Stephen King - One For The Road

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ONE FOR THE ROAD

It was quarter past ten and Herb Tooklander was thinking of closing for the night when the man in the fancy

overcoat and the white, staring face burst into Tookey's Bar, which lies in the northern part of Falmouth. It was

the tenth of January, just about the time most folks are learning to live comfortably with all the New Year's

resolutions they broke, and there was one hell of a north-easter blowing outside. Six inches had come down

before dark and it had been going hard and heavy since then. Twice we had seen Billy Larribee go by high in the

cab of the town plough, and the second time Tookey ran him out a beer - an act of pure charity my mother would

have called it, and my God knows she put down enough of Tookey's beer in her time. Billy told him they were

keeping ahead of it on the main road, but the side ones were closed and apt to stay that way until next morning.

The radio in Portland was forecasting another foot and a forty-mile-an-hour wind to pile up the drifts.

There was just Tookey and me in the bar, listening to the wind howl around the eaves and watching it dance the

fire around on the hearth. 'Have one for the road, Booth,' Tookey says, 'I'm gonna shut her down.'

He poured me one and himself one and that's when the door cracked open and this stranger staggered in, snow up

to his shoulders and in his hair, like he had rolled around in confectioner's sugar. The wind billowed a sand-fine

sheet of snow in after him.

'Close the door!' Tookey roars at him. 'Was you born in a barn?'

I've never seen a man who looked that scared. He was like a horse that's spent an afternoon eating fire nettles. His

eyes rolled towards Tookey and he said, 'My wife - my daughter -' and he collapsed on the floor in a dead faint.

'Holy Joe,' Tookey says. 'Close the door, Booth, would you?'

I went and shut it, and pushing it against the wind was something of a chore. Tookey was down on one knee

holding the fellow's head up and patting his cheeks. I got over to him and saw right off that it was nasty. His face

was fiery red, but there were grey blotches here and there, and when you've lived through winters in Maine since

the time Woodrow Wilson was President, as I have, you know those grey blotches mean frostbite.

'Fainted,' Tookey said. 'Get the brandy off the backbar, will you?'

I got it and came back. Tookey had opened the fellow's coat. He had come around a little; his eyes were half open

and he was muttering something too low to catch.

'Pour a capful,' Tookey says.

'Just a cap?' I asks him.

'That stuff's dynamite,' Tookey says. 'No sense overloading his carb.'

I poured out a capful and looked at Tookey. He nodded. 'Straight down the -'

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ONE FOR THE ROAD

I poured it down. It was a remarkable thing to watch. The man trembled all over and began to cough. His face got

redder. His eyelids, which had been at half-mast, flew up like window shades. I was a bit alarmed, but Tookey

only sat him up like a big baby and clapped him on the back.

The man started to retch, and Tookey clapped him again.

'Hold on to it,' he says, 'that brandy comes dear.'

The man coughed some more, but it was diminishing now. I got my first good look at him. City fellow, all right,

and from somewhere south of Boston, at a guess. He was wearing kid gloves, expensive but thin. There were

probably some more of those greyish-white patches on his hands, and he would be lucky not to lose a finger or

two. His coat was fancy, all right; a three-hundred-dollar job if ever I'd seen one. He was wearing tiny little boots

that hardly came up over his ankles, and I began to wonder about his toes.

'Better,' he said.

'All right,' Tookey said. 'Can you come over to the fire?'

'My wife and my daughter,' he said. 'They're out there ... in the storm.'

'From the way you came in, I didn't figure they were at home watching the TV,' Tookey said. 'You can tell us by

the fire as easy as here on the floor. Hook on, Booth.'

He got to his feet, but a little groan came out of him and his mouth twisted down in pain. I wondered about his

toes again, and I wondered why God felt he had to make fools from New York City who would try driving

around in southern Maine at the height of a north-east blizzard. And I wondered if his wife and his little girl were

dressed any warmer than him.

We hiked him across to the fireplace and got him sat down in a rocker that used to be Missus Tookey's favourite

until she passed on in '74. It was Missus Tookey that was responsible for most of the place, which had been

written up in Down East and the Sunday Telegram and even once in the Sunday supplement of the Boston Globe.

It's really more of a public house than a bar, with its big wooden floor, pegged together rather than nailed, the

maple bar, the old barn-raftered ceiling, and the monstrous big fieldstone hearth. Missus Tookey started to get

some ideas in her head after the Down East article came out, wanted to start calling the place Tookey's Inn or

Tookey's Rest, and I admit it has sort of a Colonial ring to it, but I prefer plain old Tookey's Bar. It's one thing to

get uppish in the summer, when the state's full of tourists, another thing altogether in the winter, when you and

your neighbours have to trade together. And there had been plenty of winter nights, like this one, that Tookey and

I had spent all alone together, drinking scotch and water or just a few beers. My own Victoria passed on in '73,

and Tookey's was a place to go where there were enough voices to mute the steady ticking of the death-watch

beetle - even if there was just Tookey and me, it was enough. I wouldn't have felt the same about it if the place

had been Tookey's Rest. It's crazy but it's true.

We got this fellow in front of the fire and he got the shakes harder than ever. He hugged on to his knees and his

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Stephen King - One For The Road

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