Stephen King - The Stand

“I know. Are you going back to Portland?”

“I’ll stay here tonight and call you in the morning. But it’s your decision, Fran. If you decide, you know, that an abortion is the thing, I’ll scrape up the cash.”

“Pun intended?”

“No,” he said. “Not at all.” He slid across the seat and kissed her chastely.

“I love you, Fran.”

I don’t believe you do, she thought. Suddenly I don’t believe it at all… but I’ll accept in good grace. I can do that much.

“All right,” she said quietly.

“It’s the Lighthouse Motel. Call if you want.”

“Okay.” She slid behind the wheel, suddenly feeling very tired. Her tongue ached miserably where she had bitten it.

He walked to where his bike was locked to the iron railing and coasted it back to her. “Wish you’d call, Fran.”

She smiled artificially. “We’ll see. So long, Jess.”

She put the Volvo in gear, turned around, and drove across the lot to the Shore Road. She could see Jess standing by his bike yet, the ocean at his back, and for the second time that day she mentally accused him of knowing exactly what kind of picture he was making. This time, instead of being irritated, she felt a little bit sad. She drove on, wondering if the ocean would ever look the way it had looked to her before all of this had happened. Her tongue hurt miserably. She opened her window wider and spat. All white and all right this time. She could smell the salt of the ocean strongly, like bitter tears.

Norm Bruett woke up at quarter past ten in the morning to the sound of kills fighting outside the bedroom window and country music from the radio in the kitchen.

He went to the back door in his saggy shorts and undershirt, threw it open, and yelled: “You kids shutcha heads!”

A moment’s pause. Luke and Bobby looked around from the old and rusty dump truck they had been arguing over. As always when he saw his kids, Norm felt dragged two ways at once. His heart ached to see them wearing hand-me-downs and Salvation Army giveouts like the ones you saw the nigger children in east Arnette wearing; and at the same time a horrible, shaking anger would sweep through him, making him want to stride out there and beat the living shit out of them.

“Yes, Daddy,” Luke said in a subdued way. He was nine.

“Yes, Daddy,” Bobby echoed. He was seven going on eight. Norm stood for a moment, glaring at them, and slammed the door shut. He stood for a moment, looking indecisively at the pile of clothes he had worn yesterday. They were lying at the foot of the sagging double bed where he had dropped them.

That slutty bitch, he thought. She didn’t even hang up my duds.

“Lila!” he bawled.

There was no answer. He considered ripping the door open again and asking Luke where the hell she had gone. It wasn’t donated commodities day until next week and if she was down at the employment office in Braintree again she was an even bigger fool than he thought.

He didn’t bother to ask the kids. He felt tired and he had a queasy, thumping headache. Felt like a hangover, but he’d only had three beers down at Hap’s the night before. That accident had been a hell of a thing. The woman and the baby dead in the car, the man, Campion, dying on the way to the hospital. By the time Hap had gotten back, the State patrol had come and gone, and the wrecker, and the Braintree undertaker’s hack. Vic Palfrey had given the Laws a statement for all five of them. The undertaker, who was also the county coroner, refused to speculate on what might have hit them.

“But it ain’t cholera. And don’t you go scarin people sayin it is. There’ll be an autopsy and you can read about it in the paper.”

Miserable little pissant, Norm thought, slowly dressing himself in yesterday’s clothes. His headache was turning into a real blinder. Those kids had better be quiet or they were going to have a pair of broken arms to mouth off about. Why the hell couldn’t they have school the whole year round?

He considered tucking his shirt into his pants, decided the President probably wouldn’t be stopping by that day, and shuffled out into the kitchen in his sock feet. The bright sunlight coming in the east windows made him squint.

The cracked Philco radio over the stove sang:

But bay-yay-yaby you can tell me if anyone can,

Baby, can you dig your man?

He’s a righteous man,

Tell me baby, can you dig your man?

Things had come to a pretty pass when they had to play nigger rock and roll music like that on the local country music station. Norm turned it off before it could split his head. There was a note by the radio and he picked it up, narrowing his eyes to read it.

Dear Norm,

Sally Hodges says she needs somebody to sit her kids this morning and says shell give me a dolar. Ill be back for luntch. Theres sassage if you want it. I love you honey.

Lila.

Norm put the note back and just stood there for a moment, thinking it over and trying to get the sense of it in his mind. It was goddam hard to think past the headache. Babysitting… a dollar. For Ralph Hodges’s wife.

The three elements slowly came together in his mind. Lila had gone off to sit Sally Hodges’s three kids to earn a lousy dollar and had stuck him with Luke and Bobby. By God it was hard times when a man had to sit home and wipe his kids’ noses so his wife could go and scratch out a lousy buck that wouldn’t even buy them a gallon of gas. That was hard fucking times.

Dull anger came to him, making his head ache even worse. He shuffled slowly to the Frigidaire, bought when he had been making good overtime, and opened it. Most of the shelves were empty, except for leftovers Lila had put up in refrigerator dishes. He hated those little plastic Tupperware dishes. Old beans, old corn, a leftover dab of chili… nothing a man liked to eat. Nothing in there but little Tupperware dishes and three little old sausages done up in Handi-Wrap. He bent, looking at them, the familiar helpless anger now compounded by the dull throb in his head. Those sausages looked like somebody had cut the cocks off’n three of those pygmies they had down in Africa or South America or wherever the fuck it was they had them. He didn’t feel like eating anyway. He felt damn sick, when you got right down to it.

He went over to the stove, scratched a match on the piece of sandpaper nailed to the wall beside it, lit the front gas ring, and put on the coffee. Then he sat down and waited dully for it to boil. Just before it did, he had to scramble his snotrag out of his back pocket to catch a big wet sneeze. Coming down with a cold, he thought. Isn’t that something nice on top of everything else? But it never occurred to him to think of the phlegm that had been running out of that fellow Campion’s pump the night before.

Hap was in the garage bay putting a new tailpipe on Tony Leominster’s Scout and Vic Palfrey was rocking back on a folding camp chair, watching him and drinking a Dr. Pepper when the bell dinged out front.

Vic squinted. “It’s the State Patrol,” he said. “Looks like your cousin, there. Joe Bob.”

“Okay.”

Hap came out from beneath the Scout, wiping his hands on a ball of waste. On his way through the office he sneezed heavily. He hated summer colds. They were the worst.

Joe Bob Brentwood, who was almost six and a half feet tall, was standing by the back of his cruiser, filling up. Beyond him, the three pumps Campion had driven over the night before were neatly lined up like dead soldiers.

“Hey Joe Bob!” Hap said, coming out.

“Hap, you sumbitch,” Joe Bob said, putting the pump handle on automatic and stepping over the hose. “You lucky this place still standin this morning.”