by Stephen King
Grandpa looked at him then, an eyebrow raised ironically, as if expecting the boy to ask for an explanation, but Clive smiled, delighted by this--he knew what a chemise was, all right, because it was sometimes all that his mother wore until five in the afternoon or so, at least when his father was out on the road, selling appliances and kitchenware and a little insurance when he could. When his father went out on the road his mother got down to the serious drinking, and that was drinking sometimes too serious to allow her to get dressed until the sun was getting ready to go down. Then sometimes she went out, leaving him in Patty's care while she went to visit a sick friend. Once he said to Patty, "Ma's friends get sick more when Dad's on the road, d'ja notice?" And Patty laughed until tears ran down her face and she said Oh yes, she had noticed, she most certainly had.
What Grandpa said reminded him of how, once the days finally began to slope down toward school again, the poplars changed somehow. When the wind blew, their undersides turned up exactly the color of his mother's prettiest chemise, a silver color which was as surprisingly sad as it was lovely: a color that signified the end of what you had believed must be forever.
"Then," Grandpa continued, "you start to lose track of things in your own mind. Not too much--it ain't being senile, like old man Hayden down the road, thank God--but it's still a suckardly thing, the way you lose track. It ain't like forgetting things; that'd be one thing. No, you remember em but you get em in all the wrong places. Like how I was so sure I broke my arm just after our boy Billy got killed in that road accident in '58. That was a suckardly thing, too. That's one I could task that Reverend Chadband with. Billy, he was followin a gravel truck, doin no more than twenty mile an hour, when a chunk of stone no bigger'n the dial of that pocket watch I gave you fell off the back of the truck, hit the road, bounced up, and smashed the windshield of our Ford. Glass went in Billy's eyes and the doc said he would have been blinded in one of em or maybe even in both if he'd lived, but he didn't live--he went off the road and hit a 'lectric pole. It fell down atop the car and he got fried just the same as any mad dog killer that ever rode Old Sparky at Sing Sing. And him the worst thing he ever did in his life maybe playing sick to keep from hoeing beans when we still kep the garden.
"But I was saying how sure I was I broke my goddam arm after--I swore up n down I could remember goin to his funeral with that arm still in the sling! Sarah had to show me the family Bible first and the insurance papers on my arm second before I could believe she had it the right way around; it had been two whole months before, and by the time we buried Billy away, the sling was off. She called me an old fool and I felt like putting one up on the side of her head I was s'mad, but I was mad because I was embarrassed, and at least I had the sense to know that n leave her alone. She was only mad because she don't like to think about Bill. He was the apple of her eye, he was."
"Boy!" Clive said.
"It ain't goin soft; it's more like when you go down to New York City and there are these fellas on the street corners with nutshells and a beebee under one of em, and they bet you can't tell which nutshell the beebee's under, and you're sure you can, but they shuffle em so goddarn fast they fool you every time. You just lose track. You can't seem to help it."
He sighed, looking around, as if to remember where exactly it was that they were. His face had a momentary look of utter helplessness that disgusted the boy as much as it frightened him. He didn't want to feel that way, but couldn't help it. It was as if Grandpa had pulled open a bandage to show the boy a sore which was a symptom of something awful. Something like leprosy.
"Seems like spring started last week," Grandpa said, "but the blossoms'll be gone tomorrow if the wind keeps up its head, and damn if it don't look like it's gonna. A man can't keep his train of thought when things go as fast as that. A man can't say, Whoa up a minute or two, old hoss, while I get my bearins! There's no one to say it to. It's like bein in a cart that's got no driver, if you take my drift. So what do you make of it, Clivey?"
"Well," the boy said, "you're right about one thing, Grandpa--it sounds like an ijit of some kind must've made up the whole thing."
He didn't mean it to be funny, but Grandpa laughed until his face went that alarming shade of purple again, and this time he not only had to lean over and put his hands on the knees of his overalls but then had to sling an arm around the boy's neck to keep from falling down. They both would have gone tumbling if Grandpa's coughing and wheezing hadn't eased just at the moment when the boy felt sure the blood must come bursting out of that face, which was swollen purple with hilarity.
