The Regulators - Stephen King [81]
'Is Major Pike from a movie or a TV show?' Johnny asked, but he knew the answer already. It was coming together now, maybe should have come together a lot earlier. In the last few years he had taught a lot of classes in schools where grownups had to lean over seriously in order to drink from the water fountains, did a lot of readings in library rooms where the chairs were mostly three feet high. He listened to the run of their talk, but he didn't watch their shows or go to their movies. He knew instinctively that that sort of research would hinder his work rather than help it. So he didn't know everything, and still had plenty of questions, but he thought he was beginning to believe that this craziness could be understood.
'Ralphie?'
'From a TV show,' Ralphie said around his thumb. He was still holding Major Pike up in front of his eyes, much as Johnny had done. 'He's a MotoKop.'
'And Dream Floater. What's that, Ralphie?'
'Mr Marinville,' Dave began, 'we really ought to — '
'Give him a second, son,' Brad said.
Johnny never took his eyes off Ralphie. 'Dream Floater?'
'Cassie's Power Wagon,' Ralphie said. 'Cassie Styles. I think she's Colonel Henry's girlfriend. My friend Jason says she isn't because MotoKops don't have girlfriends, but I think she is. Why are the Power Wagons on Poplar Street, Mr Marinville?'
'I don't know, Ralphie.' Except he almost did.
'Why are they so big? And if they're good guys, why did they shoot my daddy and mommy?'
Ralphie dropped the Major Pike figure on the floor and kicked it all the way across the room. Then he put his hands over his face and began to sob. Cammie Reed started forward, but before she could get there, Ellen had wriggled free of Belinda. She went to Ralphie and put her arms around him. 'Never mind,' she said. 'Never mind, Ralphie, I'll take care of you.'
Won't that be a treat.' Ralphie said through his sobs, and Johnny clapped a hand over his mouth almost hard enough to make his lips bleed. It was the only way he could keep from bursting into mad, yodeling laughter.
If they're good guys, why did they shoot my daddy and mommy?
'Come on, boys,' he said, standing up and turning to the Reed twins. 'Let's go exploring.'
4
On Poplar Street, the sun was starting to go down. It was too early for it to be going down, but it was, just the same. It glared above the horizon in the west like a baleful red eye, turning the puddles in the street and the driveways and on the stoops to fire. It turned the broken glass which littered the block into embers. It turned the eyes of the faux-buzzard into red pits as it lifted off from the body of Mary Jackson on its improbable wings and flew across the street to the Carver lawn. Here it alit, looking from David Carver's body to that of Susi Geller's friend. It seemed unsure upon which to start. So much to eat, so little time. At last it chose Ellen and Ralphie's father, approaching the dead man in a series of clumsy hops. One of its yellow claw-feet sported five talons, the other only two.
Across the street, in the Wyler house — in the smell of dirt, old hamburger, and tomato soup — the TV blared on. It was the first saloon scene of The Regulators.
'You're a right purty lady,' Rory Calhoun was saying. That knowing leer in his voice, the one that said Babydoll, I'm going to eat you like ice cream before this shitty little oat-opera is over, and both of us know it. 'Why don't you sit down 'n have a drink? Bring me some luck?'
'I don't drink with trash,' Karen Steele responded coldly, and all of Rory Calhoun's men — the ones not currently hiding outside of town, that was — guffawed.
'Well, ain't you a little spitfire?' Rory Calhoun said, relaxed, and his men