nicotine, but it was still the residue of an addicting substance.
Children did not revere or love him; he was not a Mr Chips languishing away in a rustic corner of America and waiting for Ross Hunter to discover him, but many of his students did come to respect him, and a few)earned from him that dedication, however eccentric or humble, can be a noteworthy thing. He liked his work.
Now he got into his car, pumped the accelerator too much and flooded it, waited, and started it again. He tuned the radio to a Portland rock ‘n’ roll station and jacked the volume almost to the speaker’s distortion point. He thought rock ‘n’ roll was fine music. He backed out of his parking slot, stalled, and started the car up again.
He had a small house out on the Taggart Stream Road, and had very few callers. He had never been married, had no family except for a brother in Texas who worked for an oil company and never wrote. He did not really miss the attachments. He was a solitary man, but solitude had in no way twisted him.
He paused at the blinking light at the intersection of Jointner Avenue and Brock Street, then turned toward home. The shadows were long now, and the daylight had taken on a curiously beautiful warmth - flat and golden, like something from a French Impressionist painting. He glanced over to his left, saw the Marsten House, and glanced again.
‘The shutters,’ he said aloud, against the driving beat from the radio. ‘Those shutters are back up.’
He glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw that there was a car parked in the driveway. He had been teaching in ‘salem’s Lot since 1952, and he had never seen a car parked in that driveway.
‘Is someone living up there?’ he asked no one in particular, and drove on.
16
6:00 P.M.
Susan’s father, Bill Norton, the Lot’s first selectman, was surprised to find that he liked Ben Mears-liked him quite a lot. Bill was a big, tough man with black hair, built like a truck, and not fat even after fifty, He had left high school for the Navy in the eleventh grade with his father’s permission, and he had clawed his way up from there, picking up his diploma at the age of twenty-four on a high school equivalency test taken almost as an afterthought. He was not a blind, bullish anti-intellectual as some plain workingmen become when they are denied the level of learning that they may have been capable of, either through fate or their own doing, but he had no patience with ‘art farts’, as he termed some of the doe-eyed, longhaired boys Susan had brought home from school. He didn’t mind their hair or their dress. What bothered him was that none of them seemed serious-minded. He didn’t share his wife’s liking for Floyd Tibbits, the boy that Susie had been going around with the most since she graduated, but he didn’t actively dislike him, either. Floyd had a pretty good job at the executive level in the Falmouth Grant’s, and Bill Norton considered him to be moderately serious-minded. And he was a hometown boy. But so was this Mears, in a manner of speaking.
‘Now, you leave him alone about that art fart business,’ Susan said, rising at the sound of the doorbell. She was wearing a light green summer dress, her new casual hairdo pulled back and tied loosely with a hank of oversized green yarn.
Bill laughed. ‘I got to call ‘em as I see ‘em, Susie darlin’. I won’t embarrass you… never do, I?’
She gave him a pensive, nervous smile and went to open the door.
The man who came back in with her was lanky and agile-looking, with finely drawn features and a thick, almost greasy shock of black hair that looked freshly washed despite its natural oiliness. He was dressed in a way that impressed Bill favorably: plain blue jeans, very new, and a white shirt rolled to the elbows.
‘Ben, this is my dad and mom-Bill and Ann Norton. Mom, Dad, Ben Mears.’
‘Hello. Nice to meet you.’
He smiled at Mrs Norton with a touch of reserve and she said,
Children did not revere or love him; he was not a Mr Chips languishing away in a rustic corner of America and waiting for Ross Hunter to discover him, but many of his students did come to respect him, and a few)earned from him that dedication, however eccentric or humble, can be a noteworthy thing. He liked his work.
Now he got into his car, pumped the accelerator too much and flooded it, waited, and started it again. He tuned the radio to a Portland rock ‘n’ roll station and jacked the volume almost to the speaker’s distortion point. He thought rock ‘n’ roll was fine music. He backed out of his parking slot, stalled, and started the car up again.
He had a small house out on the Taggart Stream Road, and had very few callers. He had never been married, had no family except for a brother in Texas who worked for an oil company and never wrote. He did not really miss the attachments. He was a solitary man, but solitude had in no way twisted him.
He paused at the blinking light at the intersection of Jointner Avenue and Brock Street, then turned toward home. The shadows were long now, and the daylight had taken on a curiously beautiful warmth - flat and golden, like something from a French Impressionist painting. He glanced over to his left, saw the Marsten House, and glanced again.
‘The shutters,’ he said aloud, against the driving beat from the radio. ‘Those shutters are back up.’
He glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw that there was a car parked in the driveway. He had been teaching in ‘salem’s Lot since 1952, and he had never seen a car parked in that driveway.
‘Is someone living up there?’ he asked no one in particular, and drove on.
16
6:00 P.M.
Susan’s father, Bill Norton, the Lot’s first selectman, was surprised to find that he liked Ben Mears-liked him quite a lot. Bill was a big, tough man with black hair, built like a truck, and not fat even after fifty, He had left high school for the Navy in the eleventh grade with his father’s permission, and he had clawed his way up from there, picking up his diploma at the age of twenty-four on a high school equivalency test taken almost as an afterthought. He was not a blind, bullish anti-intellectual as some plain workingmen become when they are denied the level of learning that they may have been capable of, either through fate or their own doing, but he had no patience with ‘art farts’, as he termed some of the doe-eyed, longhaired boys Susan had brought home from school. He didn’t mind their hair or their dress. What bothered him was that none of them seemed serious-minded. He didn’t share his wife’s liking for Floyd Tibbits, the boy that Susie had been going around with the most since she graduated, but he didn’t actively dislike him, either. Floyd had a pretty good job at the executive level in the Falmouth Grant’s, and Bill Norton considered him to be moderately serious-minded. And he was a hometown boy. But so was this Mears, in a manner of speaking.
‘Now, you leave him alone about that art fart business,’ Susan said, rising at the sound of the doorbell. She was wearing a light green summer dress, her new casual hairdo pulled back and tied loosely with a hank of oversized green yarn.
Bill laughed. ‘I got to call ‘em as I see ‘em, Susie darlin’. I won’t embarrass you… never do, I?’
She gave him a pensive, nervous smile and went to open the door.
The man who came back in with her was lanky and agile-looking, with finely drawn features and a thick, almost greasy shock of black hair that looked freshly washed despite its natural oiliness. He was dressed in a way that impressed Bill favorably: plain blue jeans, very new, and a white shirt rolled to the elbows.
‘Ben, this is my dad and mom-Bill and Ann Norton. Mom, Dad, Ben Mears.’
‘Hello. Nice to meet you.’
He smiled at Mrs Norton with a touch of reserve and she said,
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