Boy, He Hated Drunks.
Disclaimer: Stephen King Owns All Characters.
It was a balmy Thursday evening the day he walked into the pizza place on Ninth Street. His apartment was just around the corner, a small studio space with large windows and a small roof terrace where he sat to watch the world go by. It wasn't the first time he'd entered that restaurant. They didn't make pepperoni slices like it any place else, and they were open late, another plus for a hardworking bachelor who worked long hours and had little time to cook a decent meal throughout the week.
The staff recognised him, a waiter shook his hand as he passed. They all liked the quiet handsome lawyer who greeted everybody with a smile and manners from the owner right down to the busboys.
He stood in the takeaway line, a small queue that formed to the left of the room, deciding that he would eat at home today. He had work to do and eating pizza slices on his terrace while poring over his thick text books in the warmth of the night, sounded like a plan to him. He had a couple of beers in his refrigerator along with some left over cheesecake which he would tuck into when he got too tired to work. The man smiled softly to himself, still in awe of how well his life had turned out. Him, the baby faced boy with the tainted name, who was never supposed to amount to anything. It had taken a long time for him to shake off that image, not just for other people but for himself. It had been a slow and gradual process and he had fought everybody including himself until it was apparent that he was no longer some scruffy kid from the bad part of town trying to be something he wasn't . He was finally allowed to be who he was.
He wasn't sure exactly when the turning point had occurred. Maybe it was the day he got accepted to an ivy league college with full scholarship. The day he had come home to his Mom clutching the letter like she was about to keel over and faint and old Eyeball shaking his head and saying 'no shit' over and over, an almost smile on his arrogant face. Of course, that was the same day his father had almost killed him, splitting his skull open with a poker as he screamed 'this don't make you no better than me'. Even Eyeball had looked scared that day.
Maybe it was the day that he graduated high school and read his valedictorian speech with the sun on his back and the knowledge inside of him that his days in Castle Rock were numbered. Then again, he'd been jumped just the following evening by four guys from the view, one of whom had assumed the role of valedictorian was his. He could still remember lying bleeding and dazed on the dusty sidewalk as the four pulled away in their gleaming thunderbird, one of them guffawing loudly;
"I still can't believe you lost out to a stinkin' Chambers!"
Another moment that stuck out was the day he packed up his sparse things to actually leave for college, throwing his rucksack on his back and jumping onto the back of the battered motorcycle he'd spent the summer building because it was cheaper than running a car. He remembered the wind whipping over his helmet as he left Oregon far behind him. The day had only gotten better when he'd met his roommate, a polished preppy kinda guy with perfect teeth, all of his belongings brand new with the labels on. He'd become guarded then, the way he always was with rich snooty guys that looked down on him in his ripped jeans and hand me down t shirts. But this guy wasn't from the view, this guy shook his hand and pointed at his helmet, asking what kind of motorcycle he drove. He was much more concerned with the fact that he'd built it than with what it looked like or the fact that it sounded like a tank when it was started up. That day probably would have been perfect if he could have shaken the memory of his younger siblings with their damp faces pressed against a bedroom window, watching their protector mount his motorcycle to leave them. There would be nobody to divert their father when they brought home bad grades or got caught stealing from the dime store on main street. There would be no one to wipe up their blood or their tears when life in one way or another became unfair, the way it always did for a Chambers kid. That thought tugged at his heart every second he was away from Castle Rock.
He was brought back to the little pizzeria by the loud boastful voice of an obviously drunk man in front of him. That was the trouble with this place. It was located right across the street from a bar well known for trouble. Since he regularly frequented the restaurant late in the evening, he often had the misfortune of witnessing the drunken behaviour of a hungry drinker who had ventured across the road for pizza. Boy, he hated drunks. His whole life he had always limited himself to two beers per night for fear of the hereditary addictive gene that may have been passed on by his alcoholic father.
It had stood him in good stead in college. He had a beer or two to be sociable but that was his strict limit. He was never hung over for class or more importantly exams, and the girls liked that he wasn't reeling and passing out in the street like the frat boys. Aah the girls, another highlight of college, and another turning point in his life.
At home, only the girls who offered themselves to all showed any interest in him. No decent girl would blacken her name by dating a Chambers, no matter how polite or charming he was. He found, once at college, where he was surrounded by the very type of girl that had avoided him, he was in abundance of women. He still didn't quite understand it, that the reason that had kept girls at bay, was the same reason that they now flocked to him. Apparently, according to his green with envy roommate, girls loved a bad boy. The very first dance that had taken place left him in a state of confusion. He'd accepted an invitation from a pretty brunette down the hall, astounded at the fact that she'd actually asked him. Prior to that, he'd never even heard of a girl asking a guy out. The week that followed saw no less than six different girls ask him out and he'd had to go through the mortifying ordeal of stammering an apology and refusal to each and every one of them. The guys back home would never have believed it. That might have changed his life completely if it weren't for the college professors.
