by Rocky Wood
The New Lieutenant’s Rap (1999)
The New Lieutenant’s Rap has a unique history. Printed as a chapbook from King’s own imprint, Philtrum Press, the entire text is in King’s handwriting. It was provided to guests at the 6 April 1999 New York City party at the Tavern on the Green to celebrate King’s 25th anniversary in book publishing. Marsha DeFilippo, King’s assistant, confirmed that copies were left at the party by guests who clearly did not know what they were leaving behind! In total only 500 copies were printed, with up to 150 distributed at the party.
The front and rear covers simply show a hand drawn peace sign. King’s introduction to the chapbook reads:
“The New Lieutenant’s Rap” is from Hearts in Atlantis, to be published by Scribner’s in the fall of 1999. This version, which differs considerably from the one which will appear in the book (it’s longer, for one thing), is offered as a little keepsake – my way of marking twenty-five fruitful (a little too fruitful, some critics would say) years as a novelist and freelance writer. It is limited to no more than 500 copies, each of which has been signed by me and numbered or lettered by Michael Alpert, who has so brilliantly executed all the Philtrum Press books, from The Plant to The Ideal Genuine Man. The printing is my own. So are the mistakes and scratch-outs.
I hope what follows makes you as uncomfortable as it does me.
Stephen King
This America Under Siege story has never been published in the mass market and most likely will not be. As King states, it is effectively a version of Why We’re In Vietnam, which appeared in Hearts in Atlantis later that year. It was substantially revised for that appearance and those with a strong interest in King’s prose and its development should try to secure a copy of this story. It is as great a pleasure to read a story in King’s handwriting as it is to listen to his audio readings. A certain amount of character is added to the story when reading the handwritten version and one is amazed by the neatness of King’s penmanship.
Copies are rarely offered for sale. Photocopies also circulate in limited numbers in the King community.
As one of the Hearts in Atlantis stories it includes characters that appear in other stories from the group. These are John L. (“Sully-John”) Sullivan, who also appears in Low Men in Yellow Coats, Blind Willie (Hearts in Atlantis version only), Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling and Hearts in Atlantis; and is the key character in Why We’re In Vietnam; and Dieffenbaker, who also appears in Why We’re in Vietnam and Blind Willie (Hearts In Atlantis version only).
In the story two Vietnam vets talk at another veteran’s funeral. Dieffenbaker had been the new lieutenant when John Sullivan served in Vietnam. They met again for the first time in a couple of years and talked after attending Dick Pagano’s funeral. They remembered and discussed many of the things that happened during the War but Dieffenbaker, now a bald computer salesman, appeared to be extremely negative. He reminded Sullivan of the things their generation had created, from video games to crack cocaine, but most were mentioned in a negative or sarcastic way. Dieffenbaker finally apologized to Sullivan for the way he had spoken, and they parted.
Once reading, we are quickly into the story. As Dieffenbaker and Sully stand outside the funeral parlor, smoking, Sully remembered the day in Dong Ha Province when “…old mamasan died. That day he had been shit scared. They had all been shit scared.” Sully recalled that Dieffenbaker, the “new lieutenant,” had stood tall that day and
…given the order that needed giving. Sully thought if it had come down to him, Clemson and Malenfant and those other fuckheads would have killed until their ammo ran out – wasn’t that pretty much what the men under Calley and Medina had done? But Dieffenbaker was no William Calley, give him that. Dieffenbaker had given the nod. Slocum nodded back, then raised his rifle – goddam, I say goddam – and blew off the back of Ralph Clemson’s head.
For those old enough to remember the trauma of the Vietnam War era, one of the defining memories is the My Lai massacre and its aftermath. In just one paragraph King recalls the tragedy and the trauma while instantly making readers consider the impact one battlefield officer’s choices can have. The instant shock of understanding that a US soldier had killed another gets the story moving at pace.
