by Stephen King
He quit it, creeped out by the muttery, talismanic quality of the chant, and called for Oy to stop. “Need to take a leak, boy.”
“Oy!” Cocked ears and bright eyes providing the rest of the message: Don’t take too long.
Jake sprayed urine onto one of the tile walls. Greenish dreck was seeping between the squares. He also listened for the sound of pursuit and was not disappointed. How many back there? What sort of posse? Roland probably would have known, but Jake had no idea. The echoes made it sound like a regiment.
As he was shaking off, it came to Jake Chambers that the Pere would never do this again, or grin at him and point his finger, or cross himself before eating. They had killed him. Taken his life. Stopped his breath and pulse. Save perhaps for dreams, the Pere was now gone from the story. Jake began to cry. Like his smile, the tears made him once again look like a child. Oy had turned around, eager to be off on the scent, but now looked back over one shoulder with an expression of unmistakable concern.
“’S’all right,” Jake said, buttoning his fly and then wiping his cheeks with the heel of his hand. Only it wasn’t all right. He was more than sad, more than angry, more than scared about the low men running relentlessly up his backtrail. Now that the adrenaline in his system had receded, he realized he was hungry as well as sad. Tired, too. Tired? Verging on exhaustion. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept. Being sucked through the door into New York, he could remember that, and Oy almost being hit by a taxi, and the God-bomb minister with the name that reminded him of Jimmy Cagney playing George M. Cohan in that old black-and-white movie he’d watched on the TV in his room when he was small. Because, he realized now, there had been a song in that movie about a guy named Harrigan: H–A–double R–I; Harrigan, that’s me. He could remember those things, but not when he’d last eaten a square—
“Ake!” Oy barked, relentless as fate. If bumblers had a breaking point, Jake thought wearily, Oy was still a long way from his. “Ake-Ake!” “Yeah-yeah,” he agreed, pushing away from the wall. “AkeAke will now run-run. Go on. Find Susannah.”
He wanted to plod, but plodding would quite likely not be good enough. Mere walking, either. He flogged his legs into a jog and once more began to sing under his breath, this time the words to the song: “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight … In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight … ohhh …” And then he was off again, wimeweh, wimeweh, wimeweh, nonsense words from the kitchen radio that was always tuned to the oldies on WCBS … only weren’t memories of some movie wound around and into his memory of this particular song? Not a song from Yankee Doodle Dandy but from some other movie? One with scary monsters? Something he’d seen when he was just a little kid, maybe not even out of his
(clouts )
diapers?
“Near the village, the quiet village, the lion sleeps tonight… Near the village, the peaceful village, the lion sleeps tonight … HUH-oh, awimeweh, awimeweh …”
He stopped, breathing hard, rubbing his side. He had a stitch there but it wasn’t bad, at least not yet, hadn’t sunk deep enough to stop him. But that goo … that greenish goo dribbling between the tiles … it was oozing through the ancient grout and busted ceramic because this was
(the jungle )
deep below the city, deep like catacombs
(wimeweh )
or like—
“Oy,” he said, speaking through chapped lips. Christ, he was so thirsty! “Oy, this isn’t goo, this is grass. Or weeds …or…”
Oy barked his friend’s name, but Jake hardly noticed. The echoing sound of the pursuers continued (had drawn a bit closer, in fact), but for the time being he ignored them, as well.
Grass, growing out of the tiled wall.
Overwhelming the wall.
He looked down and saw more grass, a brilliant green that was almost purple beneath the fluorescent lights, growing up out of the floor. And bits of broken tile crumbling into shards and fragments like remains of the old people, the ancestors who had lived and built before the Beams began to break and the world began to move on.
He bent down. Reached into the grass. Brought up sharp shards of tile, yes, but also earth, the earth of
(the jungle )
some deep catacomb or tomb or perhaps—
There was a beetle crawling through the dirt he’d scooped up, a beetle with a red mark on its back like a bloody smile, and Jake cast it away with a cry of disgust. Mark of the King! Say true! He came back to himself and realized that he was down on one knee, practicing at archaeology like the hero in some old movie while the hounds drew closer on his trail. And Oy was looking at him, eyes shining with anxiety.
“Ake! Ake-Ake!”
“Yeah,” he said, heaving himself to his feet. “I’m coming. But Oy … what is this place?”
Oy had no idea why he heard anxiety in his ka-dinh’s voice; what he saw was the same as before and what he smelled was the same as before: her smell, the scent the boy had asked him to find and follow. And it was fresher now. He ran on along its bright brand.
FOUR
Jake stopped again five minutes later, shouting, “Oy! Wait up a minute!”
The stitch in his side was back, and it was deeper, but it still wasn’t the stitch that had stopped him. Everything had changed. Or was changing. And God help him, he thought he knew what it was changing into.
Above him the fluorescent lights still shone down, but the tile walls were shaggy with greenery. The air had become damp and humid, soaking his shirt and sticking it against his body. A beautiful orange butterfly of startling size flew past his wide eyes. Jake snatched at it but the butterfly eluded him easily. Almost merrily, he thought.
