Billy Summers

by Stephen King

He’s thinking that Zola was just beginning to mine what would turn out to be a deep and fabulous vein of ore. He’s thinking that Zola was—is—the nightmare version of Charles Dickens. He’s thinking that would make a good thesis for an essay. Not that he’s ever written one.

There’s a fountain in the front yard. Got a naked little kid in the middle of it, there’s a word for that…” Cherub, Billy thinks but doesn’t say. He just keeps smiling.

The man’s offed God knows how many guys, some of them very hard guys, and he gets pepper-sprayed by a dyke women’s libber? You gotta see the humor in that.”

“That’s right, but he was here before he went there.

When it comes, he sits by the window, eating and reading Thérèse Raquin. He thinks it’s like James M. Cain crossed with an EC horror comic from the 1950s.

The phone rings. It’s Ken Hoff. He tells Billy where they’ll meet tomorrow afternoon. Billy doesn’t have to write it down. Writing things down can be dangerous, and he’s got a good memory.

There is indeed a cherub peeing endlessly into a pool of water, and a couple of other statues (Roman soldier, bare-breasted maiden) that are lit by hidden spots now that dusk is here.

Why not a novel that’s actually an autobiography, one written not by the Billy Summers who reads Zola and Hardy and even plowed his way through Infinite Jest, but one written by the other Billy Summers? The alter ego he calls his dumb self? Could that work? He thinks yes, because he knows that Billy as well as he knows himself. I might give it a try, he thinks. With nothing but time on my hands, why not? He’s thinking about how he might begin when he finally drifts off.

He stops at Burger King on the way back, and when he gets to the yellow house, a couple of kids on bikes are in front of it. A boy and a girl, one white and one black. He guesses the girl must belong to Jamal and Corinne Ackerman.

The one that will soon fall behind. Ken Hoff is the patsy. Not for the killing, he’ll have a cast-iron alibi for that, but when the cops start looking for the guy who ordered the killing, they won’t find Nick. They’ll find Ken. Billy decides that’s okay with him.

Being a good neighbor is tiring.

The next day Billy hooks up his new MacBook in the office on the fifth floor and downloads a solitaire app.

And while Nick might consider Billy far from the brightest bulb in the chandelier, he knows his hired gun is smart enough to realize he can’t trade a name for a reduction to homicide in the second or manslaughter.

He goes back to the table, where the expensive Mac Pro is still playing Canfield. He powers up his own laptop and goes to Amazon. You can buy anything at Amazon.

When that man came home he was plenty mad. He killed my sister and I don’t even remember his name.

Take care of your sister. Writing is good. He’s always wanted to do it, and now he is. That’s good. Only who knew it hurt so much?

You get along with people without buddying up to them. Nice to know that works even if you look fat.

It rains all weekend. On Saturday morning Billy goes to Walmart where he buys a couple of cheap suitcases and a lot of cheap clothes that will fit his overweight Dalton Smith persona. He pays cash. Cash has amnesia.

When he gets home he throws the cookies into the trash. Corinne Ackerman is a good little baker, but he can’t think of eating cookies now. He can’t even bear to look at them.

What happened to getting friendly, but not too close? Can you be part of the scenery when you’re in the foreground? The short answer is no.

Summer rolls along. Hot and humid days of blaring sunshine are punctuated by sudden thunderstorms, some of them vicious with throats full of hail. A couple of tornados strike, but on the outskirts, none downtown or in Midwood.

Don Jensen works for a landscaping company called Growing Concern.

He especially agrees with the other Don when it comes to the issue of immigration

a large part of Growing Concern’s workforce consists of undocumented aliens who don’t speak English

He doesn’t believe (or can’t, or refuses to) that he is actually going to break their hearts when he kills Joel Allen, but he knows they will be shocked and shaken. Disillusioned. Dutched.

It does. What it doesn’t help Billy to understand is whether Colin White is a good person or a bad one. Perhaps he’s both. Billy has always found this a troubling concept.

I went over to him and said to myself I might have to shoot him again. If I had to I would. He was my mother’s boyfriend but he was wrong.

I put my wet hand in front of his mouth and nose so I could feel if there was still any breath in him. There wasn’t so then I knew for sure he was dead.

But I didn’t take care of her. I should have shot that son of a bitch before, that would have been taking care of her.

I said my sister is dead. That is the big emergency. She said oh my God are you sure and I said please let me speak to my mom. Because I had enough of that nosey bitch.

Underneath it said SHE WAS KILLED FOR COOKIES.

My mother started to cry and that made me want to cry. She said you are so unfair, sitting there on your high horse.

When we came back to the hearing room a day later they said I would have to go into foster care at a place called Speck House because she was an unfit mother.

Anyway, mom didn’t make trouble because she was sober. She said to the cop I put off packing his things because I didn’t want to think this would really happen.

Then she made me 2 PB&J sandwiches and put them in a lunch sack and told me to be a good boy. Then she started to cry and I did too. It was her fault I had to go away, everything was her fault, she was the one who gave the scorpion a ride and she was the one who kept getting drunk and blaming it on Cassie being dead, but I cried because I loved her.

I ate 1 of the PB&Js and saw she put a devil-egg in the lunch sack too and that made me cry again, thinking of her hands doing that.

The Specks weren’t good people or bad people, just people living on money they got from the state of Tennessee.

I said yes but of course I did. Me and Glen and Ronnie and Donnie.

Donnie took it back but Ronnie punched Glen a good hard one on the shoulder.

I loved her among the wrecks, Billy thinks, and goes back to write another paragraph or two before calling it a day.

Two bad things happen on Labor Day weekend.

Corrie Ackerman throws darts at water balloons and wins a spangly headband that says WORLD’S GREATEST MOM.

Me and Mr. Speck went to Chattanooga, which was where I joined the Marines.

Mr. Speck said are you sure you want to do this Benjy? and I said yes, but I wasn’t.

just two guys in a Toyota having a no-bullshit talk.

It’s all worrisome, but as he pulls into his driveway, he sees one thing that’s good: his lawn looks terrific.

Allen can’t be allowed to find himself standing trial in a death penalty state. Not with something hot he can trade.

As he’s getting into his car the next morning, Corrie Ackerman cuts across her lawn and his. She’s got a brown bag, and something inside it smells delicious.

Sometimes Colin tops them with a wide-shouldered flower power shirt, sometimes with a tee that says QUEERS FOR TRUMP,

There goes that fag in one of his flashy outfits, running for the hills. He hopes. Still using his own laptop, Billy goes shopping on Amazon, specifying next-day delivery.