Different Seasons - Stephen King [171]
'You little son of a bitch!' Teddy was screaming at me. 'You fucker! Don't you throw your weight around on me! I'll kill you, you dipshit!'
I was getting my breath back now, and I made it to my feet. I backed away as Teddy advanced, holding my open hands up to slap away his punches, half laughing and half scared. Teddy was no one to fool around with when he went into one of his screaming fits. He'd take on a big kid in that state, and after the big kid broke both of his arms, he'd bite.
'Teddy, you can dodge anything you want after we see what we're going to see but' whack on the shoulder as one wildly-swinging fist got past me 'until then no one's supposed to see us, you' whack on the side of the face, and then we might have had a real fight if Chris and Vern 'stupid wet end!' hadn't grabbed us and kept us apart. Above us, the train roared by in a thunder of diesel exhaust and the great heavy clacking of boxcar wheels. A few cinders bounced down the embankment and the argument was over at least until we could hear ourselves talk again.
It was only a short freight, and when the caboose had trailed by, Teddy said: 'I'm gonna kill him. At least give him a fat lip.' He struggled against Chris, but Chris only grabbed him tighter.
'Calm down, Teddy,' Chris said quietly, and he kept saying it until Teddy stopped struggling and just stood there, his glasses hanging askew and his hearing-aid cord dangling limply against his chest on its way down to the battery, which he had shoved into the pocket of his jeans.
When he was completely still, Chris turned to me and said: 'What the hell are you fighting with him about, Gordon?'
'He wanted to dodge the train. I figured the engineer would see him and report it They might send a cop out.'
'Ahhh, he'd be too busy makin' chocolate in his drawers,' Teddy said, but he didn't seem angry anymore. The storm had passed.
'Gordie was just trying to do the right thing,' Vern said. 'Come on, peace.'
'Peace, you guys,' Chris agreed.
'Yeah, okay,' I said, and held out my hand, palm up. 'Peace, Teddy?'
'I coulda dodged it,' he said to me. 'You know that, Gordie?'
'Yeah,' I said, although the thought turned me cold inside. 'I know it.'
'Okay. Peace, then.'
'Skin it, man,' Chris ordered, and let go of Teddy.
Teddy slapped his hand down on mine hard enough to sting and then turned it over. I slapped his.
'Fucking pussy Lachance,' Teddy said.
'Meeiowww,' I said.
'Come on, you guys,' Vern said. 'Let's go, okay?'
'Go anywhere you want, but don't go here,' Chris said solemnly, and Vern drew back as if to hit him.
We got to the dump around one-thirty, and Vern led the way down the embankment with a Paratroops over the side! We went to the bottom in big jumps and leaped over the brackish trickle of water oozing listlessly out of the culvert which pocked out of the cinders. Beyond this small boggy area was the sandy, trash-littered verge of the dump.
There was a six-foot security fence surrounding it. Every twenty feet weather-faded signs were posted. They said: CASTLE ROCK DUMP HOURS 4-8 PM CLOSED MONDAYS TRESPASSING STRICTLY FORBIDDEN We climbed to the top of the fence, swung over, and jumped down. Teddy and Vern led the way towards the well, which you tapped with an old-fashioned pump-the kind from which you had to call the water with elbow-grease. There was a Crisco can filled with water next to the pump handle, and the great sin was to forget to leave it filled for the next guy to come along. The iron handle stuck off at an angle, looking like a one-winged bird that was trying to fly. It had once been green, but almost all of the paint had been rubbed off by the thousands of hands that had worked that handle since 1940. The dump is one of my strongest memories of Castle Rock. It always reminds me of the surrealist painters when I think of it-those fellows who were always painting pictures of clockfaces lying limply in the crotches of trees or Victorian living rooms standing in the middle of the Sahara or steam engines