The tiled corridor had become a jungle path. Ahead of them, it sloped up to a ragged hole in the overgrowth, probably some sort of forest clearing. Beyond it Jake could see great old trees growing in a mist, their trunks thick with moss, their branches looped with vines. He could see giant spreading ferns, and through the green lace of the leaves, a burning jungle sky. He knew he was under New York, must be under New York, but—
What sounded like a monkey chittered, so close by that Jake flinched and looked up, sure he would see it directly overhead, grinning down from behind a bank of lights. And then, freezing his blood, came the heavy roar of a lion. One that was most definitely not asleep.
He was on the verge of retreating, and at full speed, when he realized he could not ; the low men (probably led by the one who’d told him the faddah was dinnah ) were back that way. And Oy was looking at him with bright-eyed impatience, clearly wanting to go on. Oy was no dummy, but he showed no signs of alarm, at least not concerning what was ahead.
For his own part, Oy still couldn’t understand the boy’s problem. He knew the boy was tired—he could smell that— but he also knew Ake was afraid. Why? There were unpleasant smells in this place, the smell of many men chief among them, but they did not strike Oy as immediately dangerous. And besides, her smell was here. Very fresh now. Almost new.
“Ake!” he yapped again.
Jake had his breath now. “All right,” he said, looking around. “Okay. But slow.”
“Lo,” Oy said, but even Jake could detect the stunning lack of approval in the bumbler’s response.
Jake moved only because he had no other options. He walked up the slope of the overgrown trail (in Oy’s perception the way was perfectly straight, and had been ever since leaving the stairs) toward the vine-and fern-fringed opening, toward the lunatic chitter of the monkey and the testicle-freezing roar of the hunting lion. The song circled through his mind again and again
(in the village … in the jungle … hush my darling, don’t stir my darling … )
and now he knew the name of it, even the name of the group
(that’s the Tokens with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” gone from the charts but not from our hearts )
that had sung it, but what was the movie? What was the name of the goddam mo—
FIVE
Once upon a time long ago
(far and wee)
when he was just a little lad;
(there’s some for you and some for me)
once upon a time when mother went to Montreal with her art club and father went to Vegas for the annual unveiling of the fall shows;
(blackberry jam and blackberry tea)
once upon a time when ‘Bama was four—
SIX
’Bama’s what the only good one
(Mrs. Shaw Mrs. Greta Shaw)
calls him. She cuts the crusts off his sandwiches, she puts his nursie-school drawings on the fridge with magnets that look like little plastic fruits, she calls him ‘Bama and that’s a special name to him
(to them )
because his father taught him one drunk Saturday afternoon to chant “Go wide, go wide, roll you Tide, we don’t run and we don’t hide, we’re the ‘Bama Crimson Tide!” and so she calls him ‘Bama, it’s a secret name and how they know what it means and no one else does is like having a house you can go into, a safe house in the scary woods where outside the shadows all look like monsters and ogres and tigers.
(“Tyger, tyger, burning bright,” his mother sings to him, for this is her idea of a lullabye, along with “I heard a fly buzz … when I died,” which gives ‘Bama Chambers a terrible case of the creeps, although he never tells her; he lies in bed sometimes at night and sometimes during afternoon naptime thinking I will hear a fly and it will be my deathfly, my heart will stop and my tongue will fall down my throat like a stone down a well and these are the memories he denies )
It is good to have a secret name and when he finds out mother is going to Montreal for the sake of art and father is going to Vegas to help present the Network’s new shows at the Up-fronts he begs his mother to ask Mrs. Greta Shaw to stay with him and finally his mother gives in. Little Jakie knows Mrs. Shaw is not mother and on more than one occasion Mrs. Greta Shaw herself has told him she is not mother
(“I hope you know I’m not your mother, ‘Bama,” she says, giving him a plate and on the plate is a peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwich with the crusts cut off as only Greta Shaw knows how to cut them off, “because that is not in my job description”
(And Jakie—only he’s ‘Bama here, he’s ‘Bama between them— doesn’t know exactly how to tell her he knows that, knows that, knows that, but he’ll make do with her until the real thing comes along or until he grows old enough to get over his fear of the Deathfly)
And Jakie says Don’t worry, I’m okay, but he is still glad Mrs. Shaw agrees to stay instead of the latest au pair who wears short skirts and is always playing with her hair and her lipstick and doesn’t care jackshit about him and doesn’t know that in his secret heart he is ‘Bama, and boy that little Daisy Mae
( which is what his father calls all the au pairs )
is stupid stupid stupid. Mrs. Shaw isn’t stupid. Mrs. Shaw gives him a snack she sometimes calls Afternoon Tea or even High Tea, and no matter what it is—cottage cheese and fruit, a sandwich with the crusts cut off, custard and cake, leftover canapés from a cocktail party the night before—she sings the same little song when she lays it out: “A little snack that’s far and wee, there’s some for you and some for me, blackberry jam and blackberry tea.”
