Doctor Sleep, Page 48

  He would get hit with one hell of a fine, but there was an upside: he would pass the Breathalyzer with flying colors.

  Dan looked in the glove compartment and found a can of lighter fluid. No Zippo--that would be in Billy's pants pocket--but there were indeed two books of half-used matches. He went to the hat and doused it with the lighter fluid until it was soaking. Then he squatted, touched a match, and flicked it into the hat's upturned bowl. The hat didn't last long, but he moved upwind until it was nothing but ashes.

  The smell was foul.

  When he looked up, he saw Billy trudging toward him, wiping at his bloody face with his sleeve. As they tromped through the ashes, making sure there wasn't a single ember that might spark a wildfire, Dan told him the story they would tell the Colorado State Police when they arrived.

  "I'll have to pay to have that thing repaired, and I bet it costs a bundle. Good thing I've got some savings."

  Billy snorted. "Who's gonna chase you for damages? There's nothing left of those True Knot folks but their clothes. I looked."

  "Unfortunately," Dan said, "Roof O' the World belongs to the great State of Colorado."

  "Ouch," Billy said. "Hardly seems fair, since you just did Colorado and the rest of the world a favor. Where's Abra?"

  "Back home."

  "Good. And it's over? Really over?"

  Dan nodded.

  Billy was staring at the ashes of Rose's tophat. "Went up damn fast. Almost like a special effect in a movie."

  "I imagine it was very old." And full of magic, he didn't add. The black variety.

  Dan went to the pickup and sat behind the wheel so he could examine his face in the rearview mirror.

  "See anything that shouldn't be there?" Billy asked. "That's what my mom always used to say when she caught me moonin over my own reflection."

  "Not a thing," Dan said. A smile began to break on his face. It was tired but genuine. "Not a thing in the world."

  "Then let's call the police and tell em about our accident," Billy said. "Ordinarily I got no use for the Five-O, but right about now I wouldn't mind some company. Place gives me the willies." He gave Dan a shrewd look. "Full of ghosts, ain't it? That's why they picked it."

  That was why, no doubt about it. But you didn't need to be Ebenezer Scrooge to know there were good ghostie people as well as bad ones. As they walked down toward the Overlook Lodge, Dan paused to look back at Roof O' the World. He was not entirely surprised to see a man standing on the platform by the broken rail. He raised one hand, the summit of Pawnee Mountain visible through it, and sketched a flying kiss that Dan remembered from his childhood. He remembered it well. It had been their special end-of-the-day thing.

  Bedtime, doc. Sleep tight. Dream up a dragon and tell me about it in the morning.

  Dan knew he was going to cry, but not now. This wasn't the time. He lifted his own hand to his mouth and returned the kiss.

  He looked for a moment longer at what remained of his father. Then he headed down to the parking lot with Billy. When they got there, he looked back once more.

  Roof O' the World was empty.

  UNTIL YOU SLEEP

  FEAR stands for face everything and recover.

  --Old AA saying

  ANNIVERSARY

  1

  The Saturday noon AA meeting in Frazier was one of the oldest in New Hampshire, dating back to 1946, and had been founded by Fat Bob D., who had known the Program's founder, Bill Wilson, personally. Fat Bob was long in his grave, a victim of lung cancer--in the early days most recovering alkies had smoked like chimneys and newbies were routinely told to keep their mouths shut and the ashtrays empty--but the meeting was still well attended. Today it was SRO, because when it was over there would be pizza and a sheet cake. This was the case at most anniversary meetings, and today one of their number was celebrating fifteen years of sobriety. In the early years he had been known as Dan or Dan T., but word of his work at the local hospice had gotten around (the AA magazine was not known as The Grapevine for nothing), and now he was most commonly called Doc. Since his parents had called him that, Dan found the nickname ironic . . . but in a good way. Life was a wheel, its only job was to turn, and it always came back to where it had started.

