“You’re beautiful, darlin’,” Weasel said. “This is Ben Mears. He writes books.”

“Meetcha,” Jackie said, and disappeared into the dimness.

Ben poured himself a glass of beer and Weasel followed suit, filling his glass professionally to the top. The foam threatened to overspill and then backed down. “Here’s to you, buddy.”

Ben lifted his glass and drank.

“So how’s that writin’ goin’?”

“Pretty good, Weasel.”

“I seen you goin’ round with that little Norton girl. She’s a real peach, she is. You couldn’t do no better there.”

“Yes, she’s—”

“ Matt!” Weasel bawled, almost startling Ben into dropping his glass. By God, he thought, he doessound like a rooster saying good-by to this world.

“Matt Burke!” Weasel waved wildly, and a man with white hair raised his hand in greeting and started to cut through the crowd. “Here’s a fella you ought to meet,” Weasel told Ben. “Matt Burke’s one smart son of a whore.”

The man coming toward them looked about sixty. He was tall, wearing a clean flannel shirt open at the throat, and his hair, which was as white as Weasel’s, was cut in a flattop.

“Hello, Weasel,” he said.

“How are you, buddy?” Weasel said. “Want you to meet a fella stayin’ over to Eva’s. Ben Mears. Writes books, he does. He’s a lovely fella.” He looked at Ben. “Me’n Matt grew up together, only he got an education and I got the shaft.” Weasel cackled.

Ben stood up and shook Matt Burke’s bunched hand gingerly. “How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. I’ve read one of your books, Mr Mears. Air Dance.”

“Make it Ben, please. I hope you liked it.”

“I liked it much better than the critics, apparently,” Matt said, sitting down. “I think it will gain ground as time goes by. How are you, Weasel?”

“Perky,” Weasel said. “Just as perky as ever I could be. Jackie!” he bawled. “Bring Matt a glass!”

“Just wait a minute, y’old fart!” Jackie yelled back, drawing laughter from the nearby tables.

“She’s a lovely girl,” Weasel said. “Maureen Talbot’s girl.”

“Yes,” Matt said. “I had Jackie in school. Class of ’71. Her mother was ’51.”

“Matt teaches high school English,” Weasel told Ben. “You and him should have a lot to talk about.”

“I remember a girl named Maureen Talbot,” Ben said. “She came and got my aunt’s wash and brought it back all folded in a wicker basket. The basket only had one handle.”

“Are you from town, Ben?” Matt asked.

“I spent some time here as a boy. With my Aunt Cynthia.”

“Cindy Stowens?”

“Yes.”

Jackie came with a clean glass, and Matt tipped beer into it. “It really is a small world, then. Your aunt was in a senior class I taught my first year in ’salem’s Lot. Is she well?”

“She died in 1972.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She went very easily,” Ben said, and refilled his glass. The band had finished its set, and the members were trouping toward the bar. The level of conversation went down a notch.

“Have you come back to Jerusalem’s Lot to write a book about us?” Matt asked.

A warning bell went off in Ben’s mind.

“In a way, I suppose,” he said.

“This town could do much worse for a biographer. Air Dancewas a fine book. I think there might be another fine book in this town. I once thought I might write it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Matt smiled—an easy smile with no trace of bitterness, cynicism, or malice. “I lacked one vital ingredient. Talent.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Weasel said, refilling his glass from the dregs of the pitcher. “Ole Matt’s got a world of talent. Schoolteachin’ is a wonnerful job. Nobody appreciates schoo’teachers, but they’re…” He swayed a little in his chair, searching for completion. He was becoming very drunk. “Salt of the earth,” he finished, took a mouthful of beer, grimaced, and stood up. “Pardon me while I take a leak.”

He wandered off, bumping into people and hailing them by name. They passed him on with impatience or good cheer, and watching his progress to the men’s room was like watching a pinball racket and bounce its way down toward the flipper buttons.

“There goes the wreck of a fine man,” Matt said, and held up one finger. A waitress appeared almost immediately and addressed him as Mr Burke. She seemed a trifle scandalized that her old English Classics teacher should be here, boozing it up with the likes of Weasel Craig. When she turned away to bring them another pitcher, Ben thought Matt looked a trifle bemused.

“I like Weasel,” Ben said. “I get a feeling there was a lot there once. What happened to him?”

“Oh, there’s no story there,” Matt said. “The bottle got him. It got him a little more each year and now it’s got all of him. He won a Silver Star at Anzio in World War II. A cynic might believe his life would have had more meaning if he had died there.”

“I’m not a cynic,” Ben said. “I like him still. But I think I better give him a ride home tonight.”

“That would be good of you. I come out here now and then to listen to the music. I like loud music. More than ever, since my hearing began to fail. I understand that you’re interested in the Marsten House. Is your book about it?”

Ben jumped. “Who told you that?”

Matt smiled. “How does that old Marvin Gaye song put it? I heard it through the grapevine. Luscious, vivid idiom, although the image is a bit obscure if you consider it. One conjures up a picture of a man standing with his ear cocked attentively toward a Concord or Tokay…I’m rambling. I ramble a great deal these days but rarely try to keep it in hand anymore. I heard from what the gentlemen of the press would call an informed source—Loretta Starcher, actually. She’s the librarian at our local citadel of literature. You’ve been in several times to look at the Cumberland Ledgerarticles pertaining to the ancient scandal, and she also got you two true-crime books that had articles on it. By the way, the Lubert one is good—he came to the Lot and researched it himself in 1946—but the Snow chapter is speculative trash.”

“I know,” Ben said automatically.

The waitress set down a fresh pitcher of beer and Ben suddenly had an uncomfortable image: Here is a fish swimming around comfortably and (he thinks) unobtrusively, flicking here and there amongst the kelp and the plankton. Draw away for the long view and there’s the kicker: It’s a goldfish bowl.

Matt paid the waitress and said, “Nasty thing that happened up there. It’s stayed in the town’s consciousness, too. Of course, tales of nastiness and murder are always handed down with slavering delight from generation to generation, while students groan and complain when they’re faced with a George Washington Carver or a Jonas Salk. But it’s more than that, I think. Perhaps it’s due to a geographical freak.”

“Yes,” Ben said, drawn in spite of himself. The teacher had just stated an idea that had been lurking below the level of his consciousness from the day he had arrived back in town, possibly even before that. “It stands on that hill overlooking the village like—oh, like some kind of dark idol.” He chuckled to make the remark seem trivial—it seemed to him that he had said something so deeply felt in an unguarded way that he must have opened a window on his soul to this stranger. Matt Burke’s sudden close scrutiny of him did not make him feel any better.

“That is talent,” he said.

“Pardon me?”

“You have said it precisely. The Marsten House has looked down on us all for almost fifty years, at all our little peccadilloes and sins and lies. Like an idol.”

“Maybe it’s seen the good, too,” Ben said.

“There’s little good in sedentary small towns. Mostly indifference spiced with an occasional vapid evil—or worse, a conscious one. I believe Thomas Wolfe wrote about seven pounds of literature about that.”

“I thought you weren’t a cynic.”

“You said that, not I.” Matt smiled and sipped at his beer. The band was moving away from the bar, resplendent in their red shirts and glittering vests and neckerchiefs. The lead singer took his guitar and began to chord it.