Commercial dynamite. Lots of commercial dynamite. It wasn’t quite the same thing as having an arsenal filled with Stinger missiles, but it was close enough for rock and roll. My, yes.
There had been a powerful eight-cell flashlight in the carrycompartment between the van’s front seats, along with a supply of other useful tools, and now-as Alan neared Castle Rock in his station wagon, as Norris Ridgewick sat in his kitchen, fashioning a hangman’s noose with a length of stout hemp rope, as Polly Chalmers’s dream of Aunt Evvie moved toward its conclusion-Ace ran the flashlight’s bright spotlight from one crate to the next. Overhead, the rain drummed on the shed’s roof. It was coming down so hard that Ace could almost believe he was back in the prison showers.
“Let’s get on with it,” Buster said in a low, hoarse voice.
“Just a minute, Dad,” Ace said. “It’s break-time.” He handed Buster the flashlight and took out the plastic hal), Mr. Gaunt had given him. He tipped a little pile of coke into the Enuff-hollow on his left hand, and snorted it quickly.
“What’s that?” Buster asked suspiciously.
“South American bingo-dust, and it’s ’ just as tasty a s taters.”
“Huh,” Keeton snorted. “Cocaine. They sell cocaine.”
Ace didn’t have to ask who They were. The old dude had talked about nothing else on the ride up here, and Ace suspected he would talk about nothing else all night.
“Not true, Dad,” Ace said. “They don’t sell it; They’re the ones who want it all to Themselves.” He tipped a little more into the snuff-hollow at the base of his thumb and held his hand out. “Try it and tell me I’m wrong.”
Keeton looked at him with a mixture of doubt, curiosity, and suspicion. “Why do you keep calling me Dad? I’m not old enough to be your dad.”
“Well, I doubt if you ever read the underground comics, but there is this guy named R. Crumb,” Ace said. The coke was at work in him now, sparking all his nerve-endings alight. “He does these comics about a guy named Zippy. And to me, you look just like Zippy’s Dad.”
“is that good?” Buster asked suspiciously.
“” Ace assured him. “But I’ll call you Mr. Keeton, Awesome, if you want.” He paused and then added deliberately, “Just like They do.”
“No,” Buster said at once, “that’s all right. As long as it’s not an insult.”
“Absolutely not,” Ace said. “Go on-try it. A little of this shit and you’ll be singing ’Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go’ until the break of dawn.”
Buster gave him another look of dark suspicion, then snorted the coke Ace had offered. He coughed, sneezed, then clapped a hand to his nose. His watering e*yes stared balefully at Ace. “It burns!”
“Only the first time,” Ace assured him happily.
Anyway, I don’t feel a thing. Let’s stop fooling around and get this dynamite into the van.”
“You bet, Dad.”
It took them less than ten minutes to load the crates of dynamite.
5
After they had put the last one in, Buster said: “Maybe that stuff of yours does do something, after all. Can I have a little more?”
“Sure, Dad.” Ace grinned. “I’ll join you.”
They tooted up and headed back to town. Buster drove, and now he began to look not like Zippy’s Dad but Mr. Toad in Walt Disney’s The Wind i’n the Willows. A new, frantic light had come into the Head Selectman’s eyes. It was amazing how fast the confusion had dropped out of his mind; he now felt he could understand everything They had been up to-every plan, every plot, every machination. He told Ace all about it as Ace sat in the back of the van with his legs crossed, hooking up Hotpoint timers to blasting caps.
For the time being at least, Buster had forgotten all about Alan Pangborn, who was Their ringleader. He was entranced by the idea of blowing Castle Rock-or as much of it as possible-to kingdom come.
Ace’s respect became solid admiration. The old fuck was crazy, and Ace liked crazy people-always had. He felt at home with them.
And, like most people on their first cocaine high, old Dad’s mind was touring the outer planets. He couldn’t shut up. All Ace had to do was keep saying, “Uh-huh,” and “That’s right, Dad,” and “FuckinA, Dad.
Several times he almost called Keeton Mr. Toad instead of Dad, but caught himself. Calling this guy Mr. Toad might be a very bad idea.
They crossed the Tin Bridge while Alan was still three miles from it and got out in the pouring rain. Ace found a blanket in one of the van’s bench compartments and draped it over a bundle of dynamite and one of the cap-equipped timers.
“Do you want help?” Buster asked nervously.
“You better let me handle it, Dad. You’d be apt to fall in the goddam stream, and I’d have to waste time fishing you out. just keep your eyes open, okay?”
“I will. Ace… why don’t we sniff a little more of that cocaine first?”
“Not right now,” Ace said indulgently, and patted one of Buster’s meaty arms. “This shit is almost pure. You want to explode?”
“Not me,” Buster said. “Everything else, but not me.” He began to laugh wildly. Ace joined him.
“Havin some fun tonight, huh, Dad?”
Buster was amazed to find this was true. His depression following Myrtle’s… Myrtle’s accident… now seemed years distant.
He felt that he and his excellent friend Ace Merrill finally had Them right where they wanted Them: in the palm of their collective hand.
“You bet,” he said, and watched Ace slide down the wet, grassy bank beside the bridge with the blanket-wrapped parcel of dynamite held against his belly.
It was relatively dry under the bridge; not that it mattered the dynamite and the blasting caps had been waterproofed.
Ace put his package in the elbow-crook formed by two of the struts, then attached the blasting cap to the dynamite by poking the wires-the tips were already stripped, how convenient-into one of the sticks. He twisted the big white dial of the timer to 40. It began ticking.
He crawled out and scrambled back up the slippery bank.
“Well?” Buster asked anxiously. “Will it blow, do you think?”
“It’ll blow,” Ace said reassuringly, and climbed into the van.
He was soaked to the skin, but he didn’t mind.
“What if They find it? What if They disconnect it before-”
“Dad,” Ac.- said. “Listen a minute. Poke your head out this door and listen.”
Buster did. Faintly, between blasts of thunder, he thought he could hear yells and screams. Then, clearly, he heard the thin, hard crack of a pistol shot.
“Mr. Gaunt is keeping Them busy,” Ace said. “He’s one clever son of a bitch.” He tipped a pile of cocaine into his snuff-hollow, tooted, then held his hand under Buster’s nose. “Here, Dad-it’s Miller Time.”
Buster dipped his head and snorted.
They drove away from the bridge about seven minutes before Alan Pangborn crossed it. Underneath, the timer’s black marker stood at 30.
6
Ace Merrill and Danforth Keeton-aka Buster, aka Zippy’s Dad, aka Toad of Toad Hall-drove slowly up Main Street in the pouring rain like Santa and his helper, leaving little bundles here and there.
State Police cars roared by them twice, but neither had any interest in what looked like just one more TV newsvan. As Ace had said, Mr. Gaunt was keeping Them busy.
They left a timer and five sticks of dynamite in the doorway of
The Samuels Funeral Home. The barber shop was beside it. Ace wrapped a piece of blanket around his arm and popped his elbow through the gless pane in the door. He doubted very much if the barber shop was equipped with an alarm… or if the police would bother responding, even if it was. Buster handed him a freshly prepared bomb-they were using wire from one of the bench compartments to bind the timers and the blasting caps securely to the dynamite-and Ace lobbed it through the hole in the door. They watched it tumble to a stop at the foot of the # I chair, the timer ticking down from 25.