Information (tilde.town/~mozz/index) | |
All You Love Will Be Carried Away | |
By Steven King | |
(part 3 of 7) | |
Alfie unbuttoned his topcoat and put his suitcase on the | |
floor at the foot of the bed closest to the bathroom. He put | |
his briefcase on the gold coverlet. He sat down, the sides | |
of his coat spreading out like the skirt of a dress. He | |
opened his briefcase, thumbed through the various brochures, | |
catalogues, and order forms; finally he found the gun. It | |
was a Smith &Wesson revolver, .38 calibre. He put it on the | |
pillows at the head of the bed. | |
He lit a cigarette, reached for the telephone, then | |
remembered his notebook. He reached into his right coat | |
pocket and pulled it out. It was an old Spiral, bought for | |
a buck forty_nine in the stationery department of some | |
forgotten five_and_dime in Omaha or Sioux City or maybe | |
Jubilee, Kansas. The cover was creased and almost completely | |
innocent of any printing it might once have borne. Some of | |
the pages had pulled partially free of the metal coil that | |
served as the notebook's binding, but all of them were still | |
there. Alfie had been carrying this notebook for almost | |
seven years, ever since his days selling Universal Product | |
Code readers for Simonex. | |
There was an ashtray on the shelf under the phone. Out here, | |
some of the motel rooms still came with ashtrays, even on | |
the first floor. Alfie fished for it, put his cigarette on | |
the groove, and opened his notebook. He flipped through | |
pages written with a hundred different pens (and a few | |
pencils), pausing to read a couple of entries. One read: "I | |
suckt Jim Morrison's cock w/ my poutie boy mouth (LAWRENCE | |
KS)." Restrooms were filled with homosexual graffiti, most | |
of it tiresome and repetitive, but "poutie boy mouth" was | |
pretty good. Another was "Albert Gore is my favorite whore | |
(MURDO S DAK)." | |
The last page, three_quarters of the way through the book, | |
had just two entries. "Dont chew the Trojan Gum it taste's | |
just like rubber (AVOCA IA)." And: "Poopie doopie you so | |
loopy (PAPILLION NEB)." Alfie was crazy about that one. | |
Something about the "_ie, _ie," and then, boom, you got "_y" | |
It could have been no more than an illiterate's mistake (he | |
was sure that would have been Maura's take on it) but why | |
think like that? What fun was that? No, Alfie preferred | |
(even now) to believe that "_ie, _ie," . . . wait for it . . | |
. "_y" was an intended construction. Something sneaky but | |
playful, with the feel of an e. e. cummings poem. | |
He rummaged through the stuff in his inside coat pocket, | |
feeling papers, an old toll ticket, a bottle of pills__stuff | |
he had quit taking-_and at last finding the pen that always | |
hid in the litter. Time to record today's finds. Two good | |
ones, both from the same rest area, one over the urinal he | |
had used, the other written with a Sharpie on the map case | |
beside the Hav_A_Bite machine. (Snax, which in Alfie's | |
opinion vended a superior product line, had for some reason | |
been disenfranchised in the 1_80 rest areas about four years | |
ago.) These days Alfie sometimes went two weeks and three | |
thousand miles without seeing anything new, or even a viable | |
variation on something old. Now, two in one day. Two on the | |
last day. Like some sort of omen. | |
His pen had "COTTAGER FOODS The Good Stuff!" written in gold | |
along the barrel next to the logo, a thatched hut with smoke | |
coming out of the quaintly crooked chimney. | |
Sitting there on the bed, still in his topcoat, Alfie bent | |
studiously over his old notebook so that his shadow fell on | |
the page. Below "Dont chew the Trojan Gum" and "Poopie | |
doopie you so loopy," Alfie added "Save Russian Jews, | |
collect valuable prizes (WALTON NEB)'' and "All that you | |
love will be carried away (WALTON NEB)." He hesitated. He | |
rarely added notes, liking his finds to stand alone. | |
Explanation rendered the exotic mundane (or so he had come | |
to believe; in the early years he had annotated much more | |
freely), but from time to time a footnote still seemed to be | |
more illuminating than demystifying. | |
He starred the second entry__"All that you love will be | |
carried away (WALTON NEB)"__and drew a line two inches above | |
the bottom of the page, and wrote: "*To read this you must | |
also look at the exit ramp from the Walton Rest Area back to | |
highway, i.e. at departing transients." | |
He put the pen back in his pocket, wondering why he | |
or anyone would continue anything this close to ending | |
everything. He couldn't think of a single answer. But of | |
course you went on breathing, too. You couldn't stop it | |
without rough surgery. | |
The wind gusted outside. Alfie looked briefly toward the | |
window, where the curtain (also green, but a different shade | |
from the rug) had been drawn. If he pulled it back, he would | |
be able to see chains of light on Interstate 80, each bright | |
bead marking sentient beings running on the rod of the | |
highway. Then he looked back down at his book. He meant to | |
do it, all right. This was just ... well ... | |
All You Love Will Be Carried Away (Part 4 of 7) | |
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