Salem's Lot

9

Corey Bryant was stumbling up the Deep Cut Road toward where he had left his phone truck parked. He stank. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy. There was a large bump on the back of his head where he had struck it on the floor when he fainted. His boots made dragging, scuffing sounds on the soft shoulder. He tried to think about the scuffing sounds and nothing else, most notably about the sudden and utter ruin of his life. It was quarter past eight.

Reggie Sawyer had still been smiling gently when he ushered Corey out the kitchen door. Bonnie’s steady, racking sobs had come from the bedroom, counterpointing his words. ‘You go on up the road like a good boy, now. Get in your truck and go back to town. There’s a bus that comes in from Lewiston for Boston at quarter to ten. From Boston you can get a bus to anywhere in the country. That bus stops at Spencer’s. You be on it. Because if I ever see you again, I’m going to kill you. She’ll be all right now. She’s broke in now. She’s gonna have to wear pants and long-sleeve blouses for a couple of weeks, but I didn’t mark her face. You just want to get out of ‘salem’s Lot before you clean yourself up and start thinking you are a man again.’

And now here he was, walking up this road, about to do just what Reggie Sawyer said. He could go south from Boston… somewhere. He had a little over a thousand dollars saved in the bank. His mother had always said he was a very saving soul. He could wire for the money, live on it until he could get a job and begin the years-long job of forgetting this night - the taste of the gun barrel, the smell of his own shit satcheled in his trousers.

‘Hello, Mr Bryant.’

Corey gave a stifled scream and stared wildly into the dark, at first seeing nothing. The wind was moving in the trees, making shadows jump and dance across the road. Suddenly his eyes made out a more solid shadow, standing by the stone wall that ran between the road and Carl Smith’s back pasture. The shadow had a manlike form, but there was something… something…

‘Who are you?’

‘A friend who sees much, Mr Bryant.’

The form shifted and came from the shadows. In the faint light, Corey saw a middle-aged man with a black mustache and deep, bright eyes.

‘You’ve been ill used, Mr Bryant.’

‘How do you know my business?’

‘I know a great deal. It’s my business to know. Smoke?’

‘Thanks.’ He took the offered cigarette gratefully. He put it between his lips. The stranger struck a light, and in the glow of the wooden match he saw that the stranger’s cheekbones were high and Slavic, his forehead pale and bony, his dark hair swept straight back. Then the light was gone and Corey was dragging harsh smoke into his lungs. It was a dago cigarette, but any cigarette was better than none. He began to feel a little calmer.

‘Who are you?’ be asked again.

The stranger laughed, a startlingly rich and full-bodied sound that drifted off on the slight breeze like the smoke of Corey’s cigarette.

‘Names!’ he said. ‘Oh, the American insistence on names! Let me sell you an auto because I am Bill Smith! Eat at this one! Watch that one on television! My name is Barlow, if that eases you.’ And he burst into laughter again, his eyes twinkling and shining. Corey felt a smile creep onto his own lips and could scarcely believe it. His troubles seemed distant, unimportant, in comparison to the derisive good humor in those dark eyes.

‘You’re a foreigner, aren’t you?’ Corey asked.

‘I am from many lands; but to me this country… this town… seems full of foreigners. You see? Eh? Eh?’ He burst into that full-throated crow of laughter again, and this time Corey found himself joining in. The laughter escaped his throat under full pressure, rising a bit with delayed hysteria.

‘Foreigners, yes,’ he resumed, ‘but beautiful, enticing foreigners, bursting with vitality, full-blooded and full of life. Do you know how beautiful the people of your country and your town are, Mr Bryant?’

Corey only chuckled, slightly embarrassed. He did not look away from the stranger’s face, however. It held him rapt.

‘They have never known hunger or want, the people of this country. It has been two generations since they knew anything close to it, and even then it was like a voice in a distant room. They think they have known sadness, but their sadness is that of a child who has spilled his ice cream on the grass at a birthday party. There is no… how is the English?… attenuation in them. They spill each other’s blood with great vigor. Do you believe it? Do you see?’

‘Yes,’ Corey said. Looking into the stranger’s eyes, he could see a great many things, all of them wonderful.

‘The country is an amazing paradox. In other lands, when a man eats to his fullest day after day, that man becomes fat… sleepy… piggish. But in this land… it seems the more you have the more aggressive you become. You see? Like Mr Sawyer. With so much; yet he begrudges you a few crumbs from his table. Also like a child at a birthday party, who will push away another baby even though he himself can eat no more. Is it not so?,

‘Yes,’ Corey said. Barlow’s eyes were so large, and so understanding. It was all a matter of -

‘It is all a matter of perspective, is it not?’

‘Yes!’ Corey exclaimed. The man had put his finger on the right, the exact, the perfect, word. The cigarette dropped unnoticed from his fingers and lay smoldering on the road.

‘I might have bypassed such a rustic community as this,’ the stranger said reflectively. ‘I might have gone to one of your great and teeming cities. Bah!’ He drew himself up suddenly, and his eyes flashed. ‘What do I know of cities? I should be run over by a hansom crossing the street! I should choke on nasty air! I should come in contact with sleek, stupid dilettantes whose concerns are… what do you say? inimical?… yes, inimical to me. How should a poor rustic like myself deal with the hollow sophistication of a great city… even an American city? No! And no and no! I spit on your cities!’

‘Oh yes!’ Corey whispered.

‘So I have come here, to a town which was first told of to me by a most brilliant man, a former townsman himself, now lamentably deceased. The folk here are still rich and full-blooded, folk who are stuffed with the aggression and darkness so necessary to… there is no English for it. Pokol; vurderlak; eyalik. Do you follow?’

‘Yes,’ Corey whispered.

‘The people have not cut off the vitality which flows from their mother, the earth, with a shell of concrete and cement. Their hands are plunged into the very waters of life. They have ripped the life from the earth, whole and beating! Is it not true?’

‘Yes!’

The stranger chuckled kindly and put a hand on Corey’s shoulder. ‘You are a good boy. A fine, strong boy. I don’t think you want to leave this so-perfect town, do you?’

‘No… ’ Corey whispered, but he was suddenly doubtful. Fear was returning. But surely it was unimportant. This man would allow no harm to come to him.

‘And so you shall not. Ever again.’

Corey stood trembling, rooted to the spot, as Barlow’s head inclined toward him.

‘And you shall yet have your vengeance on those who would fill themselves while others want.’

Corey Bryant sank into a great forgetful river, and that river was time, and its waters were red.