The plant - By Stephen King Page 0,33

and when I peeked in the open door of his office, there he was, just sitting behind his desk and looking out at the street.

"Morning, boss," I said. I thought he'd be ready and raring to go, but he just sat there in a semi-slump, pale and disheveled, as if he'd spent the whole night tossing and turning.

"I told you not to encourage her," he said without turning from the window.

I walked over and looked out. The old lady with the guitar, the wild white hair, and the sign about letting Jesus grow in your heart was over there in front of Smiler's again. I couldn't hear what she was singing, at least. There was that much.

"You look like you had a tough night," I said.

"Tougher morning. You seen the Times?"

I had, as a matter of fact - the front page, anyway. There was the usual report on Reagan's condition, the usual stuff about unrest in the mideast, the usual corruption-in-government story, and the usual bottom-of-the-page command to support the Fresh Air Fund. Nothing that struck me as of any immediate concern. Nevertheless, I felt a little stirring of the hairs on the back of my neck.

The Times was sitting folded over in the OUT half of Roger's IN/OUT basket. I took it.

"First page of the B section," he said, still looking out the window. At the bum, presumably... or do you call a female of the species a bumette?

I turned to the National Report and saw a picture of an airplane - what was left of one, anyway - in a weedy field littered with cast-off engine parts. In the background, a bunch of people were standing behind a cyclone fence and gawking. I scanned the headline and knew at once.

"Barfield?" I asked.

"Barfield," he agreed.

"Christ!"

"Christ had nothing to do with it."

I scanned the piece without really reading it, just looking for her name. And there she was: Tina Barfield of Central Falls, source of that old adage "if you play around the buzz-saw too long, sooner or later someone is gonna get cut." Or burned alive in a Cessna Titan, she should have added.

"She said she'd be safe from Carlos if she did a genuine Good Turn," Roger said. "That might lead some to deduce that what she did us was just the opposite."

"I believed her about that," I said. I think I was telling the truth, but whether I was or wasn't, I didn't want Roger deciding to uproot the ivy growing in Riddley's closet because of what had happened to Tina Barfield. Shocked as I was, I didn't want that. Then I saw - or maybe intuited - that Roger's mind wasn't running that way, and I relaxed a little.

"Actually, I did, too," he said. "She was at least trying to do a Good Turn."

"Maybe she just didn't do it soon enough," I said.

He nodded. "Maybe that was it. I read the short story she mentioned, by the way - the one by Jerome Bixby."

"'It's a Good Life. '"

"Right. By the time I'd read two pages, I recognized it as the basis of a famous Twilight Zone episode starring Billy Mumy. What the hell ever happened to Billy Mumy?"

I didn't give Shit One about what happened to Billy Mumy, but thought it might be a bad idea to say so.

"The story's about a little boy who's a super-psychic. He destroys the whole world, apparently, except for his own little circle of friends and relatives. Those people he holds hostage, killing them if they dare to cross him in any way."

I remembered the episode. The little kid hadn't pulled out anyone's heart or caused any planes to crash, but he'd turned one character - his big brother or maybe a neighbor - into a jack-in-the-box. And when he made a mess, he simply sent it away into the cornfield.

"Based on that, can you imagine what living with Carlos must have been like?" Roger asked me.

"What are we going to do, Roger?"

He turned from the window then and looked at me straight on. Frightened - I was, too - but determined. I respected him for that. And I respect myself, too.

I think.

"We're going to make Zenith House into a profitable concern if we can," he said, "and then we're going to jam about nine gallons of black ink in Harlow Enders's eye. I don't know if that plant is really a modern-day version of Jack's beanstalk or not, but if it is, we're going to climb it and get