In the Deathroom (4)

“The men who did that to you”—Escobar indicated Fletcher’s face with a wave of one not-particularly-clean hand—“have been disciplined. Yet not too harshly, and I myself stop short of apology, you will notice. Those men are patriots, as are we here. As you are yourself, Mr. Fletcher, yes?”

“I suppose.” It was his job to appear ingratiating and frightened, a man who would say anything in order to get out of here. It was Escobar’s job to be soothing, to convince the man in the chair that his swelled eye, split lip, and loosened teeth meant nothing; all that was just a misunderstanding which would soon be straightened out, and when it was he would be free to go. They were still busy trying to deceive each other, even here in the deathroom.

Escobar switched his attention to Ramón the guard and spoke in rapid Spanish. Fletcher’s Spanish wasn’t good enough to pick up everything, but you couldn’t spend almost five years in this shithole capital city without picking up a fair vocabulary; Spanish wasn’t the world’s most difficult language, as both Escobar and his friend the Bride of Frankenstein undoubtedly knew.

Escobar asked if Fletcher’s things had been packed and if he had been checked out of the Hotel Magnificent: Sí. Escobar wanted to know if there was a car waiting outside the Ministry of Information to take Mr. Fletcher to the airport when the interrogation was done. Sí, around the corner on the Street Fifth of May.

Escobar turned back and said, “Do you understand what I ask him?” From Escobar, understand came out unnerstand, and Fletcher thought again of Escobar’s TV appearances. Low bressure? What low bressure? We don’t need no steenkin low bressure.

Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual

In the Deathroom (1)

It was a deathroom. Fletcher knew it for what it was as soon as the door opened. The floor was gray industrial tile. The walls were discolored
white stone, marked here and there with darker patches that might have been blood—certainly blood had been spilled in this room. The overhead lights were cupped in wire cages. Halfway across the room stood a long wooden table with three people seated behind it. Before the table was an empty chair, waiting for Fletcher. Beside the chair stood a small wheeled trolley. The object on it had been draped with a piece of cloth, as a sculptor might cover his work-in-progress between sessions.

Fletcher was half-led, half-dragged toward the chair which had been placed for him. He reeled in the guard’s grip and let himself reel. If he looked more dazed than he really was, more shocked and unthinking, that was fine. He thought his chances of ever leaving this basement room in the Ministry of Information were perhaps one or two in thirty, and perhaps that was optimistic. Whatever they were, he had no intention of thinning them further by looking even halfway alert. His swelled eye, puffy nose, and broken lower lip might help in this regard; so might the crust of blood, like a dark red goatee, around his mouth. One thing Fletcher knew for sure: if he did leave, the others—the guard and the three sitting in tribunal behind the table—would be dead. He was a newspaper reporter and had never killed anything much larger than a hornet, but if he had to kill to escape this room, he would. He thought of his sister, on her retreat. He thought of his sister swimming in a river with a Spanish name. He thought of the light on the water at noon, moving river light toobright to look at. They reached the chair in front of the table. The guard pushed him into it so hard that Fletcher almost tipped himself over.

“Careful now, that’s not the way, no accidents,” said one of the men
behind the table. It was Escobar. He spoke to the guard in Spanish.
To Escobar’s left sat the other man. To Escobar’s right sat a woman of
about sixty. The woman and the other man were thin. Escobar was fat
and as greasy as a cheap candle. He looked like a movie Mexican. You
expected him to say, “Batches? Batches? We don’t need no steenkin
batches.” Yet this was the Chief Minister of Information. Sometimes
he gave the English-language portion of the weather on the city television station. When he did this he invariably got fan mail. In a suit
he didn’t look greasy, just roly-poly. Fletcher knew all this. He had done three or four stories on Escobar. He was colorful. He was also, according to rumor, an enthusiastic torturer. A Central American Himmler, Fletcher thought, and was amazed to discover that one’s
sense of humor—rudimentary, granted—could function this far into
a state of terror.

Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual

The Death Of Jack Hamilton (42)

“Anyway, we’re gettin’ out of here,” he says, rubbing the sore place. “You ought to get out, too. Take your luggage. Don’t even pull in on your way back. Things can change in a hurry.”

“Okay,” Johnnie says.
“At least he died happy,” Volney says. “Died laughin’.” I didn’t say nothing. It was coming home to me that Red Hamilton —my old running buddy—was really dead. It made me awful sad. I turned my mind to how the bullet had just grazed Johnnie (and then gone on to kill a fly instead), thinking that would cheer me up. But it didn’t. It only made me feel worse.

Dock shook my hand, then Johnnie’s. He looked pale and glum. “I don’t know how we ended up like this, and that’s the truth,” he says. “When I was a boy, the only goddam thing I wanted was to be a railroad engineer.” “Well, I’ll tell you something,” Johnnie says. “We don’t have to
worry. God makes it all come right in the end.”

We took Jack on his last ride, wrapped up in a bloodstained sheet and pushed into the back of that stolen Ford. Johnnie drove us to the far side of the pit, all bump and jounce (when it comes to rough riding, I’ll take a Terraplane over a Ford any day). Then he killed the engine and touched the Band-Aid riding his upper lip. He says, “I used up the last of my luck today, Homer. They’ll get me now.”

Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual

The Death Of Jack Hamilton (39)

“Golly, look at em,” he says as the white strings rose up, all on
their own. “That ain’t all, either,” Johnnie says. “Watch this.” He then walked one step to the kitchen door, turned, and took a bow. He was grinning, but it was the saddest grin I ever saw in my life. All we did was
the best we could; we couldn’t very well give him a last meal, could we? “Remember how I used to walk on my hands in the shirt shop?”

“Yeah! Don’t forget the spiel!” Jack says. “Ladies and gentlemen!” Johnnie says. “Now in the center ring for your delight and amazement, John Herbert Dillinger!” He said the “G” hard, the way his old man said it, the way he had said it himselfbefore he got so famous. Then he clapped once and dived forward onto his hands. Buster Crabbe couldn’t have done it better. His pants slid up to his knees, showing the tops of his stockings and his shins. His change come out of his pockets and rattled away across the boards. He started walking across the floor that way, limber as ever, singing “Trara- ra-boom-de-ay!” at the top of his voice. The keys from the stolenFord fell out of his pocket, too. Jack was laughing in these big hoarse gusts—like he had the flu—and Dock Barker and Rabbits and Volney, all crowded in the doorway, were also laughing. Fit to split. Rabbits clapped her hands and called “Bravo! Encore!” Above my head the white threads were still floating on, only drifting apart a little at a time. I was laughing along with the rest, and then I saw what
was going to happen and I stopped.

“Johnnie!” I shouted. “Johnnie, look out for your gun! Look out for your gun!” It was that goddam .38 he kept tucked into the top of his pants.
It was working free of his belt. “Huh?” he said, and then it dropped onto the floor on top of the keys and went off. A .38 isn’t the world’s loudest gun, but it was loud enough in that back bedroom. And the flash was plenty bright. Dock yelled and Rabbits screamed. Johnnie didn’t say nothing, just did a complete somersault and fell flat on his face. His feet came down with a crash, almost hitting the foot of the bed Jack Hamilton was dying in. Then he just lay there. I ran to him, brushing the white threads aside.

Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual

The Death Of Jack Hamilton (36)

I got the end of the thread and taped it to the handle of the privy door with the Band-Aid. Then I went after the next one. And the next. Rabbits came out to get a closer look, and I told her that she could stay if she was quiet, and she tried, but she wasn’t good at being quiet and finally I had to tell her she was scaring off the game and send her back inside.

I worked the privy for an hour and a half—long enough that I couldn’t smell it anymore. Then it started getting cold, and my flies were sluggish. I’d got five. By Pendleton standards, that was quite a herd, although not that many for a man standing next to a shithouse. Anyway, I had to get inside before it got too cold for them to stay airborne.

