Mr. Mercedes

Now that Hodges is no longer an active detective, he chooses not to carry either his old service weapon or his father’s old Victory .38. He selects instead a more basic weapon—the “Happy Slapper,” a sock weighted with ball bearings—closer to a defensive weapon, requiring the user to come within easy reach of the target. For Hodges, the Happy Slapper represents his relinquishment of his formal identity as a police officer and acceptance of his new role as a private citizen.

The Happy Slapper, with its load of ball bearings, is a parallel to Brady Hartsfield’s flak jacket, also loaded with ball bearings intended to act as shrapnel when he sets off his bomb at the concert. While Brady’s flak jacket is a weapon of mass destruction, Hodges’s Happy Slapper is a targeted weapon designed to produce the minimum necessary force on a very precise target, which is how Hodges uses it to drive off the bullies who are hassling the boy beneath the underpass.

When Holly takes the Happy Slapper from Hodges, she is symbolically making the leap from child to adult while Hodges is the mentor stepping back and turning the fight over to the younger generation.