Salem's Lot

  It had been part her and part him that night, and after it had happened and they were lying together in the darkness of her bedroom, she began to weep and tell him that what they had done was wrong. He told her it had been right, not knowing if it had been right or not and not caring, and there had been a norther whooping and coughing and screaming around the eaves and her room had been warm and safe and at last they had slept together like spoons in a silverware drawer.

  Ah God and sonny Jesus, time was like a river and he wondered if that writer fella knew that.

  He began to polish the banister again with long, sweeping strokes.

  NINE

  10:00 AM

  It was recess time at Stanley Street Elementary School, which was the Lot's newest and proudest school building. It was a low, glassine four-classroom building that the school district was still paying for, as new and bright and modern as the Brock Street Elementary School was old and dark.

  Richie Boddin, who was the school bully and proud of it, stepped out onto the playground grandly, eyes searching for that smart-ass new kid who knew all the answers in math. No new kid came waltzing into his school without knowing who was boss. Especially some four-eyes queer-boy teacher's pet like this one.

  Richie was eleven years old and weighed 140 pounds. All his life his mother had been calling on people to see what a huge young man her son was. And so he knew he was big. Sometimes he fancied that he could feel the ground tremble underneath his feet when he walked. And when he grew up he was going to smoke Camels, just like his old man.

  The fourth-and fifth-graders were terrified of him, and the smaller kids regarded him as a schoolyard totem. When he moved on to the seventh grade at Brock Street School, their pantheon would be empty of its devil. All this pleased him immensely.

  And there was the Petrie kid, waiting to be chosen up for the recess touch football game.

  "Hey!" Richie yelled.

  Everyone looked around except Petrie. Every eye had a glassy sheen on it, and every pair of eyes showed relief when they saw that Richie's rested elsewhere.

  "Hey you! Four-eyes!"

  Mark Petrie turned and looked at Richie. His steel-rimmed glasses flashed in the morning sun. He was as tall as Richie, which meant he towered over most of his classmates, but he was slender and his face looked defenseless and bookish.

  "Are you speaking to me?"

  "'Are you speaking to me?'" Richie mimicked, his voice a high falsetto. "You sound like a queer, four-eyes. You know that?"

  "No, I didn't know that," Mark Petrie said.

  Richie took a step forward. "I bet you suck, you know that, four-eyes? I bet you suck the old hairy root."

  "Really?" His polite tone was infuriating.

  "Yeah, I heard you really suck it. Not just Thursdays for you. You can't wait. Every day for you."

  Kids began to drift over to watch Richie stomp the new boy. Miss Holcomb, who was playground monitor this week, was out front watching the little kids on the swings and seesaws.

  "What's your racket?" Mark Petrie asked. He was looking at Richie as if he had discovered an interesting new beetle.

  "'What's your racket?'" Richie mimicked falsetto. "I ain't got no racket. I just heard you were a big fat queer, that's all."

  "Is that right?" Mark asked, still polite. "I heard that you were a big clumsy stupid turd, that's what I heard."

  Utter silence. The other boys gaped (but it was an interested gape; none of them had ever seen a fellow sign his own death warrant before). Richie was caught entirely by surprise and gaped with the rest.

  Mark took off his glasses and handed them to the boy next to him. "Hold these, would you?" The boy took them and goggled at Mark silently.

  Richie charged. It was a slow, lumbering charge, with not a bit of grace or finesse in it. The ground trembled under his feet. He was filled with confidence and the clear, joyous urge to stomp and break. He swung his haymaker right, which would catch ole four-eyes queer-boy right in the mouth and send his teeth flying like piano keys. Get ready for the dentist, queer-boy. Here I come.

  Mark Petrie ducked and sidestepped at the same instant. The haymaker went over his head. Richie was pulled halfway around by the force of his own blow, and Mark had only to stick out a foot. Richie Boddin thumped to the ground. He grunted. The crowd of watching children went "Aaaah."

