The Regulators - Stephen King [7]
Grinning, unaware that he will die both a virgin and a backup shortstop, Gary throws a Shopper on to the stoop of Tom Billingsley's house (he can hear Doc's mower yowling out back), and swoops across the street again towards the Reed house. Dave tosses the Frisbee to Susi Geller and then takes the Shopper when Gary flips it to him.
'Thanks for getting the Frisbee back,' Dave says.
'No problem.' He nods toward the redhead. 'Who's she?'
Dave laughs, not unkindly. 'Never mind, little man. Don't even bother to ask.'
Gary thinks of chasing it a little, then decides it would probably be better to quit while he's ahead — he got the Frisbee, after all, and she applauded him, and the sight of her bouncing around in that little halter would have gotten an overcooked noodle hard. Surely that is enough for a summer afternoon as hot as this one.
Above and behind them, at the top of the hill, the red van begins to move, creeping slowly up on the corner.
'You coming to the game tonight?' Gary asks Dave Reed. 'We got the Columbus Rebels. Should be good.'
'You gonna play?'
'I should get a couple of innings in the field and at least one ay-bee.'
'Probably not, then,' Dave says, and yodels a laugh which makes Gary wince. The Reed twins look like young gods in their cut-off tees, he thinks, but when they open their mouths they bear a suspicious resemblance to the Hager Twins of Hee Haw.
Gary glances down toward the house on the corner of Poplar and Hyacinth, across from the store. The last house on the left, as in the horror movie of the same name. There is no car in the driveway, but that means nothing; it could be in the garage.
'He home?' he asks Dave, lifting his chin at 240.
'Dunno,' Jim says, coming over. 'But you hardly ever do, do you? That's what makes him so weird. Half the time he leaves his damn car in the garage and cuts through the woods to Hyacinth. Probably takes the bus to wherever it is he goes.'
'You scared of him?' Dave asks Gary. He's not exactly taunting, but it's close.
'Shit, no,' Gary says, cool, looking at the redhead, wondering about how it would feel to have a package like her in his arms, all sleek and springy, maybe slipping him a little tongue as she snuggled up to his boner. Not in this life, Bub, he thinks again.
He tosses the redhead a wave, is outwardly non-committal and inwardly overjoyed when she returns it, then sails diagonally down the street toward 240 Poplar. He'll deliver the Shopper on to the porch with his usual hard flip, and then — if the crazy ex-cop doesn't come charging out the front door, foaming at the mouth and glaring at him with stoned PCP eyes, maybe waving his service pistol or a machete or something — Gary will go across to the E-Z Stop for a soda to celebrate another successful negotiation of his route: Anderson Avenue to Columbus Broad, Columbus Broad to Bear Street, Bear Street to Poplar Street. Then home to change into his uniform and off to the baseball wars.
First, however, there is 240 Poplar to get behind him, home of the ex-cop who reputedly lost his job for beating a couple of innocent North Side kids to death because he thought they raped a little girl. Gary has no idea if there's any truth to the story — he has never seen anything about it in the papers, certainly — but he has seen the ex-cop's eyes, and there is something in them that he's never seen in another pair of eyes, a vacancy that makes you want to look away just as soon as you can without appearing uncool.
At the top of the hill, the red van — if that's what it is, it's so gaudy and customized it's hard to tell — turns on to Poplar. It begins to pick up speed. The sound of its engine is a cadenced, silky