Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 4

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part One

Chapter 3: The Lot (I)

Sunrise: 6:50 AM

Sunset: 6:32 PM

The town, from sunup to sundown. We see the townsfolk at work and at play. We meet several characters, some will figure largely in what is to come, some will remain only shadows:

A boy despises getting up and going to school. A milkman makes his deliveries, dreaming of the day he can retire. A woman eats her breakfast and plans her day of work in her boarding house. A young mother screams at her crying baby. A man finds a dead dog hanging from the cemetery gates. The town drunk has a moment of clarity. A boy stands up to the school bully. A man shoots rats at the town dump, imagining them to be the people who bedevil him. A real estate agent thinks about deals with the devil. A woman gets her hair done. Another woman has an affair. A writer sits at his desk. A high school teacher listens to rock’n’roll in his car. A man meets the parents of a woman he is dating. A bartender spreads a little gossip. Two boys meet their fates in the woods off the beaten path. A woman sits in her house and spies on her neighbors. A man stands in the local cemetery and makes a dark sacrifice.

You see now why I had you read Chapter 3 as a whole?

There are four chapters called “The Lot,” and they are each really fine examples of how to build a large setting and people it with loads of characters that make it come to life. Each Lot chapter will give a bird’s eye (or bat’s eye, amirite?) view of the town. In this first of the four, King creates twenty vignettes — some only a few paragraphs in length, others unfurling themselves over several pages — that stitch together a tapestry of who the people who live in ‘salem’s Lot are like. We get a taste of their dreams and desires, as well as their regrets and disappointments. We find some of them pleasant — the milkman, Win Purinton, for example, just wants to retire, so he can sleep in and then go fishing with his dog. Others, like Sandy McDougall and her abuse of her infant son, Randy, are painful to read about. Yet, sadly, that is life.

At this stage in the game, we are unsure who is important and who is just included for “local color.” Obviously, Ben and Susan are main characters. Ben visiting the Norton home is a nice section. What about Hal Griffen, the boy who hates his teacher’s pet brother as much as he hates school? How about Charlie Rhodes, the driver and wanna-be dictator of Bus No. 6? Or the hanky-panky that Bonnie Sawyer and Corey Bryant are engaged in behind Bonnie’s husband’s back? Is all of that important to the story? We don’t know yet, but all of these vignettes make up a tasty Whitman’s sampler of character and setting, and I love them all.

There are a few of these snapshots that are connected. Larry Crockett, Ben Mears, Matthew Burke, and Mabel Werts all notice activity at the Marsten House. Each of them has their own reaction to said activity. For Mabel, the town gossip, she is looking for the freshest, hottest tea to spill. Both Ben and Matthew, an English teacher at the local high school, seem aghast that someone should be living there. We know Ben’s reasons, but for Matthew, the shock is that of a long time resident seeing something new under the sun.

Larry Crocket, ‘salem’s Lot’s real estate agent, on the other hand, sees the car in the driveway of the Marsten House and suddenly feels very uneasy. Larry, we learn, had sold the local haunted house and one of the empty businesses on Main Street for one dollar to a very strange man, a certain Richard Throckett Straker. Why would Larry cut such a lopsided deal? Well, Straker seems to know exactly how to play Larry’s like an accordion, and the tune he squeezes out could be “For the Love of Money” by The O’Jays. The thin end of the wedge is slid into place so cheaply.

Another section that may or not be connected to the goings on at the Marsten place (but we just know it is) is the finding of the dog at the Harmony Hill cemetery by Mike Ryerson. It is a grisly scene. Mike thinks it’s the work of vandals, while the local bartender Delbert Markey seems to think it’s Satanists. We’ll have to wait and see which one is right.

But we already know the answer to that question, don’t we kiddies?

Sections 18 and 20 neatly go hand-in-hand, and together they are the high-water mark of Chapter 3. The taking of the Glick boys is chilling, because it plays on so many fears — for both the child and the adult. How many times as a child did you take a shortcut you shouldn’t have taken? Or how many times did you tease a younger sibling with images of that old stand-by quicksand and threats of “They’re gonna getcha!” How many times did you hear a stick break behind you or something rustle through the underbrush to your left and wonder if someone…or something…was there, watching, waiting? Now, let’s take it from the perspective of Danny and Ralphie’s parents. How often do parents think that their children are in danger when they leave the house at night. Even if they are only going across the road or down the street, doesn’t your imagination sometimes bring up dark images (such as the  “sex preevert” Danny heard adults talk about) that make you shout just as the door closes “Call as soon as you get there!” Suffice it to say, this is waaay before cellphones. If you wanted to be a helicopter parent, then you had to hire a helicopter.

We’re back at Harmony Hill for Section 20. Whatever happens here, happens at the stroke of midnight. One of the appendices to the Illustrated Edition of ‘Salem’s Lot includes different edits to certain scenes throughout the book. It’s like getting an extra on a Blu-Ray showing scenes that didn’t make the movie’s final cut. For this scene, we get more of a back-and-forth between the dark figure making its sacrifice and whatever it is that is being sacrificed to. It’s spooky, to be sure, but the scene as is, with its ambiguity — we only get a bit of breeze and the smell of carrion — plays much better.

One last thing I’d like to touch on — and, no, I am not referring to Larry Crockett’s choice of reading material (Satan’s Sex Slaves? Yowza!) — is the concept of the party line. In Section 19, Mabel Werts, town busybody, picks up her phone and listens in on a conversation. Mabel lives alone. It’s not like there was somebody else in her house using a phone in another room. I grew up in a house with two phones. One upstairs, the other downstairs. If a friend called me and someone else answered the phone, I’d have to make darn sure that that other phone was properly hung up before starting my conversation.

No, what Mabel is taking advantage of is what used to be known as a “party line.” A party line (also known as a multiparty line, shared service line, party wire) linked together several separate houses — sometimes entire neighborhoods — with a single telephone line. For many, this type of service was cheaper than getting an individual line. During the Second World War, party lines were the only service available due to wartime rationing and shortages. Privacy was impossible, but party lines did make it easier for areas to be made aware of emergencies, such as fires. Subscribers were urged to use the line responsibly. Many services asked that people only spend five minutes on a call. How did you know if a call on the line was for you and not one of your neighbors? Some services offered specific rings on the line to signal specific users. It was not a perfect system, as Mabel’s use of the service underscores.

That’s all for today’s class. Come back tomorrow and please read Part 1, Chapter 4: Danny Glick and Others, Sections 1-7. This is short selction — at least shorter than today’s reading. We’ll find out what Danny Glick saw (or didn’t see) in the woods. We’ll also learn more about Larry Crockett and his crooked real estate dealings. And we’ll actually go into the Marsten House. I wonder what we’ll find there?

Go straight home after class, kiddies. Stick to the roads. And if you are going to listen in on the party line late at night, remember to…