Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [232]
'I draw better when I'm stewed,' Rudolph said, and gave his poster to Dave. On it was a gigantic chicken leg with stick men and women standing around and looking up at it. 'It's the fantasy approach,' Rudolph said to Sam. He spoke with some truculence.
'I like it,' Sam said. He did, actually. Rudolph's poster reminded him of a New Yorker cartoon, one of the ones he sometimes couldn't understand because they were so surreal.
'Good.' Rudolph studied him closely. 'You sure you ain't got a quarter?'
'No,' Sam said.
Rudolph nodded. 'In a way, that's good,' he said. 'But in another way, it really shits the bed.' He followed Lukey inside, and soon the Star Trek theme drifted out through the open door. William Shatner told the winos and burnouts of Angle Street that their mission was to boldly go where no man had gone before. Sam guessed that several members of this audience were already there.
'Nobody much comes to the dinners but us guys and some of the AA's from town,' Dave said, 'but it gives us something to do. Lukey hardly talks at all anymore, 'less he's drawing.'
'You're awfully good,' Sam told him. 'You really are, Dave. Why don't you - ' He stopped.
'Why don't I what, Mr Peebles?' Dave asked gently. 'Why don't I use my right hand to turn a buck? The same reason I don't get myself a regular job. The day got late while I was doin other things.'
Sam couldn't think of a thing to say.
'I had a shot at it, though. Do you know I went to the Lorillard School in Des Moines on full scholarship? The best art school in the Midwest. I flunked out my first semester. Booze. It don't matter. Do you want to come in and have a cup of coffee, Mr Peebles? Wait around? You could meet Sarah.'
'No, I better get back. I've got an errand to run.'
He did, too.
'All right. Are you sure you're not mad at me?'
'Not a bit.'
Dave stood up. 'I guess I'll go in awhile, then,' he said. 'It was a beautiful day, but it's gettin nippy now. You have a nice night, Mr Peebles.'
'Okay,' Sam said, although he doubted that he was going to enjoy himself very much this Saturday evening. But his mother had had another saying: the way to make the best of bad medicine is to swallow it just as fast as you can. And that was what he intended to do.
He walked back down the steps of Angle Street, and Dirty Dave Duncan went on inside.
2
Sam got almost all the way back to his car, then detoured in the direction of the Recycling Center. He walked across the weedy, cindery ground slowly, watching the long freight disappear in the direction of Camden and Omaha. The red lamps on the caboose twinkled like dying stars. Freight trains always made him feel lonely for some reason, and now, following his conversation with Dirty Dave, he felt lonelier than ever. On the few occasions when he had met Dave while Dave was collecting his papers, he had seemed a jolly, almost clownish man. Tonight Sam thought he had seen behind the make-up, and what he had seen made him feel unhappy and helpless. Dave was a lost man, calm but totally lost, using what was clearly a talent of some size to make posters for a church supper.
One approached the Recycling Center through zones of litter - first the yellowing ad supplements which had escaped old copies of the Gazette, then the torn plastic garbage bags, finally an asteroid belt of busted bottles and squashed cans. The shades of the small clapboard building were drawn. The sign hanging in the door simply read CLOSED.
Sam lit a cigarette and started back to his car. He had gone only half a dozen steps when he saw something familiar lying on the ground. He picked it up. It was the bookjacket of Best Loved Poems of the American People. The words PROPERTY OF THE JUNCTION CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY were stamped across it.
So now he knew for sure. He had set the books on top of the papers in the Johnnie Walker box and then forgotten them. He had put other papers -Tuesday's, Wednesday's, and Thursday's -