Doctor Sleep (7 page)

“Mama,” the kid said.

Which in a way made perfect sense—Dan, too, had come from his mama—but it didn't help. A terrible deduction was trying to form itself in his thumping head, but he didn't want anything to do with it.

He saw you take the money
.

Maybe so, but that wasn't the deduction. If the kid saw him take it, so what? He wasn't even two. Kids that young accepted everything adults did. If he saw his mama walking on the ceiling with fire shooting from her fingertips, he'd accept that.

“What's your name, hero?” His voice was throbbing in time with his heart, which still hadn't settled down.

“Mama.”

Really? The other kids are gonna have fun with that when you get to high school
.

“Did you come from next door? Or down the hall?”

Please say yes. Because here's the deduction: if this kid is Deenie's, then she went out barhopping and left him locked in this shitty apartment. Alone.

“Mama!”

Then the kid spied the coke on the coffee table and trotted toward it with the sodden crotch of his diaper swinging.

“Canny!”

“No, that's not candy,” Dan said, although of course it was: nose candy.

Paying no attention, the kid reached for the white powder with one hand. As he did, Dan saw bruises on his upper arm. The kind left by a squeezing hand.

He grabbed the kid around the waist and between the legs. As he swung him up and away from the table (the sodden diaper squeezing pee through his fingers to patter on the floor), Dan's head filled with
an image that was brief but excruciatingly clear: the Deenie look-alike in the wallet photo, picking the kid up and shaking him. Leaving the marks of his fingers.

(
Hey Tommy what part of
get the fuck out
don't you understand?
)

(
Randy don't he's just a baby
)

Then it was gone. But that second voice, weak and remonstrating, had been Deenie's, and he understood that Randy was her older brother. It made sense. Not every abuser was the boyfriend. Sometimes it was the brother. Sometimes the uncle. Sometimes

(
come out you worthless pup come out and take your medicine
)

it was even dear old Dad.

He carried the baby—Tommy, his name was Tommy—into the bedroom. The kid saw his mother and immediately began wriggling. “Mama! Mama!
Ma
ma!”

When Dan set him down, Tommy trotted to the mattress and crawled up beside her. Although sleeping, Deenie put her arm around him and hugged him to her. The Braves shirt pulled up, and Dan saw more bruises on the kid's legs.

The brother's name is Randy. I could find him
.

This thought was as cold and clear as lake ice in January. If he handled the picture from the wallet and concentrated, ignoring the pounding of his head, he probably
could
find the big brother. He had done such things before.

I could leave a few bruises of my own. Tell him the next time I'll kill him
.

Only there wasn't going to be a next time. Wilmington was done. He was never going to see Deenie or this desperate little apartment again. He was never going to think of last night or this morning again.

This time it was Dick Hallorann's voice.
No, honey
.
Maybe you can put the things from the Overlook away in lockboxes, but not memories. Never those. They're the
real
ghosts
.

He stood in the doorway, looking at Deenie and her bruised boy. The kid had gone back to sleep, and in the morning sun, the two of them looked almost angelic.

She's no angel. Maybe she didn't leave the bruises, but she went out
partying and left him alone. If you hadn't been there when he woke up and walked into the living room . . .

Canny,
the kid had said, reaching for the blow. Not good. Something needed to be done.

Maybe, but not by me. I'd look good showing up at DHS to complain about child neglect with this face, wouldn't I? Reeking of booze and puke. Just an upstanding citizen doing his civic duty
.

You can put her money back,
Wendy said.
You can do that much
.

He almost did. Really. He took it out of his pocket and had it right there in his hand. He even strolled it over to her purse, and the walk must have done him good, because he had an idea.

Take the coke, if you've got to take something. You can sell what's left for a hundred bucks. Maybe even two hundred, if it hasn't been stomped on too much.

Only, if his potential buyer turned out to be a narc—it would be just his luck—he'd wind up in jail. Where he might also find himself nailed for whatever stupid shit had gone down in the Milky Way. The cash was way safer. Seventy bucks in all.

