Read Online The Plant by Stephen King - Free Book Online

think what freaked Sandra out before was that she’d never seen him.”
    “Yes,” I said. “She even told me that once.”
    He paid the tab, waving away my offer to pay my half. “It’s the revenge of the flower-people,” he said. “First Detweiller, the mad gardener from Central Falls, and then Hecksler, the mad gardener from Oak Cove.”
    That gave me what the British mystery writers like to call a nasty start—
    talk about not making obvious connections! Roger, who is far from being anyone’s fool, saw my expression and smiled.
    “Didn’t think of that, did you?” he asked. “It’s just a coincidence, of course, but I guess it was enough to set off a little paranoid chime in Herb Porter’s head—I can’t imagine him getting so fashed otherwise. We could have the basis of a good Robert Ludlum novel here. The Horticultural Something-or-Other. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
    “Convergence,” I said as we hit the street.
    “Huh?” Roger looked like someone coming back from a million miles away.
    “The Horticultural Convergence,” I said. “The perfect Ludlum title.
    Even the perfect Ludlum plot. It turns out, see, that Detweiller and Hecksler are actually brothers—no, considering the ages, I guess father and son would be better—in the pay of the NKVD. And—”
    “I’ve got to catch my bus, John,” he said, not unkindly.
    Well, I have my problems, dear Ruth (who knows better than you?), but realizing when I’m being a bore has never been one of them (except when I’m drunk). I saw him down to the bus stop and headed home.
    The last thing he said was that the next we heard of General Hecksler would probably be a report of his capture...or his suicide. And Herb Porter would be disappointed as well as relieved.
    “It isn’t General Hecksler Herb and the rest of us have to be worried about,” he said—his little burst of good humor had left him and he looked 57
     
    slumped and small, standing there at the bus stop with his hands jammed into the pockets of his trenchcoat. “It’s Harlow Enders and the rest of the accountants who are going to get us. They’ll stab us with their red pencils.
    When I think about Enders, I almost wish I had Sandra Jackson’s Rainy Night Friend.”
    No progress on my novel this week—looking back over this epistle I see why—all this narrative that should have gone into Maymonth tonight went ended up here instead. But if I went on too long and in too much novelistic detail, don’t chalk it all up to prolixity, my dear—over the last six months or so I have become a genuine Lonely Guy. Writing to you isn’t as good as talking to you, and talking to you isn’t as good as seeing you, and seeing you isn’t as good as touching you and being with you (steam-steam! pant-pant!), but a person has to make do with what he has. I know you’re busy, studying hard, but going so long without talking to you has got me sorta crazy (and on top of Detweiller and Hecksler, more crazy I do not need to be). I love you, my dear.
    Missing you, needing you,
    John
    58
     
    March 9, 1981
    Mr. Herbert Porter
    Designated Jew
    Zenith House
    490 Park Avenue
    New York, NY 10017
    Dear Designated Jew,
    Did you think I had forgotten you? I bet you did. Well, I didn’t. A man doesn’t forget the thief who rejected his book after stealing all of the good parts. And how you tried to discredit me. I wonder how you will look with your penis in your ear . Ha-ha. (But not a joke) I am coming for you, “big boy.”
    Major General Anthony R.
    Hecksler (Ret.)
    P.S. Roses are red.
    Violets are blue.
    I am coming to castrate.
    A Designated Jew.
    M.G.A.R.H. (Ret.)
    59
     
    MAILGRAM FROM MR. JOHN KENTON TO RUTH TANAKA
    MS. RUTH TANAKA
    10411 CRESCENT BOULEVARD
    LOS ANGELES, CA 90024
    MARCH 10, 1981
    DEAR RUTH
    THIS IS PROBABLY PRIMO STUPIDO BUT PARANOIA BEGETS PARANOIA AND I STILL
    CAN’T RAISE YOU. FINALLY GOT PAST THAT BLANK-BLANK ANSWERING MACHINE
    THIS MORNING TO YOUR ROOMMATE WHO SAID