Salem's Lot

5

When Nolly brought Floyd his breakfast from the Excellent Café, Floyd was fast asleep. It seemed to Nolly that it would be a meanness to wake him up just to eat a couple of Pauline Dickens’s hard-fried eggs and five or six pieces of greasy bacon, so Nolly disposed of it himself in the office and drank the coffee, too. Pauline did make nice coffee you could say that for her. But when he brought in Floyd’s lunch and Floyd was still sleeping and still in the same position, Nolly got a little scared and set the tray on the floor and went over and banged on the bars with a spoon.

‘Hey! Floyd! Wake up, I got y’dinner.’

Floyd didn’t wake up, and Nolly took his key ring out of his pocket to open the drunk-tank door. He paused just before inserting the key. Last week’s’ Gunsmoke’ had been about a hard guy who pretended to be sick until he jumped the turnkey. Nolly had never thought of Floyd Tibbits as a particularly hard guy, but he hadn’t exactly rocked that Mears guy to sleep.

He paused indecisively, holding the spoon in one hand and the key ring in the other, a big man whose open-throat white shirts always sweat-stained around the armpits by noon of a warm day. He was a league bowler with an average of 151 and a weekend bar-hopper with a list of Portland red-light bars and motels in his wallet right behind his Lutheran Ministry pocket calendar. He was a friendly man, a natural fall guy, slow of reaction and also slow to anger. For all these not inconsiderable advantages, he was not particularly agile on his mental feet and for several minutes he stood wondering how to proceed, beating on the bars with the spoon, hailing Floyd, wishing he would move or snore or do something. He was just thinking he better call Parkins on the citizen’s band and get instructions when Parkins himself said from the office doorway:

‘What in hell are you doin’, Nolly? Callin’ the hogs?’

Nolly blushed. ‘Floyd won’t move, Park. I’m afraid that maybe he’s… you know, sick.’

‘Well, do you think beatin’ the bars with that goddamn spoon will make him better?’ Parkins stepped by him and unlocked the cell.

‘Floyd?’ He shook Floyd’s shoulder. ‘Are you all r-’

Floyd fell off the chained bunk and onto the floor.

‘Goddamn,’ said Nolly. ‘He’s dead, ain’t he?’

But Parkins might not have heard. He was staring down at Floyd’s uncannily reposeful face. The fact slowly dawned on Nolly that Parkins looked as if someone had scared the bejesus out of him.

‘What’s the matter, Park?’

‘Nothin’,’ Parkins said. ‘Just… let’s get out of here.’ And then, almost to himself, he added: ‘Christ, I wish I hadn’t touched him.’

Nolly looked down at Floyd’s body with dawning horror.

‘Wake up,’ Parkins said. ‘We’ve got to get the doctor down here.’