by Stephen King
For quite awhile everything that happens at her little brother's birthday party is perfectly okay. Marvin Gaye is on the record-player, true, but it is not the bad song, the dangerous song. "I wouldn't be doggone," Marvin sings, mock-threatening, "I'd be long gone ... bay-bee." Actually sort of a cute song, and the truth is that the day has been a lot better than okay, at least so far; it has been, in the words of Jessie's great-aunt Katherine, "finer than fiddle-music." Even her Dad thinks so, although he wasn't very keen on coming back to Falmouth for Will's birthday when the idea was first suggested. Jessie has heard him say I guess it was a pretty good idea, after all to her Mom, and that makes her feel good, because it was she--Jessie Mahout, daughter of Tom and Sally, sister of Will and Maddy, wife of nobody--who put the idea over. She's the reason they're here instead of inland, at Sunset Trails.
Sunset Trails is the family camp (although after three generations of haphazard family expansion, it is really big enough to be called a compound) on the north end of Dark Score Lake. This year they have broken their customary nine weeks of seclusion there because Will wants--just once, he has told his mother and father, speaking in the tones of a nobly suffering old grandee who knows he cannot cheat the reaper much longer--to have a birthday party with his rest-of-the-year friends as well as his family.
Tom Mahout vetoes the idea at first. He is a stock broker who divides his time between Portland and Boston, and for years he has told his family not to believe all that propaganda about how guys who go to work wearing ties and shirts with white collars spend their days goofing off--either hanging around the water-cooler or dictating lunch invitations to pretty blondes from the steno pool. "No hardscrabble spud-farmer in Aroostook County works any harder than I do," he frequently tells them. "Keeping up with the market isn't easy, and it isn't particularly glamorous, either, no matter what you may have heard to the contrary. " The truth is none of them have heard anything to the contrary, all of them (his wife included, most likely, although Sally would never say so) think his job sounds duller than donkeyshit, and only Maddy has the vaguest idea of what it is he does.
Tom insists that he needs that time on the lake to recover from the stresses of his job, and that his son will have plenty of birthdays with his friends later on. Will is turning nine, after all, not ninety. "Plus," Tom adds, "birthday parties with your pals really aren't much fun until you're old enough to have a keg or two."
So Will's request to have his birthday at the family's year-round home on the coast would probably have been denied if not for Jessie's sudden, surprising support of the plan (and to Will it's plenty surprising; Jessie is three years older and lots of times he's not sure she remembers she even has a brother). Following her initial soft-voiced suggestion that maybe it would be fun to come home--just for two or three days, of course--and have a lawn-party, with croquet and badminton and a barbecue and Japanese lanterns that would come on at dusk, Tom begins to warm to the idea. He is the sort of man who thinks of himself as a "strong-willed son of a bitch" and is often thought of as a "stubborn old goat" by others; whichever way you saw it, he has always been a tough man to move once he has set his feet ... and his jaw.
When it comes to moving him--to changing his mind--his younger daughter has more luck than the rest of them put together. Jessie often finds a way into her father's mind by means of some loophole or secret passage denied to the rest of the family. Sally believes
--with some justification--that their middle child has always been Tom's favorite and Tom has fooled himself into believing none of the others know. Maddy and Will see it in simpler terms: they believe that Jessie sucks up to their father and that he in turn spoils her rotten. "If Daddy caught Jessie smoking," Will told his older sister the year before, after Maddy had been grounded for that very offense, "he'd probably buy her a lighter." Maddy laughed, agreed, and hugged her brother. Neither they nor their mother has the slightest idea of the secret which lies between Tom Mahout and his younger daughter like a heap of rotting meat.
Jessie herself believes she is just going along with her baby brother's request--that she's sticking up for him. She has no idea, not on the surface of her mind, anyway, how much she has come to hate Sunset Trails and how eager she is to get away. She has also come to hate the lake she once passionately loved--especially its faint, flat mineral smell. By 1965 she can hardly bear to go swimming there, even on the hottest of days. She knows her mother thinks it's her shape--Jessie began to bud early, as Sally did herself, and at the age of twelve she has most of her woman's figure--but it's not her shape. She's gotten used to that, and knows that she's a long way from being a Playboy pin-up in either of her old, faded Jantzen tank suits. No, it's not her breasts, not her hips, not her can. It's that smell.
