As the horses thundered down the final straightaway toward the place where Keeton and Frazier were standing, the entire crowd began to bellow. Keeton had felt the electricity whip through him again, not a spark this time but a storm. He began to bellow with them; the next day he would be so hoarse he could barely speak above a whisper.
"Absolutely!" he screamed. "Come on Absolutely, come on you bitch andr UN."' "Trot," Frazier said, laughing so hard tears ran down his cheeks.
"Come on you bitch and trot. That's what you mean, Buster."
Keeton paid no attention. He was in another world. He was sending brain-waves out to Absolutely, sending her telepathic strength through the air.
"Now it's Broken Field and How Do?, How Do? and Broken Field", the godlike voice of the announcer chanted, "and Absolutely is gaining fast as they come to the last eighth of a mile@' The horses approached, raising a cloud of dust. Absolutely trotted with her neck arched and her head thrust forward, legs rising and falling like pistons; she passed How Do? and Broken Field, who was flagging badly, right where Keeton and Frazier were standing. She was still widening her lead when she crossed the finish line.
When the numbers went up on the tote-board, Keeton had to ask Frazier what they meant. Frazier had looked at his ticket, then at the board. He whistled soundlessly.
"Did I make my money back?" Keeton asked anxiously.
"Buster, you did a little better than that. Absolutely was a thirtyto-one shot."
Before he left the track that night, Keeton had made just over three hundred dollars. That was how his obsession was born.
3
He took his overcoat from the tree in the corner of his office, drew it on, started to leave, then stopped, holding the doorknob in his hand. He looked back across the room. There was a mirror on the wall opposite the window. Keeton looked at it for a long, speculative moment, then walked across to it. He had heard about how They used mirrors-he hadn't been born yesterday.
He put his face against it, ignoring the reflection of his pallid skin and bloodshot eyes. He cupped a hand to either cheek, cutting off the glare, narrowing his eyes, looking for a camera on the other side.
Looking for Them.
He saw nothing.
After a long moment he stepped away, swabbed indifferently at the smeared glass with the sleeve of his overcoat, and left the office. Nothing yet, anyway. That didn't mean They wouldn't come in tonight, pull out his mirror, and replace it with one-way glass.
Spying was just another tool of the trade for the Persecutors. He would have to check the mirror every day now.
"But I can," he said to the empty upstairs hallway. "I can do that. Believe me."
Eddie Warburton was mopping the lobby floor and didn't look up as Keeton stepped out onto the street.
His car was parked around back, but he didn't feel like driving.
He felt too confused to drive; he would probably put the Caddy through someone's store window if he tried. Nor was he aware, in I the depths of his confused mind, that he was walking away from his house rather than toward it. It was seven-fifteen on Saturday morning, and he was the only person out in Castle Rock's small business district.
His mind went briefly back to that first night at Lewiston Raceway. He couldn't do anything wrong, it seemed. Steve Frazier had lost thirty dollars and said he was leaving after the ninth race.
Keeton said he thought he would stay awhile longer. He barely looked at Frazier, and barely noticed when Frazier was gone. He did remember thinking it was nice not to have someone at his elbow saying Buster This and Buster That all the time. He hated the nickname, and of course Steve knew it-that was why he used it.
The next week he had come back again, alone this time, and had lost sixty dollars' worth of previous winnings. He hardly cared.
Although he thought often of those huge stacks of banded currency, it wasn't the money, not really; the money was just the symbol you took away with you, something that said you had been there, that you had been, however briefly, part of the big show. What he really cared about was the tremendous, walloping excitement that went through the crowd when the starter's bell rang, the gates opened with their heavy, crunching thud, and the announcer yelled, "Theyyy'rrre OFF!" What he cared about was the roar of the crowd as the pack rounded the third turn and went hell-for-election down the backstretch, the hysterical camp-meeting exhortations from the stands as they rounded the fourth turn and poured on the coal down the homestretch. It was alive, oh, it was so alive. It was so alive that-that it was dangerous.