Free Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Weasel supposed that Ralph had earned it. When the big fire had swept out of the Marshes and jumped Jointner Avenue under the urging of a twenty-five-mile-an-hour east wind, it had seemed that the sawmill was certain to go. The fire departments of six neighboring townships had enough on their hands trying to save the town without sparing men for such a pissant operation as the Jerusalem’s Lot Sawmill. Ralph Miller had organized the whole second shift into a fire-fighting force, and under his direction they wetted the roof and did what the entire combined fire-fighting force had been unable to do west of Jointner Avenue-he had constructed a firebreak that stopped the fire and turned it south, where it was fully contained.
    Seven years later he had fallen into a shredding machine while he was talking to some visiting brass from a Massachusetts company. He had been taking them around the plant, hoping to convince them to buy in. His foot slipped in a puddle of water and son of a bitch, right into the shredder before their very eyes. Needless to say, any possibility of a deal went right down the chute with Ralph Miller. The sawmill that he had saved in 1951 closed for good in February of 1960.
    Weasel looked in his water-spotted mirror and combed his white hair, which was shaggy, beautiful, and still sexy at sixty-seven. It was the only part of him that seemed to thrive on alcohol. Then he pulled on his khaki work shirt, took his oatmeal box, and went downstairs.
    And here he was, almost sixteen years after all of that had happened, hiring out as a frigging housekeeper to a woman he had once bedded-and a woman he still regarded as damned attractive.
    The widow fell on him like a vulture as soon as he stepped into the sunny kitchen.
    ‘Say, would you like to wax that front banister for me after you have your breakfast, Weasel? You got time?’ They both preserved the gentle fiction that he did these things as favors, and not as pay for his fourteen-dollar-a-week upstairs room.
    ‘Sure would, Eva.’
    ‘And that rug in the front room-’
    ‘-has got to be turned. Yeah, I remember.’
    ‘How’s your head this morning?’ She asked the question in a businesslike way, allowing no pity to enter her tone… but he sensed its existence beneath the surface.
    ‘Head’s fine,’ he said touchily, putting water on to boil for the oatmeal.
    ‘You were out late, is why I asked.’
    ‘You got a line on me, is that right?’ He cocked a humorous eyebrow at her and was gratified to see that she could still blush like a schoolgirl, even though they had left off any funny stuff almost nine years ago.
    ‘Now, Ed-’
    She was the only one who still called him that. To everyone else in the Lot he was just Weasel. Well, that was all right. Let them call him any old thing they wanted. The bear had caught him, sure enough.
    ‘Never mind,’ he said gruffly. ‘I got up on the wrong side of the bed.’
    ‘Fell out of it, by the sound.’ She spoke more quickly than she had intended, but Weasel only grunted. He cooked and ate his hateful oatmeal, then took the can of furniture wax and rags without looking back.
    Upstairs, the tap-tap of that guy’s typewriter went on and on. Vinnie Upshaw, who had the room upstairs across from him, said he started in every morning at nine, went till noon, started in again at three, went until six, started in again at nine and went right through until midnight. Weasel couldn’t imagine having that many words in your mind.
    Still, he seemed a nice enough sort, and he might be good for a few beers out to Dell’s some night. He had heard most of those writers drank like fish.
    He began to polish the banister methodically, and fell to thinking about the widow again. She had turned this place into a boardinghouse with her husband’s insurance money, and had done quite well. Why shouldn’t she? She worked like a dray horse. But she must have been used to getting it regular from her husband, and after the grief