As they talk Dieffenbaker’s cynicism emerges but it is Sully who asks the question that presages the title under which the story appears in Hearts: “‘Why were we in Vietnam to begin with?’ Sully asked. ‘Not to get all philosophical or anything, but have you ever figured that out?’”
Then, shortly, “‘Fuckin yeah, it matters,’ Dieffenbaker said. ‘Because we never got out. We never got out of the green. Our generation died over there.’” He then argues that their generation, “…those of us who ran north to Toronto, those of us who marched and protested …” and even those who simply stayed home, had achieved little of value since that time. What they had done was to become a generation of watchers, selling out their beliefs – a rather heavy slap on their generation’s first President’s sexual peccadilloes is also delivered – “…our generation is a joke.”
Deef (and he hates that nickname) reminds Sully that “…there was a time when it was all in our hands.” This sets Sully to remembering Carol Gerber, not the Carol of college or peace-marches; but the time they and Bobby (Garfield) had gone to Savin Rock Amusement Park in 1960. “It had been in their hands then; he was quite sure of it. But kids lose everything, kids have slippery fingers and holes in their pockets and they lose everything.”
Dieffenbaker continues, postulating that they are still really in Vietnam, and that all that appeared to have occurred in their lives since was just part of a “pot-bubble” and that Vietnam is/was in fact the better of the realities. Realizing his bitterness Dieffenbaker then apologizes (if apparently half-heartedly) to Sully as he prepares to leave and they now “…looked at each other across the years – it felt like years, not space” and Sully thought, “…It’s still klicks instead of miles and Dieffenbaker is still the new lieutenant. We stay because it’s better. He’s right. We stay.”
The story, presumably King’s partial take on his own generation’s past and present dilemmas, is entirely set outside the funeral home in which Dick Pagano lay (dead of pancreatic cancer) but really the story is of Vietnam and the lasting impact on Sully, Deef and their entire generation. We know from Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling that it is the summer of 1999, as in that story John Sullivan died of a heart attack while returning home from Pagano’s funeral.
The Hearts in Atlantis stories
Hearts in Atlantis is a five-story collection, first published in 1999. There are autobiographical overtones (and undertones) in some of these stories. For instance, Low Men in Yellow Coats recalls a short period of King’s childhood, when he and his family lived in Stratford, Connecticut (re-cast as Harwich for this story). The Hearts in Atlantis story draws directly from King’s past, considering he was studying at the University of Maine at Orono during the same time setting.
The stories are loosely linked by certain characters and by the Vietnam War era. In order of their presentation in the collection they are: Low Men in Yellow Coats, Hearts in Atlantis, Blind Willie, Why We’re in Vietnam and Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling.
What is not well known to most fans is that a number of these stories also appear in differing versions.
Low Men in Yellow Coats is an original Dark Tower story, first appearing in the collection. However, an excerpt was published in Family Circle for 3 August 1999. There are very minor wording variations in that publication.
Blind Willie was first published in the literary magazine, Antaeus for Autumn 1994 and then republished in King’s Six Stories collection with quite a number of minor changes. King then completely rewrote the story for its appearance in Hearts in Atlantis so as to fit the story line of the collection. Bill Teale became Bill Shearman (one of those who beat up Carol Gerber) and instead of Blind Willie Teale, Shearman posed as Blind Willie Garfield (he still had
Bobby Garfield’s glove, which he used when begging).
Why We’re in Vietnam is a substantial revision of The New Lieutenant’s Rap, given out as a chapbook earlier in 1999.
Only Hearts in Atlantis itself and Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling have not been revised in any way.
The movie version of Hearts in Atlantis, a much under-rated and warm-hearted adaptation, is actually mainly of Low Men in Yellow Coats (the Hearts in Atlantis storyline does not appear in the movie) and of Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling. The screenplay was by William Goldman (Misery, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and the Director was Scott Hicks. Anthony Hopkins played Ted Brautigan, Anton Yelchin the Young Bobby Garfield, with David Morse (The Green Mile) the adult Bobby.
