Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (66 page)

In Chapter Fifty Four a photographer, Galey Womack who had developed the photos of Longtin and Coolidge went to the Club and demanded money for copies of the photos. Neiman had told McCullough that the flash on the camera had not worked and there were no photos. McCullough paid Womack $30 but told Marty to follow him to Womack’s shop, beat him and trash the shop. In Fifty Five Slade meditates and remembers the power of the crowd – which he had first learned at a baseball game at Shea Stadium.  

In Chapter Fifty Six it is Sunday 24 June. Arnie Kalowski takes Frank Kalowski home from hospital. Arnie rings Bill Danning’s house but hangs up after the phone rang for sixty seconds. In Fifty Seven Edie Rowsmith remembers that Edgars had apologized for having sex with her. She had replied, “I love you, John.” His last words to her had been, “Don’t, Edie, don’t.” She visits Paradise Park and finds Janet Cross at the Beach. They talk briefly. In Fifty Eight, Arnie Kalowski goes to Danning’s home, where Danning admits that he and Miriam Kalowski had had an affair. Arnie hits him and leaves, then calls Janet Cross and tells her what he has done.  

In Chapter Fifty Nine it is now Monday 25 June. Henry Coolidge puts the blackmail money into in a gym bag at his office at Harding High. In Sixty Spooner, staking out Coolidge’s house follows him to Paradise Beach where Coolidge arrives to pay Neiman off. Jigs, Bull-Run, Marty and McCullough had followed Neiman and Longtin to the same location. In Sixty One Neiman and Longtin take the blackmail money from Coolidge. McCullough and his men then jump them. Neiman tries to stab McCullough but Bull-Run breaks his wrist. Neiman is severely beaten but Longtin escapes in Marty’s Pontiac. In Sixty Two McCullough’s men throw Neiman’s body off the pier. Elsewhere, Coolidge remembers being in the Army in Germany, where a girl had jacked him off in a Berlin club. 

In Chapter Sixty Three it is 26 June. Arnie Kalowski and Janet Cross make love in his apartment. He had told her everything the night before. In the afternoon they clean the apartment. In Sixty Four it is now Friday 29 June. Slade meets White at his San Francisco gym and gets a treatment in the steam room. He then flies out of San Francisco at 1pm Pacific time, headed for Harding. In Sixty Five, at 1pm that same day, Kenny Roth calls and invites Meg DeClancy to the dog races. In Sixty Six, still at 1pm, John Edgars rings to invite Edie Rowsmith to lunch but she decides they should go to dinner instead. In Sixty Seven, at 1pm, Webs McCullough calls a meeting of his men at The Club. He briefs everyone on the final plan for that night. In Sixty Eight, at 1pm, Kit Longtin rings Arnie Kalowski but the phone is not answered. In Sixty Nine and still at 1pm, Arnie Kalowski tells Janet Cross he wants to marry her but she replies that they are too young. They argue and she leaves. Kit Longtin gets through to Arnie by phone and they agree to meet at Uncle Pete’s that evening. 

In Chapter Seventy Slade arrives in Harding. In Seventy One it is the evening of 29 June. Rowsmith and Edgars meet for dinner at Uncle Pete’s in Harding. She tells him something of her past, including the story of her dead boyfriend, Donald Knowles. Don’s mother had murdered him after he decided to marry Edie while she lived with the Knowles family in Gates Falls, Maine. They also see Arnie Kalowski having dinner at the restaurant with Kit Longtin. As the chapter ends the riot is beginning in Harding. 

In Chapter Seventy Two Janet Cross had wandered Harding that afternoon. She went to the movies, fell asleep and woke at 9:30pm. She went to Mike’s Place but walked in on a confrontation between gangs. A Negro boy took her out the back of the restaurant and raped her. In Seventy Three Kenny Roth and Meg DeClancy return to the downtown from the dog races and head for a floating craps game behind Uncle Pete’s. They are attacked and Roth is beaten and stabbed. Meg runs. Nearby, oil tanks explode. In Seventy Four the Slade rally begins at 8:25pm. Slade whips the African Americans in the audience into a frenzy. Suddenly, Webs McCullough yells racial abuse and throws a smoke bomb, causing a panic. In Seventy Five McCullough and his men escape Slade’s rally. The rioting spreads in Harding. Webs’ group arm themselves. Slade tours the streets of the South City in the back of a pickup truck, urging people to go home. 

