The Regulators - Stephen King [156]
Tak ah wan! Tak ah lah! Mi him en tow!
What is it?' Cynthia asked. What's wrong?'
What do you mean?'
'You're shivering.'
Johnny smiled. 'I guess a goose just walked over my grave.' He took her hand off his arm and folded his fingers through hers. 'Come on. Let's go out and see how everyone's doing.'
4
They were almost to the street and the others when Cynthia came to a stop. 'Oh my God,' she said in a soft, strengthless voice. 'Oh my God, look.'
Johnny turned. The storm had moved on, but there was one isolated thunderhead just west of them. It hung over downtown Columbus, connected to Ohio by a gauzy umbilicus of rain, and it made the shape of a gigantic cowboy galloping on a storm-colored stallion. The horse's grotesquely elongated snout pointed east, toward the Great Lakes; its tail stretched out long toward the prairies and deserts. The cowboy appeared to have his hat in one hand, perhaps waving it in a hooraw, and as Johnny watched, open-mouthed and transfixed, the man's head flickered with lightning.
'A ghost rider,' Brad said. 'Holy shit, a goddam ghost rider in the sky. Do you see it, Bee?'
Cynthia moaned through the hand she'd pressed to her mouth. Looked up at the cloud-shape, eyes bulging, head shaking from side to side in a useless gesture of negation. The others were looking now, as well — not the firemen and not the cops, who would break out of their indecision soon and come on up here to join the block party, but the Poplar Street folk who had survived the regulators.
Steve took Cynthia by her thin arms and drew her gently away from Johnny. 'Stop it,' he said. 'It can't hurt us. It's just a cloud and it can't hurt us. It's going away already. See?'
It was true. The flank of the skyhorse was tearing open in some places, melting in others, letting the sun through in long, hazy rays. It was just a summer afternoon again, the very rooftree of summer, all watermelon and Kool-Aid and foul tips off the end of the bat.
Steve glanced down the street and saw a police car begin rolling, very slowly, up the hill toward them, running over the tangled firehoses as it came. He looked back at Johnny. 'Yo.'
'Yo what?'
'Did he commit suicide, that kid?'
'I don't know what else you'd call it,' Johnny said, but he supposed he knew why the hippie had asked; it hadn't felt like suicide, somehow.
The police cruiser stopped. The man who got out was wearing a khaki uniform which came equipped with roughly one ton of gold braid. His eyes, a very sharp blue, were almost lost in a complex webwork of wrinkles. His gun, a big one, was in his hand. He looked like someone Johnny had seen before, and after a moment it came to him: the late Ben Johnson, who had played saintly ranchers (usually with beautiful daughters) and satanic outlaws with equal grace and ability.
'Someone want to tell me what in the name of Christ Jesus the Redeemer went on here?' he asked.
No one replied, and after a moment Johnny Marinville realized they were all looking at him. He stepped forward, read the little plaque pinned to the pocket of the man's crisp uniform blouse, and said: 'Outlaws, Captain Richardson.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Outlaws. Regulators. Renegades from the wastes.'
'My friend, if you see anything funny about this — '
'I don't, sir. No indeed. And it's going to get even further from funny when you look in there.' Johnny pointed toward the Wyler house, and as he did suddenly thought of his guitar. It was like thinking about a glass of iced tea when you were hot and thirsty and tired. He thought of how nice it would be to sit on his porch step and strum and sing 'The Ballad of Jesse James' in the key of D. That was the one that went, 'Oh, Jesse had a wife to mourn for his life, three children they were brave'. He supposed his old Gibson might have a hole in it, his house looked pretty well trashed (looked as if it was no longer sitting exactly right on its