Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [207]
The telephone on Sam Peebles's desk at Junction City Realty and Insurance rang at five past four on Thursday afternoon. Sam picked it up. It was always Sam who picked it up - either Sam in person or Sam on the answering machine, because he was Junction City Realty and Insurance's owner and sole employee. He was not a rich man, but he was a reasonably happy one. He liked to tell people that his first Mercedes was still quite a distance in the future, but he had a Ford which was almost new and owned his own home on Kelton Avenue. 'Also, the business keeps me in beer and skittles,' he liked to add ... although in truth, he hadn't drunk much beer since college and wasn't exactly sure what skittles were. He thought they might be pretzels.
'Junction City Realty and In - '
'Sam, this is Craig. The acrobat broke his neck.'
'What?'
'You heard me!' Craig Jones cried in deeply aggrieved tones. 'The acrobat broke his fucking neck!'
'Oh,' Sam said. 'Gee.' He thought about this for a moment and then asked cautiously, 'Is he dead, Craig?'
'No, he's not dead, but he might as well be as far as we're concerned. He's in the hospital over in Cedar Rapids with his neck dipped in about twenty pounds of plaster. Billy Bright just called me. He said the guy came on drunk as a skunk at the matinee this afternoon, tried to do a back-over flip, and landed outside the center ring on the nape of his neck. Billy said he could hear it way up in the bleachers, where he was sitting. He said it sounded like when you step in a puddle that just iced over.'
'Ouch!' Sam exclaimed, wincing.
'I'm not surprised. After all - The Amazing Joe. What kind of name is that for a circus performer? I mean, The Amazing Randix, okay. The Amazing Tortellini, still not bad. But The Amazing Joe? It sounds like a prime example of brain damage in action to me.'
'Jesus, that's too bad.'
'Fucking shit on toast is what it is. It leaves us without a speaker tomorrow night, good buddy.'
Sam began to wish he had left the office promptly at four. Craig would have been stuck with Sam the answering machine, and that would have given Sam the living being a little more time to think. He felt he would soon need time to think. He also felt that Craig Jones was not going to give him any.
'Yes,' he said, 'I guess that's true enough.' He hoped he sounded philosophical but helpless. 'What a shame.'
'It sure is,' Craig said, and then dropped the dime. 'But I know you'll be happy to step in and fill the slot.'
'Me? Craig, you've got to be kidding! I can't even do a somersault, let alone a back-over fl - '
'Thought you could talk about the importance of the independently owned business in small-town life,' Craig Jones pressed on relentlessly. 'If that doesn't do it for you, there's baseball. Lacking that, you could always drop your pants and wag your wing-wang at the audience. Sam, I am not just the head of the Speaker's Committee - that would be bad enough. But since Kenny moved away and Carl quit coming, I am the Speaker's Committee. Now, you've got to help me. I need a speaker tomorrow night. There are about five guys in the whole damn club I feel I can trust in a pinch, and you're one of them.'
'But - '
'You're also the only one who hasn't filled in already in a situation like this, so you're elected, buddy-boy.'
'Frank Stephens pinch-hit for the guy from the trucking union last year when the grand jury indicted him for fraud and he couldn't show up. Sam - it's your turn in the barrel. You can't let me down, man. You owe me.'
'I run an insurance business!' Sam cried. 'When I'm not writing insurance, I sell farms! Mostly to banks! Most people find it boring! The ones who don't find it boring find it disgusting!'
'None of that matters.' Craig was now moving in