In Chapter Seventy Six an oil tank explosion finds Kit Longtin and Arnie Kalowski in a cheap fleabag hotel room on Dock Street, where they had just had sex. They leave the Hotel but one of Arnie’s car tires is flat and he has to change it. Fire-trucks head toward the oil tank and docks fire. Four African Americans shoot at Arnie and Kit as they drive off. Arnie swerves to avoid hitting a woman, crashing the car into a light pole and stalling it. They run from the car into the crowd. In Seventy Seven, Coolidge sits at home, reading childhood books. His wife, Ann had gone to the Slade rally. He drives to his office where he falls asleep.  

In Chapter Seventy Eight the Riot is described. Three separate “rumbles” occur between the Dock Street Socializers (white) and Memorial Circle Traders (black) gangs and there are many deaths. It is interesting to note that during a gang fight between the Socializers and the Turner Street Oligarchs in 1962 a boy was turned into a vegetable after a brick was dropped on his head, reminding us Jack Mort from
The Dark Tower
cycle. The firemen at the Docks fire are nearly helpless and the fire spreads to nearby tenements. The National Guard is called out. Thirty two people have been killed by midnight. In Seventy Nine Slade continues to try to get people off the streets but a white man shoots him. In Eighty McCullough’s group robs the South City Savings and Loan, using plastic explosives bought with some of the blackmail money. They take the haul and head toward Harding High School. In Eighty One Rowsmith, who had served as a nurse during the Second World War, helps at the temporary infirmary in a police station and is there when a shocked Janet Cross is brought in. 

In Chapter Eighty Two Kit Longtin is put on a police-protected city bus, leaving Arnie Kalowski to be put to work fighting the fires. He comes across Edgars who is also helping the firemen. After calling Rowsmith at the police station they set out to meet her there. In Eighty Three Coolidge awakes in his office and realizes there are people in the school. Coolidge shoots Pete Venness with a BB pistol. McCullough returns fire with a shotgun, killing Coolidge. In Eighty Four Coolidge is dead; Pete Venness wounded in the eye. McCullough locks Venness, the money and Coolidge’s body in his office. Jigs, now realizing the danger McCullough presents, shoots him. Bull-Run then throws Jigs down the stairs, seriously injuring him. In the mayhem, McCullough accidentally shoots Bull-Run in the head. Marty, Spooner and Hash run, taking the unconscious Jigs with them; and in Eighty Five McCullough dies as he crawls back toward the money. 

In Chapter Eighty Six, Slade wakes up in hospital and sees Roy at his bedside. He is then taken into surgery. In Eighty Seven the National Guard arrives in Harding and the fire is contained. A doctor tells Rowsmith that Cross had been raped. In Eighty Eight Arnie Kalowski and Edgars arrive at the infirmary. Edie Rowsmith tells them that Janet Cross had died at 2:50am that morning (30 June). Arnie screams and runs from the infirmary as dawn is just beginning to show. 

Part Four is titled
Good Mornin’, Blues
. In Chapter Eighty Nine Meg DeClancy awakens, having survived the riot. In Ninety Slade comes to after surgery. He will live and the attempted assassin has given himself up. In Ninety One the remaining gang members’ car blows a tire 100 miles from Harding. Jigs had died during the trip. In Ninety Two Edgars drives Rowsmith to her apartment and they discuss both Arnie Kalowski’s situation and the causes of the riot. They go inside, together. In the concluding Chapter, Ninety Three, Arnie Kalowski arrives home. Edie Rowsmith rings him and they agree to meet at 3pm. Arnie then tells his still catatonic father that he loves him and gets him ready for bed. 

