aged twenty years since he had last seen him bantering casually with the sheriff. It was partly exhaustion, but exhaustion couldn’t be the whole explanation—even Nick could see that. As if to confirm his thought, the doctor produced a wrinkled handkerchief from his breast pocket like an old magician doing a creaky trick that does not interest him much anymore, and sneezed into it repeatedly. When he was done he leaned his head back against the car’s seat, mouth half-open to draw breath. His skin looked so shiny and yellow that he reminded Nick of a dead person.