When I came walking slowly through the kitchen, Dock, Volney, and Rabbits were all laughing and clapping. Jack’s bedroom was on the other side of the house, and it was shadowy and dim. That was why I’d asked for white thread instead of black. I looked like a man with a handful of strings leading up to invisible balloons. Except that you could hear the flies buzzing—all mad and bewildered, like anything else that’s been caught it don’t know how.

“I be dog,” Dock Barker says. “I mean it, Homer. Double dog. Where’d you learn to do that?” “Pendleton Reformatory,” I says. “Who showed you?” “Nobody,” I said. “I just did it one day.” “Why don’t they tangle the strings?” Volney asked. His eyes were as big as grapes. It tickled me, I tell you that.

Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual

The Death Of Jack Hamilton (33)

I nodded. Harry Pierpont and Johnnie were always the best of friends, but Harry never liked me. If not for Johnnie, he never would’ve taken me into the gang, which was the Pierpont Gang to begin with, remember. Harry thought I was a fool. That was another thing Johnnie would never admit, or even talk about. Johnnie wanted everyone to be friends.

“I want you to go out and wrangle up some big uns,” Johnnie says, “just like you used to when you was on the Pendleton mat. Some big old buzzers.” When he asked for that, I knew he finally understood Jack was finished.

Fly-Boy was what Harry Pierpont used to call me at Pendleton Reformatory, when we were all just kids and I used to cry myself to sleep with my head under my pillow so the screws wouldn’t hear. Well, Harry went on and rode the lightning in Ohio State, so maybe I wasn’t the only fool.

Rabbits was in the kitchen, cutting up vegetables for supper. Something was simmering on the stove. I asked her if she had thread, and she said I knew goddam well she did, hadn’t I been right beside her when she sewed up my friend? You bet, I said, but that was black and I wanted white. Half a dozen pieces, about so long. And I held out my index fingers maybe eight inches apart. She wanted to know whatI was going to do. I told her that if she was that curious she could watch right out the window over the sink.

Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual

The Death Of Jack Hamilton (30)

“Moran’ll give this place up, just as sure as shit sticks to a blanket,”
Volney says. “Maybe it’s not even true,” Johnnie says. Jack was unconscious now. His red hair lay on the pillow like little pieces of wire. “Maybe it’s just a rumor.” “You better not believe that,” Buster says. “I got it from Timmy O’Shea.”

“Who’s Timmy O’Shea? The Pope’s butt-wiper?” Johnnie says. “He’s Moran’s nephew,” Dock says, and that kind of sealed the deal. “I know what you’re thinking, handsome,” Rabbits says to Johnnie, “and you can stop thinking it right now. You put this fella in a car and go bumping him over those back roads between here and St. Paul, he’ll be dead by morning.”

“You could leave him,” Volney says. “The cops show up, they’ll have to take care of him.” Johnnie sat there, sweat running down his face in streams. He looked tired, but he was smiling. Johnnie was always able to find a smile. “They’d take care of him, all right,” he says, “but they wouldn’t take him to any hospital. Stick a pillow over his face and sit down on it, most likely.” Which gave me a start, as I’m sure you’ll understand.

“Well, you better decide,” Buster says, “because they’ll have this joint surrounded by dawn. I’m getting the hell out.” “You all go,” Johnnie says. “You, too, Homer. I’ll stay here with Jack.” “Well, what the hell,” Dock says. “I’ll stay, too.” “Why not?” Volney Davis says.

Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual

The Death Of Jack Hamilton (27)

“I hope so,” she says, “because once I start in, there’s no going back.” She looked up and seen Dock standing in the doorway. Volney Davis, too. “Go on, baldy,” she says to Dock, “and take-um heap big chief with you.” Volney Davis was no more a Indian than I was, but they used to rib him because he was born in the Cherokee Nation. Some judge had given him three years for stealing a pair of shoes, which was how he got into a life of crime.

