Stephen King - Firestarter

“He’s gonna think it’s bad news,” John said.

“That’s a big ten-four.”

The Juice laughed again. Up ahead the stop-and-go light that marked the Northway ramp gleamed in the dark. OJ put his hand on the walnut stock of The Windsucker. Just in case.

The van passed them by, backwashing cool air… and then its brakelights flashed brighter and it swerved over into the breakdown lane about fifty yards farther up.

“Thank God,” Andy said softly. “You let me do the talking, Charlie.”

“All right, Daddy.” She sounded apathetic. The dark circles were back under her eyes. The van was backing up as they walked toward it. Andy’s head felt like a slowly swelling lead balloon.

There was a vision from the Thousand and One Nights painted on the side-caliphs, maidens hiding under gauzy masks, a carpet floating mystically in the air. The carpet was undoubtedly meant to be red, but in the light of turnpike sodiums it was the dark maroon of drying blood.

Andy opened the passenger door and boosted Charlie up and in. He followed her. “Thanks, mister,” he said. “Saved our lives.”

“My pleasure,” the driver said. “Hi, little stranger.”

“Hi,” Charlie said in a small voice.

The driver checked the outside mirror, drove down the breakdown lane at a steadily increasing pace, and then crossed into the travel lane. Glancing past Charlie’s slightly bowed head, Andy felt a touch of guilt: the driver was exactly the sort of young man Andy himself always passed by when he saw him standing on the shoulder with his thumb out. Big but lean, he wore a heavy black beard that curled down to his chest and a big felt hat that looked like a prop in a movie about feudin Kentucky hillbillies. A cigarette that looked home rolled was cocked in the corner of his mouth, curling up smoke. Just a cigarette, by the smell; no sweet odor of cannabis.

“Where you headed, my man?” the driver asked.

“Two towns up the line,” Andy said.

“Hastings Glen?”

“That’s right.”

The driver nodded. “On the run from someone, I guess.”

Charlie tensed and Andy put a soothing hand on her back and rubbed gently until she loosened up again. He had detected no menace in the driver’s voice.

“There was a process server at the airport,” he said.

The driver grinned-it was almost hidden beneath his fierce beard-plucked the cigarette from his mouth, and offered it delicately to the wind sucking just outside his half-open vent window. The slipstream gulped it down.

“Something to do with the little stranger here is my guess,” he said.

“Not far wrong,” Andy said.

The driver fell silent. Andy settled back and tried to cope with his headache. It seemed to have leveled off at a final screaming pitch. Had it ever been this bad before? Impossible to tell. Each time he overdid it, it seemed like the worst ever. It would be a month before he dared use the push again. He knew that two towns up the line was not nearly far enough, but it was all he could manage tonight. He was tipped over. Hastings Glen would have to do.

“Who do you pick, man?” the driver asked him.

“Huh?”

“The Series. The San Diego Padres in the World Series-how do you figure that?”

“Pretty far out,” Andy agreed. His voice came from far away, a tolling undersea bell.

“You okay, man? You look pale.”

“Headache,” Andy said. “Migraine.”

“Too much pressure,” the driver said. “I can dig it. You staying at a hotel? You need some cash? I could let you have five. Wish it was more, but I’m on my way to California, and I got to watch it careful. Just like the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath.”

Andy smiled gratefully. “I think we’re okay.”

“Fine.” He glanced at Charlie, who had dozed off: “Pretty little girl, my man. Are you watching out for her?”

“As best I can,” Andy said.

“All right,” the driver said. “That’s the name of that tune.”

Hastings Glen was little more than a wide place in the road; at this hour all the traffic lights in town had turned to blinkers. The bearded driver in the hillbilly hat took them up the exit ramp, through the sleeping town, and down Route 40 to the Slumberland Motel, a redwood place with the skeletal remains of a harvested cornfield in back and a pinkish-red neon sign out front that stuttered the nonword VA A CY into the dark. As her sleep deepened, Charlie had tilted farther and farther to the left, until her head was resting on the driver’s blue-jeaned thigh. Andy had offered to shift her, and the driver shook his head.

“She’s fine, man. Let her sleep.” “Would you mind dropping us off a little bit past?” Andy asked. It was hard to think, but this caution came almost intuitively.

“Don’t want the night man to know you don’t have a car?” The driver smiled. “Sure, man. But a place like that, they wouldn’t give a squirt if you pedaled in on a unicycle.” The van’s tires crunched the gravel shoulder. “You positive you couldn’t use five?”

“I guess I could,” Andy said reluctantly. “Would you write down your address for me?

I’ll mail it back to you.”

The driver’s grin reappeared. “My address is ‘in transit,'” he said, getting out his wallet. “But you may see my happy smiling face again, right? Who knows. Grab onto Abe, man.” He handed the five to Andy and suddenly Andy was crying-not a lot, but crying.

“No, man,” the driver said kindly. He touched the back of Andy’s neck lightly. “Life is short and pain is long and we were all put on this earth to help each other. The comic-book philosophy of Jim Paulson in a nutshell. Take good care of the little stranger.”

“Sure,” Andy said, brushing his eyes. He put the five-dollar bill in the pocket of his corduroy coat.

“Charlie? Hon? Wake up. Just a little bit longer now.”

Three minutes later Charlie was leaning sleepily against him while he watched Jim Paulson go up the road to a closed restaurant, turn around, and then head back past them toward the Interstate. Andy raised his hand. Paulson raised his in return. Old Ford van with the Arabian Nights on the side, jinns and grand viziers and a mystic, floating carpet. Hope California’s good to you, guy, Andy thought, and then the two of them walked back toward the Slumberland Motel.

“I want you to wait for me outside and out of sight,” Andy said. “Okay?”

“Okay, Daddy.” Very sleepy.

He left her by an evergreen shrub and walked over to the office and rang the night bell. After about two minutes, a middle-aged man in a bathrobe appeared, polishing his glasses. He opened the door and let Andy in without a word.

“I wonder if I could have the unit down on the end of the left wing,” Andy said. “I parked there.”

“This time of year, you could have all of the west wing if you wanted it,” the night man said, and smiled around a mouthful of yellow dentures. He gave Andy a printed index card and a pen advertising business supplies. A car passed by outside, silent headlights that waxed and waned.

Andy signed the card Bruce Rozelle. Bruce was driving a 1978 Vega, New York license LMS 240. He looked at the blank marked ORGANIZATION/ COMPANY for a moment, and then, in a flash of inspiration (as much as his aching head would allow), he wrote United Vending Company of America. And checked CASH under form of payment.

Another car went by out front.

The clerk initialed the card and tucked it away. “That’s seventeen dollars and fifty cents.”

“Do you mind change?” Andy asked. “I never did get a chance to cash up, and I’m dragging around twenty pounds of silver. I hate these country milk runs.”