Song of Susannah - Stephen King [129]
“Oy!” That was Jake, his voice raised in a scream. “Oy, LOOK OUT!”
There was a yapping, excited bark Callahan would have recognized anywhere. Then the scream of locked tires.
The blare of a horn.
And the thud.
* * *
Three
Callahan forgot about his bashed ankle and sizzling palms. He ran around the preacher’s little crowd (it had turned as one to the street and the preacher had quit his rant in mid-flow) and saw Jake standing in Second Avenue, in front of a Yellow Cab that had slewed to a crooked stop no more than an inch from his legs. Blue smoke was still drifting up from its rear tires. The driver’s face was a pallid, craning O of shock. Oy was crouched between Jake’s feet. To Callahan the bumbler looked freaked out but otherwise all right.
The thud came again and yet again. It was Jake, bringing his balled-up fist down on the hood of the taxi. “Asshole!” Jake yelled at the pallid O on the other side of the windshield. Thud! “Why don’t you—” Thud! “—watch where—” THUD! “—the fuck you’re GOING!” THUD-THUD!
“You give it to im, Cholly!” yelled someone from across the street, where perhaps three dozen people had stopped to watch the fun.
The taxi’s door opened. The long tall helicopter who stepped out was wearing what Callahan thought was called a dashiki over jeans and huge mutant sneakers with boomerangs on the sides. There was a fez on his head, which probably accounted somewhat for the impression of extreme height, but not entirely. Callahan guessed the guy was at least six and a half feet tall, fiercely bearded, and scowling at Jake. Callahan started toward this developing scene with a sinking heart, barely aware that one of his feet was bare, slapping the pavement with every other step. The street preacher was also moving toward the developing confrontation. Behind the taxi stopped in the intersection, another driver, interested in nothing but his own scheduled evening plans, laid on his horn with both hands—WHEEEOOOONNNNNNK!!!—and leaned out his window, hollering “Move it, Abdul, you’re blockin the box!”
Jake paid no attention. He was in a total fury. This time he brought both fists down on the hood of the taxi, like Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy—THUD! “You almost ran my friend down, you asshole, did you even LOOK—” THUD! “—where you were GOING?”
Before Jake could bring his fists down on the hood of the taxi again—which he obviously meant to do until he was satisfied—the driver grabbed his right wrist. “Stop doing that, you little punk!” he cried in an outraged and strangely high voice. “I am telling you—”
Jake stepped back, breaking free of the tall taxi driver’s grip. Then, in a liquid motion too quick for Callahan to follow, the kid yanked the Ruger from the docker’s clutch under his arm and pointed it at the driver’s nose.
“Tell me what? ” Jake raged at him. “Tell me what? That you were driving too fast and almost ran down my friend? That you don’t want to die here in the street with a hole in your head? Tell me WHAT? ”
A woman on the far side of Second Avenue either saw the gun or caught a whiff of Jake’s homicidal fury. She screamed and started hurrying away. Several more followed her example. Others gathered at the curb, smelling blood. Incredibly, one of them—a young man wearing his hat turned around backward—shouted: “Go on, kid! Ventilate that camel-jockey!”
The driver backed up two steps, his eyes widening. He held up his hands to his shoulders. “Do not shoot me, boy! Please!”
“Then say you’re sorry!” Jake raved. “If you want to live, you cry my pardon! And his! And his! ” Jake’s skin was dead pale except for tiny red spots of color high up on his cheekbones. His eyes were huge and wet. What Don Callahan saw most clearly and liked least was the way the barrel of the Ruger was trembling. “Say you’re sorry for the way you were driving, you careless motherfucker! Do it now! Do it now! ”
Oy whined uneasily and said, “Ake!”
Jake looked down at him. When he did, the taxi driver lunged for the gun. Callahan hit him with a fairly respectable