Стивен Кинг - The Colorado Kid

“Johnny Gravlin says, ‘He’s not asleep, Nancy, and he’s not unconscious, either. He’s not breathing.’

“She said later she knew that, she’d seen it, but she didn’t want to believe it. Accourse not, poor kid. So she says, ‘Maybe he is. Maybe he is asleep. You can’t always tell when a person’s breathing. Shake him, Johnny, see if he won’t wake up.’

“Johnny didn’t want to, but he also didn’t want to look like a chicken in front of his girlfriend, so he reached down—he had to steel himself to do it, he told me that years later after we’d had a couple of drinks down at the Breakers—and shook the guy’s shoulder. He said he knew for sure when he grabbed hold, because it didn’t feel like a real shoulder at all under there but like a carving of one. But he shook it all the same and said, ‘Wake up, mister, wake up and—’ He was gonna saydie right but thought that wouldn’t sound so good under the circumstances (thinkin a little bit like a politician even back then, maybe) and changed it to ‘—and smell the coffee!’

“He shook twice. First time, nothing happened. Second time, the guy’s head fell over on his left shoulder—Johnny had been shakin the right one—and the guy slid off the litter basket that’d been holding him up and went down on his side. His head thumped on the sand. Nancy screamed and ran back to the road, fast as she could…which was fast, I can tell you. If she hadn’t’ve stopped there, Johnny probably would’ve had to chase her all the way down to the end of Bay Street, and, I dunno, maybe right out to the end of Dock A. But shedid stop and he caught up to her and put his arm around her and said he was never so glad to feel live flesh underneath his arm. He told me he’s never forgotten how it felt to grip that dead man’s shoulder, and how it felt like wood under that white shirt.”

Dave stopped abruptly, and stood up. “I want a CocaCola out of the fridge,” he said. “My throat’s dry, and this is a long story. Anyone else want one?”

It turned out they all did, and since Stephanie was the one being entertained—if that was the word—she went after the drinks. When she came back, both of the old men were at the porch rail, looking out at the reach and the mainland on the far side. She joined them there, setting the old tin tray down on the wide rail and passing the drinks around.

“Where was I?” Dave asked, after he’d had a long sip of his.

“You know perfectly well where you were,” Vince said. “At the part where our future mayor and Nancy Arnault, who’s God knows where—probably California, the good ones always seem to finish up about as far from the Island as they can go without needing a passport—had found the Colorado Kid dead on Hammock Beach.”

“Ayuh. Well, John was for the two of em runnin right to the nearest phone, which would have been the one outside the Public Library, and callin George Wournos, who was the MooseLook constable in those days (long since gone to his reward, dear—ticker). Nancy had no problem with that, but she wanted Johnny to set ‘the man’ up again first. That’s what she called him: ‘the man.’ Never ‘the dead man’ or ‘the body,’ always ‘the man.’

“Johnny says, ‘I don’t think the police like you to move them, Nan.’

“Nancy says, ‘Youalready moved him, I just want you to put him back where he was.’

“Andhe says, ‘I only did it because you told me to.’

“To whichshe answers, ‘Please, Johnny, I can’t bear to look at him that way and I can’t bear tothink of him that way.’ Then she starts to cry, which of course seals the deal, and he goes back to where the body was, still bent at the waist like it was sitting but now with its left cheek lying on the sand.

“Johnny told me that night at the Breakers that he never could have done what she wanted if she hadn’t been right there watchin him and countin on him to do it, and you know, I believe that’s so. For a woman a man will do many things that he’d turn his back on in an instant when alone; things he’d back away from, nine times out of ten, even when drunk and with a bunch of his friends egging him on. Johnny said the closer he got to that man lying in the sand—only lying there with his knees up, like he was sitting in an invisible chair—the more sure he was that those closed eyes were going to open and the man was going to make a snatch at him. Knowing that the man was dead didn’t take that feeling away, Johnny said, but only made it worse. Still, in the end he got there, and he steeled himself, and he put his hands on those wooden shoulders, and he sat the man back up again with his back against that leaning litter basket. He said he got it in his mind that the litter basket was going to fall over and make a bang, and when it did he’d scream. But the basket didn’t fall and he didn’t scream. I am convinced in my heart, Steffi, that we poor humans are wired up to always think the worst is gonna happen because it so rarely does. Then what’s only lousy seems okay—almost good, in fact—and we can cope just fine.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Oh yes, ma’am! In any case, Johnny started away, then saw a pack of cigarettes that had fallen out on the sand. And because the worst was over and it was only lousy, he was able to pick em up—even reminding himself to tell George Wournos what he’d done in case the State Police checked for fingerprints and found his on the cellophane—and put em back in the breast pocket of the dead man’s white shirt. Then he went back to where Nancy was standing, hugging herself in her BCHS warmup jacket and dancing from foot to foot, probably cold in those skimpy shorts she was wearing. Although it was more than the cold she was feeling, accourse.

“In any case, she wasn’t cold for long, because they ran down to the Public Library then, and I’ll bet if anyone had had a stopwatch on em, it would have shown a record time for the halfmile, or close to it. Nancy had lots of quarters in the little change purse she carried in her warmup, and she was the one who called George Wournos, who was just then gettin dressed for work—he owned the Western Auto, which is now where the church ladies hold their bazaars.”

Stephanie, who had covered several for Arts ’N Things, nodded.

“George asked her if she was sure the man was dead, and Nancy said yes. Then he asked her to put Johnny on, and he asked Johnny the same question. Johnny also said yes. He said he’d shaken the man and that he was stiff as a board. He told George about how the man had fallen over, and the cigarettes falling out of his pocket, and how he’d put em back in, thinking George might give him hell for that, but he never did.Nobody ever did. Not much like a mystery show on TV, was it?”

“Not so far,” Stephanie said, thinking itdid remind her just a teensy bit of aMurder, She Wrote episode she’d seen once. Only given the conversation which had prompted this story, she didn’t think any Angela Lansbury figures would be showing up to solve the mystery…although someone must have madesome progress, Stephanie thought. Enough, at least, to know where the dead man had come from.

“George told Johnny that he and Nancy should hurry on back to the beach and wait for him,” Dave said. “Told em to make sure no one else went close. Johnny said okay. George said, ‘If you miss the seventhirty ferry, John, I’ll write you and your ladyfriend an excusenote.’ Johnny said that was the last thing in the world he was worried about. Then he and Nancy Arnault went back up there to Hammock Beach, only jogging instead of allout runnin this time.”

Stephanie could understand that. From Hammock Beach to the edge of Moosie Village was downhill. Going the other way would have been a tougher run, especially when what you had to run on was mostly spent adrenaline.