He and Scotty were sitting in the play rocketship when Scotty jerked his thumb at Robin and said: "You know that kid?"
"Yeah," Danny said.
Scott leaned forward. "His dad LOST HIS MARBLES last night. They took him away."
"Yeah? Just for losing some marbles?" Scotty looked disgusted. "He went crazy. You know." Scott crossed his eyes, flopped out his tongue, and twirled his index fingers in large elliptical orbits around his ears. "They took him t0 THE BUGHOUSE."
"Wow," Danny said. "When will they let him come back?"
"Never-never-never," Scotty said darkly.
In the course of that day and the next, Danny heard that a.) Mr. Stenger had tried to kill everybody in his family, including Robin, with his World War II souvenir pistol; b.) Mr. Stenger ripped the house to pieces while he was STINKO; c.) Mr. Stenger had been discovered eating a bowl of dead bugs and grass like they were cereal and milk and crying while he did it; d.) Mr. Stenger had tried to strangle his wife with a stocking when the Red Sox lost a big ball game.
Finally, too troubled to keep it to himself, he had asked Daddy about Mr.
Stenger. His daddy had taken him on his lap and had explained that Mr. Stenger had been under a great deal of strain, some of it about his family and some about his job and some of it about things that nobody but doctors could understand. He had been having crying fits, and three nights ago he had gotten crying and couldn't stop it and had broken a lot of things in the Stenger home.
It wasn't LOSING YOUR MARBLES, Daddy said, it was HAVING A BREAKDOWN, and Mr.
Stenger wasn't in a BUGHOUSE but in a SANNY-TARIUM. But despite Daddy's careful explanations, Danny was scared. There didn't seem to be any difference at all between LOSING YOUR MARBLES and HAVING A BREAKDOWN, and whether you called it a BUGHOUSE or a SANNYTARIUM, there were still bars on the windows and they wouldn't let you out if you wanted to go. And his father, quite innocently, had confirmed another of Scotty's phrases unchanged, one that filled Danny with a vague and unformed dread. In the place where Mr. Stenger now lived, there were THE MEN IN THE WHITE COATS. They came to get you in a truck with no windows, a truck that was gravestone gray. It rolled up to the curb in front of your house and THE MEN IN THE WHITE COATS got out and took you away from your family and made you live in a room with soft walls. And if you wanted to write home, you had to do it with Crayolas.
"When will they let him come back?" Danny asked his father.
"Just as soon as he's better, doc."
"But when will that be?" Danny had persisted.
"Dan," Jack said, "NO ONE KNOWS." And that was the worst of all. It was another way of saying never-never-never.
A month later, Robin's mother took him out of nursery school and they moved away from Stovington without Mr. Stenger.
That had been over a year ago, after Daddy stopped taking the Bad Stuff but before he had lost his job. Danny still thought about it often. Sometimes when he fell down or bumped his head or had a bellyache, he would begin to cry and the memory would flash over him, accompanied by the fear that he would not be able to stop crying, that he would just go on and on, weeping and wailing, until his daddy went to the phone, dialed it, and said: "Hello? This is Jack Torrance at 149 Mapleline Way. My son here can't stop crying. Please send THE MEN IN THE WHITE COATS t0 take him to the SANNY-TARIUM. That's right, he's LOST HIS MARBLES. Thank you." And the gray truck with no windows would come rolling up to his door, they would load him in, still weeping hysterically, and take him away.
When would he see his mommy and daddy again? NO ONE KNOWS.
It was this fear that had kept him silent. A year older, he was quite sure that his daddy and mommy wouldn't let him be taken away for thinking a fire hose was a snake, his rational mind was sure of that, but still, when he thought of telling them, that old memory rose up like a stone filling his mouth and blocking words. It wasn't like Tony; Tony had always seemed perfectly natural (until the bad dreams, of course), and his parents had also seemed to accept Tony as a more or less natural phenomenon. Things like Tony came from being BRIGHT, which they both assumed he was (the same way they assumed they were BRIGHT), but a fire hose that turned into a snake, or seeing blood and brains on the wall of the Presidential Sweet when no one else could, those things would not be natural. They had already taken him to see a regular doctor. Was it not reasonable to assume that THE MEN IN THE WHITE COATS might come next?
