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Cain Rose UP
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Ý Ý A Þ°
Ý "Cain Rose UP" Ý Þ°
Ý Story by Stephen King A ßßßßß°
Ý Tfile Þ°
Ý Written By: Doctor Murdock Distribution Þ°
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°°°The°Pirates'°Hollow°-°415/236/2371°°The°Electric°Pub°-°415/236/4380°°°°
CAIN ROSE UP
Author: Stephen King
Typed by: Doctor Murdock
=============================================================
Garrish walked out of the bright May sunshine and into the
coolness of the dorm. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, and at
first Harry the Beaver was just a bodiless voice from the shadows.
"It was a bitch, wasn't it?" the Beaver asked. "Wasn't that one a
really truly bitch?"
"Yes," Garrish said. "It was tough."
Now his eyes pulled in the Beaver. He was rubbing a hand across
the pimples on his forehead and sweating under his eyes. He was
wearing sandals and a 69 T-Shirt with a button on the front that said
Howdy Doody was a pervert. The Beavers huge buck teeth loomed in the
gloom.
"I was gonna drop it in January," the Beaver said. "I kept
telling myself to do it while there was still time. And then add-
drop was over and it was either go for it or pick up an incomplete.
I think, Curt. Honest to God."
The housemother stood in the corner by the mailboxes. She was an
extremely tall woman who looked vaguely like Rudulph Valentino. She
was trying to push a slip strap back up with one hand while she
tacked up a dorm sign-out sheet with the other.
"Tough," Garrish repeated.
"I wanted to bag a few off you but I didn't dare, honest to God,
that guy's got eyes like an eagle. You think you got you A all
right?"
"I guess maybe I flunked," Garrish said.
The Beaver gaped. "You think you FLUNKED? You think you---"
"I'm going to go take a shower, okay?"
"Yeah, sure, Curt. Sure. Was that you last test?"
"Yes," Garrish said. "That was my last test."
Garrish crossed the lobby and pushed through the doors and began
to climb. The stairwell smelled like an athletic supporter. Same
old stairs. His room was on the fifth floor.
Quinn and that other idiot from three, the one with the hairy
legs, piled by him, tossing a softball back and forth. A little
fellow wearing horned rimmed glasses and valiantly struggling goatee
passed him between four and five, holding a calculus book in his
chest like a Bible, his lips moving in a rosary of logarithms. His
eyes were blank as blackboards.
Garrish paused and looked after him, wondering if he wouldn't be
better off dead, but the little fellow was now only a bobbing,
disappearing shadow on the wall. It bobbed once more and was gone.
Garrish climbed to five and walked down the hall to his room. Pig
Pen had left two days ago. Four finals in three days, wham bam and
thank-ya-ma'am. Pig Pen knew how to arrange things. He had left
only his pin-ups, two dirty mismatched sweat socks, and a ceramic
parody of Rodin's THINKER perched on a toilet seat.
Garrish put his key in the lock and turned it.
"Curt! Hey, Curt!"
Rollins, the asinine floor counselor who had just sent Jimmy Brody
up to visit the Dean of Men for a drinking offense, was coming down
the hall and waving at him. He was tall, well built, crewcut,
symmetrical. He looked varnished.
"You all done?" Rollins asked.
"Yeah."
"Don't forget to sweep the floor of the room and fill out the
damage report, okay?"
"Yeah."
"I slid a damage report under your door last Thursday, didn't I?"
"Yeah."
"If I'm not in my room, just slide the damage report and the key
under the door."
"Okay."
Rollins seized his hand and shook it twice, fast, pumppump.
Rollins palm was dry, the skin grainy. Shaking hands with Rollins
was like shaking hand with a fistful of salt.
"Have yourself a good summer, m'man."
"Right."
"Don't work too hard."
"No."
"Use it but don't abuse it."
"I will and I won't"
Rollins look momentarily puzzled and then he laughed. "Take care,
now." He slapped Garrish's shoulder and then walked back down the
hall, pausing once to tell Ron Frane to turn down his stereo.
Garrish could see Rollins lying dead in a ditch with maggots in his
eyes. Rollins wouldn't care. Neither would the maggots. You either
ate the world or the world ate you and it was okay either way.
Garrish stood thoughtfully, watching until Rollins was out of
sight, and then he let himself into his room.
With Pig Pens cyclonic clutter gone it looked barren and sterile.
The swirled, heaped, drifted pile that had been Pig Pens bed was
stripped down to the bare---if slightly comestained---mattress pad.
Two Playboy gatefolds look down at him with frozen two-dimensional
come-ons.
Not much changed in Garrish's half of the room, which had always
been barracks neat. You could drop a quarter on the top blanket of
Garrish's bed and it would bounce. All that neat had gotten on
Piggy's nerves. He was an English major with a fine turn of phrase.
He called Garrish a pigeonholer. The only thing on the wall above
Garrish's bed was a huge blow-up of Humphrey Bogart that he had
gotten in the college bookstore. Bogie had an automatic pistol in
each hand and was wearing suspenders. Piggy said pistols and braces
were impotency symbols. Garrish doubted if Bogie had been impotent,
although he had never read anything about him.
He went to the closet door, unlocked it, and brought out the big
walnut stocked .352 Magnum that his father, a Methodist minister, had
bought him for Christmas. He had bought the telescopic sight himself
last March.
You weren't supposed to have guns in your room, not even hunting
rifles, but it hadn't been hard. He had signed it out of the
university gun storage room the day before with a forged withdrawl
slip. He put it in his waterproof leather scabbard, and left it in
the woods behind the football field. Then, this morning around three
a.m. he just went out and got it and brought it upstairs through the
sleeping corridors.
He sat down on the bed with the gun across his knees and wept a
little bit. The THINKER on the toilet seat was looking at him.