Although it has not been published
Sword and the Darkness
represents the debut of a famous King town – Gates Falls, Maine. Edie Rowsmith lived there with John and Cass Knowles before his mother murdered John and Edie moved to Harding. Gates Falls is one of King’s earliest towns and he has continued to mention it throughout his career. It is a key location in
Graveyard Shift
,
It Grows on You
,
The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan
and
Riding the Bullet
.
It is also mentioned in
Blaze
,
The Body
,
The Dark Half
,
The Dead Zone
,
Gramma
,
Hearts in Atlantis
,
Movie Show
,
Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut
,
Needful Things
,
The Plant
(the electronic
version only),
Rage
and
‘Salem’s Lot.
The town of Gates Center is mentioned and it also appears in
It Grows on You
. 

Harding, based on Detroit as noted earlier, itself appears to be the same city in which Richards lived in
The Running Man
. 

Chapter Seventy One is the most powerful section of the entire novel and would make a superb stand alone story, subject to some rewriting and editing by King. This Chapter tells Edie Rowsmith’s back-story in Gates Falls, Maine before the War. In reading this Chapter I formed the view that as a stand alone effort it would represent one of the top ten or so of King’s short stories. In my opinion, if a reader did not know this was King’s writing from 1970 most would assume it was from a later King period, most likely the early 1980s. This makes it some of the most exciting of the material at the Fogler, a clear if slightly unpolished view of Stephen King the professional writer. Indeed, this discovery makes it clear that King was destined to be a writer of the horrors humanity inflicts upon itself as much as mainstream horror, and most certainly not the standard run-of-the-mill writer of race riot and “contemporary” novels. 

As publication of this book neared King kindly agreed to allow this Chapter to be published, as originally written. It follows this review (readers should tackle the Chapter
before
reading the next paragraph). 

Edie Rowsmith’s story is as poignant as any King has ever produced. She related it to her school teacher friend and lover, John Edgars, the night of the Harding riots. Edie was one of twelve children, only four of whom lived beyond the age of five. Her only surviving brother died of peritonitis aged fifteen. She attended Gorham Normal School before moving to Gates Falls, Maine in 1938, where she began teaching at a two-room school. She boarded with the Knowles family. She and the son, Donald, fell in love. Don was college educated, worked at a bank in Brunswick and in addition to being the apple of his mother’s eye was also the focus of her ambitions. On 31 January 1939 Don returned to Gates Falls with an engagement ring for Edie. When Don told his mother he wanted to marry Edie she killed him with a kindling hatchet and cut off his genitals. Edie found the body later that morning, along with a catatonic Cass Knowles. Cass ended up in a “place” in Augusta. Her dreams lost, Edie moved to Harding and Edgars was the first chance she’d had for real love in the intervening thirty years. 

One of the more interesting characters is “Webs” (short for “Cobwebs”) McCullough, a psychopath in the tradition of
The Dead Zone
’s Greg Stillson. A white man born and raised in Wilmot, Pennsylvania, at an early age he began to kill cats and dogs. Aged fourteen, he killed a nine year old boy with a piece of rusty pipe. He left Wilmot at the age of 15 and five years later turned up in Harding, where he revamped a local gang, the Oligarchs. In between he had killed an itinerant laborer in south Texas and an old woman in Reno. He always wore dark glasses. He planned and started the riot in Harding in June 1969 as a cover for a series of robberies. One of the gang members shot him on the night of the riots after his psychopathic streak became too much even for them and he died shortly afterwards. 

As one of King’s earliest attempts at a novel
Sword in the Darkness
has numerous weaknesses, not the least of which is its overcomplicated, schizophrenic nature. There are simply too many storylines competing for the reader’s attention, many of which add nothing to the overall impact. On the other hand it is exciting to see King literally bursting from the cocoon of his youth and college career, only three years before
Carrie
would be accepted for publication. Many of King’s trademarks are clearly evident and future researchers will perhaps use this manuscript as a benchmark in King’s career – one of the last transitional works before he became a fully-fledged brand-name author.