Oh, they weren't like the teachers back at home, prejudice and unashamed that they had tarred him with the Chambers brush before he'd walked in the door. Yet he saw them favour the kids whose family had attended for generations. They gave them the best assignments and that much more leniency. Unfortunately for him, that pretty much generalised his whole class. He had sealed his fate the day he walked in with his crash helmet under his arm, ten minutes late because he had gotten lost on the huge unfamiliar campus that a lot of the other kids had visited when their older siblings had attended here.
"Ah Mr Hells Angels, so nice of you to join us," the professor had said with humour. The class had laughed and he'd smiled along but he'd noticed that ever since, that professor was a little harder and that bit sharper with him.
Still college was an overall good time. The guys loved having him around, the girls were falling at his feet, and with all the hard work he put in, he made the grades he needed to take him on to law school. It was within those college years that he became a little more confident, walked that bit taller and found out that actually, nice guys didn't finish last.
Despite the bad boy image bestowed upon him, he'd always known that he was anything but. He couldn't stand to see an injustice done to anyone. It just about killed him to see a girl cry and when the testosterone kicked in amongst the guys, he was the first to bring it to a close when it got out of hand.
He remembered when a new guy had joined the college soccer team and some of his team mates had gone out of their way to make the guys life a misery. They hid his clothes, left a stink bomb in his locker amongst other juvenile pranks they deemed amusing. One morning things had gone too far when the Captain decided he had one more thing to put in the locker. The guy himself, bound and gagged with his own pants. Fortunately for the new guy, he'd arrived in the locker room just as they were stuffing him inside. It had taken a fierce argument that had almost led to blows, and had meant standing up to the entire team amidst shouts of 'traitor' and 'killjoy', but they had finally released the boy, who it turned out was acutely claustrophobic, and was practically sobbing in relief.
That act of kindness had reaped its own rewards since the guy, who began to worship him after that, came from a long line of successful lawyers. The boy's father gave him a summer's internship at his office and before he knew it, he was enrolled in a prestigious law school. Who was it that said nice guys finish last?
Again, he was torn from his thoughts by the loud drunk in front of him. Boy, he hated drunks. He hated the slurring sound of a man who couldn't handle his liquor. It reminded him of a rough childhood where the only thing he was shown from the man who had sired him was the back of his hand. He remembered hiding under his brother's bed as a frightened six year old, praying that his old man would disappear forever. Still, when the drink finally finished him off, he was sorry.
He'd stood in the graveyard, holding his mother's hand, surrounded by local people, who only came along so they'd have something to talk about the following day. He'd watched as they lowered the casket into the ground, and damn it, he was sorry. Sorry that his Dad had been born and died in a town that hated him, never getting the chance to break away and prove them wrong. Sorry that his Grandfather, his father's father, had beaten him savagely and regularly whether he was drunk or not.
It was standing in that cemetery on that wet spring morning that he started to realise there were more similarities between him and his father than he had ever dared to admit. The difference was he was stronger than his old man. He was smarter, he was more likable, and because of those things, he'd gotten out. He hadn't succumbed to drink and creating more kids than he could afford to keep. He hadn't become bitter and hard, alternating his time between the television and the local bar. He had gotten out. He had gotten out and his father hadn't. For that, he was sorry.
Even more than he was sorry for his father, he was sorry for his mother. The woman who worked every hour God sent her and never complained. The woman who had no time to care for her wild children because if she did, they wouldn't be able to eat or afford the rent on the piece of shit shack they called a house. She cleaned people's toilets and scrubbed kitchen floors, all the while being ridiculed and put down by her employers and the man she was married to. He'd always thought when he was a kid, that if his old man was dead, she'd be free and happy, but looking at her then, silent and sad at her husband's graveside, he knew that wasn't true. Yes, he guessed in one way she was free, but it was forty years too late for that. Her youth was long gone, along with her looks, her spirit and her reputation. She was beaten down, broken from years of physical and mental abuse. It made him realise he had to do more for her. Sure, he'd tried when he'd had the time. When the other guys from the dorms were lugging their laundry home for their Moms to do, he had gone home and tackled the laundry for his family instead. He had tried to straighten out the house, keep his brothers and sisters in line, and have dinner on the table for her when she got back from a hard day's work.
The problem was he didn't go home often. He had to work two jobs throughout college just to get by, and the journey to Oregon usually cleaned him out just in fuel for his motorcycle. But he promised himself, the day of his Dad's funeral, that when he could, he'd make life for Mrs Chambers a whole lot easier.