Volney and Dock went out. When they were gone, Rabbits turned Jack over and then cut him open in a X, bearing down in a way I could barely stand to look at. I held Jack’s feet. Johnnie sat beside his head, trying to soothe him, but it didn’t do no good. When Jack started to scream, Johnnie put a dishtowel over his head and nodded for Rabbits to go on, all the time stroking Jack’s head and telling him not to worry, everything would be just fine.

That Rabbits. They call them frails, but there was nothing frail about her. Her hands never even shook. Blood, some of it black and clotted, come pouring out of the sunken place when she cut it. She cut deeper and then out came the pus. Some was white, but there was big green chunks which looked like boogers. That was bad. But when she got to the lung the smell was a thousand times worse. It couldn’t have been worse in France during the gas attacks.

Jack was gasping in these big whistling breaths. You could hear it in his throat, and from the hole in his back, too. “You better hurry up,” Johnnie says. “He’s sprung a leak in his air hose.” “You’re telling me,” she says. “The bullet’s in his lung. You just hold him down, handsome.”

Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual

The Death Of Jack Hamilton (24)

Jack muttered, then he dropped off again. There was a chair at the foot of the cot, with a cushion. I took the cushion and sat down beside Jack. It wouldn’t take long, I didn’t think. And when Johnnie came back I’d only have to say that poor old Jack took one final breath and just copped out. The cushion would be back on the chair. Really, it would be doing Johnnie a favor. Jack, too.

“I see you, Chummah,” Jack says suddenly. I tell you, it scared the
living hell out of me. “Jack!” I says, putting my elbows on that cushion. “How you doing?”

His eyes drifted closed. “Do the trick . . . with the flies,” he says, and then he was asleep again. But he’d woken up at just the right time; if he hadn’t, Johnnie would have found a dead man on that cot.

When Johnnie finally did come back, he practically busted down the door. I had my gun out. He saw it and laughed. “Put away the bean shooter, pal, and pack up your troubles in your old kit bag!”

“What’s up?” “We’re getting out of here, that’s what.” He looked five years younger. “High time, wouldn’t you say?” “Yeah.” “He been all right while I was gone?” “Yeah,” I said. The cushion lying on the chair had SEE YOU IN

Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual

The Death Of Jack Hamilton (21)

For a while, Jack was in and out of delirium, and then he was mostly in. He talked about his mother, and Harry Pierpont, and then about Boobie Clark, a famous fag from Michigan City we’d all known.

“Boobie tried to kiss me,” Jack said one night, over and over, until I thought I’d go nuts. Johnnie never minded, though. He just sat there beside Jack on the cot, stroking his hair. He’d cut out a square of cloth in Jack’s undershirt around the bullet hole, and kept painting it with Mercurochrome, but the skin had already turned graygreen, and a smell was coming out of the hole. Just a whiff of it was enough to make your eyes water.

“That’s gangrene,” Mickey McClure said on a trip to pick up the
rent. “He’s a goner.” “He’s no goner,” Johnnie said. Mickey leaned forward with his fat hands on his fat knees. He smelled Jack’s breath like a cop with a drunk, then pulled back. “You better find a doc fast. Smell it in a wound, that’s bad. Smell it on a man’s breath . . .” Mickey shook his head and walked out.

“Fuck him,” Johnnie said to Jack, still stroking his hair. “What
does he know?” Only, Jack didn’t say nothing. He was asleep. A few hours later, after Johnnie and I had gone to sleep ourselves, Jack was on the edge of the bunk, raving about Henry Claudy, the warden at Michigan City. I-God Claudy, we used to call him, because it was always I-God I’ll do this and I-God you’ll do that. Jack was screaming that he’d kill Claudy if he didn’t let us out. That got someone pounding on the wall and yelling for us to shut that man up.

Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual