Stephen King - Insomnia

You must have the constitution of an ox.”

The wino gave her a puzzled look, then took a step backward and wiped his nose with the palm of one hand.

“Don’t worry,” Ralph reassured him, “my wife sees auras everywhere. She’s a very spiritual person.”

“Izzat so, now?”

,Uh-huh. She’s also very generous, and I think she’ll do quite a bit better by you than a little spare change. Won’t you, Alice?”

“He’ll just drink it up,” she said. “There’s no job in Dexter.”

“No, probably not,” Ralph said, fixing her with his eyes, “but his aura does look extremely healthy. Extremely.”

“You kinda got your own spiritual side, I guess,” the wino said.

His eyes were still shifting cautiously back and forth between Ralph and Lois, but there was a guarded flicker of hope in them.

“You know, that’s true,” Ralph said. “And just lately it’s really come to the fore.” He pursed his lips as if an interesting thought had just occurred to him, and inhaled. A bright green ray shot out of the panhandler’s aura, crossed the ten feet separating him from Ralph and Lois, and entered Ralph’s mouth. The taste was clear and at once identifiable: Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. It was rough and lowdown, but sort of pleasant, just the same-it had a workingman’s sparkle to it.

With the taste came that sense of returning strength, which was good, and a sharp-edged clarity of thought that was even better.

Lois, meanwhile, was holding out a twenty-dollar bill. The wino didn’t immediately see it, however; he was scowling up into the sky.

At that instant, another bright green ray quilled out of his aura.

It shot across the weedy clearing beside the cellar-hole like a brilliant flashlight beam and into Lois’s mouth and nose. The bill in her hand shook briefly.

[“Oh, God, that’s so good."’]

“Goddam jet-jockeys from Charleston Air Force Base!” the wino cried disapprovingly. “They ain’t s’pored to boom the sound-barrier till they get out over the ocean! I damn near wet my-” His eye fell on the bill between Lois’s fingers, and his scowl deepened. “Sa-aay, what kind of joke you think you pullin here? I ain’t stupid, you know.

Maybe I like a drink every now n then, but that don’t make me stupid.”

Give it time, Ralph thought. It will.

“No one thinks you’re stupid,” Lois said, “and it’s no joke.

Take the money, sir.”

The bum tried to hold onto his suspicious glower, but after another close look at Lois (and a quick side-glance at Ralph), it was overwhelmed by a large and winning smile. He stepped toward Lois, putting out his hand to take the money, which he had earned without even knowing it.

Lois raised her hand just before he could close his fingers on the bill. “Just mind you get something to eat as well as something to drink. And you might ask yourself if you’re happy with the way you’re living.”

“You’re absolutely right!” the wino cried enthusiastically. His eyes never left the bill between Lois’s fingers. “Absolutely, ma’am!

They got a program other side of the river, detox and rehab, you know.

I’m thinking about it. I really am. I think about it every damn day.”

But his eyes were still tacked to the twenty, and he was almost drooling. Lois gave Ralph a brief, doubtful look, then shrugged and let the bill pass from her fingers to his. “Thanks! Thanks, lady!”

His eyes shifted to Ralph. “Dis lady a real princess! I jus hope you know dat!”

“As a matter of fact, I do,”

Ralph favored Lois with a fond glance. he said.

Half an hour later, the two of them were walking between the rusty steel rails as they curved gently past the Municipal Golf Course… except they had drifted up a little higher above the Short-Time world after their meeting with the wino (perhaps because he had been a little high himself), and walking was not exactly what they were doing.

There was little or no effort involved, for one thing, and although their feet were moving, to Ralph it felt more like gliding than walking. Nor was he entirely sure they were visible to the Short-Time world; squirrels hopped unconcernedly about their feet, busy gathering supplies for the winter ahead, and once he saw Lois duck sharply as a wren almost parted her hair. The bird veered to the left and upward, as if realizing only at the last moment that there was a human in its flight-pattern. The golfers didn’t pay them any mind, either. Ralph’s opinion of golfers was that they were self-absorbed to the point of obsession, but he thought this lack of interest extreme, even SO. If he had seen a couple of neatly dressed adults strolling along a defunct GS amp;WM spur-line in the middle of the day, he thought he might have taken a brief time-out to try and think guess what they were up to and where they might be going.

I’d be especially curious about why the lady kept on muttering “Stay where you are, you darned old thing” and hitching at her skirt, Ralph thought, and grinned. But the golfers didn’t even spare them a glance, although a foursome bound for the ninth hole passed close enough so that Ralph could hear them worrying over a developing softness in the bond market. The idea that he and Lois had become invisible again-or at least very dim-began to seem more and more plausible to Ralph. Plausible… and worrisome. Time goes faster when you’re high, Old Dor had said.

The trail became fresher as they went west, and Ralph liked the drips and splashes which made it up less and less. Where the goop had fallen on the steel rails, it had eaten away the rust like corrosive acid. The weeds it had fallen on were black and dead-even the hardiest of them had died. As Ralph and Lois passed Derry Mum’s third green and entered a tangle of scrawny trees and undergrowth, Lois tugged at his sleeve. She pointed ahead. Large splotches of Atropos’s spoor gleamed like sick paint on the trunks of the trees now pressing in close to the tracks, and there were pools of it in some of the sunken dips between the old rads-places where crossties had once been, Ralph supposed.

[“We’re getting close to where he lives, Ralph.”] [“Yes. “I [“If he comes back and finds us in his place, what will we do?”] Ralph shrugged. He didn’t know, and wasn’t sure he cared. Let the forces that were moving them around like pawns on a chessboard-the ones Mr. C. and Mr.

L. had called the Higher Purpose-worry about that. If Atropos showed up, Ralph would try to yank out the little bald bugger’s tongue and strangle him with it.

And if that upset somebody’s applecart, too goddam bad. He couldn’t take responsibility for grand plans and Long-Time business; his job now was to watch out for Lois, who was at risk, and try to stop the carnage that was going to occur not far from here in just a few hours. And who knew? He might even find a little extra time along the way which he could use to try and protect his own partially rejuvenated hide. This was the stuff he had to do, and if the nasty little fuck got in Ralph’s way, one of them was going down. If that didn’t fit in with the big boys’ plans, tough titty.

Lois was picking most of this up from his aura-he could read that in her own when she touched his arm and he turned to look at her.

[“What does that mean, Ralph? That you’ll try to kill him if he gets in our way?”] He considered this, then nodded.

[“Yeah-that’s exactly what it means.”] She thought about it, then nodded.

[“Ralph?” He looked at her, eyebrows raised.

[“If it needs to be done, I’ll help you do it.”] He was absurdly touched by this… and at pains to hide the rest of his thinking from her: that the only reason she was still with him at all was so that he could keep a protective eye on her. That thought led him back toward her earrings, but he pushed the image of them away, not wanting her to see-or even suspect-them in his aura.