A lot changed after his Dad died. He graduated with honours from law school, and all of a sudden, when he visited Castle Rock, people began to call out and wave to him as though he were some sort of returning hero. Store keepers that had chased him from their premises for no apparent reason, teachers that had caned him over the smallest misdemeanours- even Eyeball became affable with him, boasting to all who would listen that his kid brother was a hot shot lawyer. Hot shot or not, even his kid brother couldn't save Eyeball when he got caught pulling the world's dumbest bank job.
The eldest Chambers fared well in jail though. He had the right resiliency and charisma that made him popular with the guards and inmates alike. There was no one prouder than him when his attorney brother walked into the visiting room all suited and booted, briefcase in hand. It was sad really, but those conversations during visiting hours were the only real ones the brothers ever had.
And then it happened. He got the biggest case of his life and despite being the underdog with no chance of success, he won. When the media swarmed the stairs outside of the court house, desperate for a statement, he felt like it was all a surreal dream. That night, as he stood under a hot shower, every scar from his brutal childhood visible on his tall, lean body, he thanked god for every one. There were plenty of guys in his position. Most people from his graduating class in fact, successful lawyers making more money than they could spend. Yet he had something they didn't . That feeling of winning the lottery, that feeling that he'd worked his way from the depths of despair to be where he was now. That was the great thing with starting at the bottom. The only direction you could move in was up. He didn't forget where he'd come from either.
With the money he'd made in his first big case, he could have bought himself a plush house outright, but he didn't. Instead he put down a deposit on his small downtown studio with the roof terrace and took out a mortgage. The large majority of the money went on buying his mother a four bedroom house in Castle Rock. She didn't need the space anymore. With Eyeball in jail, one of his sisters married and living across town, another at the local community college, and his younger brother apartment sharing with some guy friends, there was only his mother and Lily, the baby of the family left. That didn't matter though. In effect, he'd not just bought his mother a house, he'd bought her, in the eyes of the local people, some respect. She stopped cleaning toilets and only took in peoples ironing and mending instead despite the fact he persisted she didn't have to work anymore. Eyeball told him he was crazy, but he slept better at nights after that, feeling like he had finally repaid his mother for the long hours she had always worked for them.
He guessed that was it then, that was the turning point. Giving his mother the nerve to raise her head in Castle Rock, giving her the self worth she had always deserved, even if it had been in the form of bricks and mortar.
"Hey, you cutting in line here buddy?" A sharp voice took him back to the present and for a moment he thought the voice was directed at him. It wasn't. The angry man was barking at the annoying drunk who was edging further forward in the line.
"What's it to you if I am?" The drunk was squaring his shoulders and there was something about his stance that spelled trouble. Living with a violent alcoholic for eighteen years certainly gave you an edge on sensing danger.
He stood quietly as the restaurant fell silent, and he could hear Eyeball's voice in his ear telling him to mind his own damn business. Perhaps he could have if the fight had remained fair.
"You ain't cutting in front of me, buddy. If you're gonna believe anything, believe that." The angry man's voice took on a hard bitter edge, and the drunk wavered, half afraid, half angry.
Then swoosh. He had heard that noise a thousand times in childhood, he'd know it with his eyes closed. It was the sound of a switchblade.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he was stepping between them before he knew what he was doing. The angry man's eyes were now wide with fright but the drunk looked determined as he held the knife out.
"Not so tough now, huh?" The drunk stank of whisky, a smell that had always sickened him. The worst nights were always when his father could afford whisky. His most prominent scars were from whisky fuelled attacks.
"Put the knife down," he said evenly. "This isn't worth it. It's just a place in line. Put the knife down."
He had a soothing tone to his voice that had always calmed people, the kind of voice that made him useful with scared animals or hurt children. The drunk looked at him for a second as if seeing him for the first time, before knifing him callously in the throat.
As he went down onto the carpet of the restaurant, he vaguely heard the silence explode into hysteria as one of the waiters tackled the drunk and the patrons on the premises began to scream. He felt somebody press a dishcloth into his neck to stem the bleeding. Too late, he wanted to tell them, too late for that.
He knew he was dying, could feel it inside of him, but for some reason, he was at peace with that. It hadn't been a long life, but he had defied all the lowly expectations of him. Just another no good Chambers kid, huh? He'd sure showed them.
And as his life ebbed away from him, he had a sudden ironic thought that caused him to pass with a slight smile to his lips.
He'd spent his entire childhood convinced he'd be murdered by a drunk. Same fate, different drunk.
Boy, he hated drunks.
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