  A real doctor, this one named John, chaired at Dan's request, and the meeting followed its usual course. There was laughter when Randy M. told how he had thrown up all over the cop who arrested him on his last DUI, and more when he went on to say he had discovered a year later that the cop himself was in the Program. Maggie M. cried when she told ("shared," in AA parlance) how she had again been denied joint custody of her two children. The usual cliches were offered--time takes time, it works if you work it, don't quit until the miracle happens--and Maggie eventually quieted to sniffles. There was the usual cry of Higher Power says turn it off! when a guy's cell phone rang. A gal with shaky hands spilled a cup of coffee; a meeting without at least one spilled cup of joe was rare indeed.

  At ten to one, John D. passed the basket ("We are self-supporting through our own contributions"), and asked for announcements. Trevor K., who opened the meeting, stood and asked--as he always did--for help cleaning up the kitchen and putting away the chairs. Yolanda V. did the Chip Club, giving out two whites (twenty-four hours) and a purple (five months--commonly referred to as the Barney Chip). As always, she ended by saying, "If you haven't had a drink today, give yourself and your Higher Power a hand."

  They did.

  When the applause died, John said, "We have a fifteen-year anniversary today. Will Casey K. and Dan T. come on up here?"

  The crowd applauded as Dan walked forward--slowly, to keep pace with Casey, who now walked with a cane. John handed Casey the medallion with XV printed on its face, and Casey held it up so the crowd could see it. "I never thought this guy would make it," he said, "because he was AA from the start. By which I mean, an asshole with attitude."

  They laughed dutifully at this oldie. Dan smiled, but his heart was beating hard. His one thought right now was to get through what came next without fainting. The last time he'd been this scared, he had been looking up at Rose the Hat on the Roof O' the World platform and trying to keep from strangling himself with his own hands.

  Hurry up, Casey. Please. Before I lose either my courage or my breakfast.

  Casey might have been the one with the shining . . . or perhaps he saw something in Dan's eyes. In any case, he cut it short. "But he defied my expectations and got well. For every seven alcoholics who walk through our doors, six walk back out again and get drunk. The seventh is the miracle we all live for. One of those miracles is standing right here, big as life and twice as ugly. Here you go, Doc, you earned this."

  He passed Dan the medallion. For a moment Dan thought it would slip through his cold fingers and fall to the floor. Casey folded his hand around it before it could, and then folded the rest of Dan into a massive hug. In his ear he whispered, "Another year, you sonofabitch. Congratulations."

  Casey stumped up the aisle to the back of the room, where he sat by right of seniority with the other oldtimers. Dan was left alone at the front, clenching his fifteen-year medallion so hard the tendons stood out on his wrist. The assembled alkies stared at him, waiting for what longtime sobriety was supposed to convey: experience, strength, and hope.

  "A couple of years ago . . ." he began, and then had to clear his throat. "A couple of years ago, when I was having coffee with that gimpy-legged gentleman who's just now sitting down, he asked me if I'd done the fifth step: 'Admitted to God, ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.' I told him I'd done most of it. For folks who don't have our particular problem, that probably would have been enough . . . and that's just one of the reasons we call them Earth People."

  They chuckled. Dan drew a deep breath, telling himself if he could face Rose and her True Knot, he could face this. Only this was different. This wasn't Dan the Hero; it was Dan the Scumbag. He had lived long enough to know there was a little scumbag in e
veryone, but it didn't help much when you had to take out the trash.

  "He told me that he thought there was one wrong I couldn't quite get past, because I was too ashamed to talk about it. He told me to let it go. He reminded me of something you hear at almost every meeting--we're only as sick as our secrets. And he said if I didn't tell mine, somewhere down the line I'd find myself with a drink in my hand. Was that the gist of it, Case?"

  From the back of the room Casey nodded, his hands folded over the top of his cane.

  Dan felt the stinging at the back of his eyes that meant tears were on the way and thought, God help me to get through this without bawling. Please.

  "I didn't spill it. I'd been telling myself for years it was the one thing I'd never tell anyone. But I think he was right, and if I start drinking again, I'll die. I don't want to do that. I've got a lot to live for these days. So . . ."

  The tears had come, the goddam tears, but he was in too deep to back out now. He wiped them away with the hand not fisted around the medallion.

  "You know what it says in the Promises? About how we'll learn not to regret the past, or wish to shut the door on it? Pardon me for saying so, but I think that's one item of bullshit in a program full of true things. I regret plenty, but it's time to open the door, little as I want to."

