Stephen King - Sleeping Beauties

A familiar homeless woman, bundled in so many layers of garments that you couldn’t see her feet, crossed in front of his truck, pushing her shopping cart. She was talking to herself with a bright, amused expression. Maybe one of her personalities was planning a surprise birthday party for one of her other personalities. He sometimes thought it would be nice to be crazy, not crazy like Elaine seemed to think he was, but actually crazy, talking-to-yourself-and-pushing-a-shopping-cart-full-of-garbage-bags-and-the-top-half-of-a-male-mannequin crazy.

What reason did insane people have to worry? Crazy reasons, probably, though in his fantasy of madness, Frank liked to imagine it was simpler. Do I pour the milk and cereal over my head, or do I pour it all into the mailbox? If you were bonkers, perhaps that was a stressful decision. For Frank, there was the stress of the upcoming annual cutbacks in the Dooling Municipal Budget that might put him out of work, and there was the stress of trying to hold it together for the weekends when he saw his daughter, and then there was the stress of knowing that Elaine expected him not to be able to hold it together. His own wife rooting against him, how was that for stress? Milk and cereal over the head or into the mailbox, by comparison, he thought he could handle with no problem. Cereal over the head, milk in the mailbox. There. Problem solved.

The light turned green and Frank swung left onto Malloy.

On the opposite side of the street the homeless woman—Old Essie to the volunteers at the shelter, Essie Wilcox once upon a time—jounced her shopping cart up the short, grassy embankment that surrounded the high school parking lot. After she had gained the plateau of the pavement, she pushed toward the athletic fields and the scrub woods beyond, where she kept house in the warm months.

“Hurry along, children!” Essie spoke forward, as if to the rattling contents of her shopping cart, but actually addressing her invisible family of four identical little girls, who trailed behind in a row, like ducklings. “We need to be home for supper—or else we might end up as supper! In a witch’s pot!”

Essie chuckled but the girls began to weep and fuss.

“Oh, you silly-billy girls!” she said. “I was only kidding.”

Essie reached the edge of the parking lot and pushed her cart onto the football field. Behind her, the girls had cheered up. They knew that Mother would never let anything happen to them. They were good girls.

Evie was standing between two pallets of freshly cut pine boards on the left side of Adams Lumberyard when Unit Four shot past. She was screened from the rubberneckers standing outside the main building, but not from the highway. The responders paid no attention to her, however, although she was still wearing nothing but Truman Mayweather’s shirt on her body and Truman Mayweather’s blood on her face and arms. The cops had eyes only for the smoke rising on the edge of some extremely dry woods.

Terry Coombs sat forward and pointed. “See that big rock with TIFFANY JONES SUCKS spray-painted on it?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll see a dirt road just past it. Turn there.”

“You sure?” Roger Elway asked. “The smoke looks at least a mile further on.”

“Trust me. I’ve been out here before, back when Tru Mayweather considered himself a full-time trailer pimp and a part-time gentleman pot grower. I guess he moved up in the world.”

Unit Four skidded on the dirt, and then the tires caught hold. Roger bucketed along at forty, the county car sometimes bottoming out in spite of the heavy suspension. High weeds growing up the center hump whickered against the undercarriage. Now they could smell the smoke.

Terry grabbed the mic. “Unit Four to Base, Base, this is Four.”

“Four, this is Base,” Linny responded.

“We’ll be at the scene in three, as long as Roger doesn’t put us in the ditch.” Roger raised one hand from the wheel long enough to flash his partner the finger. “What’s the status on the FD?”

“They’re rolling all four engines, plus the ambo. Some of the volunteer guys, too. Should be right behind you. Watch out for the Avon Lady.”

“Avon Lady, got it. Four is out.”

Terry racked the mic just as the cruiser took a bounce that rendered them momentarily airborne. Roger brought the car to a skidding halt. The road ahead was littered with scraps of corrugated roofing, shattered propane canisters, plastic jugs, and shredded paper, some of it smoldering. He spotted a black and white disc that looked like a stove dial.

One wall of a shed was leaning against a dead tree that was blazing like a Tiki torch. Two pine trees close to what had been the rear of the shed were also on fire. So were the scrub bushes lining the side of the road.

Roger popped the trunk, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and began spraying white foam onto the undergrowth. Terry got the fire blanket and began flapping at the flaming debris in the road. FD would be here soon; the job right now was containment.

Roger trotted over, holding the extinguisher. “I’m empty, and you’re not doing shit. Let’s scat out of here before we get rear-ended, what do you think?”

“I think that’s an excellent idea. Let’s see what’s up at chez Mayweather.”

Sweat beaded across Roger’s forehead and glimmered in the sparse hairs of his pale yellow flattop. He squinted. “Shay what?”

Terry liked his partner all right, but he wouldn’t have wanted Roger on his Wednesday Quiz Bowl team down at the Squeaky Wheel. “Never mind. Drive.”

Roger threw himself behind the wheel. Terry scooted to the passenger side. A Dooling FD pumper came swaying around the turn forty yards behind them, its high sides brushing the boughs of the trees crowding the road. Terry waved to them, then unlocked the shotgun beneath the dash. Better safe than sorry.

They arrived in a clearing where a trailer painted the hideous turquoise of aquarium pebbles sat on jacklifters. The steps were concrete blocks. A rust-eaten F-150 sat on a pair of flat tires. A woman slumped on the tailgate, mousy brown hair hiding her face. She wore jeans and a halter top. Much of the skin on display was decorated with tattoos. Terry could read LOVErunning down her right forearm. Her feet were bare and caked with dirt. She was scrawny to the point of emaciation.

“Terry…” Roger inhaled and made a throat-clearing noise that was close to a retch. “Over there.”

What Terry saw made him think of a county fair midway game he’d played as a boy. A man stuck his head through a cardboard cutout of Popeye, and for a dime you could throw three plastic bags of colored water at him. Only that wasn’t colored water below the head protruding from the trailer’s wall.

An immense weariness filled Terry. His entire body seemed to gain weight, as if his innards had been turned to concrete. He had suffered this before, mostly at the scene of bad car accidents, and knew the feeling was transitory, but while it lasted, it was hellish. There was that moment when you looked at a child still strapped into his car seat but with his little body torn open like a laundry bag—or when you looked at a head sticking out of a trailer wall, the skin peeled down the cheeks by its cataclysmic passage—and you wondered why in the hell the world had been created in the first place. Good things were in short supply, and so much of the rest was downright rancid.

The woman sitting on the tailgate raised her head. Her face was pale, her eyes ringed with dark circles. She held out her arms to them, then immediately lowered them to her thighs again as if they were too heavy, just too heavy. Terry knew her; she’d been one of Tru Mayweather’s girls before he had gone into the meth business. Perhaps she was still here because she had been promoted to quasi-girlfriend—if you could call that a promotion.