Still he might have told them except he was sure, sooner or later, that they would want to take him away from the hotel. And he wanted desperately to get away from the Overlook. But he also knew that this was his daddy's last chance, that he was here at the Overlook to do more than take care of the place. He was here to work on his papers. To get over losing his job. To love Mommy/Wendy. And until very recently, it had seemed that all those things were happening. It was only lately that Daddy had begun to have trouble. Since he found those papers.
(This inhuman place makes human monsters.) What did that mean? He had prayed to God, but God hadn't told him. And what would Daddy do if he stopped working here? He had tried to find out from Daddy's mind, and had become more and more convinced that Daddy didn't know. The strongest proof had come earlier this evening when Uncle Al had called his daddy up on the phone and said mean things and Daddy didn't dare say anything back because Uncle Al could fire him from this job just the way that Mr. Crommert, the Stovington headmaster, and the Board of Directors had fired him from his schoolteaching job. And Daddy was scared to death of that, for him and Mommy as well as himself.
So he didn't dare say anything. He could only watch helplessly and hope that there really weren't any Indians at all, or if there were that they would be content to wait for bigger game and let their little three-wagon train pass unmolested.
But he couldn't believe it, no matter how hard he tried.
Things were worse at the Overlook now.
The snow was coming, and when it did, any poor options he had would be abrogated. And after the snow, what? What then, when they were shut in and at the mercy of whatever might have only been toying with them before?
(Come out here and take your medicine!) What then? REDRUM.
He shivered in his bed and turned over again. He could read more now. Tomorrow maybe he would try to call Tony, he would try to make Tony show him exactly what REDRUM was and if there was any way he could prevent it. He Would risk the nightmares. He had to know.
Danny was still awake long after his parents' false sleep had become the real thing. He rolled in his bed, twisting the sheets, grappling with a problem years too big for him, awake in the night like a single sentinel on picket. And sometime after midnight, he slept too and then only the wind was awake, prying at the hotel and hooting in its gables under the bright gimlet gaze of the stars.
<< 22 >>
IN THE TRUCK
I see a bad moon a-rising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin' I see bad times today.
Don't go 'round tonight, It's bound to take your life, There's a bad moon on the rise.*
Someone had added a very old Buick car radio under the hotel truck's dashboard, and now, tinny and choked with static, the distinctive sound of John Fogerty's Creedence Clearwater Revival band came out of the speaker. Wendy and Danny were on their way down to Sidewinder. The day was clear and bright. Danny was turning Jack's orange library card over and over in his hands and seemed cheerful enough, but Wendy thought he looked drawn and tired, as if be hadn't been sleeping enough and was going on nervous energy alone.
The song ended and the disc jockey came on. "Yeah, that's Creedence. And speakin of bad moon, it looks like it may be risin over the KMTX listening area before long, hard as it is to believe with the beautiful, springlike weather we've enjoyed for the last couple-three days. The KMTX Fearless Forecaster says high pressure will give way by one o'clock this afternoon to a widespread low- pressure area which is just gonna grind to a stop in our KMTX area, up where the air is rare. Temperatures will fall rapidly, and precipitation should start around dusk. Elevations under seven thousand feet, including the metro-Denver area, can expect a mixture of sleet and snow, perhaps freezing on some roads, and nothin but snow up here, cuz. We're lookin at one to three inches below seven thousand and possible accumulations of six to ten inches in Central Colorado and on the Slope. The Highway Advisory Board says that if you're plannin to tour the mountains in your car this afternoon or tonight, you should remember that the chain law will be in effect. And don't go nowhere unless you have to. Remember," the announcer added jocularly, "that's how the Donners got into trouble. They just weren't as close to the nearest Seven-Eleven as they thought." A Clairol commercial came on, and Wendy reached down and snapped the radio off. "You mind?"
"Huh-uh, that's okay." He glanced out at the sky, which was bright blue.
"Guess Daddy picked just the right day to trim those hedge animals, didn't he?"
