Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,147

enjoyed it, when her mood was right; it was dusty, elemental work, with always the possibility of a healthy kick in the slats to relieve the boredom and bring a girl back to reality. But of making shoes she knew nothing, nor wished to. Brian Hookey made them at the forge behind his barn and hostelry, however; Susan easily picked out four new ones of the right size, enjoying the smell of horseflesh and fresh hay as she did. Fresh paint, too. Hookey’s Stable & Smithy looked very well, indeed. Glancing up, she saw not so much as a single hole in the barn roof. Times had been good for Hookey, it seemed.

He wrote the new shoes up on a beam, still wearing his blacksmith’s apron and squinting horribly out of one eye at his own figures. When Susan began to speak haltingly to him about payment, he laughed, told her he knew she’d settle her accounts as soon as she could, gods bless her, yes. ’Sides, they weren’t any of them going anywhere, were they? Nawp, nawp. All the time gently propelling her through the fragrant smells of hay and horses toward the door. He would not have treated even so small a matter as four iron shoes in such a carefree manner a year ago, but now she was Mayor Thorin’s good friend, and things had changed.

The afternoon sunlight was dazzling after the dimness of Hookey’s barn, and she was momentarily blinded, groping forward toward the street with the leather bag bouncing on her hip and the shoes clashing softly inside. She had just a moment to register a shape looming in the brightness, and then it thumped into her hard enough to rattle her teeth and make Felicia’s new shoes clang. She would have fallen, but for strong hands that quickly reached out and grasped her shoulders. By then her eyes were adjusting and she saw with dismay and amusement that the young man who had almost knocked her sprawling into the dirt was one of Will’s friends—Richard Stockworth.

“Oh, sai, your pardon!” he said, brushing the arms of her dress as if he had knocked her over. “Are you well? Are you quite well?”

“Quite well,” she said, smiling. “Please don’t apologize.” She felt a sudden wild impulse to stand on tiptoe and kiss his mouth and say, Give that to Will and tell him to never mind what I said! Tell him there are a thousand more where that came from! Tell him to come and get every one!

Instead, she fixed on a comic image: this Richard Stockworth smacking Will full on the mouth and saying it was from Susan Delgado. She began to giggle. She put her hands to her mouth, but it did no good. Sai Stockworth smiled back at her . . . tentatively, cautiously. He probably thinks I’m mad . . . and I am! I am!

“Good day, Mr. Stockworth,” she said, and passed on before she could embarrass herself further.

“Good day, Susan Delgado,” he called in return.

She looked back once, when she was fifty yards or so farther up the street, but he was already gone. Not into Hookey’s, though; of that she was quite sure. She wondered what Mr. Stockworth had been doing at that end of town to begin with.

Half an hour later, as she took the new iron from her da’s shoebag, she found out. There was a folded scrap of paper tucked between two of the shoes, and even before she unfolded it, she understood that her collision with Mr. Stockworth hadn’t been an accident.

She recognized Will’s handwriting at once from the note in the bouquet.

Susan,

Can you meet me at Citgo this evening or tomorrow evening? Very important. Has to do with what we discussed before. Please.

W.

P.S. Best you burn this note.

She burned it at once, and as she watched the flames first flash up and then die down, she murmured over and over the one word in it which had struck her the hardest: Please.

3

She and Aunt Cord ate a simple, silent evening meal—bread and soup—and when it was done, Susan rode Felicia out to the Drop and watched the sun go down. She would not be meeting him this evening, no. She already owed too much sorrow to impulsive, unthinking behavior. But tomorrow?

Why Citgo?

Has to do with what we discussed before.

Yes, probably. She did not doubt his honor, although she had much come to wonder if he and his friends were who they said they were.