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.'And that's all?' Lancte asked.'That's all,' Johnny said, and then hesitated.'Except I think he's going to win his election.''We're sure he is,' Lancte said.'Unless we can get something on him.In the meantime, I'm in completeagreement with Chief Bass.Stay away from Stillson rallies.''Don't worry.' Johnny crumpled up his paper cup and threw it away.'It's been nice talking to you twogentle men, but I've got a long drive back to Durham.''Going back to Maine soon, Johnny?' Lancte asked casually.'Don't know.' He looked from Lancte, slim and impeccable, tapping out a fresh cigarette on the blankface of his digital watch, to Bass, a big, tired man with a basset hound's face.'Do either of you think he'llrun for higher office? If he gets this seat in the House of Representatives?'file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste.20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20deadzone.htm (291 of 370)7/28/2005 9:23:01 PMStephen King: The Dead Zone'Jesus wept,' Bass muttered, and rolled his eyes.'These guys come and go,' Lancte said.His eyes, so brown they were nearly black, had never stoppedstudying Johnny.'They're like one of those rare radioactive elements that are so unstable that they don'tlast long.Guys like Stillson have no permanent political base, just a temporary coalition that holdstogether for a little while and then falls apart.Did you see that crowd today? College kids and mill handsyelling for the same guy? That's not politics, that's something on the order of hula hoops or coonskincaps or Beatle wigs.He'll get his term in the House and he'll free4unch until 1978 and that'll be it.Counton it.'But Johnny wondered.2.The next day, the left side of Johnny's forehead had become very colorful.Dark purple - almost black -above the eyebrow shaded to red and then to a morbidly gay yellow at the temple and hairline.Hiseyelid had puffed slightly, giving him a leering sort of expression, like the second banana in a burlesquereview.He did twenty laps in the pool and then sprawled in one of the deck chairs, panting.He felt terrible.Hehad gotten less than four hours' sleep the night before, and all of what he had gotten had been dream-haunted.'Hi, Johnny.how you doing, man?'He turned around.It was Ngo, smiling gently.He was dressed in his work clothes and wearinggardening gloves.Behind him was a child's red wagon filled with small pine trees, their roots wrappedin burlap.Recalling what Ngo called the pines, he said: 'I see you're planting more weeds.'Ngo wrinkled his nose.'Sorry, yes.Mr.Chatsworth is loving them.I tell him, but they are junk trees.Every-where there are these trees in New England.His face goes like this.' Now Ngo's whole facewrinkled and he looked like a caricature.of some late show monster.and he says to me, "Just plantthem."'Johnny laughed.That was Roger Chatsworth, all right.He liked things done his way.'How did you enjoy the rally?'Ngo smiled gently.'Very instructive,' he said.There was no way to read his eyes.He might not havenoticed the sunrise on the side of Johnny's face.'Yes, very instructive, we are all enjoying ourselves.''Good.'file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste.20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20deadzone.htm (292 of 370)7/28/2005 9:23:01 PMStephen King: The Dead Zone'And you?''Not so much,' Johnny said, and touched the bruise lightly with his fingertips.It was very tender.'Yes, too bad, you should put a beefsteak on it,' Ngo said, still smiling gently.What did you think about him, Ngo? What did your class think? Your Polish friend? Or Ruth Chen andher sister?''Going back we did not talk about it, at our instructors' request.Think about what you have seen, theysay.Next Tuesday we will write in class, I think.Yes, I am thinking very much that we will.A classcomposition.''What will you say in your composition?'Ngo looked at the blue summer sky.He and the sky smiled at each other.He was a small man with thefirst threads of gray in his hair.Johnny knew almost nothing about him; didn't know if he had beenmarried, had fathered children, if he had fled before the Vietcong, if he had been from Saigon or fromone of the rural provinces.He had no idea what Ngo's political leanings were.'We talked of the game of the Laughing Tiger,' Ngo said.'Do you remember?''Yes,' Johnny said.'I will tell you of a real tiger.When I was a boy there was a tiger who went bad near my village.He wasbeing le manger d'homme, eater of men, you understand, except he was not that, he was an eater of boysand girls and old women because this was during the war and there were no men to eat.Not the war youknow of, but the Second World War.He had gotten the taste for human meat, this tiger.Who was thereto kill such an awful creature in a humble village where the youngest man is being sixty and with onlyone arm, and the oldest boy is myself, only seven years of age? And one day this tiger was found in a pitthat had been baited with the body of a dead woman.It is a terrible thing to bait a trap with a humanbeing made in the image of God, I will say in my composition, but it is more terrible to do nothing whilea bad tiger carries away small children.And I will say in my composition that this bad tiger was stillalive when we found it.It was having a stake pushed through its body but it was still alive.We beat it todeath with hoes and sticks.Old men and women and children, some children so excited and frightenedthey are wetting themselves in their pants [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]