Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 18

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part Two

Chapter 11: Ben (IV)

Sections 1-7

Sunrise: 7:01 AM

Sunset: 6:14 PM

Susan and Ben visit Matt in the hospital. Ben and Matt try to pull Susan away from her “can’t” thoughts and towards the possibility that there are real, live (or un-live) vampires in the Lot. It is decided that Matt’s doctor, Jimmy Cody, and the local Catholic priest, Father Callahan, should be pressed into service.

Later, while receiving his check-up, Ben tells Dr. Cody everything that has happened and what he thinks it all means. Dr. Cody, much to the surprise of Susan, agrees to issue an exhumation order for Danny Glick’s body.

At the Glicks’ house to ask for permission to dig up their son, Ben and Jimmy are told by a neighbor that Mrs. Glick died early that morning. Her body has been taken to Maury Green’s Mortuary in Cumberland County. Ben and Jimmy head off to Cumberland in hopes of sitting up with Mrs. Glick’s corpse and seeing what happens when the sun goes down.

Once again…what did I tell you about Susan Norton? Have you given yourself a concussion yet from the amount of times you slapped your forehead at her infuriating “I just can’t believe that you think that there are vampires in the Lot!”

 

At this point, I’m starting to wonder if the portrayal of the character of Susan is misogynistic or not. From a narrative point-of-view, I understand what is happening. We need at least one or two characters to be incredulous about the existence of vampires. We need a little sand in the ointment, so to speak. Something to make Ben and Matt’s jobs more difficult. But this…oy!

I’ve brought up Agent Scully and The X-Files when talking about Susan. I remember when I was mainlining all of the seasons of the The X-Files a few years ago. I had friend (a woman) mention that she thought that the presentation of Scully as the lone skeptic was essentially misogynistic. (This was during my time in grad school, so we often busted out a little film theory while discussing everything.) I didn’t understand why, and she explained that the show was set up so that what we usually assume to be the “gender roles” of the male and female agents are reversed. Male characters throughout pop culture are usually associated with rationality, science, etc.; female characters correspond to the emotions, to feelings, to intuition. In The X-Files, those roles and characteristics are reversed. Scully is the agent of reason; Mulder is ruled by his feelings. But because the show is what it is — in that we are never in a position to doubt that the aliens or Bigfoot or demons are anything other than what they really are — we will always be on the side of Mulder against Scully. Like ‘Salem’s Lot, we spend a lot of time muttering, “Godammit, Scully! What more do you need to see?!” In this way, I think Susan has been done dirty. She’s in an impossible position. We’re always going to be annoyed by her and her reticence to believe.

There’s a moment after Dr. Cody has agreed to exhume Danny Glick’s body when he describes what they are bound to discover in the casket:

“When the coffin is opened, there’s apt to be a rush of gas and a rather offensive smell. The body may be bloated. The hair will have grown down over his collar—it continues to grow for an amazing period of time—and the fingernails will also be quite long…”

That is an old wives’ tale. (See! We say “old wives’ tale” and not “old husbands’s tale” when we are discussing rumors and legends. You ladies just can’t win.) The hair and nails only appear to become longer after death, and that is mainly due to the retraction of the skin around them. This shrinkage is caused by dehydration.

C’mon, Doc…you should know better. Unless you’re talking about Barbara Steele, there is no long hair of death…

Later, as Ben and Doc Cody make their way to Maury Green’s—

You certainly are, sir, but we’re actually talking the man who owns the funeral parlor in Cumberland County where Mrs. Glick’s body has been taken.

Sheesh! Can someone take care of this guy, please?

Thank you!

Anyhoo…while they drive along the turnpike heading to Maury Greene's, Jimmy and Ben wonder at the relative ease with which a vampire colony could be established in bedroom communities like the Lot:

“‘There’s no in-town industry where a rise in absenteeism would be noticed. The schools are three-town consolidated, and if the absence list starts getting a little longer, who notices? A lot of people go to church over in Cumberland, a lot more don’t go at all. And TV has pretty well put the kibosh on the old neighborhood get-togethers, except for the duffers who hang around Milt’s store. All this could be going on with great effectiveness behind the scenes.’”

Wow! Looks like Jimmy was around twenty-five years ahead of Robert D. Putnam’s study of the collapse of American social networks (actual, real-life social networks…not…whatever the hell this all is).

Jimmy also says, “This is beginning to seem like a paranoid’s dream…or a Gahan Wilson cartoon.”

Who now?

Gahan Wilson was born in 1930 in Evanston, Illinois. Inspired by magazines such as Mad and Punch, Wilson soon developed his own style that was deeply influenced by the horror films of the 1950s. His work is similar to that of Charles Addams in that the comedy on display is of the darkest, blackest variety.

