Read Online Six Stories by Stephen King - Free Book Online

date. Wheelock has never bought his act, and although Blind Willie pays for the privilege of being left alone on this corner, and quite handsomely by going rates, he knows that part of Wheelock is still cop enough to hope he’ll fuck up. Part of Wheelock is actively rooting for that. But what the Wheelocks of the world never understand is that what looks fake isn’t always fake. Sometimes the issues are a little more complicated than they look at first glance. That was something else the Nam had to teach him, back in the years before it became a political joke and a crutch for hack filmwriters.
    ‘Sixty-seven was a hard year,’ the gray-haired man says. He speaks in a slow, heavy voice. ‘I was at Loc Ninh when the regulars tried to overrun the place. Up by the ‘Bodian border. Do you remember Loc Ninh?’
    ‘Ah, yes, sir,’ Blind Willie says. ‘I lost two friends on Tory Hill.’
    ‘Tory Hill,’ the man in the open coat says, and all at once he looks a thousand years old, the bright red ski sweater an obscenity, like something hung on a museum mummy by vandals who believe they are exhibiting a sense of humor. His eyes are off over a hundred horizons. Then they come back here, to this street where a nearby carillion is playing the one that goes I hear those sleighbells jingling, ring-ting tingling too. He sets his bags down between his expensive shoes and takes a pigskin wallet out from an inner pocket. He opens it, riffles through a neat thickness of bills.
    ‘Son all right, Teale?’ he asks. ‘Making good grades?’
    ‘Yes sir.’
    ‘How old?’
    ‘Twenty one, sir.’
    ‘God willing, he’ll never know what it’s like to see his friends die and then get spit on in an airport concourse,’ the man in the open topcoat says. He takes a bill out of his wallet. Blind Willie feels as well as hears Wheelock’s little gasp and hardly has to look at the bill to know it is a hundred.
    ‘Yes, sir, God willing, sir.’
    The man in the topcoat touches Willie’s hand with the bill, looks surprised when the gloved hand pulls back, as if it were bare and had been touched by something hot.
    ‘Put it in my case, sire, if you would,’ Blind Willie says.
    The man in the topcoat looks at him for a moment, eyebrows raised, frowning slightly, then seems to understand. He stoops, puts the bill in the case, then reaches into his front pocket and brings out a small handful of change. This he scatters across the face of old Ben Franklin, in order to hold the bill down. Then he stands up. His eyes are wet and bloodshot.
    ‘Do you any good to give you my card?’ he asks Blind Willie. ‘I can put you in touch with several veterans’ organizations.’
    ‘Thank you, sir, I’m sure you could, but I must respectfully decline.’
    ‘Tried most of them?’
    ‘Tried some, yes sir.’
    ‘Where’d you V.A.?’
    ‘San Francisco, sir.’ He hesitates, then adds, ‘The Pussy Palace, sir.’
    The man in the topcoat laughs heartily at this, and when his face crinkles, the tears which have been standing in his eyes run down his weathered cheeks. ‘Pussy Palace! he cries. ‘I haven’t heard that in fifteen years! Christ! A bedpan in every bed, and a naked nurse to hold it in place, right? Except for the lovebeads, which they left on.’
    ‘Yes, sir, that about covers it, sir.’
    ‘Or uncovers it. Merry Christmas, soldier.’ The man in the topcoat ticks off a little one-finger salute.
    ‘Merry Christmas to you, sir.’
    The man in the topcoat picks up his bags again and walks off. He doesn’t look back. Blind Willie would not have seen him do so if he had; his vision is now down to ghosts and shadows.
    ‘That was beautiful,’ Wheelock murmurs. The feeling of Wheellocks freshly used air puffing into the cup of his ear is hateful to Blind Willie - gruesome, in fact - but he will not give the man the pleasure of moving his head so much as an inch. ‘The old fuck was actually crying. As I’m sure you saw. But can talk the