“Sorry, Mr. Priest,” he said, blushing madly. Hugh Priest was nobody to get mad at you. He worked for the Public Works Department and was reputed to have the worst temper in Castle Rock.

Brian watched him narrowly. If he started to get out of his truck, Brian planned to jump on his bike and be gone down Main Street at roughly the speed of light. He had no interest in spending the next month or so in the hospital just because he’d been daydreaming about going to the County Fair with Miss Ratcliffe.

But Hugh Priest had a bottle of beer in the fork of his legs, Hank Williams, jr was on the radio singing “High and Pressurized,” and it was all just a little too comfy for anything so radical as beating the shit out of a little kid on Tuesday afternoon.

“You want to keep your eyes open,” he said, taking a pull from the neck of his bottle and looking at Brian balefully, “because next time I won’t bother to stop. I’ll just run you down in the road.

Make you squeak, little buddy.”

He put the truck in gear and drove off. Brian felt an insane (and mercifully brief) urge to scream Well I’ll be butched! after him. He waited until the orange road-crew truck had turned off onto Linden Street and then went on his way. The daydream about Miss Ratcliffe, alas, was spoiled for the day. Hugh Priest had let in reality again.

Miss Ratcliffe hadn’t had a fight with her fiance, Lester Pratt; she was still wearing her small diamond engagement ring and was still driving his blue Mustang while she waited for her own car to come back from the shop.

Brian had seen Miss Ratcliffe and Mr. Pratt only last evening, stapling those DICE AND THE DEVIL posters to the telephone poles on Lower Main Street along with a bunch of other people.

They had been singing hymns. The only thing was, the Catholics went around as soon as they were done and took them down again.