"Ain't you a jeezer!" Grandpa said, pulling back at last. "Ain't you a one!"
"Grandpa? Are you all right? Maybe we ought to--"
"Shit, no, I ain't all right. I've had me two heart attacks in the last two years, and if I live another two years no one'll be any more surprised than me. But it ain't no news to the human race, boy. All I ever set out to say was that old or young, fast time or slow time, you can walk a straight line if you remember that pony. Because when you count and say 'my pretty pony' between each number, time can't be nothing but time. You do that, I'm telling you you got the sucker stabled. You can't count all the time--that ain't God's plan. I'll go down the primrose lane with that little oily-faced pissant Chadband that far, anyway. But you got to remember that you don't own time; it's time that owns you. It goes along outside you at the same speed every second of every day. It don't care a pisshole in the snow for you, but that don't matter if you got a pretty pony. If you got a pretty pony, Clivey, you got the bastard right where its dingle dangles and never mind all the Alden Osgoods in the world."
He bent toward Clive Banning.
"Do you understand that?"
"No, sir."
"I know you don't. Will you remember it?"
"Yes, sir."
Grandpa Banning's eyes studied him so long the boy became uncomfortable and fidgety. At last he nodded. "Yeah, I think you will. Goddam if I don't."
The boy said nothing. In truth, he could think of nothing to say.
"You have taken instruction," Grandpa said.
"I didn't take any instruction if I didn't understand!" Clive cried in a frustrated anger so real and so complete it startled him. "I didn't!"
"Fuck understanding," the old man said calmly. He slung his arm around the boy's neck again and drew him close--drew him close for the last time before Gramma would find him dead as a stone in bed a month later. She just woke up and there was Grandpa and Grandpa's pony had kicked down Grandpa's fences and gone over all the hills of the world.
Wicked heart, wicked heart. Pretty, but with a wicked heart.
"Understanding and instruction are cousins that don't kiss," Grandpa said that day among the apple trees.
"Then what is instruction?"
"Remembrance," the old man said serenely. "Can you remember that pony?"
"Yes, sir."
"What name does it keep?"
The boy paused.
"Time. . . I guess."
"Good. And what color is it?"
The boy thought longer this time. He opened his mind like an iris in the dark. "I don't know," he said at last
"Me, neither," the old man said, releasing him. "I don't think it has one, and I don't think it matters. What matters is, will you know it?"
"Yes, sir," the boy said at once.
A glittering, feverish eye fastened the boy's mind and heart like a staple.
"How?"
"It'll be pretty," Clive Banning said with absolute certainty.
Grandpa smiled. "So!" he said. "Clivey has taken a bit of instruction, and that makes him wiser and me more blessed . . . or the other way around. D'you want a slice of peach pie, boy?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Then what are we doin up here? Let's go get her!"
They did.
And Clive Banning never forgot the name, which was time, and the color, which was none, and the look, which was not ugly or beautiful. . . but only pretty
. Nor did he ever forget her nature, which was wicked, or what his Grandpa said on the way down, words almost thrown away, lost in the wind: having a pony to ride was better than having no pony at all, no matter how the weather of its heart might lie.
Sorry, Right Number
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Screenplay abbreviations are simple and exist, in this author's opinion, mostly to make those who write screenplays feel like lodge brothers. In any case, you should be aware that CU means close-up; ECU means extreme close-up; INT. means interior; EXT means exterior; B.G. means background; POV means point of view. Probably most of you knew all that stuff to begin with, right?
Act I
FADE IN ON:
KATIE WEIDERMAN'S MOUTH, ECU
She's speaking into the telephone. Pretty mouth; in a few seconds we'll see that the rest of her is just as pretty.
KATIE
Bill? Oh, he says he doesn't feel very well, but he's always like that between books . . . can't sleep, thinks every headache is the first symptom of a brain tumor . . . once he gets going on something new, he'll be fine.
SOUND, B.G.: THE TELEVISION.