Whatever reasons and motives may be swirling around beneath, Will Mahout's request is finally approved by the Mahout family's head honcho. They made the trip back to the coast yesterday, leaving early enough for Sally (eagerly assisted by both daughters) to prepare for the party. And now it's August 14th, and August 14th is surely the apotheosis of summer in Maine, a day of faded-blue-denim skies and fat white clouds, all of it freshened by a salt-tangy breeze.
Inland--and that includes the Lakes District, where Sunset Trails has stood on the shore of Dark Score Lake since Tom Mahout's grandfather built the original cabin in 1923--the woods and lakes and ponds and bogs lie sweltering under temperatures in the mid-nineties and humidity just below the saturation point, but here on the seacoast it's only eighty. The seabreeze is an extra bonus, rendering the humidity negligible and sweeping away the mosquitoes and sandflies. The lawn is filled with children, mostly Will's friends but girls who chum with Maddy and Jessie as well, and for once, mirabile dictu, they all seem to be getting along. There hasn't been a single argument, and around five o'clock, as Tom raises the first martini of the day to his lips, he glances at Jessie, who is standing nearby with her croquet mallet propped on her shoulder like a sentry's rifle (and who is clearly within earshot of what sounds like a casual husband-and-wife conversation but which may actually be a shrewd bank-shot compliment aimed at his daughter), then back at his wife. "I guess it was actually a pretty good idea, after all," he says.
Better than good, Jessie thinks. Absolutely great and totally monster, if you want to know the truth. Even that isn't what she really means, really thinks, but it would be dangerous to say the rest out loud; it would tempt the gods. What she really thinks is that the day is flawless--a sweet and perfect peach of a day. Even the song blasting out of Maddy's portable record player (which Jessie's big sister has cheerfully carted out to the patio for this occasion, although it is ordinarily the Great Untouchable Icon) is okay. Jessie is never really going to like Marvin Gaye--no more than she is ever going to like that faint mineral smell which rises from the lake on hot summer afternoons--but this song is okay. I'll be doggone if you ain't a pretty thing... bay-bee: silly, but not dangerous.
It is August 14th, 1965, a day that was, a day that still is in the mind of a dreaming woman handcuffed to a bed in a house on the shore of a lake forty miles south of Dark Score (but with the same mineral smell, that nasty, evocative smell, on hot, still summer days), and although the twelve-year-old girl she was doesn't see Will creeping up behind her as she bends over to address her croquet ball, turning her bottom into a target simply too tempting for a boy who has only lived one year for each inning in a baseball game to ignore, part of her mind knows he is there, and that this is the seam where the dream has been basted to the nightmare.
She lines up her shot, concentrating on the wicket six feet away. A hard shot but not an impossible one, and if she drives the ball through, she may well catch Caroline after all. That would be nice, because Caroline almost always wins at croquet. Then, just as she draws her mallet back, the music coming from the record-player changes.
"Oww, listen everybody," Marvin Gaye sings, sounding a lot more than just mock-threatening to Jessie this time, "especially you girls ..."
Chills of gooseflesh run up Jessie's tanned arms. "... is it right to be left alone when the one you love is never home? . . . I love too hard, my friends sometimes say ..."
Her fingers go numb and she loses any sense of the mallet in her hands. Her wrists are tingling, as if bound by
(stocks Goody's in the stocks come and see Goody in the stocks come and laugh at Goody in the stocks)
unseen clamps, and her heart is suddenly full of dismay. It is the other song, the wrong song, the bad song.
"... but I believe ... I believe ... that a woman should be loved that way ..."
