Stephen King - Firestarter

Charlie heard them talking in the kitchen. She fumbled for the Big Ben on her dresser and brought it close to her face. It was ten o'clock. She had been asleep only an hour and a half.

“-going to do?” Norma asked.

It was wrong to eavesdrop, but how could she help it? And they were talking about her; she knew it.

“I don’t know,” Irv said.

“Have you thought anymore about the paper?”

Papers , Charlie thought. Daddy wanted to talk to the papers. Daddy said it would be all right then . “Which one?” Irv asked. “The Hastings Bugle? They can put it right next to the A amp;P ad and this week’s shows at the Bijou.” “It was what her father was planning to do.” “Norma,” he said. “I could take her to New York City. I could take her to the Times . And what would happen if four guys pulled guns and started shooting in the lobby?” Charlie was all ears now. Norma’s footfalls crossed the kitchen; there was the rattle of the teapot’s lid, and what she said in reply was mostly lost under running water.

Irv said, “Yeah, I think it might happen. And I tell you what might be even worse, as much as I love her. She might get the drop on them . And if it got out of control, like it did at that place where they kept her… well, there’s pretty nearly eight million people in New York City, Norma. I just feel like I’m too old to take a risk like that.”

Norma’s footfalls crossed back to the table again, the old flooring of the farmhouse creaking comfortably beneath them. “But, Irv, listen to me now,” she said. Norma spoke carefully and slowly, as if she had been thinking this out carefully over a long period of time. “Even a little paper, even a little weekly like the Bugle , they’re hooked into those AP tickers. News comes from everyplace these days. Why, just two years ago a little paper in Southern California won the Pulitzer Prize for some news story, and they had a circulation of under fifteen hundred!”

He laughed, and Charlie suddenly knew he had taken her hand across the table. “You’ve been studying on this, haven’t you?”

“Yes I have, and there’s no reason to laugh at me for it, Irv Manders! This is serious, a serious business! We’re in a box! How long can we keep her here before somebody finds out? You took her sapping out in the woods just this afternoon-”

“Norma, I wasn’t laughin at you, and the child has got to get out sometime-”

“Don’t you think I know that? I didn’t say no, did I? That’s just it! A growing child needs fresh air, exercise. Got to have those things if you’re going to have any appetite, and she’s-”

“Peckish, I know.”

“Pale and peckish, that’s right. So I didn’t say no. I was glad to see you take her. But, Irv, what if Johnny Gordon or Ray Parks had been out today and had just happened to drift over to see what you were doing, like they sometimes do?”

“Honey, they didn’t.” But Irv sounded uneasy. “Not this time! Not the time before! But Irv, it can’t go on! We been lucky already, and you know it” Her footsteps crossed the kitchen again, and then there was the sound of tea being poured. “Yeah,” Irv said. “Yeah, I know we have. But… thanks, darlin.”

“Welcome,” she said, sitting down again. “And never mind the buts, either. You know it only takes one person, or maybe two. It’ll spread. It’ll get out, Irv, that we got a little girl up here. Never mind what it’s doing to her; what happens if it gets back to them?”

In the darkness of the back room, Charlie’s arms rashed out in goosebumps.

Slowly, Irv answered her. “I know what you’re saying, Norma. We got to do something, and I keep going over and over it in my head. A little paper… well, it’s not just sure enough. You know we’ve got to get this story out right if we’re going to make that girl safe for the rest of her life. If she’s going to be safe, a lot of people have got to know she exists and what she can do-isn’t that right? A lot of people.”

Norma Manders stirred restlessly but said nothing.

Irv pressed on. “We got to do it right for her, and we got to do it right for us. Because it could be our lives at stake, too. Me, I’ve already been shot once. I believe that. I love her like my own, and I know you do, too, but we got to be realists about it, Norma. She could get us killed.”

Charlie felt her face grow hot with shame… and with terror. Not for herself but for them. What had she brought on their house? “And it’s not just us or her. You remember what that man Tarkington said. The files he showed us. “It’s your brother and my nephew Fred and Shelley, and-““-and all those people back in Poland,” Norma said. “Well, maybe he was only bluffing about that. I pray to God he was. It’s hard for me to believe anyone could get that low.” Norma said grimly, “They’ve been pretty low already.”

“Anyway,” Irv said, “we know they’ll follow through on as much as they can, the dirty bastards. The shit is going to fly. All I’m saying, Norma, is I don’t want the shit to fly to no good purpose. If we’re going to make a move, I want it to be a good one. I don’t want to go to some country weekly and then have them get wind of it and squash it. They could do it. They could do it.”

“But what does that leave?”

“That,” Irv said heavily, “is what I keep tryin to figure out. A paper or a magazine, but one they won’t think of. It’s got to be honest, and it ought to be nationwide. But most of all, it can’t have any ties to the government or to the government’s ideas.”

“You mean to the Shop,” she said flatly. “Yeah. That’s what I mean.” There was the soft sound of Irv sipping his tea. Charlie lay in her bed, listening, waiting.

… it could be our lives at stake, too… I’ve already been shot once… I love her like my own, and I know you do, too, but we got to be realists about it, Norma… she could get us killed.

(no please I)

(she could get us killed like she got her mother killed)

(no please please don’t don’t say that)

(like she got her daddy killed)

(please stop)

Tears rolled across her side-turned face, catching in her ears, wetting the pillowcase. “Well, we’ll think on it some more,” Norma said finally. “There’s an answer to this, Irv. Somewhere.” “Yeah. I hope so.” “And in the meantime,” she said, “we just got to hope no one knows she’s here.” Her voice suddenly kindled with excitement. “Irv, maybe if we got a lawyer-”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’m done in, Norma. And no one knows she’s here yet.”

But someone did. And the news had already begun to spread.

Until he was in his late sixties, Dr. Hofferitz, an inveterate bachelor, had slept with his longtime housekeeper, Shirley McKenzie. The sex part of it had slowly dried up: the last time, as well as Hofferitz could recall, had been about fourteen years before, and that had been something of an anomaly. But the two of them had remained close; in fact, with the sex gone, the friendship had deepened and had lost some of that tense prickliness that seems to be at the center of most sexual relationships. Their friendship had become of that platonic variety that seems to genuinely obtain only in the very young and in the very old of the opposite sex.

Still, Hofferitz held onto his knowledge of the Manderses” “boarder” for better than three months. Then, one night in February, after three glasses of wine while he and Shirley (who had just that January turned seventy-five) were watching television, he told her the whole story, after swearing her to complete secrecy.