The Night of the Tiger (1978)
The lack of inclusion of The Night of the Tiger in a King collection is passing strange. The tale was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for February 1978 and appeared in various anthologies but has not been republished in English since 1992. Perhaps King is unhappy with the tale. If this is the case, fans would benefit from a rewrite to correct any inadequacies. In fact, King expert Tyson Blue says,77 “It may be that the ultimately unsatisfying nature of the story, with its plethora of unresolved loose ends and plot inconsistencies, are among the reasons why it has yet to be collected in a King anthology.”
Readers seeking the story should be able to find one of the anthologies at an online King bookseller or second hand bookseller of the traditional or Internet type. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is collectable in its own right and copies may be available from specialist sources. These are the anthologies in which the story has appeared: More Tales of Unknown Horror edited by Peter Haining (New English Library, 1979); The Year’s Best Horror Stories edited by Gerald Page (DAW Books, 1979); The Third Book of Unknown Tales of Horror edited by Peter Haining (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980); Chamber of Horrors (Octopus Books, 1984); The Best Horror Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction edited by Edward Ferman and Anne Jordan (St Martin’s Press, 1988 and Viking, 1989 as The Best of Modern Horror); Horrorstory, Volume Three edited by Gerald Page and Karl Edward Wagner (Underwood-Miller, 1992); and Tails of Wonder and Imagination edited by Ellen Datlow (Night Shade Books, 2010).
King relates a little of the story’s history in On Writing:
By the time I was sixteen I’d begun to get rejection slips with hand-written notes a little more encouraging than the advice to stop using staples and start using paperclips. The first of these hopeful notes was from Algis Budrys, then the editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction, who read a story of mine called “The Night of the Tiger” (the inspiration was, I think, an episode of The Fugitive in which Dr. Richard Kimble worked as an attendant cleaning out cages in a zoo or a circus) and wrote: “This is good. Not for us, but good. You have talent. Submit again.”
Those four brief sentences, scribbled by a fountain pen that left big ragged blotches in its wake, brightened the dismal winter of my sixteenth year. Ten years or so later, after I’d sold a couple of novels, I discovered “The Night of the Tiger” in a box of old manuscripts and thought it was still a perfectly respectable tale, albeit one obviously written by a guy who had only begun to learn his chops. I rewrote it and on a whim resubmitted it to F&SF. This time they bought it. One thing I’ve noticed is that when you’ve had a little success, magazines are a lot less apt to use that phrase, “Not for us.”
The reference to King’s sixteenth year suggests the story was originally written about 1963.
In this America Under Siege tale two tigers fight during a storm. The story begins:
I first saw Mr. Legere when the circus swung through Stuebenville, but I’d only been with the show for two weeks; he might have been making his irregular visits indefinitely. No one much wanted to talk about Mr. Legere, not even the last night when it seemed that the world was coming to an end – the night Mr. Indrasil disappeared.
The narrator is Eddie Johnston, who had joined Farnum & William’s All American 3-Ring Circus and Sideshow after becoming bored with small town life in Sauk City. As the circus toured Illinois and Indiana that hot summer the crowds were good and everyone was happy, “Everyone except Mr. Indrasil. Mr. Indrasil was never happy. He was the lion-tamer, and he looked like old pictures I’ve seen of Rudolph Valentino.” Indrasil had a reputation, sullen and silent, it was said he had once nearly killed a roustabout for the crime of spilling coffee on his hands. “And the only two things he was afraid of were Mr. Legere and the circus’s one tiger, a huge beast called Green Terror.” Indrasil had once used Green Terror in his act but had stopped after the cat “almost ripped his head from his shoulders before he could get out of the cage. I noticed that Mr. Indrasil always wore his hair long down the back of his neck.”
