'Your fly's unzipped, oldtimer,' Junior said, and when Sam looked down at the crotch of his grimy chinos, Junior stroked a finger up the flabby underside of the old man's chin and then tweaked his beak. A grammar school trick, sure, but it hadn't lost its charm. Junior even said what they'd said back then: 'Dirty clothes, gotcha nose!'
Freddy Denton laughed. So did a couple of other people. Even Johnny Carver smiled, although he didn't look as if he really wanted to.
'Get outta here, Sloppy,' Freddy said. 'It's a nice day. You don't want to spend it in a cell.'
BUt something - maybe being called Sloppy, maybe having his nose tweaked, maybe both - had relit some of the rage that had awed and frightened Sam's mates when he'd been a lumber-jockey on the Canadian side of the Merimachee forty years before. The tremble disappeared from his lips and hands, at least temporarily. His eyes lighted on Junior, and he made a phlegmy but undeniably contemptuous throat-clearing sound. When he spoke, the slur had left his voice.
'Fuck you, kid. You ain't no cop, and you was never much of a football player. Couldn't even make the college B-team is what I heard.'
His gaze switched to Officer Denton.
'And you, Deputy Dawg. Sunday sales legal after nine o'clock. Has been since the seventies, and that's the end of that tale.'
Now it was Johnny Carver he was looking at. Johnny's smile was gone, and the watching customers had grown very silent. One woman had a hand to her throat.
'I got money, coin of the realm, and I'm takin' what's mine.'
He started around the counter. Junior grabbed him by the back of the shirt and the seat of the pants, whirled him around, and ran him toward the front of the store.
'Hey!' Sam shouted as his feet bicycled above the old oiled boards. 'Take your hands off me! Take your f**king hands - '
Out through the door and down the steps, Junior holding the old man out in front of him. He was light as a bag of feathers. And Christ, he was fartingl Pow-pow-pow, like a damn machine gun!
Stubby Norman's panel truck was parked at the curb, the one with FURNITURE BOUGHT & SOLD and TOP PRICES FOR ANTIQUES on the side. Stubby himself stood beside it with his mouth open. Junior didn't hesitate. He ran the blabbering old drunk headfirst into the side of the truck. The thin metal gave out a mellow BONNG!
It didn't occur to Junior that he might have killed the smelly f**k until Sloppy Sam dropped like a rock, half on the sidewalk and half in the gutter. But it took more than a smack against the side of an old truck to kill Sam Verdreaux. Or silence him. He cried out, then just began to cry. He got to his knees. Scarlet was pouring down his face from his scalp, where the skin had split. He wiped some away, looked at it with disbelief, then held out his dripping fingers.
Foot traffic on the sidewalk had halted so complexly that someone might have called a game of Statues. Pedestrians stared with wide eyes at the kneeling man holding out a palmful of blood.
'I'll sue this whole f**kin' town far police brutality!' Sam bawled. 'AND I'LL WIN!'
Freddy came down the store's steps and stood beside Junior.
'Go ahead, say it,' Junior told him.
'Say what?'
'I overreacted.'
'The f**k you did. You heard what Pete said: Take no shit from anybody. Partner, that deal starts here and now.*
Partner! Junior s heart lifted at the word.
'You can't throw me out when I got money!' Sam raved. 'You can't beat me up! I'm an American citizen! I'll see you in court!1
'Good luck on that one,' Freddy said. 'The courthouse is in Castle Rock, and from what I hear, the road going there is closed.'
He hauled the old man to his feet. Sam's nose was also bleeding, and the flow had turned his shirt into a red bib. Freddy reached around to the small of his back for a set of his plastic cuffs (Gotta get me some of those, Junior thought admiringly). A moment later they were on Sam's wrists.
Freddy looked around at the witnesses - those on the street, those crowding the doorway of the Gas & Grocery. 'This man is being arrested for public disturbance, interfering with police officers, and attempted assault!' he said in a bugling voice Junior remembered well from his days on the football field. Hectoring from the sidelines, it had never failed to irritate him. Now, it sounded delightful.
Guess I'm growing up, Junior thought.
'He is also being arrested for violating the new no-alcohol rule, instituted by Chief Randolph. Take a good look!' Freddy shook Sam. Blood flew from Sam's face and filthy hair. 'We've got a crisis situation here, folks, but there's a new sheriff in town, and he intends to handle it. Get used to it, deal with it, learn to love it. That's my advice. Follow it, and I'm sure we'll get through this situation just fine. Go against it, and...' He pointed to Sam's hands, plasticuffed behind him.
A couple of people actually applauded. For Junior Rennie, the sound was like cold water on a hot day. Then, as Freddy began to frog-march the bleeding old man up the street, Junior felt eyes on him. The sensation so clear it might have been fingers poking the nape of his neck. He turned, and there was Dale Barbara. Standing with the newspaper editor and looking at him with flat eyes. Barbara, who had beaten him up pretty good that night in the parking lot. Who'd marked all three of them, before sheer weight of numbers had finally begun to turn things around.
Junior's good feelings began to depart. He could almost feel them flying up through the top of his head like birds. Or bats from a belfry.
'What are you doing here?' he asked Barbara.
'I've a better question,'Julia Shumway said. She was wearing her tight little smile. 'What are you doing, brutalizing a man who's a quarter your weight and three times your age?'
Junior could think of nothing to say He felt blood rush into his face and fan out on his cheeks. He suddenly saw the newspaper bitch in the McCain pantry, keeping Angie and Dodee company. Barbara, too. Maybe lying on top of the newspaper bitch, as if he were enjoying a little of the old sumpin-sumpin.