  They waited. Even the two ladies who had been doling out pizza slices on paper plates were now standing in the kitchen doorway and watching him.

  "Not too long before I quit drinking, I woke up next to some woman I picked up in a bar. We were in her apartment. The place was a dump, because she had almost nothing. I could relate to that because I had almost nothing, and both of us were probably in Broke City for the same reason. You all know what that reason is." He shrugged. "If you're one of us, the bottle takes your shit, that's all. First a little, then a lot, then everything.

  "This woman, her name was Deenie. I don't remember much else about her, but I remember that. I put on my clothes and left, but first I took her money. And it turned out she had at least one thing I didn't, after all, because while I was going through her wallet, I looked around and her son was standing there. Little kid still in diapers. This woman and I had bought some coke the night before, and it was still on the table. He saw it and reached for it. He thought it was candy."

  Dan wiped his eyes again.

  "I took it away and put it where he couldn't get it. That much I did. It wasn't enough, but that much I did. Then I put her money in my pocket and walked out of there. I'd do anything to take that back. But I can't."

  The women in the doorway had gone back to the kitchen. Some people were looking at their watches. A stomach grumbled. Looking at the assembled nine dozen alkies, Dan realized an astounding thing: what he'd done didn't revolt them. It didn't even surprise them. They had heard worse. Some had done worse.

  "Okay," he said. "That's it. Thanks for listening."

  Before the applause, one of the oldtimers in the back row shouted out the traditional question: "How'd you do it, Doc?"

  Dan smiled and gave the traditional answer. "One day at a time."

  2

  After the Our Father, and the pizza, and the chocolate cake with the big number XV on it, Dan helped Casey back to his Tundra. A sleety rain had begun to fall.

  "Spring in New Hampshire," Casey said sourly. "Ain't it wonderful."

  "Raineth drop and staineth slop," Dan said in a declamatory voice, "and how the wind doth ram! Skiddeth bus and sloppest us, damn you, sing goddam."

  Casey stared at him. "Did you just make that up?"

  "Nah. Ezra Pound. When are you going to quit dicking around and get that hip replaced?"

  Casey grinned. "Next month. I decided that if you can tell your biggest secret, I can get my hip replaced." He paused. "Not that your secret was all that fucking big, Danno."

  "So I discovered. I thought they'd run from me, screaming. Instead, they stood around eating pizza and talking about the weather."

  "If you'd told em you killed a blind gramma, they'd have stayed to eat the pizza and cake. Free is free." He opened the driver's door. "Boost me, Danno."

  Dan boosted him.

  Casey wriggled ponderously, getting comfortable, then keyed the engine and got the wipers to work on the sleet. "Everything's smaller when it's out," he said. "I hope you'll pass that on to your pigeons."

  "Yes, O Wise One."

  Casey looked at him sadly. "Go fuck yourself, sweetheart."

  "Actually," Danny said, "I think I'll go back in and help put away the chairs."

  And that was what he did.

  UNTIL YOU SLEEP

  1

  No balloons or magician at Abra Stone's birthday party this year. She was fifteen.

  There was neighborhood-rattling rock music slamming through the outdoor speakers Dave Stone--ably assisted by Billy Freeman--had set up. The adults had cake, ice cream, and coffee in the Stone kitchen. The kids took over the downstairs family room and the back lawn, and from the sound of them, they had a blast. They started to leave around five o'clock, but Emma Deane, Abra's closest friend, stayed for supper. Abra, resplendent in a red skirt and off-the-shoulder peasant blouse, bubbled with good cheer. She exclaimed over the charm bracelet Dan gave her, hugged him, kissed him on the cheek. He smelled perfume. That was new.

  When Abra left to accompany Emma back to her house, the two of them chattering their way happily down the walk, Lucy leaned toward Dan. Her mouth was pursed, there were new lines around her eyes, and her hair was showing the first touches of gray. Abra seemed to have put the True Knot behind her; Dan thought Lucy never would. "Will you talk to her? About the plates?"

  "I'm going outside to watch the sun go down over the river. Maybe you'll send her to visit with me a little when she gets back from the Deanes'."

