All You Love Will Be Carried Away              
                       By Steven King                       

                       (part 3 of 7)                        

Alfie unbuttoned  his topcoat  and put  his suitcase  on the
floor at the foot of the bed closest to the bathroom. He put
his briefcase on  the gold coverlet. He sat  down, the sides
of his  coat spreading  out like  the skirt  of a  dress. He
opened his briefcase, thumbed through the various brochures,
catalogues, and  order forms; finally  he found the  gun. It
was a Smith &Wesson revolver, .38  calibre. He put it on the
pillows at the head of the bed.

He  lit  a  cigarette,   reached  for  the  telephone,  then
remembered  his notebook.  He  reached into  his right  coat
pocket and pulled  it out. It was an old  Spiral, bought for
a  buck  forty_nine in  the  stationery  department of  some
forgotten  five_and_dime in  Omaha  or Sioux  City or  maybe
Jubilee, Kansas. The cover was creased and almost completely
innocent of any  printing it might once have  borne. Some of
the pages had  pulled partially free of the  metal coil that
served as the notebook's binding, but all of them were still
there.  Alfie had  been  carrying this  notebook for  almost
seven years,  ever since his days  selling Universal Product
Code readers for Simonex.

There was an ashtray on the shelf under the phone. Out here,
some of  the motel rooms  still came with ashtrays,  even on
the first floor.  Alfie fished for it, put  his cigarette on
the  groove, and  opened  his notebook.  He flipped  through
pages  written with  a  hundred different  pens  (and a  few
pencils), pausing to read a  couple of entries. One read: "I
suckt Jim Morrison's  cock w/ my poutie  boy mouth (LAWRENCE
KS)." Restrooms  were filled with homosexual  graffiti, most
of it  tiresome and repetitive,  but "poutie boy  mouth" was
pretty good. Another  was "Albert Gore is  my favorite whore
(MURDO S DAK)."

The last page,  three_quarters of the way  through the book,
had just two  entries. "Dont chew the Trojan  Gum it taste's
just like  rubber (AVOCA  IA)." And:  "Poopie doopie  you so
loopy  (PAPILLION NEB)."  Alfie  was crazy  about that  one.
Something about the "_ie, _ie," and then, boom, you got "_y"
It could have been no  more than an illiterate's mistake (he
was sure  that would have been  Maura's take on it)  but why
think  like that?  What fun  was that?  No, Alfie  preferred
(even now) to believe that "_ie, _ie," . . . wait for it . .
. "_y"  was an  intended construction. Something  sneaky but
playful, with the feel of an e. e. cummings poem.

He rummaged  through the  stuff in  his inside  coat pocket,
feeling papers, an old toll ticket, a bottle of pills__stuff
he had quit taking-_and at  last finding the pen that always
hid in  the litter. Time  to record today's finds.  Two good
ones, both from  the same rest area, one over  the urinal he
had used, the  other written with a Sharpie on  the map case
beside  the  Hav_A_Bite  machine. (Snax,  which  in  Alfie's
opinion vended a superior product  line, had for some reason
been disenfranchised in the 1_80 rest areas about four years
ago.) These  days Alfie sometimes  went two weeks  and three
thousand miles without seeing anything new, or even a viable
variation on something old. Now, two  in one day. Two on the
last day. Like some sort of omen.

His pen had "COTTAGER FOODS The Good Stuff!" written in gold
along the barrel next to the logo, a thatched hut with smoke
coming out of the quaintly crooked chimney.

Sitting there on  the bed, still in his  topcoat, Alfie bent
studiously over his old notebook  so that his shadow fell on
the  page. Below  "Dont  chew the  Trojan  Gum" and  "Poopie
doopie  you  so  loopy,"  Alfie added  "Save  Russian  Jews,
collect  valuable prizes  (WALTON NEB)''  and "All  that you
love will  be carried away  (WALTON NEB)." He  hesitated. He
rarely  added  notes,  liking  his  finds  to  stand  alone.
Explanation rendered the  exotic mundane (or so  he had come
to believe;  in the early  years he had annotated  much more
freely), but from time to time a footnote still seemed to be
more illuminating than demystifying.

He  starred the  second entry__"All  that you  love will  be
carried away (WALTON NEB)"__and drew a line two inches above
the bottom of  the page, and wrote: "*To read  this you must
also look at the exit ramp from the Walton Rest Area back to
highway, i.e. at departing transients."

He  put  the  pen  back  in his  pocket,  wondering  why  he
or  anyone  would continue  anything  this  close to  ending
everything. He  couldn't think  of a  single answer.  But of
course  you went  on breathing,  too. You  couldn't stop  it
without rough surgery.

The  wind gusted  outside. Alfie  looked briefly  toward the
window, where the curtain (also green, but a different shade
from the rug) had been drawn. If he pulled it back, he would
be able to see chains of light on Interstate 80, each bright
bead  marking sentient  beings  running on  the  rod of  the
highway. Then he  looked back down at his book.  He meant to
do it, all right. This was just ... well ...