Salem's Lot - Stephen King [93]
‘You think it over,’ Mrs Norton said, now clearly sorry as well as frightened. ‘I still don’t think I spoke out of turn. That Ben Mears, I’ve seen showboats like him before. All he’s interested in is-’
‘No. No more.’
She turned away.
Her mother came up another step and called after her: ‘When Floyd left here he was in an awful state. He-’
But the door to Susan’s room closed and cut off her words.
She lay down on her bed-which had been decorated with stuffed toys and a poodle dog with a transistor radio in its belly not so long ago-and lay looking at the wall, trying not to think. There were a number of Sierra Club posters on the wall, but not so long ago she had been surrounded by posters clipped from Rolling Stone and Creem and Crawdaddy, pictures of her idols-Jim Morrison and John Lennon and Dave van Ronk and Chuck Berry. The ghost of those days seemed to crowd in on her like bad time exposures of the mind.
She could almost see the newsprint, standing out on the cheap pulp stock. GOING-PLACES YOUNG WRITER AND YOUNG WIFE INVOLVED IN ‘MAYBE’ MOTORCYCLE FATALITY. The rest in carefully couched innuendoes. Perhaps a picture taken at the scene by a local photographer, too gory for the local paper, just right for Mabel’s kind.
And the worst was that a seed of doubt had been planted Stupid. Did you think he was in cold storage before he came back here? That he came wrapped in a germ-proof cellophane bag, like a motel drinking glass? Stupid. Yet the seed had been planted. And for that she could feel something more than adolescent pique for her mother she could feel something black that bordered on hate.
She shut the thoughts-not out but away-and put an arm over her face and drifted into an uncomfortable doze that was broken by the shrill of the telephone downstairs, then more sharply by her mother’s voice calling, ‘Susan! It’s for you!’
She went downstairs, noticing it was just after five-thirty’. The sun was in the west. Mrs Norton was in the kitchen, beginning supper. Her father wasn’t home yet.
‘Hello?’
‘Susan?’ The voice was familiar, but she could not put a name to it immediately.
‘Yes, who’s this?’
‘Eva Miller, Susan. I’ve got some bad news.’
‘Has something happened to Ben?’ All the spit seemed to have gone out of her mouth. Her band came up and touched her throat. Mrs Norton had come to the kitchen door and was watching, a spatula held in one hand.
‘Well, there was a fight. Floyd Tibbits showed up here this afternoon-’
‘Floyd!’
Mrs Norton winced at her tone.
‘-and I said Mr Mears was sleeping. He said all right, just as polite as ever, but he was dressed awful funny. I asked him if he felt all right. He had on an old-fashioned overcoat and a funny hat and he kept his hands in his pockets. I never thought to mention it to Mr Mears when he got up. There’s been so much excitement-’
‘What happened?’ Susan nearly screamed.
‘Well, Floyd beat him up,’ Eva said unhappily. ‘Right out in my parking lot. Sheldon Corson and Ed Craig went out and dragged him off.’
‘Ben. Is Ben all right?’
‘I guess not.’
‘What is it?’ She was holding the phone very tightly.
‘Floyd got in one last crack and sent Mr Mears back against that little foreign car of his, and he hit his head. Carl Foreman took him over to Cumberland Receiving, and he was unconscious. I don’t know anything else. If you-’
She hung up, ran to the closet, and pulled her coat off the hanger.
‘Susan, what is it?’
‘That nice boy Floyd Tibbits,’ Susan said, hardly aware that she had begun to cry. ‘He’s put Ben in the hospital.’
She ran out without waiting for a reply.
2
She got to the hospital at six-thirty and sat in an uncomfortable plastic contour chair, staring blankly at a copy of Good Housekeeping. And I’m the only one, she thought. How damned awful. She had thought of calling Matt Burke, but the thought of the doctor coming back and finding her gone had stopped her.
The minutes crawled by on the waiting room clock, and at ten minutes of seven, a doctor with a sheaf of