'Salem's Lot(40)

When Parkins got back to his office in the Municipal Building, he called, 'Nolly? You here, Nolly?'

No answer. Parkins nodded. Nolly was a good boy, but a little bit short on brains. He took off his coat, unbuckled his galoshes, sat down at his desk, looked up a telephone number in the Portland book, and dialed. The other end picked up on the first ring.

'FBI, Portland. Agent Hanrahan.'

'This is Parkins Gillespie. Constable at Jerusalem's Lot township. We've got us a missin' boy up here.'

'So I understand,' Hanrahan said crisply. 'Ralph Glick. Nine years old, four-three, black hair, blue eyes. What is it, kidnap note?'

'Nothin' like that. Can you check on some fellas for me?'

Hanrahan answered in the affirmative.

'First one is Benjaman Mears. M-E-A-R-S. Writer. Wrote a book called Conway's Daughter. The other two are sorta stapled together. Kurt Barlow. B-A-R-L-O-W. The other guy - '

'You spell that Kurt with a "c" or a "k"?' Hanrahan asked.

'I dunno.'

'Okay. Go on.'

Parkins did so, sweating. Talking to the real law always made him feel like an ass**le. 'The other guy is Richard Throckett Straker. Two t's on the end of Throckett, and Straker like it sounds. This guy and Barlow are in the furniture and antique business. They just opened a little shop here in town. Straker claims Barlow's in New York on a buyin' trip. Straker claims the two of them worked together in London an' Hamburg. And I guess that pretty well covers it.'

'Do you suspect these people in the Glick case?'

'Right now I don't know if there even is a case. But they all showed up in town about the same time.'

'Do you think there's any connection between this guy Mears and the other two?'

Parkins leaned back and cocked an eye out the window. 'That,' he said, 'is one of the things I'd like to find out.'

12

The telephone wires make an odd humming on clear, cool days, almost as if vibrating with the gossip that is transmitted through them, and it is a sound like no other ?the lonely sound of voices flying over space. The telephone poles are gray and splintery, and the freezes and thaws of winter have heaved them into leaning postures that are casual. They are not businesslike and military, like phone poles anchored in concrete. Their bases are black with tar if they are beside paved roads, and floured with dust if beside the back roads. Old weathered cleat marks show on their surfaces where linemen have climbed to fix some?thing in 1946 or 1952 or 1969. Birds - crows, sparrows, robins, starlings - roost on the humming wires and sit in hunched silence, and perhaps they hear the foreign human sounds through their taloned feet. If so, their beady eyes give no sign. The town has a sense, not of history, but of time, and the telephone poles seem to know this. If you lay your hand against one, you can feel the vibration from the wires deep in the wood, as if souls had been imprisoned in there and were struggling to get out.

' . . . and he paid with an old twenty, Mabel, one of the big ones. Clyde said he hadn't seen one of those since the run on the Gates Bank and Trust in 1930. He was . . . '

' . . . yes, he is a peculiar sort of man, Evvie. I've seen him through my binocs, trundling around behind the house with a wheelbarrer. Is he up there alone, I wonder, or . . . '

' . . . Crockett might know, but he won't tell. He's keep?ing shut about it. He always was a . . . '

' . . . writer at Eva's. I wonder if Floyd Tibbits knows he's been . . . '

' . . . spends an awful lot of time at the library. Loretta Starcher says she never saw a fella who knew so many . . . '

' . . . she said his name was . . . '

' . . . yes, it's Straker. Mr R. T. Straker. Kenny Danles's mom said she stopped by that new place downtown and there was a genuine DeBiers cabinet in the window and they wanted eight hundred dollars for it. Can you imagine? So I said . . . '

' . . . funny, him coming and that little Glick boy . . . '

' . . . you don't think . . . '

' . . . no, but it is funny. By the way, do you still have that recipe for . . . '

The wires hum. And hum. And hum.

13

9/23/75

Name:  Glick, Daniel Francis

Address: RFD #I, Brock Road, Jerusalem's Lot, Maine 04270

Age:  12 Sex: Male Race: Caucasian

Admitted: 9/22/75 Admitting Person: Anthony H. Glick (Father)

Symptoms: Shock, loss of memory (partial), nausea, disinterest in food, constipation, general loginess

Tests (see attached sheet):

1. Tuberculosis skin patch: Neg.

2. Tuberculosis sputum and urine: Neg.

3. Diabetes: Neg.

4. White cell count: Neg.

5. Red cell count: 45% hemo.

6. Marrow sample: Neg.

7. Chest X ray: Neg.

Possible diagnosis: Pernicious anemia, primary or sec?ondary; previous exam shows 86% hemoglobin. Sec?ondary anemia is unlikely; no history of ulcers, hemorrhoids, bleeding piles, et al. Differential cell count neg. Primary anemia combined with mental shock likely. Recommend barium enema and X rays for internal bleeding on the off-chance, yet no recent accidents, father says. Also recommend daily dosage of vitamin B12 (see attached sheet).

Pending further tests, let's release him.

G. M. Gorby

Attending Physician