"Well if you don't like it, doc, you don't have to play. All right?"
"Sure."
"Do you like the animals?" Wendy asked. "That's called a topiary." Beyond the path leading to roque there were hedges clipped into the shapes of various animals. Danny, whose eyes were sharp, made out a rabbit, a dog, a horse, a cow, and a trio of bigger ones that looked like frolicking lions.
"Those animals were what made Uncle Al think of me for the job," Jack told him. "He knew that when I was in college I used to work for a landscaping company. That's a business that fixes people's lawns and bushes and hedges. I used to trim a lady's topiary." Wendy put a hand over her mouth and snickered. Looking at her, Jack said,
"Yes, I used to trim her topiary at least once a week"
"Get away, fly," Wendy said, and snickered again.
"Did she have nice hedges, Dad?" Danny asked, and at this they both stifled great bursts of laughter. Wendy laughed so hard that tears streamed down her cheeks and she had to get a Kleenex out of her handbag.
"They weren't animals, Danny," Jack said when he had control of himself. "They were playing cards. Spades and hearts and clubs and diamonds. But the hedges grow, you see—" (They creep, Watson had said . . . no, not the hedges, the boiler. You have to watch it all the time or you and your f ambly will end up on the f uckin moon.) They looked at him, puzzled. The smile had faded off his face.
"Dad?" Danny asked.
He blinked at them, as if coming back from far away. "They grow, Danny, and lose their shape. So I'll have to give them a haircut once or twice a week until it gets so cold they stop growing for the year."
"And a playground, too," Wendy said. "My lucky boy." The playground was beyond the topiary. Two slides, a big swing set with half a dozen swings set at varying heights, a jungle gym, a tunnel made of cement rings, a sandbox, and a playhouse that was an exact replica of the Overlook itself.
"Do you like it, Danny?" Wendy asked.
"I sure do," he said, hoping he sounded more enthused than he felt. "It's neat." Beyond the playground there was an inconspicuous chain link security fence, beyond that the wide, macadamized drive that led up to the hotel, and beyond that the valley itself, dropping away into the bright blue haze of afternoon.
Danny didn't know the word isolation, but if someone had explained it to him he would have seized on it. Far below, lying in the sun like a long black snake that had decided to snooze for a while, was the road that led back through Sidewinder Pass and eventually to Boulder. The road that would be closed all winter long. He felt a little suffocated at the thought, and almost jumped when Daddy dropped his hand on his shoulder.
"I'll get you that drink as soon as I can, doc. They're a little busy right now."
"Sure, Dad." Mrs. Brant came out of the inner office looking vindicated. A few moments later two bellboys, struggling with eight suitcases between them, followed her as best they could as she strode triumphantly out the door. Danny watched through the window as a man in a gray uniform and a hat like a captain in the Army brought her long silver car around to the door and got out. He tipped his cap to her and ran around to open the trunk.
And in one of those flashes that sometimes came, he got a complete thought from her, one that floated above the confused, low-pitched babble of emotions and colors that he usually got in crowded places.
(i' d like to get into his pants) Danny's brow wrinkled as he watched the bellboys put her cases into the trunk.
She was looking rather sharply at the man in the gray uniform, who was supervising the loading. Why would she want to get that man's pants? Was she cold, even with that long fur coat on? And if she was that cold, why hadn't she just put on some pants of her own? His mommy wore pants just about all winter.
The man in the gray uniform closed the trunk and walked back to help her into the car. Danny watched closely to see if she would say anything about his pants, but she only smiled and gave him a dollar bill-a tip. A moment later she was guiding the big silver car down the driveway.
He thought about asking his mother why Mrs. Brant might want the car-man's pants, and decided against it. Sometimes questions could get you in a whole lot of trouble. It had happened to him before.
So instead he squeezed in between them on the small sofa they were sharing and watched all the people check out at the desk. He was glad his mommy and daddy were happy and loving each other, but he couldn't help being a little worried.
He couldn't help it.
<< 10 >>
HALLORANN
The cook didn't conform to Wendy's image of the typical resort hotel kitchen personage at all. To begin with, such a personage was called a chef, nothing so mundane as a cook—cooking was what she did in her apartment kitchen when she threw all the leftovers into a greased Pyrex casserole dish and added noodles.
