Only when Bobby receives a note from Ted, forwarded by Carol, does he appear to have a change of heart. To understand that, however, it is necessary to really know Ted. Here is where the story veers into The Dark Tower territory and connects itself to the Stephen King Universe as a whole.
The low men are not human. Rather, they are supernatural shepherds of a sort, or trackers, who work for the Crimson King, the evil being who hopes to destroy the tower, and in that way all reality. The multiverse is bound together by Beams (made of energy or possibility or something else entirely), and the Tower’s integrity is assured by those very Beams. Ted is a Breaker. He has certain mental abilities that when focused could help to shatter the Beams. In fact, the Crimson King enslaves him to do just that before he escapes to Bobby Garfield’s world and time. In the end, he is recaptured by the low men, who bear a red eye upon their persons, the symbol of the Crimson King.
When Bobby receives that note, he realizes that Ted has escaped from the Court of the Crimson King again. There is hope. To illustrate that, Ted includes several rose petals, which have an effect on Bobby even he does not understand.
But we do. The implication is that those petals are from the rose of creation, which is an incarnation of the Dark Tower (and therefore all reality) itself, and which Roland and his friends are going to have to protect in that book series.
Hearts in Atlantis is a remarkable work for many reasons already stated. There is another, however. Though King’s most mainstream book, it also has undeniable connections to other of his writings, such as those mentioned above, and a great many echoes of others.
The relationship between Bobby and Ted Brautigan, for example, is a very sweet mirror image of the horrifying relationship between Todd Bowden and Kurt Dussander in the 1982 novella Apt Pupil. In both narratives, a boy and an old man use the charade of the youth reading to the man due to his failing eyesight to cover up the truth from the boy’s parent(s). And yet, the end results in each account could not be more different.
Ted’s powers are similar, in some ways, to those of John Smith in The Dead Zone (1979). Ted’s dialogue is laced with King references, including a joke about the library police (a nod to the novella The Library Policeman from Four Past Midnight, 1990), a paraphrasing of The Dark Tower refrain “there are other worlds than this,” and an exact quote from Storm of the Century (1999)—“Give me what I want and I’ll go away”—which seems quite intentional.
The Stephen King Universe is a tapestry being constantly woven with new colors and yet all of a piece. None of the author’s works reveals that as completely as Hearts in Atlantis. For there is one other important connection to the author’s fictional panorama, one that many readers will likely have missed. But we’ll get to that shortly.
First, we move on to the second part of this epic, the title story, Hearts in Atlantis. At 150 pages, it is the second longest piece in the book, and it stands out as one of the most obviously autobiographical works of King’s career. That is not to say that King wasted a semester of his college career playing the card game Hearts, as happens in this tale. But this narrative introduces us to Pete Riley, a freshman in 1966 at the University of Maine at Orono. No coincidence that King was also a freshman at Orono that year. It is, in its way, just as much a coming-of-age story as Low Men in Yellow Coats, but a different kind of age.
We think we lose our innocence when we become teenagers. Perhaps, as this story implies, that loss comes later. In this novella, Pete Riley and his friends get themselves wrapped up in a GPA-destroying obsession that causes some of them to fail academically and to be expelled. But there’s no safety net for them. Those who are asked to leave are likely to be sent off to Vietnam; those sent to Asia during the war have a good chance of coming home in a body bag.
But the game of Hearts goes on.
Over the course of that semester, a distant war in Vietnam is brought to their attention. Despite their normal human faults, the students find enlightenment of a sort, and realize the horrible injustice of that war, but almost by accident. Few of the characters in this piece are actively seeking a cause, and yet it finds them.
The title novella may be completely a work of fiction, but it rings all too true. King has re-created this troubled era quite convincingly.
In this segment, Pete Riley is attracted to Carol Gerber, through whom we learn a bit more about Bobby Garfield. She has lost touch with him, and in high school, she and Bobby’s best friend, John Sullivan, became romantically involved. But Sully is off fighting in Vietnam, and Carol is becoming a vocal antiwar protester. She is inspired by the way Bobby Garfield once lifted her in his arms, after she had been attacked by local boys, and carried her up the hill to his house, though she was even bigger than he was. She believes that somebody has to be there to help when injustice is being done. Though her relationship with Pete does not last, she has begun on a path that will lead to tragedy.
For the third installment, Blind Willie, the book jumps ahead to 1983 and focuses on Willie Shearman, who had been one of the boys who attacked Carol back in 1960. Willie never got over the guilt of what they did to her: he held her while a friend hit her with a baseball bat, hard enough to dislocate her shoulder. As a boy, he also stole Bobby Garfield’s baseball glove, an item that takes on a talismanic importance.
In Vietnam, Willie saves John Sullivan’s life, but that isn’t enough. He hasn’t done nearly enough penance, to his mind. He is injured, and temporarily blinded, but that isn’t enough. Now, in 1983, Willie goes through a vastly complex series of ruses and identities to hide the truth: he suffers from a temporary blindness for several hours every afternoon. He has no job, save for begging for money in the guise of a blind vet named “William Garfield,” and yet he has a life at home with a wife who loves him. Willie writes a message of apology thousands of times, a little each day. He gives a large portion of his income to the church, all to try to make up for what he once did.