  Lucy looked relieved, and Dan thought David did, as well. To them she would always be a mystery. Would it help to tell them she would always be one to him? Probably not.

  "Good luck, chief," Billy said.

  On the back stoop where Abra had once lain in a state that wasn't unconsciousness, John Dalton joined him. "I'd offer to give you moral support, but I think you have to do this alone."

  "Have you tried talking to her?"

  "Yes. At Lucy's request."

  "No good?"

  John shrugged. "She's pretty closed up on the subject."

  "I was, too," Dan said. "At her age."

  "But you never broke every plate in your mother's antique breakfront, did you?"

  "My mother didn't have a breakfront," Dan said.

  He walked down to the bottom of the Stones' sloping backyard and regarded the Saco, which had, courtesy of the declining sun, become a glowing scarlet snake. Soon the mountains would eat the last of the sunlight and the river would turn gray. Where there had once been a chainlink fence to block the potentially disastrous explorations of young children, there was now a line of decorative bushes. David had taken the fence down the previous October, saying Abra and her friends no longer needed its protection; they could all swim like fish.

  But of course there were other dangers.

  2

  The color on the water had faded to the faintest pink tinge--ashes of roses--when Abra joined him. He didn't have to look around to know she was there, or to know she had put on a sweater to cover her bare shoulders. The air cooled quickly on spring evenings in central New Hampshire even after the last threat of snow was gone.

  (I love my bracelet Dan)

  She had pretty much dropped the uncle part.

  (I'm glad) "They want you to talk to me about the plates," she said. The spoken words had none of the warmth that had come through in her thoughts, and the thoughts were gone. After the very pretty and sincere thank-you, she had closed her inner self off to him. She was good at that now, and getting better every day. "Don't they?"

  "Do you want to talk about them?"

  "I told her I was sorry. I told her I didn't mean to. I don't think she believed me."

>   (I do)

  "Because you know. They don't."

  Dan said nothing, and passed on only a single thought: (?)

  "They don't believe me about anything!" she burst out. "It's so unfair! I didn't know there was going to be booze at Jennifer's stupid party, and I didn't have any! Still, she grounds me for two fucking weeks!"

  (? ? ?)

  Nothing. The river was almost entirely gray now. He risked a look at her and saw she was studying her sneakers--red to match her skirt. Her cheeks now also matched her skirt.

  "All right," she said at last, and although she still didn't look at him, the corners of her lips turned up in a grudging little smile. "Can't fool you, can I? I had one swallow, just to see what it tasted like. What the big deal is. I guess she smelled it on my breath when I came home. And guess what? There is no big deal. It tasted horrible."

  Dan did not reply to this. If he told her he had found his own first taste horrible, that he had also believed there was no big deal, no precious secret, she would have dismissed it as windy adult bullshit. You could not moralize children out of growing up. Or teach them how to do it.

  "I really didn't mean to break the plates," she said in a small voice. "It was an accident, like I told her. I was just so mad."

  "You come by it naturally." What he was remembering was Abra standing over Rose the Hat as Rose cycled. Does it hurt? Abra had asked the dying thing that looked like a woman (except, that was, for the one terrible tooth). I hope it does. I hope it hurts a lot.

  "Are you going to lecture me?" And, with a lilt of contempt: "I know that's what she wants."

  "I'm out of lectures, but I could tell you a story my mother told me. It's about your great-grandfather on the Jack Torrance side. Do you want to hear it?"

  Abra shrugged. Get it over with, the shrug said.

  "Mark Torrance wasn't an orderly like me, but close. He was a male nurse. He walked with a cane toward the end of his life, because he was in a car accident that messed up his leg. And one night, at the dinner table, he used that cane on his wife. No reason; he just started in whaling. He broke her nose and opened her scalp. When she fell out of her chair onto the floor, he got up and really went to work on her. According to what my father told my mom, he would have beaten her to death if Brett and Mike--they were my uncles--hadn't pulled him away. When the doctor came, your great-grandfather was down on his knees with his own little medical kit, doing what he could. He said she fell downstairs. Great-Gram--the momo you never met, Abra--backed him up. So did the kids."