"I guess he did," Wendy said.
"Sure doesn't look much like snow, though," Danny added hopefully.
"Getting cold feet?" Wendy asked. She was still thinking about that crack the disc jockey had made about the Donner Party.
"Nah, I guess not." Well, she thought, this is the time. If you're going to bring it up, do it now or forever hold your peace.
"Danny," she said, making her voice as casual as possible, "would you be happier if we went away from the Overlook? If we didn't stay the winter?" Danny looked down at his hands. "I guess so," he said. "Yeah. But it's Daddy's job."
"Sometimes," she said carefully, "I get the idea that Daddy might be happier away from the Overlook, too." They passed a sign which read SIDEWINDER 18 mi.
and then she took the truck cautiously around a hairpin and shifted up into second. She took no chances on these downgrades; they scared her silly.
"Do you really think so?" Danny asked. He looked at her with interest for a moment and then shook his head. "No, I don't think so."
"Why not?"
"Because he's worried about us," Danny said, choosing his words carefully. It was hard to explain, he understood so little of it himself. He found himself harking back to an incident he had told Mr. Hallorann about, the big kid looking at department store TV sets and wanting to steal one. That had been distressing, but at least it had been clear what was going on, even to Danny, then little more than an infant. But grownups were always in a turmoil, every possible action muddied over by thoughts of the consequences, by self-doubt, by seIfimage, by feelings of love and responsibility. Every possible choice seemed to have drawbacks, and sometimes he didn't understand why the drawbacks were drawbacks. It was very hard.
"He thinks . . ." Danny began again, and then looked at his mother quickly.
She was watching the road, not looking at him, and he felt he could go on.
"He thinks maybe we'll be lonely. And then he thinks that he likes it here and it's a good place for us. He loves us and doesn't want us to be lonely . . . or sad . . . but he thinks even if we are, it might be okay in the LONGRUN. Do you know LONGRUN?" She nodded. "Yes, dear. I do."
"He's worried that if we left he couldn't get another job. That we'd have to beg, or something."
"Is that all?"
"No, but the rest is all mixed up. Because he's different now."
"Yes," she said, almost sighing. The grade eased a little and she shifted cautiously back to third gear.
"I'm not making this up, Mommy. Honest to God."
"I know that," she said, and smiled. "Did Tony tell you?"
"No," he said. "I just know. That doctor didn't believe in Tony, did he?"
"Never mind that doctor," she said. "I believe in Tony. I don't know what he is or who he is, if he's a part of you that's special or if he comes from . . .
somewhere outside, but I do believe in him, Danny. And if you . . . he . . .
think we should go, we will. The two of us will go and be together with Daddy again in the spring." He looked at her with sharp hope. "Where? A motel?"
"Hon, we couldn't afford a motel. It would have to be at my mother's." The hope in Danny's face died out. "I know—" he said, and stopped.
"What?"
"Nothing," he muttered.
She shifted back to second as the grade steepened again. "No, doc, please don't say that. This talk is something we should have had weeks ago, I think. So please. What is it you know? I won't be mad. I can't be mad, because this is too important. Talk straight to me."
"I know how you feel about her," Danny said, and sighed.
"How do I feel?"
"Bad," Danny said, and then rhyming, singsong, frightening her: "Bad. Sad.
Mad. It's like she wasn't your mommy at all. Like she wanted to eat you." He looked at her, frightened. "And I don't like it there. She's always thinking about how she would be better for me than you. And how she could get me away from you. Mommy, I don't want to go there. I'd rather be at the Overlook than there." Wendy was shaken. Was it that bad between her and hermother? God, what hell for the boy if it was and he could really read their thoughts for each other.
She suddenly felt more naked than naked, as if she had been caught in an obscene act.
"All right," she said. "All right, Danny."
"You're mad at me," he said in a small, near-to-tears voice.
"No, I'm not. Really I'm not. I'm just sort of shook up." They were passing a SIDEWINDER 15 mi. sign, and Wendy relaxed a little. From here on in the road was better.
"I want to ask you one more question, Danny. I want you to answer it as truthfully as you can. Will you do that?"
