Chapter 24

It was the telephone that woke him up. Twilight¹ had almost become night, and he made his way slowly past the glass-topped coffee table that liked to bite with a weird² feeling that time had somehow doubled back on itself. His right arm ached like hell. His back wasn't in much better shape. Exactly how hard had he swung that poker³, anyway? How much panic had been driving him? He didn't like to think.

He picked up the telephone, not bothering to guess who it might be. Life has been so dreadfully busy lately, darling, that it might even be the President. 'Hello?'

'How you doin, Mr Rainey?' the voice asked, and Mort recoiled⁴, snatching the telephone away from his ear for a moment as if it were a snake which had tried to bite. He returned it slowly.

'I'm doing fine, Mr Shooter,' he said in a dry, spitless voice. 'How are you doing?'

'I'm-a country fair,' Shooter allowed, speaking in that thick crackerbarrel Southern accent that was somehow as bald and staring as an unpainted barn standing⁵ all by itself in the middle of a field. 'But I don't think you're really all that well. Stealing from another man, that don't seem to have ever bothered you none. Being caught up on, though ... that seems to have given you the pure miseries⁶.'

'What are you talking about?'

Shooter sounded faintly amused. 'Well, I heard on the radio news that someone burned down your house. Your other house. And then, when you come back down here, it sounded like you pitched a fit or something once you got into the house. Shouting ... whacking⁷ on things ... or maybe it's just that successful writers like you throw tantrums when things don't go the way they expect. Is that it, maybe?'

My God, he was here. He was.

Mort found himself looking out the window as if Shooter still might be out there ... hiding in the bushes, perhaps, while he spoke⁸ to Mort on some sort of cordless telephone. Ridiculous, of course.

'The magazine with my story in it is on the way,' he said. 'When it gets here, are you going to leave me alone?'

Shooter still sounded lazily amused. 'There isn't any magazine with that story in it, Mr Rainey. You and me, we know that. Not from 1980, there isn't. How could there be, when my story wasn't there for you to steal until 1982?'

'Goddammit, I did not steal your st-'

'When I heard about your house,' Shooter said, 'I went out and bought an Evening Express. They had a picture of what was left. Wasn't very much. Had a picture of your wife, too.' There was a long, thoughtful pause. Then Shooter said, 'She's purty.' He used the country pronunciation purposely, sarcastically⁹. 'How'd an ugly son of a buck¹⁰ like you luck into such a purty wife, Mr Rainey?'

'We're divorced,' he said. 'I told you that. Maybe she discovered how ugly I was. Why don't we leave Amy out of this? It's between you and me.'

For the second time in two days, he realized he had answered the phone while he was only half awake and nearly defenseless. As a result, Shooter was in almost total control of the conversation. He was leading Mort by the nose, calling the shots.

Hang up, then.

But he couldn't. At least, not yet.

'Between you and me, is it?' Shooter asked. 'Then I don't s'pose you even mentioned me to anyone else.'

'What do you want? Tell me! What in the hell do you want?'

'You want the second reason I came, is that it?'

'Yes!'

'I want you to write me a story,' Shooter said calmly. 'I want you to write a story and put my name on it and then give it to me. You owe me that. Right is right and fair is fair.'

Mort stood in the hallway with the telephone clutched in his aching fist and a vein¹¹ pulsing in the middle of his forehead. For a few moments his rage was so total that he found himself buried alive inside it and all he was capable of thinking was So THAT'S it! SO THAT'S it! SO THAT'S it! over and over again.

'You there, Mr Rainey?' Shooter asked in his calm, drawling voice.

'The only thing I'll write for you,' Mort said, his own voice slow and syrupy-thick with rage, 'is your death-warrant, if you don't leave me alone.'

'You talk big, pilgrim,' Shooter said in the patient voice of a man explaining a simple problem to a stupid child, 'because you know I can't put no hurtin on you. If you had stolen my dog or my car, I could take your dog or car. I could do that just as easy as I broke your cat's neck. If you tried to stop me, I could put a hurtin on you and take it anyway. But this is different. The goods I want are inside your head. You got the goods locked up like they were inside a safe. Only I can't just blow off the door and torch open the back. I have to find me the combination. Don't I?'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Mort said, 'but the day you get a story out of me will be the day the Statue of Liberty wears a diaper. Pilgrim.'

