Stephen King - Grey Matter(1).pdf - Stephen King - margozap

GREY MATTER

They had been predicting a norther all week and along about Thursday we got it, a real screamer that piled up

eight inches by four in the afternoon and showed no signs of slowing down. The usual five or six were gathered

around the Reliable in Henry's Nite-Owl, which is the only little store on this side of Bangor that stays open right

around the clock.

Henry don't do a huge business - mostly, it amounts to selling the college kids their beer and wine - but he gets

by and it's a place for us old duffers on Social Security to get together and talk about who's died lately and how

the world's going to hell.

This afternoon Henry was at the counter; Bill Pelham, Bertie Connors, Carl Littlefield, and me was tipped up by

the stove. Outside, not a car was moving on Ohio Street, and the ploughs was having hard going. The wind was

socking drifts across that looked like the backbone on a dinosaur.

Henry'd only had three customers all afternoon - that is, if you want to count in blind Eddie. Eddie's about

seventy, and he ain't completely blind. Runs into things, mostly. He comes in once or twice a week and sticks a

loaf of bread under his coat and walks out with an expression on his face like: there, you stupid sonsabitches,

fooled you again.

Bertie once asked Henry why he never put a stop to it.

'I'll tell you,' Henry said. 'A few years back the Air Force wanted twenty million dollars to rig up a flyin' model of

an airplane they had planned out. Well, it cost them seventy-five million and then the damn thing wouldn't fly.

That happened ten years ago, when blind Eddie and myself were considerable younger, and I voted for the

woman who sponsored that bill. Blind Eddie voted against her. And -since then I've been buyin' his bread.'

Bertie didn't look like he quite followed all of that, but he sat back to muse over it.

Now the door opened again, letting in a blast of the cold grey air outside, and a young kid came in, stamping

snow off his boots. I placed him after a second. He was Richie Grenadine's kid, and he looked like he'd just

kissed the wrong end of the baby. His Adam's apple was going up and down and his face was the colour of old

oilcloth.

'Mr Parmalee,' he says to Henry, his eyeballs rolling -around in his head like ball bearings, 'you got to come. You

got to take him his beer and come. I can't stand to go back there. I'm scared.'

'Now slow down,' Henry says, taking off his white butcher's apron and coming around the counter. 'What's the

matter? Your dad been on a drunk?'

I realized when he said that that Richie hadn't been in for quite some time. Usually he'd be by once a day to pick

up a -case of whatever beer was going cheapest at that time, a big --fat man with jowls like pork butts and ham-

hock arms. Richie always was a pig about his beer, but he handled it okay when he was working at the sawmill

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GREY MATTER

out in Clifton. Then something happened - a pulper piled a bad load, or maybe Richie just made it out that way -

and Richie was off work, free an' easy, with the sawmill company paying him compensation. Something in his

back. Anyway, he got awful fat. He hadn't been in lately, although once in a while I'd seen his boy come in for

Richie's nightly case. Nice enough boy Henry sold him the beer, for he knew it was only the boy doing as his

father said.

'He's been on a drunk,' the boy was saying now, 'but that ain't the trouble. It's . . . it's . . . oh Lord, it's awful!'

Henry saw he was going to bawl, so he says real quick:

'Carl, will you watch things for a minute?'

'Sure.'

'Now, Timmy, you come back into the stockroom and tell me what's what.'

He led the boy away, and Carl went around behind the counter and sat on Henry's stool. No one said anything for

quite a while. We could hear 'em back there, Henry's deep, slow voice and then Timmy Grenadine's high one,

speaking very fast. Then the boy commenced to cry, and Bill Pelham cleared his throat and started filling up his

pipe.

'I ain't seen Richie for a couple of months,' I said.

Bull grunted. 'No loss.'

'He was in . . . oh, near the end of October,' Carl said. 'Near Halloween. Bought a case of Schlitz beer. He was

gettin' awful meaty.'

There wasn't much more to say. The boy was still crying, but he was talking at the same time. Outside the wind

kept on whooping and yowling and the radio said we'd have another six inches or so by morning. It was mid-

January and it made me wonder if anyone had seen Richie since October - besides his boy, that is.

