2
He deliberately skirted town, crossing into Cumberland and then coming back into 'salem's Lot from the west, taking the Burns Road. He was amazed by how little things had changed out here. There were a few new houses he didn't remember, there was a tavern called Dell's just over the town line, and a pair of fresh gravel quarries. A good deal of the hardwood had been pulped over. But the old tin sign pointing the way to the town dump was still there, and the road itself was still unpaved, full of chuckholes and wash?boards, and he could see Schoolyard Hill through the slash in the trees where the Central Maine Power pylons ran on a northwest to southeast line. The Griffen farm was still there, although the barn had been enlarged. He wondered if they still bottled and sold their own milk. The logo had been a smiling cow under the name brand: 'Sunshine Milk from the Griffen Farms!' He smiled. He had splashed a lot of that milk on his corn flakes at Aunt Cindy's house.
He turned left onto the Brooks Road, passed the wrought-iron gates and the low fieldstone wall surrounding Harmony Hill Cemetery, and then went down the steep grade and started up the far side - the side known as Marsten's Hill.
At the top, the trees fell away on both sides of the road. On the right, you could look right down into the town proper - Ben's first view of it. On the left, the Marsten House. He pulled over and got out of the car.
It was just the same. There was no difference, not at all. He might have last seen it yesterday.
The witch grass grew wild and tall in the front yard, obscuring the old, frost-heaved flagstones that led to the porch. Chirring crickets sang in it, and he could see grass?hoppers jumping in erratic parabolas.
The house itself looked toward town. it was huge and rambling and sagging, its windows haphazardly boarded shut, giving it that sinister look of all old houses that have been empty for a long time. The paint had been weathered away, giving the house a uniform gray look. Windstorms had ripped many of the shingles off, and a heavy snowfall had punched in the west corner of the main roof, giving it a slumped, hunched look. A tattered no-trespassing sign was nailed to the right-hand newel post.
He felt a strong urge to walk up that overgrown path, past the crickets and hoppers that would jump around his shoes, climb the porch, peek between the haphazard boards into the hallway or the front room. Perhaps try the front door. If it was unlocked, go in.
He swallowed and stared up at the house, almost hypno?tized. It stared back at him with idiot indifference.
You walked down the hall, smelling wet plaster and rotting wallpaper, and mice would skitter in the walls. There would still be a lot of junk lying around, and you might pick something up, a paperweight maybe, and put it in your pocket. Then, at the end of the hall, instead of going through into the kitchen, you could turn left and go up the stairs, your feet gritting in the plaster dust which had sifted down from the ceiling over the years. There were fourteen steps, exactly fourteen. But the top one was smaller, out of proportion, as if it had been adde to avoi the evil number. At the top of the stairs you stand on the landing, looking down the hall toward a closed door. And if you walk down the hall toward it, watching as if from outside yourself as the door gets closer and larger, you can reach out your hand and put it on the tarnished silver knob -
He turned away from the house, a straw-dry whistle of air slipping from his mouth. Not yet. Later, perhaps, but not yet. For now it was enough to know that all of that was still here. It had waited for him. He put his hands on the hood of his car and looked out over the town. He could find out down there who was handling the Marsten House, and perhaps lease it. The kitchen would make an adequate writing room and he could bunk down in the front parlor. But he wouldn't allow himself to go upstairs.
Not unless it had to be done.
He got in his car, started it, and drove down the hill to Jerusalem's Lot.
Chapter Two SUSAN (I)
1
He was sitting on a bench in the park when he observed the girl watching him. She was a very pretty girl, and there was a silk scarf tied over her light blond hair. She was currently reading a book, but there was a sketch pad and what looked like a charcoal pencil beside her. It was Tuesday, September 16, the first day of school, and the park had magically emptied of the rowdier element. What was left was a scattering of mothers with infants, a few old men sitting by the war memorial, and this girl sitting in the dappled shade of a gnarled old elm.
She looked up and saw him. An expression of startle?ment crossed her face. She looked down at her book; looked up at him again and started to rise; almost thought better of it; did rise; sat down again.
