'Salem's Lot(87)

'Foreigners, yes,' he resumed, 'but beautiful, enticing foreigners, bursting with vitality, full-blooded and full of life. Do you know how beautiful the people of your country and your town are, Mr Bryant?'

Corey only chuckled, slightly embarrassed. He did not look away from the stranger's face, however. It held him rapt.

'They have never known hunger or want, the people of this country. It has been two generations since they knew anything close to it, and even then it was like a voice in a distant room. They think they have known sadness, but their sadness is that of a child who has spilled his ice cream on the grass at a birthday party. There is no . . . how is the English? . . . attenuation in them. They spill each other's blood with great vigor. Do you believe it? Do you see?'

'Yes,' Corey said. Looking into the stranger's eyes, he could see a great many things, all of them wonderful.

'The country is an amazing paradox. In other lands, when a man eats to his fullest day after day, that man becomes fat . . . sleepy . . . piggish. But in this land . . . it seems the more you have the more aggressive you become. You see? Like Mr Sawyer. With so much; yet he begrudges you a few crumbs from his table. Also like a child at a birthday party, who will push away another baby even though he himself can eat no more. Is it not so? ,

'Yes,' Corey said. Barlow's eyes were so large, and so understanding. It was all a matter of  -

'It is all a matter of perspective, is it not?'

'Yes!' Corey exclaimed. The man had put his finger on the right, the exact, the perfect, word. The cigarette dropped unnoticed from his fingers and lay smoldering on the road.

'I might have bypassed such a rustic community as this,' the stranger said reflectively. 'I might have gone to one of your great and teeming cities. Bah!' He drew himself up suddenly, and his eyes flashed. 'What do I know of cities? I should be run over by a hansom crossing the street! I should choke on nasty air! I should come in contact with sleek, stupid dilettantes whose concerns are . . . what do you say? inimical? . . . yes, inimical to me. How should a poor rustic like myself deal with the hollow sophistication of a great city . . . even an American city? No! And no and no! I spit on your cities!'

'Oh yes!' Corey whispered.

'So I have come here, to a town which was first told of to me by a most brilliant man, a former townsman himself, now lamentably deceased. The folk here are still rich and full-blooded, folk who are stuffed with the aggression and darkness so necessary to . . . there is no English for it. Pokol; vurderlak; eyalik. Do you follow?'

'Yes,' Corey whispered.

'The people have not cut off the vitality which flows from their mother, the earth, with a shell of concrete and cement. Their hands are plunged into the very waters of life. They have ripped the life from the earth, whole and beating! Is it not true?'

'Yes!'

The stranger chuckled kindly and put a hand on Corey's shoulder. 'You are a good boy. A fine, strong boy. I don't think you want to leave this so-perfect town, do you?'

'No . . . ' Corey whispered, but he was suddenly doubt?ful. Fear was returning. But surely it was unimportant. This man would allow no harm to come to him.

'And so you shall not. Ever again.'

Corey stood trembling, rooted to the spot, as Barlow's head inclined toward him.

'And you shall yet have your vengeance on those who would fill themselves while others want.'

Corey Bryant sank into a great forgetful river, and that river was time, and its waters were red.

10

It was nine o'clock and the Saturday night movie was coming on the hospital TV bolted to the wall when the phone beside Ben's bed rang. It was Susan, and her voice was barely under control.

'Ben, Floyd Tibbits is dead. He died in his cell some time last night. Dr Cody says acute anemia - but I went with Floyd! He had high blood pressure. That's why the Army wouldn't take him!'

'Slow down,' Ben said, sitting up.

'There's more. A family named McDougall out in the Bend. A little ten months baby died out there. They took Mrs McDougall away in restraints.'

'Have you heard how the baby died?'

'My mother said Mrs Evans came over when she heard Sandra McDougall screaming, and Mrs Evans called old Dr Plowman. Plowman didn't say anything, but Mrs Evans told my mother that she couldn't see a thing wrong with the baby . . . except it was dead.'

'And both Matt and I, the crackpots, just happen to be out of town and out of action,' Ben said, more to himself than to Susan. 'Almost as if it were planned.'

'There's more.'

'What?'

'Carl Foreman is missing. And so is the body of Mike Ryerson.'

'I think that's it,' he heard himself saying. 'That has to be it. I'm getting out of here tomorrow.'

'Will they let you go so soon?'

'They aren't going to have anything to say about it.' He spoke the words absently; his mind had already moved on to another subject. 'Have you got a crucifix?'

'Me?' She sounded startled and a little amused. 'Gosh, no.'

'I'm not joking with you, Susan - I was never more serious. Is there anyplace where you can get one at this hour?'

'Well, there's Marie Boddin. I could walk - '

'No. Stay off the streets. Stay in the house. Make one yourself, even if it only means gluing two sticks together. Leave it by your bed.'