Стивен Кинг: If It Bleeds

He looked at me, blue eyes bright beneath his shaggy white brows. “I can do that out here in the williwags?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The reception is terrific, thanks to the new tower. You’ve got four bars.”

“Bars?”

“Never mind, just make your call. I’ll leave you alone while you do it, just wave out the window when you’re—”

“No need. This won’t take long, and I don’t need privacy.”

He touched the numbers tentatively, as if he expected to set off an explosion. Then, just as tentatively, he raised the iPhone to his ear, looking at me for confirmation. I nodded encouragingly. He listened, spoke to someone (too loud at first), and then, after a short wait, to someone else. So I was right there when Mr. Harrigan sold all of his Coffee Cow stock, a transaction amounting to who knows how many thousands of dollars.

When he was finished, he figured out how to go back to the home screen. From there he opened Safari again. “Is Forbes on here?”

I checked. It wasn’t. “But if you’re looking for an article from Forbes you already know about, you can probably find it, because someone will have posted it.”

“Posted—?”

“Yeah, and if you want info about something, Safari will search for it. You just have to google it. Look.” I went over to his chair and entered Coffee Cow in the search field. The phone considered, then spewed a number of hits, including the Wall Street Journal article he’d called his broker about.

“Will you look at this,” he marveled. “It’s the Internet.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, thinking Well, duh .

“The worldwide web.”

“Yeah.”

“Which has been around how long?”

You should know this stuff , I thought. You’re a big businessman, you should know this stuff even if you’re retired, because you’re still interested .

“I don’t know exactly how long it’s been around, but people are on it all the time. My dad, my teachers, the cops… everyone, really.” More pointedly: “Including your companies, Mr. Harrigan.”

“Ah, but they’re not mine anymore. I do know a little, Craig, as I know a little about various television shows even though I don’t watch television. I have a tendency to skip the technology articles in my newspapers and magazines, because I have no interest. If you wanted to talk bowling alleys or film distribution networks, that would be a different matter. I keep my hand in, so to speak.”

“Yeah, but don’t you see… those businesses are using the technology. And if you don’t understand it…”

I didn’t know how to finish, at least without straying beyond the bounds of politeness, but it seemed he did. “I will be left behind. That’s what you’re saying.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” I said. “Hey, you’re retired, after all.”

“But I don’t want to be considered a fool ,” he said, and rather vehemently. “Do you think Chick Rafferty was surprised when I called and told him to sell Coffee Cow? Not at all, because he’s undoubtedly had half a dozen other major clients pick up the phone and tell him to do the same. Some are no doubt people with inside information. Others, though, just happen to live in New York or New Jersey and get the Journal on the day it’s published and find out that way. Unlike me, stashed away up here in God’s country.”

I again wondered why he’d come to begin with—he certainly had no relatives in town—but this didn’t seem like the time to ask.

“I may have been arrogant.” He brooded on this, then actually smiled. Which was like watching the sun break through heavy cloud cover on a cold day. “I have been arrogant.” He raised the iPhone. “I’m going to keep this after all.”

The first thing that rose to my lips was thank you , which would have been weird. I just said, “Good. I’m glad.”

He glanced at the Seth Thomas on the wall (and then, I was amused to see, checked it against the time on the iPhone). “Why don’t we just read a single chapter today, since we’ve spent so much time talking?”

“Fine with me,” I said, although I would gladly have stayed longer and read two or even three chapters. We were getting near the end of The Octopus by a guy named Frank Norris, and I was anxious to see how things turned out. It was an old-fashioned novel, but full of exciting stuff just the same.

When we finished the shortened session, I watered Mr. Harrigan’s few indoor plants. This was always my last chore of the day, and only took a few minutes. While I did it, I saw him playing with the phone, turning it on and off.

“I suppose if I’m going to use this thing, you better show me how to use it,” he said. “How to keep it from going dead, to start with. The charge is already dropping, I see.”

“You’ll be able to figure most of it out on your own,” I said. “It’s pretty easy. As for charging it, there’s a cord in the box. You just plug it into the wall. I can show you a few other things, if you—”

“Not today,” he said. “Tomorrow, perhaps.”

“Okay.”

“One more question, though. Why could I read that article about Coffee Cow, and look at that map of proposed closing sites?”

The first thing that came to mind was Hillary’s answer about climbing Mount Everest, which we had just read about in school: Because it’s there . But he might have seen that as smartass, which it sort of was. So I said, “I don’t get you.”

“Really? A bright boy like you? Think, Craig, think. I just read something for free that people pay good money for. Even with the Journal subscription rate, which is a good deal cheaper than buying off a newsstand, I pay ninety cents or so an issue. And yet with this…” He held up the phone just as thousands of kids would hold theirs up at rock concerts not many years later. “Now do you understand?”

When he put it that way I sure did, but I had no answer. It sounded—

“Sounds stupid, doesn’t it?” he asked, reading either my face or my mind. “Giving away useful information runs counter to everything I understand about successful business practices.”

“Maybe…”

“Maybe what? Give me your insights. I’m not being sarcastic. You clearly know more about this than I do, so tell me what you’re thinking.”

I was thinking about the Fryeburg Fair, where Dad and I went once or twice every October. We usually took my friend Margie, from down the road. Margie and I rode the rides, then all three of us ate doughboys and sweet sausages before Dad dragged us to look at the new tractors. To get to the equipment sheds, you had to go past the Beano tent, which was enormous. I told Mr. Harrigan about the guy out front with the microphone, telling the passing folks how you always got the first game for free.

He considered this. “A come-on? I suppose that makes a degree of sense. You’re saying you can only look at one article, maybe two or three, and then the machine… what? Shuts you out? Tells you if you want to play, you have to pay?”

“No,” I admitted. “I guess it’s not like the Beano tent after all, because you can look at as many as you want. At least, as far as I know.”

“But that’s crazy. Giving away a free sample is one thing, but giving away the store …” He snorted. “There wasn’t even an advertisement , did you notice that? And advertising is a huge income stream for newspapers and periodicals. Huge.”

He picked the phone up, stared at his reflection in the now blank screen, then put it down and peered at me with a queer, sour smile on his face.

“We may be looking at a huge mistake here, Craig, one being made by people who understand the practical aspects of a thing like this—the ramifications —no more than I do. An economic earthquake may be coming. For all I know, it’s already here. An earthquake that’s going to change how we get our information, when we get it, where we get it, and hence how we look at the world.” He paused. “And deal with it, of course.”