Further, the culinary wizard of such a place as the Overlook, which advertised in the resort section of the New York Sunday Times, should be small, rotund, and pasty-faced (rather like the Pillsbury Dough-Boy); he should have a thin pencil- line mustache like a forties musical comedy star, dark eyes, a French accent, and a detestable personality.
Hallorann had the dark eyes and that was all. He was a tall black man with a modest afro that was beginning to powder white. He had a soft southern accent and he laughed a lot, disclosing teeth too white and too even to be anything but 1950-vintage Sears and Roebuck dentures. Her own father had had a pair, which he called Roebuckers, and from time to time he would push them out at her comically at the supper table . . . always, Wendy remembered now, when her mother was out in the kitchen getting something else or on the telephone.
Danny had stared up at this black giant in blue serge, and then had smiled when Hallorann picked him up easily, set him in the crook of his elbow, and said: "You ain't gonna stay up here all winter."
"Yes I am," Danny said with a shy grin.
"No, you're gonna come down to St. Pete's with me and learn to cook and go out on the beach every damn evenin watchin for crabs. Right?" Danny giggled delightedly and shook his head no. Hallorann set him down.
"If you're gonna change your mind," Hallorann said, bending over him gravely,
"you better do it quick. Thirty minutes from now and I'm in my car. Two and a half hours after that, I'm sitting at Gate 32, Concourse B, Stapleton International Airport, in the mile-high city of Denver, Colorado. Three hours after that, I'm rentin a car at the Miama Airport and on my way to sunny St.
Pete's, waiting to get iota my swimtrunks and just laaafin up my sleeve at anybody stuck and caught in the snow. Can you dig it, my boy?"
"Yes, sir," Danny said, smiling.
Hallorann turned to Jack and Wendy. "Looks like a fine boy there."
"We think he'll do," Jack said, and offered his hand. Hallorann took it. "I'm Jack Torrance. My wife Winnifred. Danny you've met."
"And a pleasure it was. Ma'am, are you a Winnie or a Freddie?"
"I'm a Wendy," she said, smiling.
"Okay. That's better than the other two, I think. Right this way. Mr. Unman wants you to have the tour, the tour you'll get." He shook his bead and said under his breath: "And won't I be glad to see the last of him." Hallorann commenced to tour them around the most immense kitchen Wendy had ever seen in her life. It was sparkling clean. Every surface was coaxed to a high gloss. It was more than just big; it was intimidating. She walked at Hallorann's side while Jack, wholly out of his element, hung back a little with Danny. A long wallboard hung with cutting instruments which went all the way from paring knives to twohanded cleavers hung beside a four-basin sink. There was a breadboard as big as their Boulder apartment's kitchen table. An amazing array of stainless-steel pots and pans hung from floor to ceiling, covering one whole wall.
"I think I'll have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs every time I come in," she said.
"Don't let it get you down," Hallorann said. "It's big, but it's still only a kitchen. Most of this stuff you'll never even have to touch. Keep it clean, that's all I ask. Here's the stove I'd be using, if I was you. There are three of them in all, but this is the smallest.
Smallest, she thought dismally, looking at it There were twelve burners, two regular ovens and a Dutch oven, a heated well on top in which you could simmer sauces or bake beans, a broiler, and a warmer—plus a million dials and temperature gauges.
"All gas," Hallorann said. "You've cooked with gas before, Wendy?"
"Yes..:'
"I love gas," he said, and turned on one of the burners. Blue flame popped into life and he adjusted it down to a faint glow with a delicate touch. "I like to be able to see the flame you're cookin with. You see where all the surface burner switches are?"
"Yes."
"And the oven dials are all marked. Myself, I favor the middle one because it seems to heat the most even, but you use whichever one you like—or all three, for that matter."
"A TV dinner in each one," Wendy said, and laughed weakly.
Hallorann roared. "Go right ahead, if you like. I left a list of everything edible over by the sink. You see it?"
"Here it is, Mommyl" Danny brought over two sheets of paper, written closely on both sides.