I'll split it,
he decided.
Forty for her and thirty for me
.

Only, thirty wouldn't do him much good. And there were the food stamps—a wad big enough to choke a horse. She could feed the kid with those.

He picked up the coke and the dusty
People
magazine and put them on the kitchenette counter, safely out of the kid's reach. There was a scrubbie in the sink, and he used it on the coffee table, cleaning up the leftover shake. Telling himself that if she came stumbling out while he was doing it, he would give her back her goddam money. Telling himself that if she went on snoozing, she deserved whatever she got.

Deenie didn't come out. She went on snoozing.

Dan finished cleaning up, tossed the scrubbie back in the sink, and thought briefly about leaving a note. But what would it say?
Take better care of your kid, and by the way, I took your cash?

Okay, no note.

He left with the money in his left front pocket, being careful
not to slam the door on his way out. He told himself he was being considerate.

Around noon—his hangover headache a thing of the past thanks to Deenie's Fioricet and a Darvon chaser—he approached an establishment called Golden's Discount Liquors & Import Beers. This was in the old part of town, where the establishments were brick, the sidewalks were largely empty, and the pawnshops (each displaying an admirable selection of straight razors) were many. His intention was to buy a very large bottle of very cheap whiskey, but what he saw out front changed his mind. It was a shopping cart loaded with a bum's crazy assortment of possessions. The bum in question was inside, haranguing the clerk. There was a blanket, rolled up and tied with twine, on top of the cart. Dan could see a couple of stains, but on the whole it didn't look bad. He took it and walked briskly away with it under his arm. After stealing seventy dollars from a single mother with a substance abuse problem, taking a bum's magic carpet seemed like small shit indeed. Which might have been why he felt smaller than ever.

I am the Incredible Shrinking Man,
he thought, hurrying around the corner with his new prize.
Steal a few more things and I will vanish entirely from sight.

He was listening for the outraged caws of the bum—the crazier they were, the louder they cawed—but there was nothing. One more corner and he could congratulate himself on a clean getaway.

Dan turned it.

That evening found him sitting at the mouth of a large stormdrain on the slope beneath the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge. He had a
room, but there was the small matter of stacked-up back rent, which he had absolutely promised to pay as of 5 p.m. yesterday. Nor was that all. If he returned to his room, he might be invited to visit a certain fortresslike municipal building on Bess Street, to answer questions about a certain bar altercation. On the whole, it seemed safer to stay away.

There was a downtown shelter called Hope House (which the winos of course called Hopeless House), but Dan had no intention of going there. You could sleep free, but if you had a bottle they'd take it away. Wilmington was full of by-the-night flops and cheap motels where nobody gave a shit what you drank, snorted, or injected, but why would you waste good drinking money on a bed and a roof when the weather was warm and dry? He could worry about beds and roofs when he headed north. Not to mention getting his few possessions out of the room on Burney Street without his landlady's notice.

The moon was rising over the river. The blanket was spread out behind him. Soon he would lie down on it, pull it around him in a cocoon, and sleep. He was just high enough to be happy. The takeoff and the climb-out had been rough, but now all that low-altitude turbulence was behind him. He supposed he wasn't leading what straight America would call an exemplary life, but for the time being, all was fine. He had a bottle of Old Sun (purchased at a liquor store a prudent distance from Golden's Discount) and half a hero sandwich for breakfast tomorrow. The future was cloudy, but tonight the moon was bright. All was as it should be.

(
Canny
)

Suddenly the kid was with him. Tommy. Right here with him. Reaching for the blow. Bruises on his arm. Blue eyes.

(
Canny
)

He saw this with an excruciating clarity that had nothing to do with the shining. And more. Deenie lying on her back, snoring. The red imitation leather wallet. The wad of food stamps with U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE printed on them. The money. The seventy dollars. Which he had taken.

Think about the moon. Think about how serene it looks rising over the water
.