THE CAMERA DRAWS BACK. KATIE is sitting in the kitchen phone nook, having a good gab with her sister while she idles through some catalogues. We should notice one not-quite-ordinary thing about the phone she's on: it's the sort with two lines. There are LIGHTED BUTTONS to show which ones are engaged. Right now only one--KATIE'S--is. AS KATIE CONTINUES HER CONVERSATION, THE CAMERA SWINGS AWAY FROM HER, TRACKS ACROSS THE KITCHEN, and through the arched doorway that leads into the family room.
KATIE (voice, fading)
Oh, I saw Janie Charlton today . . . yes! Big as a house! . . .
She fades. The TV gets louder. There are three kids: JEFF eight, CONNIE, ten, and DENNIS, thirteen. Wheel of Fortune is on, but they're not watching. Instead they're engaged in that great pastime, Fighting About What Comes On Later.
JEFF
Come onnn! It was his first book!
CONNIE
His first gross book.
DENNIS
We're gonna watch Cheers and Wings, just like we do every week, Jeff.
DENNIS speaks with the utter finality only a big brother can manage. "Wanna talk about it some more and see how much pain I can inflict on your scrawny body, Jeff?" his face says.
JEFF
Could we at least tape it?
CONNIE
We're taping CNN for Mom. She said she might be on the phone with Aunt Lois for quite awhile.
JEFF
How can you tape CNN, for God's sake? It never stops!
DENNIS
That's what she likes about it.
CONNIE
And don't say God's sake, Jeffie--you're not old enough to talk about God except in church.
JEFF
Then don't call me Jeffie.
CONNIE
Jeffie, Jeffie, Jeffie.
JEFF gets up, walks to the window, and looks out into the dark. He's really upset. DENNIS and CONNIE, in the grand tradition of older brothers and sisters, are delighted to see it.
DENNIS
Poor Jeffie.
CONNIE
I think he's gonna commit suicide.
JEFF (turns to them)
It was his first book! Don't you guys even care?
CONNIE
Rent it down at the Video Stop tomorrow, if you want to see it so bad.
JEFF
They don't rent R-rated pictures to little kids and you know it!
CONNIE (dreamily)
Shut up, it's Vanna! I love Vanna!
JEFF
Dennis--
DENNIS
Go ask Dad to tape it on the VCR in his office and quit being such a totally annoying little booger.
JEFF crosses the room, poking his tongue out at Vanna White as he goes. THE CAMERA FOLLOWS as he goes into the kitchen.
KATIE
. . . so when he asked me if Polly had tested strep positive, I had to remind him she's away at prep school . . . and God, Lois, I miss her . . .
JEFF is just passing through, on his way to the stairs.
KATIE
Will you kids please be quiet?
JEFF (glum)
They'll be quiet. Now.
He goes up the stairs, a little dejected. KATIE looks after him for a moment, loving and worried.
KATIE
They're squabbling again. Polly used to keep them in line, but now that she's away at school . . . I don't know . . . maybe sending her to Bolton wasn't such a hot idea. Sometimes when she calls home she sounds so unhappy . . .
INT. BELA LUGOSI AS DRACULA, CU
Drac's standing at the door of his Transylvanian castle. Someone has pasted a comic-balloon coming out of his mouth which reads: "Listen! My children of the night! What music they make!" The poster is on a door but we only see this as JEFF opens it and goes into his father's study.
INT. A PHOTOGRAPH OF KATIE, CU
THE CAMERA HOLDS, THEN PANS SLOWLY RIGHT. We pass another photo, this one of POLLY, the daughter away at school. She's a lovely girl of sixteen or so. Past POLLY is DENNIS . . . then CONNIE . . . then JEFF.
THE CAMERA CONTINUES TO PAN AND ALSO WIDENS OUT so we can see BILL WEIDERMAN, a man of about forty-four. He looks tired. He's peering into the word-processor on his desk, but his mental crystal ball must be taking the night off, because the screen is blank. On the walls we see framed book-covers. All of them are spooky. One of the titles is Ghost Kiss.
JEFF comes up quietly behind his dad. The carpet muffles his feet. BILL sighs and shuts off the word-cruncher. A moment later JEFF claps his hands on his father's shoulders.
JEFF
BOOGA-BOOGA!