The talking went on for quite a while, but finally Henry and the boy came out. The boy had taken his coat off, but

Henry had put his on. The boy was kinda hitching in his chest the way you do when the worst is past, but his eyes

was red and when he glanced at you, he'd look down at the floor.

Henry looked worried. 'I thought I'd send Timmy here upstairs an' have my wife cook him up a toasted cheese or

somethin'. Maybe a couple of you fellas'd like to go around to Richie's place with me. Timmy says he wants

some beer. He gave me the money.' He tried to smile, but it was a pretty sick affair and he soon gave up.

'Sure,' Bertie says. 'What kind of beer? I'll go fetch her.'

'Get Harrow's Supreme,' Henry said. 'We got some cut-down boxes back there.'

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I got up, too. It would have to be Bertie and me. Carl's arthritis gets something awful on days like this, and Billy

Pelham don't have much use of his right arm any more.

Bertie got four six-packs of Harrow's and I packed them into a box while Henry took the boy upstairs to th~

apartment, overhead.

Well, he straightened that out with his missus and came back down, looking over his shoulder once to make sure

the upstairs door was closed. Billy spoke up, fairly busting:

'What's up? Has Richie been workin' the kid over?'

'No,' Henry said. 'I'd just as soon not say anything just yet. It'd sound crazy. I will show you somethin-', though.

The money Timmy had to pay for the beer with.' He shed four dollar bills out of his pocket, holding them by the

corner, and I don't blame him. They was all covered with a grey, slimy stuff that looked like the scum on top of

bad preserves. He laid them down on the counter with a funny smile and said to Carl: 'Don't let anybody touch

'em. Not if what the kid says is even half right!'

And he went around to the sink by the meat counter and washed his hands.

I got up, put on my pea coat and scarf and buttoned up. It was no good taking a car; Richie lived in an apartment

building down on Curve Street, which is as close to straight up and down as the law allows, and it's the last place

the ploughs touch.

As we were going out, Bill Pelham called after us: 'Watch out, now.'

Henry just nodded and put the case of Harrow's on the little handcart he keeps by the door, and out we trundled.

The wind hit us like a sawblade, and right away I pulled my scarf up over my ears. We paused in the doorway

just for a second while Bertie pulled on his gloves. He had a pained sort of a wince on his face, and I knew how

he felt. It's all well for younger fellows to go out skiing all day and running those goddam waspwing

snowmobiles half the night, but when you get up over seventy without an oil change, you feel that north-east

wind around your heart.

'I don't want to scare you boys,' Henry said, with that queer, sort of revolted smile still on his mouth, 'but I'm

goin' to show you this all the same. And I'm goin' to tell you what the boy told me while we walk up there. . .

because I want you to know, you see!'

And he pulled a .45-calibre hogleg out of his coat pocket - the pistol he'd kept loaded and ready under the counter

ever since he went to twenty-four hours a day back in 1958. I don't know where he got it, but I do know the one

time he flashed it at a stickup guy, the fella just turned around and bolted right out the door. Henry was a cool

one, all right. I saw him throw out a college kid that came in one time and gave him a hard time about cashing a

cheque. That kid walked away like his ass was on sideways and he had to crap.

Well, I only tell you that because Henry wanted Bertie and me to know he meant business, and we did, too.

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So we set out, bent into the wind like washerwomen, Henry trundling that cart and telling us what the boy had

said. The wind was trying to rip the words away before we could hear 'em, but we got most of it - more'n we

wanted to. I was damn glad Henry had his Frenchman's pecker stowed away in his coat pocket.

The kid said it must have been the beer - you know how you can get a bad can every now and again. Flat or

smelly or green as the peestains in an Irishman's underwear. A fella once told me that all it takes is a tiny hole to

let in bacteria that'll do some damn strange things. The hole can be so small that the beer won't hardly dribble out,

but the bacteria can get in. And beer's good food for some of those bugs.

Anyway, the kid said Richie brought back a case of Golden Light just like always that night in October and sat

down to polish it off while Timmy did his homework.

