The Blue Air Compressor - Stephen King, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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//-->THE BLUE AIR COMPRESSORTHE BLUE AIR COMPRESSORThe house was tall, with an incredible slope of shingled roof. As he walked up toward it from the shore road,Gerald Nately thought it was almost a country in itself, geography in microcosm. The roof dipped and rose atvarying angles above the main building and two strangely-angled wings; a widow's walk skirted a mushroom-shaped cupola which looked toward the sea; the porch, facing the dunes and lusterless September scrubgrass waslonger than a Pullman car and screened in. The high slope of roof made the house seem to beetle its brows andloom above him. A Baptist grandfather of a house.He went to the porch and after a moment of hesitation, through the screen door to the fanlighted one beyond.There was only a wicker chair, a rusty porch swing, and an old discarded knitting basket to watch him go.Spiders had spun silk in the shadowy upper corners. He knocked.There was silence, inhabited silence. He was about to knock again when a chair someplace inside wheezeddeeply in its throat. It was a tired sound. Silence. Then the slow, dreadfully patient sound of old, overburdenedfeet finding their way up the hall. Counterpoint of cane: Whock... whock... whock...The floorboards creaked and whined. A shadow, huge and unformed in the pearled glass, bloomed on thefanlight. Endless sound of fingers laboriously solving the riddle of chain, bolt, and hasp lock. The door opened."Hello," the nasal voice said flatly. "You're Mr. Nately. You've rented the cottage. My husband's cottage.""Yes." Gerald said, his tongue swelling in his throat. "That's right. And you're-""Mrs. Leighton," the nasal voice said, pleased with either his quickness or her name, though neither wasremarkable. "I'm Mrs. Leighton."***this woman is so goddam fucking big and old she looks like oh jesus christ print dress she must be six-six and fatmy god Shes fat as a hog can't smell her white hair long white hair her legs those redwood trees ill that movie aLank she could be a tank she could kill me her voice is out of any context like a kazoo jesus if i laugh i can'tlaugh can she be seventy god how does she walk and the cane her hands are bigger than my feet like a goddamtank she could go through oak oak for christs sake.***"You write." She hadn't offered him in."That's about the size of it," he said, and laughed to cover his own sudden shrinking from that metaphor."Will you show me some after you get settled?" she asked. Her eyes seemed perpetually luminous and wistful.They were not touched by the age that had run riot in the rest of herfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...en%20King%20-%20The%20Blue%20Air%20Compressor.htm (1 of 8)7/28/2005 9:17:41 PMTHE BLUE AIR COMPRESSOR***wait get that written down***image: "age had run riot in her with luxuriant fleshiness: she was like a wild sow let loose in a great and dignifiedhouse to shit on the carpet, gore at the welsh dresser and send the crystal goblets and wine-glasses all crash-atumble, to trample the wine colored divans to lunatic puffs of springs and stuffing, to spike the mirrorbrightfinish of the great hall floor with barbarian hoofprints and flying puddles of urine"okay Shes there its a story i feel her***body, making it sag and billow."If you like," he said. "I didn't even see the cottage from the Shore Road, Mrs. Leighton. Could you tell mewhere--""Did you drive in?""Yes. I left my car over there.'' He pointed beyond the dunes, toward the road.A smile, oddly one-dimensional, touched her lips. "That's why. You can only see a blink from the road: unlessyou're walking, you miss it." She pointed west at a slight angle away from the dunes and the house. "There. Rightover that little hill.""All right," he said, then stood there smiling. He really had no idea how to terminate the interview."Would you like to come in for some coffee? Or a Coca-Cola?""Yes," he said instantly.She seemed a little taken back by his instant agreement. He had, after 211, been her husband's friend, not herown. The face loomed above Gerald, moonlike, disconnected, undecided. Then she led him into the elderly,waiting house.She had tea. He had Coke, Millions of eyes seemed to watch them. He felt like a burglar, stealing around thehidden fiction he could Make of her, carrying only his own youthful winsomeness and a psychic flashlight.***file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...en%20King%20-%20The%20Blue%20Air%20Compressor.htm (2 of 8)7/28/2005 9:17:41 PMTHE BLUE AIR COMPRESSORMy own name, of course, is Steve King, and you'll pardon my intrusion on your mind-or I hope you will. I couldargue that the drawing-aside of the curtain of presumption between reader and author is permissible because I amthe writer; i.e., since it's my story I'll do any goddam thing I please with it-but since that leaves the reader out ofit completely, that is not valid. Rule One for all writers is that the teller is not worth a tin tinker's fart whencompared to the listener. Let us drop the matter, if we may. I am intruding for the same reason that the Popedefecates: we both have to.You should know that Gerald Nately was never brought to the dock; his crime was not discovered. He paid allthe same. After writing four twisted, monumental, misunderstood novels, he cut his own head off with an ivory-figured guillotine purchased in Kowloon.I invented him first during a moment of eight o'clock boredom in a class taught by Carroll F. Terrell of theUniversity of Maine English faculty. Dr. Terrell was speaking of Edgar A. Poe, and I thoughtivory guillotine Kowloontwisted woman of shadows, like a pigsome big houseThe blue air compressor did not come until later. It is desperately important that the reader be made cognizant ofthese facts.