The plant - By Stephen King Page 0,18

me-an endearing little loophole in the walking castle of complacency that is Massa Po'tuh.

Oh, but today! What a different Herbert Porter crept into my janitorial cubbyhole today! The complacent, ruddy face had become pallid and trembling. The blue eyes shifted so regularly from side to side that Porter looked like a man watching a tennis match even when he was trying to stare right at me. His lips were so shiny with spittle that they looked almost varnished. And while he was of course still fat, he also looked as if he had somehow lost his surface tension-as if the essential Herb Porter had shrunk away from the borders of his skin, leaving that skin to sag in places where it had been previously stretched smooth.

"He's out," Porter whispered.

"Who's dat, Mist Po'tuh?" I asked. I was genuinely curious; I could not imagine what mighty sling or engine could have breached such a gap in Castle Herbert. Although I suppose I should have guessed.

He proffered me the paper-the Post, of course. He's the only one around here who reads it. Kenton and Wade read the Times, Gelb and Jackson bring the Times but secretly read the Daily News (the hand that rocks the cradle may rule the world, but de han which empty de white folks' wastebaskets know de secrets of de worl), but the Post was made for fellows such as Herb Porter. He plays Wingo religiously and says if he ever wins a bundle he is going to buy a Winnebago, paint the word WINGOBAGO on the side, and tour the country.

I took it, opened it, and read the headline.

"The General's escaped," he whispered. His eyes stopped bouncing back and forth for a moment and he stared at me in dismay and utter horror. "It's as if that damned Detweiller cursed us. The General's escaped and I rejected his book!"

"Now, now, Mist Po'tuh," I said. "Ain't no need to take on so. Man lak dis prob'ly got fo-five dozen scores to settle befo he git to you."

"But I could be number one," he whispered. "After all, I rejected his goddam book."

It was true, and it is ironic how two such fundamentally different men as Kenton and Porter have managed to get themselves into exactly the same situation this late wintereach the target of a rejected author (Detweiller's rejection a bit more dramatic than that of the Major-General, granted, but that was indubitably Detweiller's own fault) who just happens to be insane. The difference-I know it, even if no one else does (and I believe Roger Wade might)-is that, while Kenton thought there might actually be the germ of a book in Detweiller's obsession, Porter knew better concerning the General's. But Porter is one of those men who has read omnivorously-and vicariously-about World War II, that Pickett's Charge of western man (western white man) in the 20th century, and he knew who Hecksler was... in a war filled with military celebrities Hecksler was, granted, of the Hollywood Squares type (if you see what I mean), but to Porter he was somebody. So he asked to see the completed manuscript of Twenty Psychic Garden Flowers in spite of the abysmal outline, thereby encouraging a man who was, by the quality and content of his own written words, a palpable psychotic. I felt that the result and his present terror, although unforeseen, were partly his own fault.

I allowed as how it was true that he could be number one on the General's hit list (if indeed the poor madman is doing anything other than cowering in drainage ditches or scouring alley garbage cans for offal at this point), but reiterated that I thought it unlikely. I added that he might well be caught before he could get within fifty miles of New York City even if he had decided to come after Porter, and finished by telling him that many psychotics released suddenly into an uncontrolled environment took their own lives... although I did not say so in exactly those words.

Porter regarded me suspiciously for a moment and then said, "Riddley-don't take offense at this - "

"Nawsah!"

"Have you really been to college?"

"Yassah!"

"And you took psychology courses?"

"Yassah, I sho did."

"Abnormal psychology?"

"Yassah, and I'se pow'ful familier wid de suicidial syndrome associated wid de paranoid-psychotic personality! Why, dat Gen'l Hecksler could be slittin' his wrists or garglin' wid a lightbulb even while we's heah talkin, Mist Po'tuh!"

He looked at me for a long time and then said, "If you've been to college, Riddley, why do