Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

“Oh, don’t sound so concerned,” Al said. “It’s a new medication the doctors put me on. Supposed to have all kinds of side effects, but the only one I’ve got, at least so far, is the goddam rash. All over my back and sides. Nadie swore it was shingles, but I had the test and it’s just a rash. Itches like hell, though.”

“Just a rash,” Drew echoed. He wiped a hand across his mouth. CLOSED FOR FUNNERAL , he thought. “Well, that’s not so bad. You take care of yourself, Al.”

“I will. And I want to see that book when you finish it.” He paused. “Notice I said when , not if .”

“After Lucy, you’ll be first in line,” Drew said, and hung up. Good news. All good news. Al sounded strong. Like his old self. All fine, except for that damn rat.

Drew found he could laugh at that.

November was cold and snowy, but Drew Larson barely noticed. On the last day of the month, he watched (through the eyes of Sheriff Jim Averill) as Andy Prescott climbed the stairs to the gallows in the county seat. Drew was curious as to how the boy would take it. As it turned out—as the words spilled out—he did just fine. He had grown up. The tragedy (Averill knew it) was that the kid would never grow old. One drunken night and a fit of jealousy over a dancehall girl had put paid to everything that might have been.

On the first of December, Jim Averill turned in his badge to the circuit judge who had been in town to witness the hanging, then rode back to Bitter River, where he would pack his few things (one trunk would be enough) and say goodbye to his deputies, who had done a damn good job when the chips were down. Yes, even Jep Leonard, who was about as smart as a rock. Or sharp as a marble, take your pick.

On the second of December, the sheriff harnessed his horse to a light buggy, threw his trunk and saddle in the back, and headed west, thinking he might try his luck in California. The gold rush was over, but he longed to see the Pacific Ocean. He was unaware of Andy Prescott’s grief-stricken father, laid up behind a rock two miles out of town and looking down the barrel of a Sharps Big Fifty, the rifle which would become known as “the gun that changed the history of the west.”

Here came a light wagon, and sitting up there on the seat, boots on the splashboard, was the man responsible for his grief and spoiled hopes, the man who had killed his son. Not the judge, not the jury, not the hangman. No. That man down there. If not for Jim Averill, his son would be in Mexico now, with his long life—all the way into a new century!—ahead of him.

Prescott cocked the hammer. He laid the sights on the man in the wagon. He hesitated with his finger curled on the cold steel crescent of the trigger, deciding what to do in the forty seconds or so before the wagon breasted the next hill and disappeared from sight. Shoot? Or let him go?

Drew thought of adding one more sentence—He made up his mind—and didn’t. That would lead some readers, perhaps many, to believe Prescott had decided to shoot, and Drew wanted to leave that issue unresolved. Instead, he hit the space bar twice and typed.

He looked at those two words for quite a long time. He looked at the pile of manuscript between his laptop and his printer; with the work of this final session added, it would come in at just under three hundred pages.

I did it. Maybe it will be published and maybe it won’t, maybe I’ll do another and maybe I won’t, it doesn’t matter. I did it.

He put his hands over his face.

Lucy turned the last page two nights later and looked at him in a way he hadn’t seen in a very long time. Maybe not since the first year or two of their marriage, before the kids came.

“Drew, it’s amazing.”

He grinned. “Really? Not just saying that because your hubby wrote it?”

She shook her head violently. “No. It’s wonderful. A western! I never would have guessed. How did you get the idea?”

He shrugged. “It just came to me.”

“Did that horrible rancher shoot Jim Averill?”

“I don’t know,” Drew said.

“Well, a publisher may want you to put that in.”

“Then the publisher—if there ever is one—will find his want unsatisfied. And you’re sure it’s okay? You mean it?”

“Much better than okay. Are you going to show Al?”

“Yes. I’ll take a copy of the script over tomorrow.”

“Does he know it’s a western?”

“Nope. Don’t even know if he likes them.”

“He’ll like this one.” She paused, then took his hand and said, “I was so pissed at you for not coming back when that storm was on the way. But I was wrong and you were rat.”

He took his hand back, once again feeling feverish. “What did you say?”

“That I was wrong. And you were right. What’s the trouble, Drew?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

“So?” Drew asked three days later. “What’s the verdict?”

They were in his old department head’s study. The manuscript was on Al’s desk. Drew had been nervous about Lucy’s reaction to Bitter River , but he was even more nervous about Al’s. Stamper was a voracious, omnivorous reader who had been analyzing and deconstructing prose his entire working life. He was the only person Drew knew who had dared to teach Under the Volcano and Infinite Jest in the same semester.

“I think it’s very good.” Al not only sounded like his old self these days, he looked like it. His color was back and he had put on a few pounds. The chemo had taken his hair, but the Red Sox cap he was wearing covered his newly bald head. “It’s plot-driven, but the relationship between the sheriff and his young captive gives the story quite extraordinary resonance. It isn’t as good as The Ox-Bow Incident or Welcome to Hard Times , I’d say—”

“I know,” Drew said… who thought it was. “I’d never claim that.”

“But I think it ranks with Oakley Hall’s Warlock , which is just behind those two. You had something to say, Drew, and you said it very well. The book doesn’t pound the reader over the head with its thematic concerns, and I suppose most people will just read it for the strong story values—the what-happens-next thing—but those thematic elements are there, oh yes.”

“You think people will read it?”

“Sure.” Al seemed almost to wave this away. “Unless your agent’s a total dummocks, he or she will sell this easily. Maybe even for a fair bit of money.” He eyed Drew. “Although my guess is that was secondary to you, if you thought about it at all. You just wanted to do it, am I right? For once jump off the high board at the country club swimming pool without losing your nerve and slinking back down the ladder.”

“Nailed it,” Drew said. “And you… Al, you look terrific.”

“I feel terrific,” he said. “The doctors have stopped short of calling me a medical marvel, and I’ll be going back for tests every three weeks for the first year, but my last date with the fucking chemo IV is this afternoon. As of rat now all the tests are calling me cancer free.”

This time Drew didn’t jump, and he didn’t bother asking for a repeat. He knew what his old department head had actually said, just as he knew part of him would keep hearing that other word from time to time. It was like a splinter, one lodged in his mind instead of under his skin. Most splinters worked out without infecting. He was pretty sure this one would do that. After all, Al was fine. The deal-making rat at the cabin had been a dream. Or a stuffed toy. Or complete bullshit.