"Good boy," Hallorann said, taking it from him and ruffling his hair. "You sure you don't want to come to Florida with me, my boy? Learn to cook the sweetest shrimp creole this side of paradise?" Danny put his hands over his mouth and giggled and retreated to his father's side.
"You three folks could eat up here for a year, I guess," Hallorann said. "We got a cold-pantry, a walk-in freezer, all sorts of vegetable bins, and two refrigerators. Come on and let me show you." For the next ten minutes Hallorann opened bins and doors, disclosing food in such amounts as Wendy had never seen before. The food supplies amazed her but did not reassure her as much as she might have thought: the Donner Party kept recurring to her, not with thoughts of cannibalism (with all this food it would indeed be a long time before they were reduced to such poor rations as each other), but with the reinforced idea that this was indeed a serious business: when snow fell, getting out of here would not be a matter of an hour's drive to Sidewinder but a major operation. They would sit up here in this deserted grand hotel, eating the food that had been left them like creatures in a fairy tale and listening to the bitter wind around their snowbound eaves. In Vermont, when Danny had broken his arm (when Jack broke Danny's arm) she had called the emergency Medix squad, dialing the number from the little card attached to the phone. They had been at the house only ten minutes later.
There were other numbers written on that little card. You could have a police car in five minutes and a fire truck in even less time than that, because the fire station was only three blocks away and one block over. There was a man to call if the lights went out, a man to call if the shower stopped up, a man to call if the TV went on the fritz. But what would happen up here if Danny had one of his fainting spells and swallowed his tongue?
(oh God what a thought!) What if the place caught on fire? If Jack fell down the elevator shaft and fractured his skull? What if—?
(what if we have a wonderful time now stop ft, Winni fred!) Hallorann showed them into the walk-in freezer first, where their breath puffed out like comic strip balloons. In the freezer it was as if winter had already come.
Hamburger in big plastic bags, ten pounds in each bag, a dozen bags. Forty whole chickens hanging from a row of hooks in the wood-planked walls. Canned hams stacked up like poker chips, a dozen of them. Below the chickens, ten roasts of beef, ten roasts of pork, and a huge leg of lamb.
"You like lamb, doe?" Hallorann asked, grinning.
"I love it," Danny said immediately. He had never had it.
"I knew you did. There's nothin like two good slices of lamb on a cold night, with some mint jelly on the side. You got the mint jelly here, too. Lamb eases the belly. It's a noncontentious sort of meat." From behind them Jack said curiously: "How did you know we called him doe?" Hallorann turned around. "Pardon?"
"Danny: We call him doe sometimes. Like in the Bugs Bunny cartoons."
"Looks sort of like a doe, doesn't be?" He wrinkled his nose at Danny, smacked his lips, and said, "Ehhhh, what's up, doe?" Danny giggled and then Hallorann said something (Sure you don't want to go to Florida, doe?) to him, very clearly. He heard every word. He looked at Hallorann, startled and a little scared. Hallorann winked solemnly and turned back to the food.
Wendy looked from the cook's broad, serge-clad back to her son. She had the oddest feeling that something had passed between them, something she could not quite follow.
"You got twelve packages of sausage, twelve packages of bacon," Hallorann said. "So much for the pig. In this drawer, twenty pounds of butter."
"Real butter?" Jack asked.
"The A-number-one."
"I don't think I've had real butter since I was a kid back in Berlin, New Hampshire."
"Well, you'll eat it up here until oleo seems a treat," Hallorann said, and laughed. "Over in this bin you got your bread—thirty loaves of white, twenty of dark. We try to keep racial balance at the Overlook, don't you know. Now I know fifty loaves won't take you through, but there's plenty of makings and fresh is better than frozen any day of the week.
"Down here you got your fish. Brain food, right, doe?"
"Is it, Mom?"
"If Mr. Hallorann says so, honey." She smiled.
Danny wrinkled his nose. "I don't like fish."
"You're dead wrong," Hallorann said. "You just never had any fish that liked you. This fish here will like you fine. Five pounds of rainbow trout, ten pounds of turbot, fifteen cans of tuna fish—"