  Mark knew perfectly well that if the big, clumsy boy on the ground regained the advantage, he would be beaten up badly. Mark was agile, but agility could not stand up for long in a schoolyard brawl. In a street situation this would have been the time to run, to outdistance his slower pursuer, then turn and thumb his nose. But this wasn't the street or the city, and he knew perfectly well that if he didn't whip this big ugly turd now the harassment would never stop.

  These thoughts went through his mind in a fifth of a second.

  He jumped on Richie Boddin's back.

  Richie grunted. The crowd went "Aaaah" again. Mark grabbed Richie's arm, careful to get it above the shirt cuff so he couldn't sweat out of his grip, and twisted it behind Richie's back. Richie screamed in pain.

  "Say uncle," Mark told him.

  Richie's reply would have pleased a twenty-year Navy man.

  Mark yanked Richie's arm up to his shoulder blades, and Richie screamed again. He was filled with indignation, fright, and puzzlement. This had never happened to him before. It couldn't be happening now. Surely no four-eyes queer-boy could be sitting on his back and twisting his arm and making him scream before his subjects.

  "Say uncle," Mark repeated.

  Richie heaved himself to his knees; Mark squeezed his own knees into Richie's sides, like a man riding a horse bareback, and stayed on. They were both covered with dust, but Richie was much the worse for wear. His face was red and straining, his eyes bulged, and there was a scratch on his cheek.

  He tried to dump Mark over his shoulders, and Mark yanked upward on the arm again. This time Richie didn't scream. He wailed.

  "Say uncle, or so help me God I'll break it."

  Richie's shirt had pulled out of his pants. His belly felt hot and scratched. He began to sob and wrench his shoulders from side to side. Yet the hateful four-eyes queer-boy stayed on. His forearm was ice, his shoulder fire.

  "Get off me, you son of a whore! You don't fight fair!"

  An explosion of pain.

  "Say uncle."

  "No!"

  He overbalanced on his knees and went facedown in the dust. The pain in his arm was paralyzing. He was eating dirt. There was dirt in his eyes. He thrashed his legs helplessly. He had forgotten about being huge. He had forgotten about how the ground trembled under his feet when he walked. He had forgotten that he was going to smoke Camels, just like his old man, when he grew up.

  "Uncle! Uncle! Uncle!" Richie screamed. He felt that he could go on screaming uncle for hours, for days, if it would get his arm back.

  "Say: 'I'm a big ugly turd.'"

  "I'm a big ugly turd!" Richie screamed into the dirt.

  "Good enough."

  Mark Petrie got off him and stepped back warily out of reach as Richie got up. His thighs hurt from squeezing them together. He hoped that all the fight was out of Richie. If not, he was going to get creamed.

  Richie got up. He looked around. No one met his eyes. They turned away and went back to whatever they had been doing. That stinking Glick kid was standing next to the queer-boy and looking at him as though he were some kind of God.

  Richie stood by himself, hardly able to believe how quickly his ruination had come. His face was dusty except where it had been streaked clean with his tears of rage and shame. He considered launching himself at Mark Petrie. Yet his shame and fear, new and shining and huge, would not allow it. Not yet. His arm ached like a rotted tooth. Son of a whoring dirty fighter. If I ever land on you and get you down--

  But not today. He turned away and walked off and the ground didn't tremble a bit. He looked at the ground so he wouldn't have to look anyone in the face
.

  Someone on the girls' side laughed--a high, mocking sound that carried with cruel clarity on the morning air.

  He didn't look up to see who was laughing at him.

  TEN

  11:15 AM

  The Jerusalem's Lot Town Dump had been a plain old gravel pit until it struck clay and paid out in 1945. It was at the end of a spur that led off from the Burns Road two miles beyond Harmony Hill Cemetery.

  Dud Rogers could hear the faint putter and cough of Mike Ryerson's lawn mower down the road. But that sound would soon be blotted out by the crackle of flames.

  Dud had been the dump custodian since 1956, and his reappointment each year at town meeting was routine and by acclamation. He lived at the dump in a neat tarpaper lean-to with a sign reading "Dump Custodian" on the skew-hung door. He had wangled a space heater out of that skinflint board of selectmen three years ago, and had given up his apartment in town for good.