He pays off the police to leave him alone while he is panhandling, but one of the cops is becoming trouble. By the end of the tale, it appears as though Willie will take on yet another identity to kill the cop. Such a deed would not be his, and therefore it wouldn’t interfere with his penance.
In this segment, we learn a great deal more about Carol’s fate through newspaper clippings that Willie keeps. She becomes involved with a militant antiwar group that plants a bomb at a college lecture hall. There aren’t supposed to be any people in the building, but there are. Carol tries to stop it, but is pulled away by Raymond Fiegler, the leader of the group and probably her lover.
People die. The group is blamed, and is hunted down by the authorities. Eventually, in a confrontation with police, Carol supposedly dies in a house fire.
The fourth part of the book, Why We’re in Vietnam, turns the focus to John Sullivan, and the year to 1999. Horribly wounded in the incident during which Willie Shearman saves his life, Sully has never been the same. In this short tale, we learn that he has been haunted since even before that incident by the ghost of an old Vietnamese woman whose life he could have saved, but didn’t. She was murdered by another American soldier by the name of Ronnie Malenfant (a character who also appears in the novella Hearts in Atlantis).
In this section of the book, Sully is stuck in traffic on the way back from yet another funeral of a fellow veteran. He reminisces about a great many things, including the horrors of war and the fallout for veterans, both emotional and physical (e.g., the effects of Agent Orange). This story ends with yet another extraordinary moment. Things begin to fall from the sky, with no rhyme nor reason as to what exactly is falling: pianos and lawn mowers and ironing boards; anything you can imagine. And Bobby Garfield’s old baseball glove, with a note inside it.
Only none of that actually occurs. What happens is that John Sullivan has a heart attack in his car during a traffic jam, and dies. But he dies with Bobby Garfield’s baseball glove on his hand.
Finally, also in 1999, the book ends wi
th Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling, a brief sequence that brings the narrative back to Harwich, the little town where all of the central characters grew up, and to Bobby Garfield. He returns home for Sully’s funeral. Bobby’s a carpenter now, living in Philadelphia, with a wife and children. But he harbors the tiny hope that Carol is alive, because he’s had a message from Ted Brautigan.
Carol is alive, of course, though she teaches at Vassar College under an assumed name and identity. And the message is for both of them. Sully’s executor sends Bobby his old baseball glove, because on it is somehow inscribed, in Ted Brautigan’s handwriting, Garfield’s current address. Impossible, but true. Inside the glove is a sheet of paper torn out of a book that Ted and Bobby had loved in 1960, with the words “tell her she was as brave as a lion,” referring to the time Ted fixed Carol’s dislocated arm. And with an inscription familiar to Carol from her Vietnam days. Translated, it says, “Love plus peace equals information.”
This final segment also reveals, albeit subtly, that other connection mentioned here earlier. Bobby doesn’t notice Carol at the service for Sully because she does not want to be seen. Someone, a very dangerous and clever someone, taught her, once upon a time, how to remain unseen, how to be dim. Being dim, as we know from The Eyes of the Dragon (1987), is a trick of the dark sorcerer Randall Flagg, who also appears in The Stand (1978) and the Dark Tower series. Carol was involved with Raymond Fiegler, the leader of the protesters. Flagg has been shown to have many aliases over the years, and a number of them have also had the initials R. F. Raymond Fiegler is undoubtedly also an alias for Randall Flagg.
In the conclusion to Hearts in Atlantis—thanks to Ted, and to Sully’s death—Bobby and Carol are brought back together to ponder the fundamental question of this novel. Earlier, a character laments that once upon a time, we had a chance to change the world, and “we blew it.” The sentiment is shared as if it is too late now.
Or is it?
“People grow up,” Carol tells Bobby firmly in the book’s closing sequence. “They grow up and leave the kids they were behind.”
“Do they?” Bobby asks.
The answer that is implied is this: not really. Not in their hearts.
HEARTS IN ATLANTIS: PRIMARY SUBJECTS
BOBBY GARFIELD: Bobby resides in Harwich, Connecticut, as a boy. During these formative years, he is best friends with John Sullivan and Carol Gerber, who is his first love. He and his mother, Liz, live in a boardinghouse. During the summer of 1960, a new boarder named Ted Brautigan moves in. Ted and Bobby become friends, though Bobby is only a boy, and although Ted is hiding out from people he calls “low men in yellow coats.” Those low men turn out not to be human, and when he comes into contact with them, Bobby is forced to make a choice: fight for Ted and be captured with him, or stay out of it. He chooses not to get involved, and that decision sours his life for several years—up until the time he hears from Ted again, and realizes that Ted has escaped once more.
Today, Bobby Garfield lives outside of Philadelphia with his family. He is a carpenter by trade.