***He did show her some of his writing. Not the important part, the story he was writing about her, but fragments ofpoetry, the spine of a novel that had ached in his mind for a year like embedded shrapnel, four essays. She was aperceptive critic, and addicted to marginal notations with her black felt-tip pen. Because she sometimes droppedin when lie was gone to the village, he kept the story hidden in the back shed.September melted into cool October, and the story was completed, mailed to a friend, returned with suggestions(bad ones), rewritten. He felt it was good, but not quite right. Some indefinable was missing. The focus was ashade fuzzy. He began to toy, with the idea of giving it to her for Criticism, rejected it, toyed with it again. Afterall. the story was her; he never doubted she could supply the final vector.His attitude concerning her became increasing])- unhealthy; he was fascinated by her huge, animalistic bulk, bythe slow, tortoise-like way she trekked across the space between the house and the cottage.***image: "mammoth shadow of decay swaying across the shadowless sand, cane held in one twisted hand, feet cladin huge canvas shoes which pump and push at the coarse grains, face like a serving platter, puffy dough arms,breasts like drumlins, a geography in herself, a country of tissue"file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...en%20King%20-%20The%20Blue%20Air%20Compressor.htm (3 of 8)7/28/2005 9:17:41 PMTHE BLUE AIR COMPRESSOR***by her reedy, vapid voice; but at the same time he loathed her, could not stand her touch. lie began to feel like theyoung man in "The Tell-Tale Heart, " by Edgar A. Poe. He felt lie could stand at her bedroom door for endlessmidnights, shining one Tay of light on her sleeping eye, ready to pounce and rip the instant it flashed open.The urge to show her the story itched at him maddeningly. He had decided, by the first day of December, that hewould do it. The decision-making did not relieve him, as it is supposed to do in the novels, but it did leave himwith a feeling of antiseptic pleasure. It was right that it should be so-an omega that quite dovetailed with healpha. And it was omega; he was vacating the cottage on he fifth of December. On this day he had just returnedfrom the Stowe Travel Agency in Portland, where he had booked passage for the Far East. He had done thisalmost on the spur of the moment: the decision to go and the decision to show his manuscript to Mrs. Leightonhad come together, almost as if he had been guided by an invoisible hand.***In truth, he was guide; by an invisible hand-mine.***The day was white with overcast and the promise of snow lurked in its throat. The dunes seemed to foreshadowthe winter already, as Gerald crossed them between the slate-roofed house of her dominion and the low stonecottage of his. The sea, sullen and gray, curled on the shingle of beach. Gulls rode the slow swells like buoys.He Crossed the top of the last dune and knew she it-as there-her cane, with its white bicycle handgrip at the base,stood against the side of the door. Smoke rifted from the toy chimney.Gerald went up the board steps, kicked sand from his high-topped shoes to make her aware of his presence, andthen went in."Hi, Mrs. Leighton!"But the tiny living room and the kitchen both stood empty. The ship's clock on the mantle ticked only for itselfand for Gerald. Her gigantic fur coat lay draped over the rocker like Some animal sail. A small fire had been laidin the fireplace, and it glowed and crackled busily. The teapot was on the gas range in the kitchen, and one teacupstood on the counter, still waiting for water. He peered into the narrow hall which led to the bedroom."Mrs. Leighton?"Hall and bedroom both empty.He was about to turn back to the kitchen when the mammoth chuckles began. They were large, helpless shakingsof laughter, the kind that stays hidden for years and ages like wine. (There is also an Edgar A. Poe story aboutwine.)file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...en%20King%20-%20The%20Blue%20Air%20Compressor.htm (4 of 8)7/28/2005 9:17:41 PMTHE BLUE AIR COMPRESSORThe chuckles evolved into large bellows of laughter. They came from behind the door to the right of Gerald'sbed, the last door in the cottage. From the tool-shed.***my balls are crawling like in grammar school the old bitch shes laughing she found it the old fat shebitch goddamher goddam her goddam her you old whore youre doing that cause im out here you old she bitch whore you pieceof shit***He went to the door in one step and pulled it open. She was sitting next to the small space-heater in the sh ed, herdress pulled up over oak-stump knees to allow her to sit cross-legged, and his manuscript was held, dwarfed, inher bloated hands.Her laughter roared and racketed around him. Gerald Nately saw bursting colors in front of his eyes. She it-as aslug, a maggot, a gigantic crawling thing evolved in the cellar of the shadowy house by the sea. a dark bug thathad swaddled itself in grotesque human form.In the flat light from the one cobwebbed window her face became a hanging graveyard moon, pocked by theSterile craters of her eyes and the Tagged earthquake rift of her mouth."Don't you laugh," Gerald said stiffly."Oh Gerald," she said, laughing all the same. "This is such a bad story. I don't blame you for using a penname.it's-" she wiped tears of laughter from her eyes"it'sabominable!"He began to walk toward her stiffly."You haven't made me big enough, Gerald. That's the trouble. I'm too big for you. Perhaps Poe, or Dosteyevsky,or Melville. . . but not you, Gerald. Not even under your royal pen-name. Not you. Not you.She began to laugh again, huge racking explosions of sound."Don't you laugh," Gerald said stiffly.***The tool-shed, after the manner of Zola:Wooden walls, which showed occasional chinks of light, surrounded rabbit-traps hung and slung in corners; apair of dusty, unstrung snow-shoes: a rusty spaceheater showing flickers of yellow flame like cat's eyes; Tales; 2file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...en%20King%20-%20The%20Blue%20Air%20Compressor.htm (5 of 8)7/28/2005 9:17:41 PM
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