  He was a hunchback with a curious cocked head that made him look as if God had given him a final petulant wrench before allowing him out into the world. His arms, which dangled apelike almost to his knees, were amazingly strong. It had taken four men to load the old hardware store floor safe into their panel truck to bring it out here when the store got its new wall job. The tires of the truck had settled appreciably when they put it in. But Dud Rogers had taken it off himself, cords standing out on his neck, veins bulging on his forehead and forearms and biceps like blue cables. He had pushed it over the east edge himself.

  Dud liked the dump. He liked running off the kids who came here to bust bottles, and he liked directing traffic to wherever the day's dumping was going on. He liked dump-picking, which was his privilege as custodian. He supposed they sneered at him, walking across the mountains of trash in his hip waders and leather gloves, with his pistol in his holster, a sack over his shoulder, and his pocketknife in his hand. Let them sneer. There was copper core wire and sometimes whole motors with their copper wrappings intact, and copper fetched a good price in Portland. There were busted-out bureaus and chairs and sofas, things that could be fixed up and sold to the antique dealers on Route 1. Dud rooked the dealers and the dealers turned around and rooked the summer people, and wasn't it just fine the way the world went round and round. He'd found a splintered spool bed with a busted frame two years back and had sold it to a faggot from Wells for two hundred bucks. The faggot had gone into ecstasies about the New England authenticity of that bed, never knowing how carefully Dud had sanded off the Made in Grand Rapids on the back of the headboard.

  At the far end of the dump were the junked cars, Buicks and Fords and Chevies and you name it, and my God the parts people left on their machines when they were through with them. Radiators were best, but a good four-barrel carb would fetch seven dollars after it had been soaked in gasoline. Not to mention fan belts, taillights, distributor caps, windshields, steering wheels, and floor mats.

  Yes, the dump was fine. The dump was Disneyland and Shangri-la all rolled up into one. But not even the money tucked away in the black box buried in the dirt below his easy chair was the best part.

  The best part was the fires--and the rats.

  Dud set parts of his dump on fire on Sunday and Wednesday mornings, and on Monday and Friday evenings. Evening fires were the prettiest. He loved the dusky, roseate glow that bloomed out of the green plastic bags of crap and all the newspapers and boxes. But morning fires were better for rats.

  Now, sitting in his easy chair and watching the fire catch and begin to send its greasy black smoke into the air, sending the gulls aloft, Dud held his .22 target pistol loosely in his hand and waited for the rats to come out.

  When they came, they came in battalions. They were big, dirty gray, pink-eyed. Small fleas and ticks jumped on their hides. Their tails dragged after them like thick pink wires. Dud loved to shoot rats.

  "You buy a powerful slug o' shells, Dud," George Middler down at the hardware store would say in his fruity voice, pushing the boxes of Remingtons across. "Town pay for 'em?" This was an old joke. Some years back, Dud had put in a purchase order for two thousand rounds of hollow-point .22 cartridges, and Bill Norton had grimly sent him packing.

  "Now," Dud would say, "you know this is purely a public service, George."

  There. That big fat one with the gimpy back leg was George Middler. Had something in his mouth that looked like a shredded piece of chicken liver.

  "Here you go, George. Here y'are," Dud said, and squeezed off. The .22's report was flat and undramatic, but the rat tumbled over twice and lay twitching. Hollow points, that was the ticket. Someday he was going to get a large-bore .45 or a .357 Magnum and see what that did to the little cock-knockers.

  That next one now, that was that slutty little Ruthie Crockett, the one who didn't wear no bra to school and was always elbowing her chums and sniggering when Dud passed on the street. Bang. Good-by, Ruthie.

  The rats scurried madly for the protection of the dump's far side, but before they were gone Dud had gotten six of them--a good morning's kill. If he went out there and looked at them, the ticks would be running off the cooling bodies like...like...why, like rats deserting a sinking ship.

  This struck him as deliciously funny and he threw back his queerly cocked head and rocked back on his hump and laughed in great long gusts as the fire crept through the trash with its grasping orange fingers.

  Life surely was grand.

