'Salem's Lot(72)

'Well, there was a fight. Floyd Tibbits showed up here this afternoon - '

'Floyd!'

Mrs Norton winced at her tone.

' - and I said Mr Mears was sleeping. He said all right, just as polite as ever, but he was dressed awful funny. I asked him if he felt all right. He had on an old-fashioned overcoat and a funny hat and he kept his hands in his pockets. I never thought to mention it to Mr Mears when he got up. There's been so much excitement - '

'What happened?' Susan nearly screamed.

'Well, Floyd beat him up,' Eva said unhappily. 'Right out in my parking lot. Sheldon Corson and Ed Craig went out and dragged him off.'

'Ben. Is Ben all right?'

'I guess not.'

'What is it?' She was holding the phone very tightly.

'Floyd got in one last crack and sent Mr Mears back against that little foreign car of his, and he hit his head. Carl Foreman took him over to Cumberland Receiving, and he was unconscious. I don't know anything else. If you - '

She hung up, ran to the closet, and pulled her coat off the hanger.

'Susan, what is it?'

'That nice boy Floyd Tibbits,' Susan said, hardly aware that she had begun to cry. 'He's put Ben in the hospital.'

She ran out without waiting for a reply.

2

She got to the hospital at six-thirty and sat in an uncomfort?able plastic contour chair, staring blankly at a copy of Good Housekeeping. And I'm the only one, she thought. How damned awful. She had thought of calling Matt Burke, but the thought of the doctor coming back and finding her gone had stopped her.

The minutes crawled by on the waiting room clock, and at ten minutes of seven, a doctor with a sheaf of papers in one hand stepped through the door and said, 'Miss Norton?'

'That's right. Is Ben all right?'

'That's not an answerable question at this point.' He saw the dread come into her face and added: 'He seems to be, but we'll want him here for two or three days. He's got a hairline fracture, multiple bruises, contusions, and one hell of a black eye.'

'Can I see him?'

'No, not tonight. He's been sedated.'

'For a minute? Please? One minute?'

He sighed. 'You can look in on him, if you like. He'll probably be asleep. I don't want you to say anything to him unless he speaks to you.'

He took her up to the third floor and then down to a room at the far end of a medicinal-smelling corridor. The man in the other bed was reading a magazine and looked up at them desultorily.

Ben was lying with his eyes closed, a sheet pulled up to his chin. He was so pale and still that for one terrified moment Susan was sure he was dead; that he had just slipped away while she and the doctor had been talking downstairs. Then she marked the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest and felt a relief so great that she swayed a little on her feet. She looked at his face closely, hardly noticing the way it had been marked. Sissy boy, her mother had called him, and Susan could see how she might have gotten that idea. His features were strong but sensitive (she wished there was a better word than 'sensitive'; that was the word you used to describe the local librarian who wrote stilted Spenserian sonnets to daffodils in his spare time; but it was the only word that fit). Only his hair seemed virile in the traditional sense. Black and heavy, it seemed almost to float above his face. The white bandage on the left side above the temple stood out in sharp, telling contrast.

I love the man, she thought. Get well, Ben. Get well and finish your book so we can go away from the Lot together, if you want me. The Lot has turned bad for both of us.

'I think you'd better leave now,' the doctor said. 'Per?haps tomorrow - '

Ben stirred and made a thick sound in his throat. His eyelids opened slowly, closed, opened again. His eyes were dark with sedation, but the knowledge of her pre?sence was in them. He moved his hand over hers. Tears spilled out of her eyes and she smiled and squeezed his hand.

He moved his lips and she bent to hear.

'They're real killers in this town, aren't they?'

'Ben, I'm so sorry.'

'I think I knocked out two of his teeth before he decked me,' Ben whispered. 'Not bad for a writer fella.'

'Ben - '

'I think that will be enough, Mr Mears,' the doctor said. 'Give the airplane glue a chance to set.'

Ben shifted his eyes to the doctor. 'Just a minute.' The doctor rolled his eyes. 'That's what she said.' Ben's eyelids slipped down again, then came up with difficulty. He said something unintelligible.

Susan bent closer. 'What, darling?'

'Is it dark yet?'

'Yes.'

'Want you to go see . . . '

'Matt?'

He nodded. 'Tell him . . . I said for you to be told everything. Ask him if he . . . knows Father Callahan. He'll understand.'

'Okay,' Susan said. 'I'll give him the message. You sleep now. Sleep well, Ben.'

''Kay. Love you.' He muttered something else, twice, and then his eyes closed. His breathing deepened.

'What did he say?' the doctor asked.

Susan was frowning. 'It sounded like "Lock the win?dows,"' she said.

3

Eva Miller and Weasel Craig were in the waiting room when she went back to get her coat. Eva was wearing an old fall coat with a rusty fur collar, obviously kept for best, and Weasel was floating in an outsized motorcycle jacket. Susan warmed at the sight of both of them.