She looks up at the little group of girls waiting for her to make her shot and sees that Caroline is gone. Standing there in her place is Nora Callighan. Her hair is in braids, there's a dab of white zinc on the tip of her nose, she's wearing Caroline's yellow sneakers and Caroline's locket--the one with the tiny picture of Paul McCartney inside it--but those are Nora's green eyes, and they are looking at her with a deep adult compassion. Jessie suddenly remembers that Will--undoubtedly egged on by his buddies, who are as jazzed up on Cokes and German chocolate cake as Will himself--is creeping up behind her, that he is preparing to goose her. She will overreact wildly when he does, swinging around and punching him in the mouth, perhaps not spoiling the party completely but certainly putting a ding in its sweet perfection. She tries to let go of the mallet, wanting to straighten and turn around before any of this can happen. She wants to change the past, but the past is heavy--trying to do that, she discovers, is like trying to pick up the house by one corner so you can look under it for things that have been lost, or forgotten, or hidden.
Behind her, someone has cranked the volume on Maddy's little record-player and that terrible song blares louder than ever, triumphant and glittery and sadistic: "IT HURTS ME SO INSIDE... TO BE
TREATED SO UNKIND... SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE... TELL HER IT AIN'T FAIR ..."
She tries again to get rid of the mallet--to throw it away--but she can't do it; it's as if someone has handcuffed her to it.
Nora! she cries. Nora, you have to help me! Stop him!
(It was at this point in the dream that Jessie moaned for the first time, momentarily startling the dog back from Gerald's body.)
Nora shakes her head, slowly and gravely. I can't help you, Jessie. You're on your own--we all are. I generally don't tell my patients that, but I think in your case it's best to be honest.
You don't understand! I can't go through this again! I CAN'T!
Oh, don't be so silly, Nora says, suddenly impatient. She begins to turn away, as if she can no longer bear the sight of Jessie's upturned, frantic face. You will not die; it's not poison.
Jessie looks around wildly (although she remains unable to straighten up, to stop presenting that tempting target to her impending brother) and sees that her friend Tammy Hough is gone; standing there in Tammy's white shorts and yellow halter is Ruth Neary. She's holding Tammy's red-striped croquet mallet in one hand and a Marlboro in the other. Her mouth is hooked up at the corners in her usual sardonic grin, but her eyes are grave and full of sorrow.
Ruth, help me! Jessie shouts. You have to help me!
Ruth takes a big drag on her cigarette, then grinds it into the grass with one of Tammy Hough's cork-soled sandals. Jeepers-creepers, tootsie--he's going to goose you, not stick a cattle-prod up your ass. You know that as well as I do ; you've been through all this before. So what's the big deal?
It isn't just a goose! It isn't, and you know it!
The old hooty-owl hooty-hoos to the goose, Ruth says.
What? What does that m--
It means how can I know anything about ANYTHING? Ruth shoots back. There is anger on the surface of her voice, deep hurt beneath. You wouldn't tell me--you wouldn't tell anybody. You ran away. You ran like a rabbit that sees the shadow of some old hooty-owl on the grass.
I COULDN'T tell! Jessie shrieks. Now she can see a shadow on the grass beside her, as if Ruth's words have conjured it up. It is not the shadow of an owl, however; it is the shadow of her brother. She can hear the stifled giggles of his friends, knows he is reaching out to do it, and still she cannot even straighten up, let alone move away. She is helpless to change what is going to happen, and she understands that this is the very essence of both nightmare and tragedy.
I COULDN'T! she shrieks at Ruth again. I couldn't, not ever! It would have killed my Mom ... or destroyed the family ... or both! He said! Daddy said!
I hate to be the one to send you this particular newsflash, tootsie-wootsie, but your dear old Dad will have been dead twelve years come December. Also, can't we dispense with at least a little of this melodrama? It's not as if he hung you from the clothesline by the nipples and then set you on fire, you know.
But she doesn't want to hear this, doesn't want to consider--even in a dream--any reappraisal of her buried past; once the dominos start to fall, who knows where it will all end? So she blocks her ears to what Ruth is saying and continues to fix her old college roommate with that deep, pleading stare that so often caused Ruth (whose tough-cookie veneer was never more than frosting-deep, anyway) to laugh and give in, to do whatever it was Jessie wanted her to do.
Ruth, you have to help me! You have to!
But this time the pleading stare doesn't work. I don't think so, toots. The Sorority Susies are all gone, the time for shutting up is over, running away is out of the question, and waking up is not an option. This is the mystery train, Jessie. You're the pussycat; I'm the owl. Here we go--all aboard. Fasten your seatbelt, and fasten it tight. This is an E-ticket ride.