  ELEVEN

  12:00 noon

  The town whistle went off with a great twelve-second blast, ushering in lunch hour at all three schools and welcoming the afternoon. Lawrence Crockett, the Lot's second selectman and proprietor of Crockett's Southern Maine Insurance and Realty, put away the book he had been reading (Satan's Sex Slaves) and set his watch by the whistle. He went to the door and hung the "Back at One O'clock" sign from the shade pull. His routine was unvarying. He would walk up to the Excellent Cafe, have two cheeseburgers with the works and a cup of coffee, and watch Pauline's legs while he smoked a William Penn.

  He rattled the doorknob once to make sure the lock had caught and moved off down Jointner Avenue. He paused on the corner and glanced up at the Marsten House. There was a car in the driveway. He could just make it out, twinkling and shining. It caused a thread of disquiet somewhere in his chest. He had sold the Marsten House and the long-defunct Village Washtub in a package deal over a year ago. It had been the strangest deal of his life--and he had made some strange ones in his time. The owner of the car up there was, in all probability, a man named Straker. R.T. Straker. And just this morning he had received something in the mail from this Straker.

  The fellow in question had driven up to Crockett's office on a shimmering July afternoon just over a year ago. He got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk for a moment before coming inside, a tall man dressed in a sober three-piece suit in spite of the day's heat. He was as bald as a cueball and as sweatless as same. His eyebrows were a straight black slash, and the eye sockets shelved away below them to dark holes that might have been carved into the angular surface of his face with drill bits. He carried a slim black briefcase in one hand. Larry was alone in his office when Straker came in; his part-time secretary, a Falmouth girl with the most delectable set of jahoobies you ever clapped an eye to, worked for a Gates Falls lawyer on her afternoons.

  The bald man sat down in the client's chair, put his briefcase in his lap, and stared at Larry Crockett. It was impossible to read the expression in his eyes, and that bothered Larry. He liked to be able to read a man's wants in his baby blues or browns before the man even opened his mouth. This man had not paused to look at the pictures of local properties that were tacked up on the bulletin board, had not offered to shake hands and introduce himself, had not even said hello.

  "How can I help you?" Larry asked.

  "I have been sent to buy a residence and a business establishment in your so-fair town," the bald man said. He spoke with a flat, uninflected tonelessness that made Larry think of the rec
orded announcements you got when you dialed the weather.

  "Well, hey, wonderful," Larry said. "We have several very nice properties that might--"

  "There is no need," the bald man said, and held up his hand to stop Larry's words. Larry noted with fascination that his fingers were amazingly long--the middle finger looked four or five inches from base to tip. "The business establishment is a block beyond the Town Office Building. It fronts on the park."

  "Yeah, I can deal with you on that. Used to be a Laundromat. Went broke a year ago. That'd be a real good location if you--"

  "The residence," the bald man overrode him, "is the one referred to in town as the Marsten House."

  Larry had been in the business too long to show his thunderstruck feelings on his face. "Is that so?"

  "Yes. My name is Straker. Richard Throckett Straker. All papers will be in my name."

  "Very good," Larry said. The man meant business, that much seemed clear enough. "The asking price on the Marsten House is fourteen thousand, although I think my clients could be persuaded to take a little less. On the old washateria--"

  "That is no accord. I have been authorized to pay one dollar."

  "One--?" Larry tilted his head forward the way a man will when he has failed to hear something correctly.

  "Yes. Attend, please."

  Straker's long fingers undid the clasps on his briefcase, opened it, and took out a number of papers bound in a blue transparent folder.

  Larry Crockett looked at him, frowning.

  "Read, please. That will save time."

  Larry thumbed back the folder's plastic cover and glanced down at the first sheet with the air of a man humoring a fool. His eyes moved from left to right randomly for a moment, then riveted on something.

  Straker smiled thinly. He reached inside his suit coat, produced a flat gold cigarette case, and selected a cigarette. He tamped it and then lit it with a wooden match. The harsh aroma of a Turkish blend filled the office and was eddied around by the fan.

  There had been silence in the office for the next ten minutes, broken only by the hum of the fan and the muted passage of traffic on the street outside. Straker smoked his cigarette down to a shred, crushed the glowing ash between his fingers, and lit another.