On that day in Steubenville Indrasil was about to assault Johnston for an imagined infraction when Legere intervened. From the exchange of words and body language between the two men Johnston realized:
I was a pawn in what must have been a long combat between the two of them. I had been captured by Mr. Legere rather than Mr. Indrasil. He had stopped the lion-tamer not because he felt for me, but because it gained him an advantage, however slight, in their private war.
When Johnston asked Legere if he was with the circus he said, with a slight smile, “No. You might call me a policeman,” before disappearing into the surging crowd.
As the Circus moved between towns Johnston saw Legere from time to time and finally asked the barker, Chips Baily, and the red-headed wire walker, Sally O’Hara, whether Legere and Indrasil knew each other. They told him that Legere had followed the circus in the Midwest almost every year of the twenty or so since Indrasil had joined the troupe from Ringling Brothers. When Johnston tried to probe further they suddenly changed the subject and remembered tasks that needed immediate attention.
As the hot spell went on accidents began to happen, including O’Hara fracturing her shoulder falling from the wire; and tension built in all the circus performers, human and animal, most particularly in Indrasil. And, almost all the time, Legere was by Green Terror’s cage, watching the tiger. One evening Johnston saw Indrasil, under “a swollen Kansas moon,” baiting Green Terror with a long, pointed pike. The cat refused to cry out in pain or anger no matter how hard Indrasil poked it. “Then I saw something odd. It seemed a shadow moved in the darkness under one of the far wagons, and the moonlight seemed to glint on staring eyes – green eyes.” After Indrasil suddenly left and Johnston looked again at the far wagon, the shadow was gone. The roustabout formed this view, “He was a rogue. That was the only way I can put it. Mr. Indrasil was not only a human tiger, but a rogue tiger as well. The thought jelled inside me, disquieting and a little scary.”
The heat wave continued, “Everyone was reaching the point of explosion.” Legere was now at every performance, “always dressed in his nattily creased brown suit, despite the killing temperatures. He stood silently by Green Terror’s cage, seeming to commune deeply with the tiger, who was always quiet when he was around.”
Finally, in the town of Wildwood Green, Oklahoma a storm began to brew on the horizon. That afternoon a lion tried to attack Indrasil, seemingly spooked by a timely ear-splitting roar from Green Terror. After Indrasil escaped the cage, “Green Terror let out another roar – but this was one monstrously like a huge, disdainful chuckle.” A tornado warning was issued and the circus cancelled its evening performance, battening down in preparation for the storm. Green Terror refused to move into a larger cage and Indrasil was sent for but initially could not be found. As the storm rose Johnston finally found Indrasil, drunk and raving about Legere, “He isn’t here now is he? We’re two of a kind, him and me. Maybe the only two left. My nemesis – and I’m his … Turned the cat against me, back in ’58.”
Green Terror roared through the noise of the storm and Indrasil realized the cat was still outside, exposed in his cage, and headed there. Johnston
followed:
And Mr. Legere was standing by Green Terror’s cage. It was like a tableau from Dante. The near-empty cage-clearing inside the circle of trailers; the two men facing each other silently, their clothes and hair rippled by the shrieking gale; the boiling sky above; the twisting wheatfields in the background, like damned souls bending to the whip of Lucifer.
Legere challenged Indrasil, “It’s time Jason,” and opened the cat’s cage! The tiger seemed to be caught between the will of the two men and stopped briefly. “I think, in the end, it was Green Terror’s own will – his hate of Mr. Indrasil that tipped the scales.” Then:
something strange happened to Mr. Indrasil. He seemed to be folding in on himself, shrivelling, accordioning. The silk shirt lost shape, the dark, whipping hair became a hideous toadstool around his collar. Mr. Legere called something across to him, and, simultaneously, Green Terror leaped.
Johnston saw no more, as he was thrown to the ground, catching “one crazily tilted glimpse of a huge, towering cyclone funnel, and then the darkness descended.”