The clips were of the sort a man could use to start an electrical fire. One simply stripped the insulation from the right pairs of wires in the right places, clipped the wires together, and voili.

The snapshot showed Sonny and a number of his whitebread friends, the fellows who were always lounging on kitchen chairs in the gas station office when you went down there. The location was not Sonny’s Sunoco, however; it was Robicheau’s junkyard out on Town Road #5. The honkies were standing in front of Eddie’s burned-out Civic, drinking beer, laughing… and eating chunks of watermelon.

The note was short and to the point. Dear Nigger: Fucking with me was a bad mistake.

At first Eddie wondered why Sonny would send him such a note (although he did not relate it to the letter he himself had slipped through Polly Chalmers’s mail-slot at Mr. Gaunt’s behest). He decided it was because Sonny was even dumber and meaner than most honkies.

Still-if the business was still rankling in Sonny’s guts, why had he waited so long to reopen it? But the more he brooded over those old times

(Dear Nigger:)

the less the questions seemed to matter.

The note and the blackened alligator clips and that old photograph got into his head, buzzing there like a cloud of hungry mosquitoes.

Earlier tonight he had bought a gun from Mr. Gaunt.

The fluorescents in the Sunoco station’s office threw a white trapezoid on the macadam of the service tarmac as Eddie pulled in-driving the second-hand Olds which had replaced the Civic.

He got out, one hand in his)jacket pocket, holding the gun.

He paused outside the door for a minute, looking in. Sonny was sitting beside his cash register in a plastic chair which was rocked back on its rear legs. Eddie could just see the top of Sonny’s cap over his open newspaper. Reading the paper. Of course. White men always had lawyers, and after a day of shafting black fellows like Eddie, they always sat in their offices, rocked back in their chairs and reading the paper.

Fucking white men, with their fucking lawyers and their fucking newspapers.

Eddie drew the automatic pistol and went inside. A part of him which had been asleep suddenly woke up and screamed in alarm that he shouldn’t do this, it was a mistake. But the voice didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because suddenly Eddie didn’t seem to be inside himself at all. He seemed to be a spirit hovering over his own shoulder, watching all this happen. An evil imp had taken over his controls.

“I got something for you, you cheating sumbitch,” Eddie heard his mouth say, and watched his finger pull the trigger of the automatic twice. Two small black circles appeared in a headline which said MCKERNAN APPROVAL RATING SOARS. Sonny jackett screamed and jerked.

The rear legs of the tipped-back chair skidded and Sonny went tumbling to the floor with blood soaking into his coverall… except the name stitched on the coverall in gold thread was RICKY. It wasn’t Sonny at all but Ricky Bissonette.

“Ah, shit!” Eddie screamed. “I shot the wrong fuckin honky!”

“Hello, Eddie,” Sonny jackett remarked from behind him.

“Good thing for me I was in the shithouse, wasn’t it?”

Eddie began to turn. Three bullets from the automatic pistol Sonny had bought from Mr. Gaunt late that afternoon entered his lower back, pulverizing his spine, before he could get even halfway around.

He watched, eyes wide and helpless, as Sonny bent down toward him. The muzzle of the gun Sonny held was as big as the mouth of a tunnel and as dark as forever. Above it, Sonny’s face was pale and set. A streak of grease ran down one cheek.

“Planning to steal my new socket-wrench set wasn’t your mistake,” Sonny said as he pressed the barrel of the automatic against the center of Eddie Warburton’s forehead. “Writing and telling me you were gonna do it… that was your mistake.”

A great white light-the light of understanding-suddenly went on in Eddie’s mind. Now he remembered the letter he had pushed through the Chalmers woman’s mail-slot, and he found himself able to put that piece of mischief together with the note he had received and the one Sonny was talking about.

“Listen!” he whispered. “You have to listen to me, jackett-we been played for suckers, both of us. We-”

“Goodbye, black boy,” Sonny said, and pulled the trigger.

Sonny looked fixedly at what remained of Eddie Warburton for almost a full minute, wondering if he should have listened to what Eddie had to say. He decided the answer was no. What could a fellow dumb enough to send a note like that have to say that could possibly matter?

Sonny got up, walked into the office, and stepped over Ricky Bissonette’s legs. He opened the safe and took out the adjustable socket-wrenches Mr. Gaunt had sold him. He was still looking at them, picking each one up, handling it lovingly, then putting it back in the custom case again, when the State Police arrived to take him into custody.

Park at the corner of Birch and Main, Mr. Gaunt had told Buster on the telephone, and just wait. I will send someone to you.

Buster had followed these instructions to the letter. He had seen a great many comings and goings at the mouth of the service alley from his vantage point one block up-almost all his friends and neighbors, it seemed to him, had a little business to do with Mr. Gaunt this evening. Ten minutes ago the Rusk woman had walked down there with her dress unbuttoned, looking like something out of a bad dream.

Then, not five minutes after she came back out of the alley, putting something into her dress pocket (the dress was still unbuttoned and you could see a lot, but who in his right mind, Buster wondered, would want to look), there had been several gunshots from farther up Main Street. Buster couldn’t be sure, but he thought they came from the Sunoco station.

State Police cruisers came winding up Main from the Municipal Building, their blue lights flashing, scattering reporters like pigeons.

Disguise or no disguise, Buster decided it would be prudent to climb into the back of the van for a little while.

The State Police cars roared by, and their whirling blue lights picked out something which leaned against the van’s rear doorsa green canvas duffle bag. Curious, Buster undid the knot in the drawstring, pulled the mouth of the bag open, and looked inside.

There was a box on top of the bag’s contents. Buster took it out and saw the rest of the duffle was full of timers. Hotpoint clocktimers.

There were easily two dozen of them.

Their smooth white

faces stared up at him like pupilless Orphan Annie eyes. He opened the box he had removed and saw it was full of alligator clips-the kind electricians sometimes used to make quick connections.

Buster frowned… and then, suddenly, his mind’s eye saw an office form-a Castle Rock fund-release form, to be exact. Typed neatly in the space provided for Goods and/or Services to Be Supplied were these words: 16 CASES OF DYNAMITE.

Sitting in the back of the van, Buster began to grin. Then he began to laugh. Outside, thunder boomed and rolled. A tongue of lightning licked out of the dragging belly of a cloud and jabbed down into Castle Stream.

Buster went on laughing. He laughed until the van shook with it.

“Them!” he cried, laughing. “Oh, boy, have we got something for Them! Have we ever!”