Salem's Lot - Stephen King [113]
‘Hello, Mr Bryant.’
Corey gave a stifled scream and stared wildly into the dark, at first seeing nothing. The wind was moving in the trees, making shadows jump and dance across the road. Suddenly his eyes made out a more solid shadow, standing by the stone wall that ran between the road and Carl Smith’s back pasture. The shadow had a manlike form, but there was something… something…
‘Who are you?’
‘A friend who sees much, Mr Bryant.’
The form shifted and came from the shadows. In the faint light, Corey saw a middle-aged man with a black mustache and deep, bright eyes.
‘You’ve been ill used, Mr Bryant.’
‘How do you know my business?’
‘I know a great deal. It’s my business to know. Smoke?’
‘Thanks.’ He took the offered cigarette gratefully. He put it between his lips. The stranger struck a light, and in the glow of the wooden match he saw that the stranger’s cheekbones were high and Slavic, his forehead pale and bony, his dark hair swept straight back. Then the light was gone and Corey was dragging harsh smoke into his lungs. It was a dago cigarette, but any cigarette was better than none. He began to feel a little calmer.
‘Who are you?’ be asked again.
The stranger laughed, a startlingly rich and full-bodied sound that drifted off on the slight breeze like the smoke of Corey’s cigarette.
‘Names!’ he said. ‘Oh, the American insistence on names! Let me sell you an auto because I am Bill Smith! Eat at this one! Watch that one on television! My name is Barlow, if that eases you.’ And he burst into laughter again, his eyes twinkling and shining. Corey felt a smile creep onto his own lips and could scarcely believe it. His troubles seemed distant, unimportant, in comparison to the derisive good humor in those dark eyes.
‘You’re a foreigner, aren’t you?’ Corey asked.
‘I am from many lands; but to me this country… this town… seems full of foreigners. You see? Eh? Eh?’ He burst into that full-throated crow of laughter again, and this time Corey found himself joining in. The laughter escaped his throat under full pressure, rising a bit with delayed hysteria.
‘Foreigners, yes,’ he resumed, ‘but beautiful, enticing foreigners, bursting with vitality, full-blooded and full of life. Do you know how beautiful the people of your country and your town are, Mr Bryant?’
Corey only chuckled, slightly embarrassed. He did not look away from the stranger’s face, however. It held him rapt.
‘They have never known hunger or want, the people of this country. It has been two generations since they knew anything close to it, and even then it was like a voice in a distant room. They think they have known sadness, but their sadness is that of a child who has spilled his ice cream on the grass at a birthday party. There is no… how is the English?… attenuation in them. They spill each other’s blood with great vigor. Do you believe it? Do you see?’
‘Yes,’ Corey said. Looking into the stranger’s eyes, he could see a great many things, all of them wonderful.
‘The country is an amazing paradox. In other lands, when a man eats to his fullest day after day, that man becomes fat… sleepy… piggish. But in this land… it seems the more you have the more aggressive you become. You see? Like Mr Sawyer. With so much; yet he begrudges you a few crumbs from his table. Also like a child at a birthday party, who will push away another baby even though he himself can eat no more. Is it not so?,
‘Yes,’ Corey said. Barlow’s eyes were so large, and so understanding. It was all a matter of -
‘It is all a matter of perspective, is it not?’
‘Yes!’ Corey exclaimed. The man had put his finger on the right, the exact, the perfect, word. The cigarette dropped unnoticed from his fingers and lay smoldering on the