Christine - Stephen King [203]
'McCandless,' he said.
'Mr McCandless, my name is Dennis Guilder. Last August you put on a military-style funeral for a fellow named Roland LeBay - '
'Was he a friend of yours?'
'No, only a bare acquaintance, but - '
'Then I don't have to spare your feelings none, McCandless said, gravel rattling in his throat. He sounded like Andy Devine crossed with Broderick Crawford. 'LeBay was nothing but a pure-d sandy-craw sonofabitch, and if I'd had my way, the Legion wouldn't have had a thing to do with planting him. He quit the organization back in 1970. If he hadn't quit, we would have fired him. That man was the most contentious bastard that every lived.'
'Was he?'
'You bet he was. He'd pick an argument with you, then up it to a fight if he could. You couldn't play poker with the sonofabitcb, and you sure couldn't drink with him. You couldn't keep up with him, for one thing, and he'd get mean for another. Not that he had to go far to get to mean. What a crazy bastard he was, you should pardon my fran-sayse. Who are you, boy?'
For an insane moment I thought of quoting Emily Dickinson at him: I'm nobody! Who are you?
'A friend of mine bought a car from LeBay just before he died - '
'Shit! Not that '57?'
'Well, actually it was a '58 - '
Yeah, yeah, '57 or '58, red and white. That was the only goddam thing he cared about, Treated it like it was a woman. It was over that car he quit the Legion, did you know that?'
'No,' I said. 'What happened?'
'Ah, shit. Ancient history, kid. I'm bending your car as it is. But every time I think of that sonofabitch LeBay, I see red. I've still got the scars on my hands. Uncle Sam had three years or my life during World War II and I never got so much as a Purple Heart out of it, although I was in combat almost all that time. I fought my way across half the little shitpot islands in the South Pacific. Me and about fifty other guys stood up to a banzai charge on Guadalcanal two fucking million Japs coming at us hopped to the eyeballs and waving those swords they made out of Maxwell House coffee cans - and I never got a scar, I felt a couple of bullets go right by me, and just before we broke that charge the guy next to me got his guts rearranged courtesy of the Emperor of Japan, but the only times I saw the colour of my own blood over there in the Pacific was when I cut myself shaving. Then '
McCandless laughed.
'Shit on toast, there I go again. My wife says I'll open my mouth too wide someday and just fall right in. What'd you say your name was?'
'Dennis Guilder.'
'Okay, Dennis, I bent your ear, now you bend mine. What did you want?'
'Well, my friend bought that car and fixed it up for a sort of a street-rod, I guess you'd say. A showpiece.'
'Yeah, just like LeBay,' McCandless said, and my mouth went dry. 'He loved that fucking car, I'll say that for him. He didn't give a shit for his wife - you know what happened to her?'
'Yes,' I said.
'He drove her to it,' McCandless said grimly. 'After their kid died, she didn't get any comfort from him at all. None. I don't think he gave much of a shit about the kid, either. Sorry, Dennis. I never could shut up. Talk all the time. Always have. My mother used to say, "Dickie, your tongue's hung in the middle and runs on both ends." What did you say you wanted?'
'My friend and I went to LeBay's funeral,' I said, 'and after it was over, I introduced myself to his brother - '
'He seemed a right enough type,' McCandless broke in. 'Schoolteacher. Ohio.'
'That's right. I had a talk with him, and he did seem like a nice enough guy, I told him I was going to do my senior English paper on Ezra Pound - '
'Ezra who?'
'Pound.'
'Who the fuck's that? Was he at LeBay's funeral? '
'No, sir. Pound was a poet.'
'A what?'
'Poet. He's dead too.'
'Oh.' McCandless sounded