Free The Sun Dog by Stephen King Page A

sit down.
    'This won't take long,' he said, and then laughed. It was a grating, compressed sound, like an inexperienced driver working a transmission lever. 'It hurts too much to stretch out, even after all these years.'
    So they sat on the bench and Mr Delevan finished the story of how he happened to know Pop Merrill while they looked across the grassy common with the bandstand in the middle.
    'I went to him the same night I made the bet,' he said. 'I told your mother I was going out for cigarettes. I went after dark, so no one would see me. From town, I mean. They would have known I was in some kind of trouble, and I didn't want that. I went in and Pop said, "What's a professional man like you doing in a place like this, Mr John Delevan?" and I told him what I'd done and he said, "You made a bet and already you have got your head set to the idea you've lost it." "If I do lose it," I said, "I want to make sure I don't lose anything else."
    'That made him laugh. "I respect a wise man," he said. "I reckon I can trust you. If the Celtics win, you come see me. I'll take care of you. You got an honest face.'
    'And that was all?' Kevin asked. In eighth-grade math, they had done a unit on loans, and he still remembered most of it. 'He didn't ask for any, uh, collateral?'
    'People who go to Pop don't have collateral,' his father said. 'He's not a loan-shark like you see in the movies; he doesn't break any legs if you don't pay up. But he has ways of fixing people.'
    'What ways?'
    'Never mind,' John Delevan said. 'After that last game ended, I went upstairs to tell your mother I was going to go out for cigarettes - again. She was asleep, though, so I was spared that lie. It was late, late for Castle Rock, anyway, going on eleven, but the lights were on in his place. I knew they would be. He gave me the money in tens. He took them out of an old Crisco can. All tens. I remember that. They were crumpled but he had made them straight. Forty ten-dollar bills, him counting them out like a bank-clerk with that pipe going and his glasses file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20...ing%20-%20A%20note%20On%20The%20sun%20Dog.HTM (37 of 119)7/28/2005 9:22:38 PM
    The Sun Dog
    up on his head and for just a second there I felt like knocking his teeth out. Instead I thanked him. You don't know how hard it can be to say thank you sometimes. I hope you never do. He said, "You understand the terms, now, don't you?" and I said I did, and he said, "That's good. I ain't worried about you. What I mean to say is you got an honest face. You go on and take care of your business with that fella at work, and then take care of your business with me. And don't make any more bets. Man only has to look in your face to see you weren't cut out to be a gambler. " So I took the money and went home and put it under the floor-mat of the old Chevy and lay next to your mother and didn't sleep a wink all night long because I felt filthy. Next day I gave the tens to the engineer I bet with, and he counted them out, and then he just folded them over and tucked them into one of his shirt pockets and buttoned the flap like that cash didn't mean any more than a gas receipt he'd have to turn in to the chief contractor at the end of the day. Then he clapped me on the shoulder and said, "Well, you're a good man, Johnny. Better than I thought. I won four hundred but I lost twenty to Bill Untermeyer. He bet you'd come up with the dough first thing this morning and I bet him I wouldn't see it till the end of the week. If I ever did." "I pay my debts," I said. "Easy, now," he said, and clapped me on the shoulder again, and I think that time I really did come close to popping his eyeballs out with my thumbs.'
    'How much interest did Pop charge you, Dad?'
    His father looked at him sharply. 'Does he let you call him that?'
    'Yeah, why?'
    'Watch out for him, then,' Mr Delevan said. 'He's a snake.'
    Then he sighed, as if admitting to both of them that he was begging the question, and