I think that is as good a place to stop as any, don’t you, Blog-o-weeners? Ben and Jimmy are heading into the mortuary to check out Mrs. Glick. If you’ll read Part 2, Chapter 11: Ben (IV), Sections 8-13 for tomorrow, you will find out just what that poor lady has to say for herself. Something tells me it ain’t nothing good.

We will also find out what kind of trouble Susan’s stubborn streak will get her into. When it comes to Susan, I need to follow my own advice. I need to…

Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 7

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part One

Chapter 4: Danny Glick and Others

Sections 8-14

Sunrise: 6:52 AM

Sunset: 6:28 PM

The town’s latest resident, Richard Throckett Straker, goes shopping at Milt Crossen’s Agricultural Store. He makes quite the impression on the gaggle of old men who gather there daily to swap old stories and new gossip.

Meanwhile, Parkins Gillespie decides to do a bit of constable work. He visits Ben at his room at Eva’s and Straker at the Lot’s newest antiques emporium. Straker’s partner, a certain Mr. Kurt Barlow, is unfortunately on a buying trip in New York City. Later, Parkins takes what he finds in his interviews to the FBI.

As the telephone wires carry the news of the day back and forth from home to home, Danny Glick, who doctors thought was getting better, is found dead in his hospital room.

I like that one section of this chapter — number 13 — is made up entirely of a hospital report on Danny Glick. We get in the cold, rational language of the medical profession an overview of Danny condition. He seems normal. A lot of the tests given to him came back negative. He seems like he should be a healthy kid. Of course, we, the readers, really know the condition that Danny’s condition is in, don’t we?

Giving the reader this brief medical report is a nice touch because it foreshadows one of the problems the folks in the Lot are going to come up against as the events of the novel unfold. Their trust and reliance, either consciously or subconsciously, in the gifts of the rational, modern world leaves them open to the vampire infestation in their midst. Think back to the book’s prologue and the newspaper article about Jerusalem’s Lot that so disturbed the man and the boy. The people from the Lot that were interviewed are incapable of talking about their experiences, because the modern world does not allow for them. It’s like a blind spot in their understanding. And it’s in such blind spots that the vampires can hide and grow and spread.

As the novel progresses, we’ll see more of this rational/irrational dichotomy. As with any book, movie, or tv show that deals with the supernatural, we always come up against this battle between “This is really happening!” and “This can’t be happening!” Later in ‘Salem’s Lot, Ben will chide Susan about her reliance on “can’t” thinking. We know the drill. While reading novels like this one, we can’t help but be on the side of the irrational, no matter how rational we are in real life. More of us are skeptics than not, however. The vast majority of us would roll our eyes if told that a healthy boy’s illness is caused not by pernicious anemia but by bloodsuckers. That doesn’t stop us, however, from yelling at the tv while watching The X-Files, “Goddamit, Scully! Get with the program! It’s aliens!”

One of the bits of gossip that is passed around concerns Straker’s visit to Crossen’s. It isn’t Straker’s choice of ride, either. A nearly 40-year-old car on the roads isn’t out of the question. The notion of a man pulling up in a 1939 Packard (or was it a ’40?) is strange, but not so outré as to set tongues wagging. Giving Straker a Packard is a nice touch by King, though. The Packard Motor Car Company was one of the “Three P’s” of pre-Second World War America. Along with Peerless Motor Company and Pierce-Arrow, Packard was known for building high-quality luxury vehicles. Unfortunately, the post-war years were less kind and less profitable, and Packard went out of business at the end of the 1950s. In a way, the ’39 Packard (or was it a ’40?) pulling into the parking lot of Crossen’s is a little like the dead returning to life, like something rising from the grave again. As I said, it’s a nice touch.

No, the gossip that is on everyone’s lips is about the money that Straker passed in the store. After leaving with his box of dry goods and sundries tucked under his arm, Straker also leaves the men in the store agog at the $20 bill he paid with. The men all note that it is much bigger than an ordinary bill. One says that it’s a series E twenty. Later, over the telephone, someone says that money like it hadn’t been seen since the bank-runs of 1930. What are they talking about?

The twenty dollar bill as we know it today features a portrait of President Andrew Jackson on the front. Jackson’s picture, however, was not in place on the Federal Reserve Note until 1928. Before that, the $20 bill featured a picture of Grover Cleveland and was printed in a large-note format. These types of bills were 50% larger than the money we use today. They were affectionately known as “horse blankets” because of their size. The printing of bills of this size was discontinued after 1929.

Again, this is a nice touch by King. Straker is using discontinued money. He is resurrecting a  dead currency, so to speak.

Let’s call it quit for today, kiddies. Tomorrow we will pick back up with Part 1, Chapter 5: Ben (II). It’s about 20 pages of reading. Now that Danny Glick has passed away, events are going to start coming at us faster. Danny’s death is, we will see, the first domino to fall. Who will be next? We will just have to wait in see.

In the meantime, Blog-o-weeners, rest up, don’t take any wooden nickels — or large-format bank notes, for that matter — and remember…