'Salem's Lot(27)

'You came from this neck of the woods, all right,' Bill Norton said. 'Goddamn well told. Take that bag of briquettes over there and I'll get the meat. Bring your beer.'

'You couldn't part me from it.'

Bill hesitated on the verge of going in and cocked an eyebrow at Ben Mears. 'You a serious-minded fella?' he asked.

Ben smiled, a trifle grimly. 'That I am,' he said.

Bill nodded. 'That's good,' he said, and went inside.

Babs Griffen's prediction of rain was a million miles wrong, and the back yard dinner went well. A light breeze sprang up, combining with the eddies of hickory smoke from the barbecue to keep the worst of the late-season mosquitoes away. The women cleared away the paper plates and condiments, then came back to drink a beer each and laugh as Bill, an old hand at playing the tricky wind currents, trimmed Ben 21-6 at badminton. Ben de?clined a rematch with real regret, pointing at his watch.

'I got a book on the fire,' he said. 'I owe another six pages. If I get drunk, I won't even be able to read what I wrote tomorrow morning.'

Susan saw him to the front gate - he had walked up from town. Bill nodded to himself as he damped the fire. He had said he was serious-minded, and Bill was ready to take him at his word. He had not come with a big case on to impress anyone, but any man who worked after dinner was out to make his mark on somebody's tree, probably in big letters.

Ann Norton, however, never quite unthawed.

17

7.00 P.M.

Floyd Tibbits pulled into the crushed-stone parking lot at Dell's about ten minutes after Delbert Markey, owner and bartender, had turned on his new pink sign out front. The sign said DELL'S in letters three feet high, and the apostrophe was a highball glass.

Outside, the sunlight had been leached from the sky by gathering purple twilight, and soon ground mist would begin to form in the low-lying pockets of land. The night's regulars would begin to show up in another hour or so.

'Hi, Floyd,' Dell said, pulling a Michelob out of the cooler. 'Good day?'

'Fair,' Floyd said. 'That beer looks good.'

He was a tall man with a well-trimmed sandy beard, now dressed in double-knit slacks and a casual sports jacket - his Grant's working uniform. He was second in charge of credit, and liked his work in the absent kind of way that can cross the line into boredom almost overnight. He felt himself to be drifting, but the sensation was not actively unpleasant. And there was Suze - a fine girl. She was going to come around before much longer, and then he supposed he would have to make something of himself.

He dropped a dollar bill on the bar, poured beer down the side of his glass, downed it thirstily, and refilled. The bar's only other patron at present was a young fellow in phone-company coveralls - the Bryant kid, Floyd thought. He was drinking beer at a table and listening to a moody love song on the juke.

'So what's new in town?' Floyd asked, knowing the answer already. Nothing new, not really. Someone might have showed up drunk at the high school, but he couldn't think of anything else.

'Well, somebody killed your uncle's dog. That's new.'

Floyd paused with his glass halfway to his mouth. 'What?

Uncle Win's dog Doc?'

'That's right.'

'Hit him with a car?'

'Not so you'd notice. Mike Ryerson found him. He was out to Harmony Hill to mow the grass and Doc was hangin' off those spikes atop the cemetery gate. Ripped wide open.'

'Son of a bitch!' Floyd said, astounded.

Dell nodded gravely, pleased with the impression he had made. He knew something else that was a fairly hot item in town this evening - that Floyd's girl had been seen with that writer who was staying at Eva's. But let Floyd find that out for himself.

'Ryerson brung the co'pse in to Parkins Gillespie,' he told Floyd. 'He was of the mind that maybe the dog was dead and a bunch of kids hung it up for a joke.'

'Gillespie doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.'

'Maybe not. I'll tell you what I think.' Dell leaned forward on his thick forearms. 'I think it's kids, all right . . . hell, I know that. But it might be a smidge more serious than just a joke. Here, looka this.' He reached under the bar and slapped a newspaper down on it, turned to an inside page.

Floyd picked it up. The headline read SATAN WORSHIPERS DESECRATE FLA. CHURCH. He skimmed through it. Appar?ently a bunch of kids had broken into a Catholic Church in Clewiston, Florida, some time after midnight and had held some sort of unholy rites there. The altar had been desecrated, obscene words had been scrawled on the pews, the confessionals, and the holy font, and splatters of blood had been found on steps leading to the nave. Laboratory analysis had confirmed that although some of the blood was animal (goat's blood was suggested), most of it was human. The Clewiston police chief admitted there were no immediate leads.

Floyd put the paper down. 'Devil worshipers in the Lot? Come on, Dell. You've been into the cook's pot.'

'The kids are going crazy,' Dell said stubbornly. 'You see if that ain't it. Next thing you know, they'll be doing human sacrifices in Griffen's pasture. Want a refill on that?'      

'No thanks,' Floyd said, sliding off his stool. 'I think I'll go out and see how Uncle Win's getting along. He loved that dog.'