Ace put his package in the elbow-crook formed by two of the struts, then attached the blasting cap to the dynamite by poking the wires-the tips were already stripped, how convenient-into one of the sticks. He twisted the big white dial of the timer to 40. It began ticking.
He crawled out and scrambled back up the slippery bank.
“Well?” Buster asked anxiously. “Will it blow, do you think?”
“It’ll blow,” Ace said reassuringly, and climbed into the van.
He was soaked to the skin, but he didn’t mind.
“What if They find it? What if They disconnect it before-”
“Dad,” Ac.- said. “Listen a minute. Poke your head out this door and listen.”
Buster did. Faintly, between blasts of thunder, he thought he could hear yells and screams. Then, clearly, he heard the thin, hard crack of a pistol shot.
“Mr. Gaunt is keeping Them busy,” Ace said. “He’s one clever son of a bitch.” He tipped a pile of cocaine into his snuff-hollow, tooted, then held his hand under Buster’s nose. “Here, Dad-it’s Miller Time.”
Buster dipped his head and snorted.
They drove away from the bridge about seven minutes before Alan Pangborn crossed it. Underneath, the timer’s black marker stood at 30.
6
Ace Merrill and Danforth Keeton-aka Buster, aka Zippy’s Dad, aka Toad of Toad Hall-drove slowly up Main Street in the pouring rain like Santa and his helper, leaving little bundles here and there.
State Police cars roared by them twice, but neither had any interest in what looked like just one more TV newsvan. As Ace had said, Mr. Gaunt was keeping Them busy.
They left a timer and five sticks of dynamite in the doorway of
The Samuels Funeral Home. The barber shop was beside it. Ace wrapped a piece of blanket around his arm and popped his elbow through the gless pane in the door. He doubted very much if the barber shop was equipped with an alarm… or if the police would bother responding, even if it was. Buster handed him a freshly prepared bomb-they were using wire from one of the bench compartments to bind the timers and the blasting caps securely to the dynamite-and Ace lobbed it through the hole in the door. They watched it tumble to a stop at the foot of the # I chair, the timer ticking down from 25.
“Won’t nobody be getting a shave in there for awhile, Dad,” Ace breathed, and Buster giggled breathlessly.
They split up then, Ace tossing one bundle into Galaxia while Buster crammed another into the mouth of the bank’s night-deposit slot.
As they returned to the van through the slashing rain, lightning ripped across the sky. The elm toppled into Castle Stream with a rending roar. They stood on the sidewalk for a moment, staring in that direction, both of them thinking that the dynamite under the bridge had gone twenty minutes or more early, but there was no blossom of fire.
“I think it was lightning,” Ace said. “Must have hit a tree.
Come on.”
As they pulled out, Ace driving now, Alan’s station wagon passed them. In the pouring rain, neither driver noticed the other.
They drove up to Nan’s. Ace broke the glass of the door with his elbow and they left the dynamite and a ticking timer, this one set at 20, just inside, near the cash register stand. As they were leaving, an incredibly bright stroke of lightning flashed, and all the streetlights went out.
“It’s the power!” Buster cried happily. “The power’s out!
Fantastic! Let’s do the Municipal Building! Let’s blow it sky-high!”
“Dad, that place is crawling with cops! Didn’t you see them?”
“They’re chasing their own tails,” Buster said impatiently.
“And when these things start to go up, they’re going to be chasing them twice as fast. Besides, it’s dark now, and we can go in through the courthouse on the other side. The master-key opens that door, too.”
“You’ve got the balls of a tiger, Dad-you know that?”
Buster smiled tightly. “So do you, Ace. So do you.”
7
Alan pulled into one of the slant parking spaces in front of Needful Things, turned off the station wagon’s engine, and simply sat for a moment, staring at Mr. Gaunt’s shop. The sign in the window now read
GOODBYE GOODBYE I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU SAY HELLO I SAY GOODBYE.
Lightning stuttered on and off like giant neon, giving the window the look of a blank, dead eye.
Yet a deep instinct suggested that Needful Things, while closed and quiet, might not be empty. Mr. Gaunt could have left town in all the confusion, yes-with the storm raging and the cops running around like chickens with their heads cut off, doing that would have been no problem at all. But the picture of Mr. Gaunt which had formed in his mind on the long, wild ride from the hospital in Bridgton was that of
Batman’s nemesis, the Joker. Alan had an idea that he was dealing with the sort of man who would think installing a jet-powered backflow valve in a friend’s toilet the very height of humor. And would a fellow like that-the sort of fellow who would put a tack in your chair or stick a burning match in the sole of your shoe just for laughs-leave before you sat down or noticed that your socks were on fire and your pantscuffs were catching? Of course not. What fun would that be?
I think you’re still around, Alan thought. I think you want to watch all the fun. Don’t you, you son of a bitch?
He sat quite still, looking at the shop with the green awning, trying to fathom the mind of a man who would set such a complex and mean-spirited set of events in motion. He was concentrating far too deeply to notice that the car parked on his left was quite old, although smoothly, almost aerodynamically, designed. It was Mr.
Gaunt’s Tucker Talisman, in fact.
How did you do it? There’s a lot I want to know, but just that one thing will suffice for tonight. How could you do it? How could you learn so much about us so fast?
Brian said Mr. Gaunt wasn’t really a man at all.
In daylight Alan would have scoffed at this idea, as he had scoffed at the idea that Polly’s charm might have some supernatural healing power. But tonight, cupped in the crazy palm of the gale, staring at the display window which had become a blank dead eye, the idea had its own undeniable, gloomy power. He remembered the day he had come to Needful Things with the specific intention of meeting and talking to Mr. Gaunt, and he remembered the odd sensation that had crept over him as he peered in through the window with his hands cupped at the sides of his face to reduce the glare. He had felt he was being watched, although the shop was clearly empty.
And not only that; he’d felt the watcher was malign, hateful. The feeling had been so strong that for a moment he had actually mistaken his own reflection for the unpleasant (and half-transparent) face of someone else.
How strong that feeling had been… how very strong.
Alan found himself remembering something else-something his grandmother used to tell him when he was small: The devil’s voice is sweet to hear.
Brian said How had Mr. Gaunt come by his knowledge? And why in God’s name would he bother with a wide place in the road like Castle Rock?-Mr. Gaunt wasn’t really a man at all.
Alan suddenly leaned over and groped on the floor of the station wagon’s passenger side. For a moment he thought that what he was feeling around for was gone-that it had fallen out of the car at some point during the day when the passenger door was openand then his fingers happened on the metal curve. It had rolled underneath the seat, that was all. He fumbled it out, held it up… and the voice of depression, absent since he had left Sean Rusk’s hospital room (or maybe it was just that things had been too busy since then for Alan to hear it), spoke up in its loud and unsettlingly merry voice.
Hi, Alan! Hello! I’ve been away, sorry about that, but I’m back now, okay? What you got there? Can of nuts? Nop@that’s what i’t looks like, but that’s not what i’t is, I’s it? It’s the last Joke Todd ever boughtat the auburn Novelty Shop, correct? A fake can of Tastee-Munch Mixed Nuts with a green snake insid@repe-paper wrapped around a spring. And when he brought it to you with his eyes glowing and a hig, goofy smile on his face, you told him to put that silly thing back, didn’t you? And when his face fell, you pretended not to notice-you told him… let me see. What DID you tell him?
“That the fool and his money soon parted,” Alan said dully. He turned the can around and around in his hands, looking at it, remembering Todd’s face. “That’s what I told him.”
Ohhhh, riiiiight, the voice agreed. How could I have forgotten a thing like that? You want to talk about mean-spirited? jeer, Louise!
Good thing you reminded me! Good thing you reminded us BOTH, right? Only Annie saved the day-she said to let him have it. She said… let me see. What DID she say?
“She said it was sort of funny, that Todd was just like me, and that he’d only be young once.” Alan’s voice was hoarse and trembling.
He had begun to cry again, and why not? just why the fucking hell not?
The old pain was back, twisting itself around his aching heart like a dirty rag.
Hurts, doesn’t it? the voice of depression-that guilty, self-hating voice-asked with a sympathy Alan (the rest of Alan) suspected was entirely bogus. It hurts too much, like having to live inside a country-and-western song about goodlove gone bad or goodkids gone dead. Nothing that hurts this much can do you any good. Shove it back in the glove
