The silence was so long Morris was about to try Payton againthe electricity in the air had made long-range radio communication impossible and even in-town chatter difficult-and then Payton said in a weary, frightened voice, “Aw. Aw, Jesus. Aw, Jesus Tiddlywinks Christ. What’s going on here?”
“Well, the lady said they were going to-”
“I heard you the first time!” Payton yelled it so loudly that his voice distorted and broke up. “Get over to the Catholic Church!
If something’s happening, try to break it up but don’t get hurt.
I repeat, don’t get hurt. I’ll send backup as soon as I can-if I have any backup left. Do it now! Ten-four!”
“Uh, Lieutenant Payton? Where is the Catholic Church in this town?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Payton screamed. “I don’t worship there! Just follow the crowd! Ten-forty out!”
11
Morris hung up the mike. He could no longer see the crowd, but he could still hear them between the thunderclaps. He put the cruiser in gear and followed the singing.
The path which led up to the kitchen door of Myra Evans’s house was lined with rocks painted in various pastel colors.
Cora Rusk picked up a blue one and bounced it in the hand which was not holding her gun, testing its weight. She tried the door. It was locked, as she had expected. She tossed the rock through the glass and used the barrel of her pistol to clear away the shards and splinters still clinging to the frame. Then she reached through, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. Her hair clung to her cheeks in wet snaggles and commas. Her dress still gaped open, and droplets of rainwater ran down the pimple-studded swells of her breasts.
Chuck Evans wasn’t home, but Garfield, Chuck and Myra’s Angora cat, was. He came trotting into the kitchen, miaowing, hoping for food, and Cora let him have it. The cat flew backward in a cloud of blood and fur. “Eat that, Garfield,” Cora remarked. She strode through the puff of gunsmoke and into the hall. She started up the stairs. She knew where she would find the slut. She would find her in bed. Cora knew that as well as she knew her own name.
“It’s bedtime, all right,” she said. “You just want to believe it, Myra my dear.”
Cora was smiling.
12
Father Brigham and Albert Gendron led a platoon of pissed-off Catholics down Castle Avenue toward Harrington Street. Halfway there, they heard singing. The two men exchanged a glance.
“Do you think we might be able to teach em a different tune, Albert?” Father Brigham asked softly.
“I think so, Father,” Albert replied.
“Shall we teach them to sing ’I Ran All the Way Home’?”
“A very good tune, Father. I think maybe even muck like them might be able to learn that one.”
Lightning flew across the sky. It illuminated Castle Avenue with momentary brilliance, and showed the two men a small crowd advancing up the hill toward them. Their eyes gleamed white and empty, like the eyes of statues, in the lightning-flash.
“There they are!” someone shouted, and a woman cried: “Get the dirty Mickey Finn sons of bitches!”
“Let’s bag some trash,” Father John Brigham breathed happily, and charged the Baptists.
“Amen, Father,” Albert said, running at his side.
They all began to run then.
As Trooper Morris rounded the corner, a fresh bolt of lightning jigged across the sky, felling one of the old elms by Castle Stream.
In the glare, he saw two mobs of people running toward each other.
One mob was running up the hill, the other mob was running down, and both mobs were screaming for blood. Trooper Morris suddenly found himself wishing he had called in sick that afternoon.
13
Cora opened the door of Chuck and Myra’s bedroom and saw exactly what she had expected: the bitch lying naked in a rumpled double bed which looked as if it had seen a hard tour of duty lately.
One of her hands was behind her, tucked under the pillows. The other held a framed picture. The picture was between Myra’s meaty thighs. She appeared to be humping it. Her eyes were half-closed in ecstasy.
“Oooh, E!” she moaned. “Ooooh, E! OOOOOOOOHHH,
EEEE-EEEEEEE!”
Horrified jealousy flared in Cora’s heart and rose up her throat until she could taste its bitter ’nice in her mouth.
“Oh you shithouse mouse,” she breathed, and brought up the automatic.
At that moment Myra looked at her, and Myra was smiling. She brought her free hand out from under her pillow. In it she held an automatic pistol of her own.
“Mr. Gaunt said you’d come, Cora,” she said, and fired.
Cora felt the bullet beat the air beside her cheek; heard it thud into the plaster on the left side of the door. She fired her own gun.
It struck the picture between Myra’s legs, shattering the glass and burying itself in Myra’s upper thigh.
It also left a bullet-hole in the center of Elvis Presley’s forehead.
“Look what you did!” Myra shrieked. “You shot The King, you stupid cunt!”
She fired three shots at Cora. Two went wild but the third hit Cora in the throat, driving her backward against the wall in a pink spray of blood. As Cora collapsed to her knees, she fired again.
The bullet punched a hole in Myra’s kneecap and knocked her out of bed. Then Cora fell face-forward onto the floor, the gun slipping from her hand.
I’m coming to you, Elvis, she tried to say, but something was terribly, terribly wrong. There seemed to be only darkness, and no one in it but her.
14
Castle Rock’s Baptists, led by the Rev. William Rose, and Castle Rock’s Catholics, led by Father John Brigham, came together near the foot of Castle Hill with an almost audible crunch. There was no polite fist-fighting, no Marquis of Queensberry rules; they had come to gouge out eyes and tear off noses. Quite possibly to kill.
Albert Gendron, the huge dentist who was slow to anger but terrible once his wrath was roused, grabbed Norman Harper by the ears and jerked Norman’s head forward. He brought his own head forward at the same time. Their skulls crashed together with a sound like crockery in an earthquake. Norman shuddered, then went limp. Albert threw him aside like a bag of laundry and grabbed for Bill Sayers, who sold tools at the Western Auto. Bill dodged, then threw a punch.
Albert took it squarely on the mouth, spat a tooth, grabbed Bill in a bear-hug, and squeezed until he heard a rib snap. Bill began to shriek. Albert threw him most of the way across the street, where Trooper Morris stopped just in time to avoid running him down.
The area was now a tangle of struggling, punching, gouging, yelling figures. They tripped each other, they slipped in the rain, they got up again, they hit out and were hit in return. The gaudy splashes of lightning made it seem that some weird dance was going on, one where you threw your partner into the nearest tree instead of allemanding her, or dug your knee into his crotch instead of doing a do-si-do.
Nan Roberts grabbed Betsy Vigue by the back of the dress as Betsy tore tattoos into Lucille Dunham’s cheeks with her nails. Nan yanked Betsy toward her, whirled her around, and poked two of her fingers up Betsy’s nose all the way to the second knuckles.
Betsy uttered a nasal foghorn screech as Nan began to shake her enthusiastically back and forth by her nose.
Frieda Pulaski belted Nan with her pocket-book. Nan was driven to her knees. Her fingers came out of Betsy Vigue’s nose with an audible pop. When she tried to get up, Betsy kicked her in the face and knocked her sprawling in the middle of the street. “You bidch, you wregged by dodze!” Betsy shrieked. “You wregged by DODZE!” She tried to stamp her foot down into Nan’s belly. Nan grabbed her foot, twisted her, and dumped the once-upon-a-time Betty La-La face-first into the street. Nan crawled to her; Betsy was waiting; a moment later they were both rolling over and over in the street, biting and scratching.