No!
But now, to Jessie's horror, the day begins to darken. It could just be the sun going behind a cloud, but she knows it isn't. The sun is going out. Soon the stars will shine in a summer afternoon sky and the old hooty-owl will hooty-hoo to the dove. The time of the eclipse has come.
No! she screams again. That was two years ago!
You're wrong on that one, toots, Ruth Neary says. For you it never ended. For you the sun never came back out.
She opens her mouth to deny that, to tell Ruth she's as guilty of wild overdramatization as Nora, who kept shoving her toward doors she didn't want to open, who kept assuring her that the present can be improved by examining the past--as if one could improve the taste of today's dinner by slathering it with the maggoty remains of yesterday's. She wants to tell Ruth, as she told Nora on the day she walked out of Nora's office for good, that there is a big difference between living with something and being kept prisoner by it. Don't you two goofs understand that the Cult of Self is just another cult? she wants to say, but before she can do more than open her mouth, the invasion comes: a hand between her slightly spread legs, the thumb shoving rudely at the cleft of her buttocks, the fingers pressed against the material of her shorts just above her vagina, and it is not her brother's innocent little hand this time; the hand between her legs is much bigger than Will's and not a bit innocent. The bad song is on the radio, the stars are out at three o'clock in the afternoon, and this
(you will not die it's not poison)
is how the big people goose each other.
She whirls, expecting to see her father. He did something like this to her during the eclipse, a thing she supposes the whining Cult-of-Selfers, the Live-in-the-Pasters like Ruth and Nora, would call child abuse. Whatever it was, it will be him--she's sure of that much--and she is afraid she will exact a terrible punishment for the thing he did, no matter how serious or trivial that thing was: she will raise the croquet mallet and drive it into his face, smashing his nose and knocking out his teeth, and when he falls down on the grass the dogs will come and eat him up.
Except it isn't Tom Mahout standing there; it's Gerald. He's naked. The Penis of an Attorney pokes out at her from below the soft pink bowl of his belly. He has a set of Kreig police handcuffs in each hand. He holds them out to her in the weird afternoon darkness. Unnatural starlight gleams on the cocked jaws which are stamped M-17 because his source could not
provide him with any F-23s.
Come on, Jess, he says, grinning. It isn't as though you don't know the score. Besides, you liked it. That first time you came so hard you almost blew up. I don't mind telling you that was the best piece of ass I ever had in my life, so good I sometimes dream about it. And do you know why it was so good? Because you didn't have to take any of the responsibility. Almost all women like it better when the man takes over completely--it's a proven fact of female psychology. Did you come when your father molested you, Jessie? I bet you did. I bet you came so hard you almost blew up. The Cult-of-Selfers may want to argue about these things, but we know the truth, don't we? Some women can say they want it, but some need a man to tell them they want it. You're one of the latter. But that's okay, Jessie; that's what the cuffs are for. Only they were never really handcuffs at all. They're bracelets of love. So put them on, sweetheart. Put them on.
She backs up, shaking her head, not knowing if she wants to laugh or cry. The subject itself is new, but the rhetoric is all too familiar. The lawyer's tricks don't work on me, Gerald--I've been married to one too long. What we both know is that the business with the handcuffs was never about me at all. It was about you ... about waking up your old booze-stunned John Thomas a little, to be blunt. So you can just save your fucked-up version of female psychology, okay?
Gerald is smiling in a knowing, disconcerting way. Good try, babe. It doesn't wash, but it was still a damned good shot. The best defense is a good offense, right? I think I taught you that. Never mind, though. Right now you've got a choice to make. Either put the bracelets on or swing that mallet and kill me again.
She looks around and realizes with dawning panic and dismay that everyone at Will's party is watching her confrontation with this naked (except for his glasses, that is), overweight, sexually aroused man ... and it's not just her family and her childhood friends, either. Mrs. Henderson, who will be her Freshman Advisor at college, is standing by the punch-bowl; Bobby Hagen, who will take her to the Senior Prom--and fuck her afterward in the back seat of his father's Oldsmobile 88--is standing on the patio next to the blonde girl from the Neuworth Parsonage, the one whose parents loved her but idolized her brother.