He got up and walked over, holding his own book, which was a paperback Western. 'Hello,' he said agreeably. 'Do we know each other?'
'No,' she said. 'That is . . . you're Benjaman Mears, right?'
'Right.' He raised his eyebrows.
She laughed nervously, not looking in his eyes except in a quick flash, to try to read the barometer of his intentions. She was quite obviously a girl not accustomed to speaking to strange men in the park.
'I thought I was seeing a ghost.' She held up the book in her lap. He saw fleetingly that 'Jerusalem's Lot Public Library' was stamped on the thickness of pages between covers. The book was Air Dance, his second novel. She showed him the photograph of himself on the back jacket, a photo that was four years old now. The face looked boyish and frighteningly serious - the eyes were black diamonds.
'Of such inconsequential beginnings dynasties are be?gun,' he said, and although it was a joking throwaway remark, it hung oddly in the air, like prophecy spoken in jest. Behind them, a number of toddlers were splashing happily in the wading pool and a mother was telling Roddy not to push his sister so high. The sister went soaring up on her swing regardless, dress flying, trying for the sky. It was a moment he remembered for years after, as though a special small slice had been cut from the cake of time. If nothing fires between two people, such an instant simply falls back into the general wrack of memory.
Then she laughed and offered him the book. 'Will you autograph it?'
'A library book?'
'I'll buy it from them and replace it.'
He found a mechanical pencil in his sweater pocket, opened the book to the flyleaf, and asked, 'What's your name?'
'Susan Norton.'
He wrote quickly, without thinking: For Susan Norton, the prettiest girl in the park. Warm regards, Ben Mears. He added the date below his signature in slashed notation.
'Now you'll have to steal it,' he said, handing it back.
'Air Dance is out of print, alas.'
'I'll get a copy from one of those book finders in New York.' She hesitated, and this time her glance at his eyes was a little longer. 'It's an awfully good book.'
'Thanks. When I take it down and look at it, I wonder how it ever got published.'
'Do you take it down often?'
'Yeah, but I'm trying to quit.'
She grinned at him and they both laughed and that made things more natural. Later he would have a chance to think how easily this had happened, how smoothly. The thought was never a comfortable one. It conjured up an image of fate, not blind at all but equipped with sentient 20/20 vision and intent on grinding helpless mortals between the great millstones of the universe to make some unknown bread.
'I read Conway's Daughter, too. I loved that. I suppose you hear that all the time.'
'Remarkably little,' he said honestly. Miranda had also loved Conway's Daughter, but most of his coffeehouse friends had been noncommittal and most of the critics had clobbered it. Well, that was critics for you. Plot was out, mast***ation in.
'Well, I did.'
'Have you read the new one?'
'Billy Said Keep Going? Not yet. Miss Coogan at the drugstore says it's pretty racy.'
'Hell, it's almost puritanical,' Ben said. 'The language is rough, but when you're writing about uneducated country boys, you can't . . . look, can I buy you an ice-cream soda or something? I was just getting a hanker on for one.'
She checked his eyes a third time. Then smiled, warmly.
'Sure. I'd love one. They're great in Spencer's.'
That was the beginning of it.
2
'Is that Miss Coogan?'
Ben asked it, low-voiced. He was looking at a tall, spare woman who was wearing a red nylon duster over her white uniform. Her blue-rinsed hair was done in a steplike succession of finger waves.
'That's her. She's got a little cart she takes to the library every Thursday night. She fills out reserve cards by the ton and drives Miss Starcher crazy.'
They were seated on red leather stools at the soda fountain. He was drinking a chocolate soda; hers was strawberry. Spencer's also served as the local bus depot and from where they sat they could look through an old-fashioned scrolled arch and into the waiting room, where a solitary young man in Air Force blues sat glumly with his feet planted around his suitcase.
'Doesn't look happy to be going wherever he's going, does he?' she said, following his glance.
'Leave's over, I imagine,' Ben said. Now, he thought, she'll ask if I've ever been in the service.
But instead: 'I'll be on that ten-thirty bus one of these days. Good-by, 'salem's Lot. Probably I'll be looking just as glum as that boy.'