Salem's Lot

26

Miss Coogan was reading a story called ‘I Tried to Strangle Our Baby’ in Real Life Confessions when the door opened and her first customer of the evening came in.

She had never seen things so slow. Ruthie Crockett and her friends hadn’t even been in for a soda at the fountain-not that she missed that crowd-and Loretta Starcher hadn’t stopped in for The New York Times. It was still under the counter, neatly folded. Loretta was the only person in Jerusalem’s Lot who bought the Times (she pronounced it that way, in italics) regularly. And the next day she would put it out in the reading room.

Mr Labree hadn’t come back from his supper, either, although there was nothing unusual about that. Mr Labree was a widower with a big house out on Schoolyard Hill near the Griffens, and Miss Coogan knew perfectly well that he didn’t go home for his supper. He went out to Dell’s and ate hamburgers and drank beer. If he wasn’t back by eleven (and it was quarter of now), she would get the key out of the cash drawer and lock up herself. Wouldn’t be the first time, either. But they would-all be in a pretty pickle if someone came in needing medicine badly.

She sometimes missed the after-movie rush that had always come about this time before they had demolished the old Nordica across the street - people wanting icecream sodas and frappés and malteds, dates holding hands and talking about homework assignments. It had been hard, but it had been wholesome, too. Those children hadn’t been like Ruthie Crockett and her crowd, sniggering and flaunting their busts and wearing jeans tight enough to show the line of their panties-if they were wearing any. The reality of her feelings for those bygone patrons (who, although she had forgotten it, had irritated her just as much) was fogged by nostalgia, and she looked up eagerly when the door opened, as if it might be a member of the class of ‘64 and his girl, ready for a chocolate fudge sundae with extra nuts.

But it was a man, a grown-up man, someone she knew but could not place. As he carried his suitcase down to the counter, something in his walk or the motion of his head identified him for her.

‘Father Callahan!’ she said, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. She had never seen him without his priest suit on. He was wearing plain dark slacks and a blue chambray shirt, like a common millworker.

She was suddenly frightened. The clothes he wore were clean and his hair was neatly combed, but there was something in his face, something -

She suddenly remembered the day, twenty years ago, when she had come from the hospital where her mother had died of a sudden stroke-what the old-timers called a shock. When she had told her brother, he had looked something like Father Callahan did now. His face had a haggard, doomed took, and his eyes were blank and stunned. There was a burned-out look in them that made her uncomfortable. And the skin around his mouth looked red and irritated, as if he had overshaved or rubbed it for a long period of time with a washcloth, trying to get rid of a bad stain.

‘I want to buy a bus ticket,’ he said.

That’s it, she thought. Poor man, someone’s died and he just got the call down at the directory, or whatever they call it.

‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘Where-’

‘What’s the first bus?’

‘To where?’

‘Anywhere,’ he said, throwing her theory into shambles.

‘Well… I don’t… let me see…’ She fumbled out the schedule and looked at it, flustered. ‘There’s a bus at eleven-ten that connects with Portland, Boston, Hartford, and New Y-’

‘That one,’ he said. ‘How much?’

‘For how long-I mean, how far?’ She was thoroughly flustered now.

‘All the way,’ he said hollowly, and smiled. She had never seen such a dreadful smile on a human face, and she flinched from it. If he touches me, she thought, I’ll scream. Scream blue murder.

‘T-th-that would be to New York City,’ she said. ‘Twenty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents.’

He dug his wallet out of his back pocket with some difficulty, and she saw that his right hand was bandaged. He put a twenty and two ones before her, and she knocked a whole pile of blank tickets onto the floor taking one off the top of the stack. When she finished picking them up, he had added five more ones and a pile of change.

She wrote the ticket as fast as she could, but nothing would have been fast enough. She could feel his dead gaze on her. She stamped it and pushed it across the counter so she wouldn’t have to touch his hand.

‘Y-you’ll have to wait outside, Father C-Callahan. I’ve got to close in about five minutes.’ She scraped the bills and change into the cash drawer blindly, making no attempt to count it.

‘That’s fine,’ he said. He stuffed the ticket into his breast pocket. Without looking at her he said, ‘And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, that whosoever found him should not kill him. And Cain went out from the face of the Lord, and dwelt as a fugitive on the earth, at the east side of Eden. That’s Scripture, Miss Coogan. The hardest scripture in the Bible.’

‘Is that so?’ she said. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go outside, Father Callahan. I… Mr Labree is just in back a minute and he doesn’t like doesn’t like me to… to…’

‘Of course,’ he said, and turned to go. He stopped and looked around at her. She flinched before those wooden eyes. ‘You live in Falmouth, don’t you, Miss Coogan?’

‘Yes-’

‘Have your own car?’

‘Yes, of course. I really have to ask you to wait for the bus outside-’

‘Drive home quickly tonight, Miss Coogan. Lock all your car doors and don’t stop for anybody. Anybody. Don’t even stop if it’s someone you know.’

‘I never pick up hitchhikers,’ Miss Coogan said righteously.

‘And when you get home, stay away from Jerusalem’s Lot,’ Callahan went on. He was looking at her fixedly. ‘Things have gone bad in the Lot now.’

She said faintly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’ll have to wait for the bus outside.’

‘Yes. All right.’

He went out.

She became suddenly aware of how quiet the drugstore was ‘ how utterly quiet. Could it be that no one-no one-had come in since it got dark except Father Callahan? It was. No one at all.

Things have gone bad in the Lot now.

She began to go around and turn off the lights.