There is a TV is his room, and every day while his folks are gone he takes his after-school snack in there and watches watches watches and he hears her radio in the kitchen, always the oldies, always WCBS, and sometimes he hears her, hears Mrs. Greta Shaw singing along with the Four Seasons Wanda Jackson Lee “Yah-Yah” Dorsey, and sometimes he pretends his folks die in a plane crash and she somehow does become his mother and she calls him poor little lad and poor little lost tyke and then by virtue of some magical transformation she loves him instead of just taking care of him, loves him loves him loves him the way he loves her, she’s his mother (or maybe his wife, he is unclear about the difference between the two), but she calls him ‘Bama instead of sugarlove
(his real mother )
or hotshot
(his father ) and although he knows the idea is stupid, thinking about it in bed is fun, thinking about it beats the penis-piss out of thinking about the Deathfly that would come and buzz over his corpse when he died with his tongue down his throat like a stone down a well. In the afternoon when he gets home from nursie-school (by the time he’s old enough to know it’s actually nursery school he will be out of it) he watches Million Dollar Movie in his room. On Million Dollar Movie they show exactly the same movie at exactly the same time—four o’clock—every day for a week. The week before his parents went away and Mrs. Greta Shaw stayed the night instead of going home
(O what bliss, for Mrs. Greta Shaw negates Discordia, can you say amen)
there was music from two directions every day, there were the oldies in the kitchen
(WCBS can you say God-bomb)
and on the TV James Cagney is strutting in a derby and singing about Harrigan—H–A–double R–I, Harrigan, that’s me! Also the one about being a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam.
Then it’s a new week, the week his folks are gone, and a new movie, and the first time he sees it it scares the living breathing shit out of him. This movie is called The Lost Continent, and it stars Mr. Cesar Romero, and when Jake sees it again (at the advanced age of ten) he will wonder how he could ever have been afraid of such a stupid movie as that one. Because it’s about explorers who get lost in the jungle, see, and there are dinosaurs in the jungle, and at four years of age he didn’t realize the dinosaurs were nothing but fucking CARTOONS, no different from Tweety and Sylvester and Popeye the Sailor Man, uck-uckuck, can ya say Wimpy, can you give me Olive Oyl. The first dinosaur he sees is a triceratops that comes blundering out of the jungle, and the girl explorer
(Bodacious ta-tas, his father would undoubtedly have said, it’s what his father always says about what Jake’s mother calls A Certain Type Of Girl )
screams her lungs out, and Jake would scream too if he could but his chest is locked down with terror, o here is Discordia incarnate! In the monster’s eyes he sees the utter nothing that means the end of everything, for pleading won’t work with such a monster and screaming won’t work with such a monster, it’s too dumb, all screaming does is attract the monster’s attention, and does, it turns toward the Daisy Mae with the bodacious ta-tas and then it charges the Daisy Mae with the bodacious ta-tas, and in the kitchen (the mighty kitchen) he hears the Tokens, gone from the charts but not from our hearts, they are singing about the jungle, the peaceful jungle, and here in front of the little boy’s huge horrified eyes is a jungle which is anything but peaceful, and it’s not a lion but a lumbering thing that looks sort of like a rhinoceros only bigger, and it has a kind of bone collar around its neck, and later Jake will find out you call this kind of monster a triceratops, but for now it is nameless, which makes it even worse, nameless is worse. “Wimeweh,” sing the Tokens, “Weee-ummm-a-weh,” and of course Cesar Romero shoots the monster just before it can tear the girl with the bodacious ta-tas limb from limb, which is good at the time, but that night the monster comes back, the triceratops comes back, it’s in his closet, because even at four he understands that sometimes his closet isn’t his closet, that its door can open on different places where there are worse things waiting.
He begins to scream, at night he can scream, and Mrs. Greta Shaw comes into the room. She sits on the edge of his bed, her face ghostly with blue-gray beautymud, and she asks him what’s wrong ‘Bama and he is actually able to tell her. He co
uld never have told his father or mother, had one of them been there to begin with, which they of course aren’t, but he can tell Mrs. Shaw because while she isn’t a lot different from the other help—the au pairs babysitters child minders school-walkers— she is a little different, enough to put his drawings on the fridge with the little magnets, enough to make all the difference, to hold up the tower of a silly little boy’s sanity, say hallelujah, say found not lost, say amen.
She listens to everything he has to say, nodding, and makes him say tri-CER-a-TOPS until finally he gets it right. Getting it right is better. And then she says, “Those things were real once, but they died out a hundred million years ago, ‘Bama. Maybe even more. Now don’t bother me any more because I need my sleep.”
Jake watches The Lost Continent on Million Dollar Movie every day that week. Every time he watches it, it scares him a little less. Once, Mrs. Greta Shaw comes in and watches part of it with him. She brings him his snack, a big bowl of Hawaiian Fluff (also one for herself) and sings him her wonderful little song: “A little snack that’s far and wee, there’s some for you and some for me, blackberry jam and blackberry tea.” There are no blackberries in Hawaiian Fluff, of course, and they have the last of the Welch’s Grape Juice to go with it instead of tea, but Mrs. Greta Shaw says it is the thought that counts. She has taught him to say Rooty-tooty-salutie before they drink, and to clink glasses. Jake thinks that’s the absolute coolest, the cat’s ass.
