Different Seasons - Stephen King [168]
'Gordie! You wanna see something?'
'Sure, I guess so. What?'
'Come on down here first.' He pointed at the narrow space between the Blue Point Diner and the Castle Rock Drug Store.
'What is it, Chris?'
'Come on, I said!'
He ran down the alley and after a brief moment (that's all it took me to cast aside my better judgment) I ran after him. The two buildings were set slightly towards each other rather than running parallel, and so the alley narrowed as it went back. We waded through trashy drifts of old newspapers and stepped over cruel, sparkly nests of broken beer and soda bottles. Chris cut behind the Blue Point and put his bedroll down. There were eight or nine garbage cans lined up here and the stench was incredible.
'Phew! Christ Come on, gimme a break!'
'Gimme your arm,' Chris said, by rote.
'No, sincerely, I'm gonna throw u -'
The words broke off in my mouth and I forgot all about the smelly garbage cans. Chris had unslung his pack and opened it and reached inside. Now he was holding out a huge pistol with dark wood grips.
'You wanna be the Lone Ranger or the Cisco Kid?' Chris asked, grinning.
'Walking, talking Jesus! Where'd you get that?'
'Hawked it out of my dad's bureau. It's a.45.'
'Yeah, I can see that,' I said, although it could have been a.38 or a.357 for all I knew-in spite of all the John D MacDonalds and Ed McBains I'd read, the only pistol I'd ever seen up close was the one Constable Bannerman carried and although all the kids asked him to take it out of its holster, Banner never would. 'Man, your dad's gonna hide you when he finds out. You said he was on a mean streak anyway.'
His eyes just went on dancing. 'That's it, man. He ain't gonna find out nothing. Him and these other rummies are all laid up down in Harrison with six or eight bottles of wine. They won't be back for a week. Fucking rummies.' His lips curled. He was the only guy in our gang who would never take a drink, even to show he had, you know, big balls. He said he wasn't going to grow up to be a fucking tosspot like his old man. And he told me once privately-this was after the DeSpain twins showed up with a six-pack they'd hawked from their old man and everybody teased Chris because he wouldn't take a beer or even a swallow-that he was scared to drink. He said his father never got his nose all the way out of the bottle anymore, that his older brother had been drunk out of his tits when he raped that girl, and that Eyeball was always guzzling purple Jesuses with Ace Merrill and Charlie Hogan and Billy Tessio. What, he asked me, did I think his chances of letting go of the bottle would be once he picked it up? Maybe you think that's funny, a twelve-year-old worrying that he might be an incipient alcoholic, but it wasn't funny to Chris. Not at all. He'd thought about the possibility a lot. He'd had occasion to.
'You got shells for it?'
'Nine of them-all that was left in the box. He'll think he used 'em himself, shooting at cans while he was drunk.'
'Is it loaded?'
'No! Chrissake, what do you think I am?'
I finally took the gun. I liked the heavy way it sat there in my hand. I could see myself as Steve Carella of the 87th precinct, going after that guy The Heckler or maybe covering Myer Myer or Kling while they broke into a desperate junkie's sleazy apartment. I sighted on one of the smelly trashcans and squeezed the trigger. KA-BLAM!
The gun bucked in my hand. Fire licked from the end. It felt as if my wrist had just been broken. My heart vaulted nimbly into the back of my mouth and crouched there, trembling. A big hole appeared in the corrugated metal surface of the trash can-it was the work of an evil conjuror.
'Jesus!' I screamed.
Chris was cackling wildly-in real amusement or hysterical terror I couldn't tell. 'You did it, you did it! Gordie did it!' He bugled. 'Hey, Gordon Lachance is shooting up Castle Rock!'
'Shut up! Let's get out of here? I screamed, and grabbed him by the shirt.
As we ran, the back door of the Blue Point jerked open and Francine Tupper stepped