Roadwork - Stephen King [92]
"They're building new roads for energy-sucking behemoths while kids in this city are starving," Drake said shortly. "What do I think? I think it's a bloody crime."
He started to tell Drake about the gasoline bombs, the burning crane, the burning office trailer, and then didn't. Drake might think it was a hallucination. Worse still, he might think it wasn't.
The rest of the evening was not very clear. He directed Drake to his house. Drake commented that everyone on the street must be out partying or to bed early. He didn't comment. Drake called a taxi. They watched TV for a while without talking-Guy Lombardo at the Waldorf-Astoria, making the sweetest music this side of heaven. Guy Lombardo, he thought, was looking decidedly froggy.
The taxi came at quarter to twelve. Drake asked him again if he would be all right.
"Yes, I think I'm coming down." He really was. The hallucinations were draining toward the back of his mind.
Drake opened the front door and pulled up his collar. "Stop thinking about suicide. It's chicken."
He smiled and nodded, but he neither accepted nor rejected Drake's advice. Like everything else these days, he simply took it under advisement. "Happy New Year," he said.
"Same to you, Mr. Dawes."
The taxi honked impatiently.
Drake went down the walk, and the taxi pulled away, yellow light glowing on the roof.
He went back into the living room and sat down in front of the TV. They had switched from Guy Lombardo to Times Square, where the glowing ball was poised atop the Allis-Chalmers Building, ready to start its descent into 1974. He felt weary, drained, finally sleepy. The ball would come down soon and he would enter the new year tripping his ass off. Somewhere in the country a New Year's baby was pushing its squashed, placenta-covered head out of his mother's womb and into this best of all possible worlds. At Walter Hammer's party, people would be raising their glasses and counting down. New Year's resolutions were about to be tested. Most of them would prove as strong as wet paper towels. He made a resolution of his own on the spur of the moment, and got to his feet in spite of his tiredness. His body ached and his spine felt like glass-some kind of hangover. He went into the kitchen and got his hammer off the kitchen shelf. When he brought it back into the living room, the glowing ball was sinking down the pole. There was a split screen, showing the ball on the right, showing the merrymakers at the Waldorf on the left, chanting: "Eight seven six five " One fat society dame caught a glimpse of herself on a monitor, looked surprised, and then waved to the country.
The turn of the year, he thought. Absurdly, goose bumps broke out on his arms.
The ball reached the bottom, and a sign lit up on the top of the Allis-Chalmers Building. The sign said:
1974
At the same instant he swung the hammer and the TV screen exploded. Glass belched onto the carpet. There was a fizz of hot wires, but no fire. Just to be sure the TV would not roast him during the night in revenge, he kicked out the plug with his foot.
"Happy New Year," he said softly, and dropped the hammer to the carpet.
He lay on the couch and fell asleep almost immediately. He slept with the lights on and his sleep was dreamless.
PART THREE
January
If I don't get some shelter,
Oh, I'm gonna fade away
-Rolling Stones
January 5, 1974
The thing that happened in the Shop 'n' Save that day was the only thing that had happened to him in his whole life that actually seemed planned and sentient, not random. It was as if an invisible finger had written on a fellow human being, expressly for him to read.
He liked to go shopping. It was very soothing, very sane. He enjoyed doing sane things very much after his bout with the mescaline. He had not awakened on New Year's Day until afternoon, and he had spent the remainder of the day wandering disconnectedly around the house, feeling spaced-out and strange. He had picked