For awhile he did, but then he saw Deenie on her back, the red imitation leather wallet, the wad of food stamps, the pitiful crumple of cash (much of it now gone). Most clearly of all he saw the kid reaching for the blow with a hand that looked like a starfish. Blue eyes. Bruised arm.

Canny,
he said.

Mama,
he said.

Dan had learned the trick of measuring out his drinks; that way the booze lasted longer, the high was mellower, and the next day's headache lighter and more manageable. Sometimes, though, the measuring thing went wrong. Shit happened. Like at the Milky Way. That had been more or less an accident, but tonight, finishing the bottle in four long swallows, was on purpose. Your mind was a blackboard. Booze was the eraser.

He lay down and pulled the stolen blanket around him. He waited for unconsciousness, and it came, but Tommy came first. Atlanta Braves shirt. Sagging diaper. Blue eyes, bruised arm, starfish hand.

Canny. Mama
.

I will never speak of this,
he told himself.
Not to anyone
.

As the moon rose over Wilmington, North Carolina, Dan Torrance lapsed into unconsciousness. There were dreams of the Overlook, but he would not remember them upon waking. What he remembered upon waking were the blue eyes, the bruised arm, the reaching hand.

He managed to get his possessions and went north, first to upstate New York, then to Massachusetts. Two years passed. Sometimes he helped people, mostly old people. He had a way of doing that. On too many drunk nights, the kid would be the last thing he thought of and the first thing that came to mind on the hungover mornings-after. It was the kid he always thought of when he told himself he was going to quit the drinking. Maybe next week; next month for sure. The kid. The eyes. The arm. The reaching starfish hand.

Canny.

Mama.

After Wilmington, the daily drinking stopped.

He'd go a week, sometimes two, without anything stronger than diet soda. He'd wake up without a hangover, which was good. He'd wake up thirsty and miserable—
wanting
—which wasn't. Then there would come a night. Or a weekend. Sometimes it was a Budweiser ad on TV that set him off—fresh-faced young people with nary a beergut among them, having cold ones after a vigorous volleyball game. Sometimes it was seeing a couple of nice-looking women having after-work drinks outside some pleasant little café, the kind of place with a French name and lots of hanging plants. The drinks were almost always the kind that came with little umbrellas. Sometimes it was a song on the radio. Once it was Styx, singing “Mr. Roboto.” When he was dry, he was completely dry. When he drank, he got drunk. If he woke up next to a woman, he thought of Deenie and the kid in the Braves t-shirt. He thought of the seventy dollars. He even thought of the stolen blanket, which he had left in the stormdrain. Maybe it was still there. If so, it would be moldy now.

Sometimes he got drunk and missed work. They'd keep him on for awhile—he was good at what he did—but then would come a day. When it did, he would say thank you very much and board a bus. Wilmington became Albany and Albany became Utica. Utica became New Paltz. New Paltz gave way to Sturbridge, where he
got drunk at an outdoor folk concert and woke up the next day in jail with a broken wrist. Next up was Weston, after that came a nursing home on Martha's Vineyard, and boy,
that
gig didn't last long. On his third day the head nurse smelled booze on his breath and it was seeya, wouldn't want to beya. Once he crossed the path of the True Knot without realizing it. Not in the top part of his mind, anyway, although lower down—in the part that
shone
—there was something. A smell, fading and unpleasant, like the smell of burned rubber on a stretch of turnpike where there has been a bad accident not long before.

From Martha's Vineyard he took MassLines to Newburyport. There he found work in a don't-give-much-of-a-shit veterans' home, the kind of place where old soldiers were sometimes left in wheelchairs outside empty consulting rooms until their peebags overflowed onto the floor. A lousy place for patients, a better one for frequent fuckups like himself, although Dan and a few others did as well by the old soldiers as they could. He even helped a couple get over when their time came. That job lasted awhile, long enough for the Saxophone President to turn the White House keys over to the Cowboy President.