Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [331]
Abruptly he put the pipe in its holder and called a camera-and-video shop in Lewiston. He asked two questions. The answer to both of them was yes.
Pop hung up the phone and went back to drumming his fingers on the table beside the Polaroids. What he was planning wasn't really fair to the boy, but the boy had uncovered the corner of something he not only didn't understand but didn't want to understand.
Fair or not, Pop didn't believe he intended to let the boy do what the boy wanted to do. He hadn't decided what he himself meant to do, not yet, not entirely, but it was wise to be prepared.
That was always wise.
He sat and drummed his fingers and wondered what that thing was the boy had seen. He had obviously felt Pop would know - or might know - but Pop hadn't a clue. The boy might tell him on Friday. Or not. But if the boy didn't, the father, to whom Pop had once loaned four hundred dollars to cover a bet on a basketball game, a bet he had lost and which his wife knew nothing about, certainly would. If, that was, he could. Even the best of fathers didn't know all about their sons anymore once those sons were fifteen or so, but Pop thought Kevin was a very young fifteen, and that his dad knew most things ... or could find them out.
He smiled and drummed his fingers and all the clocks began to charge wearily at the hour of five.
CHAPTER 4
Pop Merrill turned the sign which hung in his door from OPEN to CLOSED at two o'clock on Friday afternoon, slipped himself behind the wheel of his 1959 Chevrolet, which had been for years perfectly maintained at Sonny's Texaco at absolutely no cost at all (the fallout of another little loan, and Sonny Jackett another town fellow who would prefer hot coals pressed against the soles of his feet to admitting that he not only knew but was deeply indebted to Pop Merrill, who had gotten him out of a desperate scrape over in New Hampshire in '69), and took himself up to Lewiston, a city he hated because it seemed to him that there were only two streets in the whole town (maybe three) that weren't oneways. He arrived as he always did when Lewiston and only Lewiston would do: not by driving to it but arriving somewhere near it and then spiralling slowly inward along those beshitted one-way streets until he reckoned he was as close as he could get and then walking the rest of the way, a tall thin man with a bald head, rimless specs, clean khaki pants with creases and cuffs, and a blue workman's shirt buttoned right up to the collar.
There was a sign in the window of Twin City Camera and Video that showed a cartoon man who appeared to be battling a huge tangle of movie-film and losing. The fellow looked just about ready to blow his stack. The words over and under the picture read: TIRED OF FIGHTING? WE TRANSFER YOUR 8 MM MOVIES (SNAPSHOTS TOO!) ONTO VIDEO TAPE!
Just another goddam gadget, Pop thought, opening the door and going in. World's dying of em.
But he was one of those people - world's dying of em - not at all above using what he disparaged if it proved expedient. He spoke briefly with the clerk. The clerk got the proprietor. They had known each other for many years (probably since Homer sailed the wine-dark sea, some wits might have said). The proprietor invited Pop into the back room, where they shared a nip.
'That's a goddam strange bunch of photos,' the proprietor said.
'Ayuh.'
'The videotape I made of them is even stranger.'
'I bet so.'
'That all you got to say?'
'Ayuh.'
'Fuck ya, then,' the proprietor said, and they both cackled their shrill old-man's cackles. Behind the counter, the clerk winced.
Pop left twenty minutes later with two items: a video cassette, and a brand-new Polaroid Sun 660, still in its box.
When he got back to the shop, he called Kevin's house. He was not surprised when it was John Delevan who answered.
'If you've been fucking my boy over, I'll kill you, you old snake,' John Delevan said without preamble, and distantly Pop could hear the boy's wounded cry: 'Da-ad!'
Pop's lips skinned back from