Timmy was just about ready for bed when he hears Richie say, 'Christ Jesus, that ain't right.'

And Timmy says, 'What's that, Pop?'

'That beer,' Richie says. 'God, that's the worst taste I ever had in my mouth.'

Most people would wonder why in the name of God he drank it if it tasted so bad, but then, most people have

never seen Richie Grenadine go to his beer. I was down in Wally's Spa one afternoon, and I saw him win the

goddamndest bet. He bet a fella he could drink twenty two-bit glasses of beer in one minute. Nobody local would

take him up, but this salesman from Montpelier laid down a twenty-dollar Bill and Richie covered him. He drank

all twenty with seven seconds to spare - although when he walked out he was more'n three sails into the wind. So

I expect Richie had most of that bad can in his gut before his brain could warn him.

'I'm gonna puke,' Richie say. 'Look out!'

But by the time he got to the head it had passed off, and that was the end of it. The boy said he smelt the can, and

it smeltlike something crawled in there and died. There was a little grey dribble around the top, too.

Two days later the boy comes home from school and there's Richie sitting in front of the TV and watching the

afternoon tearjerkers with every goddamn shade in the place pulled down.

'What's up?' Timmy asks, for Richie don't hardly ever roll in before nine.

'I'm watchin' the TV,' Richie says. 'I didn't seem to want to go out today.'

Timmy turned on the light over the sink, and Richie yelled at him: 'And turn off that friggin' light!'

So Timmy did, not asking how he's gonna do his homework in the dark. When Richie's in that mood, you don't

ask him nothing.

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'An' go out an' get me a case,' Richie says. 'Money's on the table.'

When the kid gets back, his dad's still sitting in the dark, only now it's dark outside, too. And the TV's off. The

kid starts getting the creeps well, who wouldn't? Nothing but a dark flat and your daddy setting in the corner like

a big lump.

So he puts the beer on the table, knowing that Richie don't like it so cold it spikes his forehead, and when he gets

close to his old man he starts to notice a kind of rotten smell, like an old cheese someone left standing on the

counter over the weekend. He don't say shit or go blind, though, as the old man was never what you'd call a

cleanly soul. Instead he goes into his room and shuts the door and does his homework, and after a while he hears

the TV start to go and Richie's popping the top in his first of the evening.

And for two weeks or so, that's the way things went. The kid got up in the morning and went to school an' when

he got home Richie'd be in front of the television, and beer money on the table.

The flat was smelling ranker and ranker, too. Richie wouldn't have the shades up at all, and about the middle of

November he made Timmy stop studying in his room. Said he couldn't abide the light under the door. So Timmy

started going down the block to a friend's house after getting his dad the beer.

Then one day when Timmy came home from school - it was four o'clock and pretty near dark already - Richie

says, 'Turn on the light.'

The kid turned on the light over the sink, and damn if Richie ain't all wrapped up in a blanket.

'Look,' Richie says, and one hand creeps out from under the blanket. Only it ain't a hand at all. Something grey, is

all the kid could tell Henry. Didn't look like a hand at all. Just a grey lump.

Well, Timmy Grenadine was scared bad. He says, 'Pop, what's happening to you?'

And Richie says, 'I dunno. But it don't hurt. It feels. . kinda nice.'

So, Timmy says, 'I'm gonna call Dr Westphail.'

And the blanket starts to tremble all over, like something awful was shaking - all over- under there. And Richie

says, 'Don't you dare. If you do I'll touch ya and you'll end up just like this.' And he slides the blanket down over

his face for just a minute.

By then we were up to the corner of Harlow arid Curve Street, and I was even colder than the temperature had

been on Henry's Orange Crush thermometer when we came out. A person doesn't hardly want to believe such

things, and yet there's still strange things in the world.

I once knew a fella named George Kelso, who worked for the Bangor Public Works Department. He spent fifteen

years fixing water mains and mending electricity cables and all that, an' then one day he just up an' quit, not two

years before his retirement. Frankie Haldeman, who knew him, said George went down into a sewer pipe on

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Stephen King - Grey Matter(1).pdf

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