Shooter said meditatively¹³, 'I'd leave her out of it if I could, but I'm startin to think you ain't going to leave me that option.'

All the spit in Mort's mouth was suddenly gone, leaving it dry and glassy and hot. 'What . . . what do you -'

'Do you want to wake up from one of your stupid naps and find Amy nailed to your garbage bin¹²?' Shooter asked. 'Or turn on the radio some morning and hear she came off second best in a match with the chainsaw you keep in your garage up there? Or did the garage burn, too?'

'Watch what you say,' Mort whispered. His wide eyes began to prickle with tears of rage and fear.

'You still have two days to think about it. I'd think about it real close, Mr Rainey. I mean I'd really hunker down over her, if I were you. And I don't think I'd talk about this to anyone else. That'd be like standing out in a thunderstorm and tempting¹⁴ the lightning. Divorced or not, I have got an idea you still have some feeling for that lady. It's time for you to grow up a little. You can't get away with it. Don't you realize that yet? I know what you did, and I ain't quitting until I get what's mine.'

'You're crazy!' Mort screamed.

'Good night, Mr Rainey,' Shooter said, and hung up.

1 twilight   

n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期

参考例句：

• Twilight merged into darkness.夕阳的光辉融于黑暗中。
• Twilight was sweet with the smell of lilac and freshly turned earth.薄暮充满紫丁香和新翻耕的泥土的香味。

2 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

3 poker   

n.扑克；vt.烙制

参考例句：

• He was cleared out in the poker game.他打扑克牌，把钱都输光了。
• I'm old enough to play poker and do something with it.我打扑克是老手了，可以玩些花样。

4 recoiled   

v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回

参考例句：

• She recoiled from his touch. 她躲开他的触摸。
• Howard recoiled a little at the sharpness in my voice. 听到我的尖声，霍华德往后缩了一下。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

6 miseries   

n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人

参考例句：

• They forgot all their fears and all their miseries in an instant. 他们马上忘记了一切恐惧和痛苦。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• I'm suffering the miseries of unemployment. 我正为失业而痛苦。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 whacking   

adj.（用于强调）巨大的v.重击，使劲打( whack的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• a whacking great hole in the roof 房顶上一个巨大的窟窿
• His father found him a cushy job in the office, with almost nothing to do and a whacking great salary. 他父亲给他在事务所找到了一份轻松舒适的工作，几乎什么都不用做，工资还极高。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

9 sarcastically   

adv.挖苦地，讽刺地

参考例句：

• 'What a surprise!' Caroline murmured sarcastically.“太神奇了!”卡罗琳轻声挖苦道。
• Pierce mocked her and bowed sarcastically. 皮尔斯嘲笑她，讽刺地鞠了一躬。

10 buck   

n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃

参考例句：

• The boy bent curiously to the skeleton of the buck.这个男孩好奇地弯下身去看鹿的骸骨。
• The female deer attracts the buck with high-pitched sounds.雌鹿以尖声吸引雄鹿。

11 vein   

n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络

参考例句：

• The girl is not in the vein for singing today.那女孩今天没有心情唱歌。
• The doctor injects glucose into the patient's vein.医生把葡萄糖注射入病人的静脉。

12 bin   

n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件

参考例句：

• He emptied several bags of rice into a bin.他把几袋米倒进大箱里。
• He threw the empty bottles in the bin.他把空瓶子扔进垃圾箱。

13 meditatively   

adv.冥想地

参考例句：

• The old man looked meditatively at the darts board. 老头儿沉思不语，看着那投镖板。 来自英汉文学
• "Well,'said the foreman, scratching his ear meditatively, "we do need a stitcher. “这--"工头沉思地搔了搔耳朵。 "我们确实需要一个缝纫工。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

14 tempting   

a.诱人的, 吸引人的

参考例句：

• It is tempting to idealize the past. 人都爱把过去的日子说得那么美好。
• It was a tempting offer. 这是个诱人的提议。