Garrish put the gun on his bed, crossed the room, and slapped it off
Piggy's table onto the floor, where it shattered. There was a knock
at the door.
Garrish put the rifle under his bed. "Come in."
It was Baily, standing there in his skivies. There was a puff of
lint in his bellybutton. There was no future for Baily. Baily would
marry a stupid girl and they would have stupid kids. Later on he
would die of cancer or maybe renal failure.
"How was the chem final, Curt?"
"All right."
"I just wondered if I could borrow your notes. I've got it
tomorrow."
"I burned them with my trash this morning."
"Oh. Hey, Jesus! Did Piggy go and do that?" He pointed at the
remains of the THINKER.
"I guess so."
Why did he want to go and do that? I liked that thing. I was
going to buy it off him." Baily had sharp, ratty little features.
His skivies were thready and saggy-seated. Garrish could see exactly
how he would look, dying of emphysema or something in an oxygen tent.
How he would look yellow. I could help you, Garrish thought.
"You think he'd mind if I scoffed up those pinups?"
"I guess not."
"Okay." Baily crossed the room, stepping his bare feet gingerly
over the pottery shards, and untacked the Playmates. "That picture
of Bogie is really sharp, too. No tits, but, hey! You know?" Baily
peered at Garrish to see if Garrish would smile. When Garrish did
not, he said, "I don't suppose you plan on throwing it away, or
anything?"
"No. I was just getting ready to take a shower."
"Okay. Have a good summer if I don't see you again, Curt."
"Thanks."
Baily went back to the door, the seat of his skivies flapping. He
paused at the door. "Another four-points this semester, Curt?"
"At least."
"Good deal. See you next year."
He went out and closed the door. Garrish sat on the bed for a
little while, then took the gun out, stripped it, and cleaned it. He
put the muzzle to his eye and looked at the tinny circle of light at
the far end. The barrel was clean. He reintegrated the gun.
In the third drawer of his bureau were three heavy boxes of
Winchester ammunition. He laid these on the windowsill. He pulled
the blinds up.
The mall was bright and green, peppered with strolling students.
Quinn and his idiot friend had gotten up a raggle taggle softball
game. The scurried back and forth like cripple ants escaping a
broken burrow.
"Let me tell you something," Garrish told Bogie. "God got mad at
Cain because Cain had an idea God was a vegetarian. His brother knew
better. God made the world in His image, and if you don't eat the
world, the world eats you. So Cain says to his brother, 'Why didn't
you tell me?' And his brother says, 'Why didn't you listen?' And Cain
says, 'Okay, I'm listening now.' So he waxes his brother and says,
'Hey God! You want meat? Here it is! You want roast or ribs or
Abelburgers or what?' And God told him to put on his boogie shoes.
So...what do you think?"
No reply from Bogie.
Garrish put the window up and rested his elbows on the ledge, not
letting the barrel of the .352 project out into the sunlight. He
looked into the sight.
He was centered on Carlton Memorial women's dormitory across the
mall. Carlton was more popularly known as the dog kennels. He put
the crosshairs on a big Ford wagon. A blonde coed in jeans and a
blue shell top was talking to her mother while her father, red-faced
and balding, loaded suitcases in the back.
Someone knocked on the door.
Garrish waited.
The knock came again.
"Curt? I'll give you half a rock for that Bogart poster."
Baily.
Garrish said nothing. The girl and her mother were laughing at
something, not knowing there were microbes in their intestines,
feeding, dividing, multiplying. The girls father joined them and
they stood in the sunlight together, a family portrait in the
crosshairs.
"Damn it all," Baily said. His feet padded down the hall.
Garrish squeezed the trigger.
The gun kicked hard against his shoulder, the good, padded kick
you get when you have seated the gun in exactly the right place. The
smiling girls blonde head sheared itself away.
Her mother went on smiling for a moment, and then her hand went to
her mouth. She screamed through her hand. Garrish shot through it.
Hand and head disappeared in a red spray. The man who had been
loading the suitcases broke into a lumbering run.
Garrish tracked him and shot him in the back. He raised his head,
looked out of the sight for a moment. Quinn was holding the softball
and looking at the blonde girls brains, which were splattered on the
NO PARKING sign behind her prone body. Quinn didn't move. All
across the mall people stood frozen, like children engaged in a game
of statues.
Somebody pounded on the door, the rattled the handle. Baily
again. "Curt? You all right, Curt? I think somebody's---"
"Good drink, good meat, good God, let's eat!" Garrish exclaimed,
and shot at Quinn. He pulled instead of squeezing and the shot went
wide. Quinn was running. No problem. The second shot took Quinn in
the neck and he flew maybe twenty feet.
"CURT GARRISH IS KILLING HIMSELF!" Baily was screaming.
"ROLLINS! ROLLINS! COME QUICK!"
His footsteps faded down the hall.
Now they were starting to run. Garrish could hear them screaming.
Garrish could hear the faint smack-smack sound of their shoes on the
walks.
He looked up at Bogie. Bogie held his two guns and looked beyond
him. He looked at the shattered remnants of Piggy's THINKER and
wondered what Piggy was doing today, if he was sleeping or watching
TV or eating some great big wonderful meal. Eat the world, Piggy,
Garrish thought. You gulp that sucker right down.
"Garrish!" It was Rollins now, pounding on the door. "Open up,
Garrish!"
"It's locked," Baily panted. "He looked lousy, he killed himself,
I know it."
Garrish pushed the muzzle out of the window again. A boy in a
madras shirt was crouched down behind a bush, scanning the dormitory
windows with desperate intensity. He wanted to run for it, Garrish
saw, but his legs were frozen.
"Good God, let's eat," Garrish murmured, and began to pull the
trigger again.
