service awards on his wall, and pictures of him talking to the Rotarians and the Lions, and he’s vice president of this dipshit town’s Jaycees, and next year he’ll be president, and he’s just as crazy as a fucking bedbug!
“Okay,” he said. “You got my attention.”
“I have had what you might call a checkered career,” Greg told him. “I’ve been up, but I’ve also been down. I’ve had a few scrapes with the law. What I’m trying to say, Sonny, is that I don’t have any set feelings about you. Not like the other locals. They read in the Union-Leader about what you and your bikie friends are doing over in the Hamptons this summer and they’d like,to castrate you with a rusty Gillette razor blade.”
“That’s not the Devil’s Dozen,” Sonny said. “We came down on a run from upstate New York to get some beachtime, man. We’re on vacation. We’re not into trashing a bunch of honky-tonk bars. There’s a bunch of Hell’s Angels tearing ass, and a chapter of the Black Riders from New Jersey, but you know who it is mostly? A bunch of college kids.” Sonny’s lip curled. “But the papers don’t like to report that, do they? They’d rather lay the rap on us than on Susie and Jim.”
“You’re so much more colorful,” Greg said mildly. “And William Loeb over at the Union-Leader doesn’t like bike clubs.”
“That bald-headed creep,” Sonny muttered.
Greg opened his desk drawer and pulled out a flat pint of Leader’s bourbon. “I’ll drink to that,” he said. He cracked the seal and drank half the pint at a draught. He blew out a great breath, his eyes watering, and held the pint across the desk. “You?”
Sonny polished the pint off. Warm fire bellowed up from his stomach to his throat.
“Light me up, man,” he gasped.
Greg threw back his head and laughed. “We’ll get along, Sonny. I have a feeling we’ll get along.”
“What do you want?” Sonny asked again, holding the empty pint.
“Nothing ... not now. But I have a feeling ...” Greg’s eyes became far away, almost puzzled. “I told you I’m a big man in Ridgeway. I’m going to run for mayor next time the office comes up, and I’ll win. But that’s ...”
“Just the beginning?” Sonny prompted.
“It’s a start, anyway.” That puzzled expression was still there. “I get things done. People know it. I’m good at what I do. I feel like ... there’s a lot ahead of me. Sky’s the limit. But I’m not ... quite sure ... what I mean. You know?”
Sonny only shrugged.
The puzzled expression faded. “But there’s a story, Sonny. A story about a mouse who took a thorn out of a lion’s paw. He did it to repay the lion for not eating him a few years before. You know that story?”
“I might have heard it when I was a kid.”
Greg nodded. “Well, it’s a few years before ... whatever it is, Sonny.” He shoved the plastic Baggies across the desk. “I’m not going to eat you. I could if I wanted to, you know. A kiddie lawyer couldn’t get you off. In this town, with the riots going on in Hampton less than twenty miles away, Clarence Fucking Darrow couldn’t get you off in Ridgeway. These good people would love to see you go up.”
Elliman didn’t reply, but he suspected Greg was right. There was nothing heavy in his dope stash—two Brown Bombers was the heaviest—but the collective parents of good old Susie and Jim would be glad to see him breaking rocks in Portsmouth, with his hair cut off his head.
“I’m not going to eat you,” Greg repeated. “I hope you’ll remember that in a few years if I get a thorn in my paw ... or maybe if I have a job opportunity for you. Keep it in mind?”
Gratitude was not in Sonny Elliman’s limited catalogue of human feelings, but interest and curiosity were. He felt both ways about this man Stillson. That craziness in his eyes hinted at many things, but boredom was not one of them.
“Who knows where we’ll all be in a few years?” he murmured. “We could all be dead, man.”
“Just keep me in mind. That’s all I’m asking.”
Sonny looked at the broken shards of vase. “I’ll keep you in mind,” he said.
4
1971 passed. The New Hampshire beach riots blew over, and the grumblings of the beachfront entrepreneurs were muted by the increased balances in their bankbooks. An obscure fellow named George McGovern declared for the presidency comically