BILL
Hi, Jeffie.
He turns in his chair to look at his son, who is disappointed.
JEFF
How come you didn't get scared?
BILL
Scaring is my business. I'm case-hardened. Something wrong?
JEFF
Daddy, can I watch the first hour of Ghost Kiss and you tape the rest? Dennis and Connie are hogging everything.
BILL swivels to look at the book-jacket, bemused.
BILL
You sure you want to watch that, champ? It's pretty--
JEFF
Yes!
INT. KATIE, IN THE PHONE NOOK
In this shot, we clearly see the stairs leading to her husband's study behind her.
KATIE
I really think Jeff needs the orthodontic work but you know Bill--
The other line rings. The other light stutters.
KATIE
That's just the other line, Bill will--
But now we see BILL and JEFF coming downstairs behind her.
BILL
Honey, where're the blank videotapes? I can't find any in the study and--
KATIE (to BILL) Wait!
(to LOIS)
Gonna put you on hold a sec, Lo.
She does. Now both lines are blinking. She pushes the top one, where the new call has just come in.
KATIE
Hello, Weiderman residence.
SOUND: DESPERATE SOBBING.
SOBBING VOICE (filter)
Take. . . please take . . . t-t-
KATIE
Polly? Is that you? What's wrong?
SOUND: SOBBING. It's awful, heartbreaking.
SOBBING VOICE (filter)
Please--quick--
SOUND: SOBBING . . . Then, CLICK! A broken connection.
KATIE
Polly, calm down! Whatever it is can't be that b--
HUM OF AN OPEN LINE
JEFF has wandered toward the TV room, hoping to find a blank tape.
BILL
Who was that?
Without looking at her husband or answering him, KATIE slams the lower button in again.
KATIE
Lois? Listen, I'll call you back. That was Polly, and she sounded very upset. No . . . she hung up. Yes. I will. Thanks
.
She hangs up.
BILL (concerned)
It was Polly?
KATIE
Crying her head off. It sounded like she was trying to say "Please take me home" . . . I knew that damn school was bumming her out . . . Why I ever let you talk me into it . . .
She's rummaging frantically on her little phone desk. Catalogues go slithering to the floor around her stool.
KATIE
Connie did you take my address book?
CONNIE (voice)
No, Mom.
BILL pulls a battered book out of his back pocket and pages through it.
BILL
I got it. Except--
KATIE
I know, damn dorm phone is always busy. Give it to me.
BILL
Honey, calm down.
KATIE
I'll calm down after I talk to her. She is sixteen, Bill.
Sixteen-year-old girls are prone to depressive interludes. Sometimes they even k . . . just give me the damn number!
BILL
617-555-8641.
As she punches the numbers, THE CAMERA SLIDES IN TO CU.
KATIE
Come on, come on . . . don't be busy . . . just this once. . .
SOUND: CLICKS. A pause. Then . . . the phone starts ringing.
KATIE (eyes closed)
Thank You, God.
VOICE (filter)
Hartshorn Hall, this is Frieda. If you want Christine the Sex Queen, she's still in the shower, Arnie.
KATIE
Could you call Polly to the phone? Polly Weiderman? This is Kate Weiderman. Her mother.
VOICE (filter)
Oh, jeez! Sorry. I thought--hang on, please, Mrs. Weiderman.
SOUND: THE PHONE CLUNKS DOWN.
VOICE (filter, and very faint)
Polly? Pol? . . . Phone call! . . . It's your mother!
INT. A WIDER ANGLE ON THE PHONE NOOK, WITH BILL.
BILL
Well?
KATIE
Somebody's getting her. I hope.
JEFF comes back in with a tape.
JEFF
I found one, Dad. Dennis hid em. As usual.
BILL
In a minute, Jeff. Go watch the tube.
JEFF
But--
BILL
I won't forget. Now go on.
JEFF goes.
KATIE
Come on, come on, come on . . .
BILL
Calm down, Katie.
KATIE (snaps)
If you'd heard her, you wouldn't tell me to calm down! She sounded--
POLLY (filter, cheery voice)
Hi, Mom!
KATIE