CAROL GERBER: In the summer of 1960, Carol is in love with her best friend, Bobby Garfield. During that same season, she is brutally beaten by several local boys, and Bobby takes vengeance upon the leader of the thugs. Later, after Bobby has moved out of Harwich, she dates his best friend, John Sullivan, for some years. In 1966, she attends the University of Maine at Orono, where she meets Pete Riley. Carol breaks off with Sully and dates Pete briefly, even as she becomes entrenched in the antiwar movement spawned by the crisis in Vietnam. Later, she becomes close to a man named Raymond Fiegler (who is also the creature known as Randall Flagg) and a group of militant antiwar protesters who plant a bomb that ends up taking lives.
Though she tries to stop it, Carol becomes a fugitive along with the others. She is believed to have died in a house fire with several of them, but survives, and resurfaces sometime later with a new identity as Denise Schoonover.
Today, under that new name, she lives in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is a professor at Vassar College.
JOHN SULLIVAN: As children, John Sullivan, or Sully-John, and Bobby Garfield are best friends. The events of the summer of 1960 so alter Bobby’s behavior that their friendship is irrevocably damaged. After Bobby moves out of Harwich, Sully dates Carol Gerber. Not long after he and Carol break up in 1966, Sully is shipped off to Vietnam to fight in the military.
During the war, Sully endures some particularly horrid things, as do so many soldiers in Vietnam. He witnesses the useless murder of an old woman by a soldier named Ronnie Malenfant, and the ghost of that old woman haunts him for the rest of his life. Also in Vietnam, Sully’s life is saved by Willie Shearman, a guy from his own hometown.
Sully has a heart attack and dies while his car sits stuck in traffic one day. Impossibly, when he is found, he wears Bobby Garfield’s baseball glove on his hand, a glove that had been stolen from Bobby when they were children, and that neither of them had seen since.
TED BRAUTIGAN: Ted is a mysterious figure. Little concrete knowledge is available in regard to him, including the era and even dimension to which he truly belongs. He enters Bobby Garfield’s life in a year that, to Bobby, is 1960. But Ted is on the run, even then, from the agents of the Crimson King, a force for chaos in the infinite multiverse. Ted had been forced to work for the King as a “Breaker,” someone who had the ability to psychically chip away at the bonds, or Beams, holding reality together. Ted is recaptured, but later escapes once more, as evidenced by the messages he sends to Bobby Garfield. His further adventures are detailed in The Dark Tower series.
LIZ GARFIELD: Bobby’s mother, Liz is widowed young and, in trying to make ends meet, finds herself with an employer who turns out to be a sexual predator. Eventually she becomes a successful real estate agent in Danvers, Massachusetts. It is presumed that she still resides there.
PETE RILEY: As a student at the University of Maine at Orono (UMO) in 1966, Pete falls in love with Carol Gerber. Though he nearly flunks out of school due to an unending card game of Hearts in his dorm, he eventually gets back on track and graduates. During this time, partially due to his relationship with Carol, and also his exposure to people like Stokely Jones, he becomes a war protester. Pete Riley’s current whereabouts are unknown.
SKIP KIRK: Stanley “Skip” Kirk is a good friend of Pete Riley’s at UMO, and also nearly falls victim to the game of Hearts. Today he is an artist of note, residing in Palm Beach, Florida. He has had at least one heart attack.
NATE HOPPENSTAND: Nate is Pete Riley’s quiet, almost prissy roommate at UMO, but he is also secretly a war protester, and helps to open Pete’s and Skip’s eyes to the horrors of Vietnam. He still exchanges Christmas cards with his old roommate.
STOKELY JONES: Crippled in an auto accident, Stoke Jones is forced to use metal crutches at all times. He is the first student to wear the peace sign at UMO, that fall of 1966. Despite his curmudgeonly persona, he inspires an interest in the crisis in Vietnam among many of his fellow students. He drops out of college to protest full-time, but later becomes an attorney, and is a constant presence on various TV network news and political programs.
RAYMOND FIEGLER: The mysterious leader of the group of war protesters that included Carol Gerber, he is supposedly killed in a fire in 1971. However, there is great reason to believe that Fiegler is actually the creature known as Randall Flagg.
WILLIE SHEARMAN: Willie grows up in Harwich, Connecticut, along with Bobby Garfield, Carol Gerber, and John Sullivan. Unlike them, he attends St. Gabe’s, a local Catholic school. Though he doesn’t really want to, Willie succumbs to peer pressure and becomes a local bully. In that role, he steals Bobby Garfield’s baseball glove. He also helps his friends beat Carol Gerber very badly in the summer of 1960, and is haunted with guilt from that incident ever after.
In Vietnam, Willie saves the life of John Sullivan, who had been Carol’s boyfriend for a time. Even that is not enough to relieve his self-torment, howeve
r. During the war, he is badly wounded, and left with an incredible handicap: for several hours each afternoon, Willie is blind. Otherwise, his eyesight is fine. Over the years, he develops a complex multiple personality system, all based upon his guilt and what he thinks of as penance, which includes begging for money on a New York City street corner, and giving some of that income to the church.
During that time, he uses Bobby’s old baseball glove as one of the objects of his bizarre penance. Though in 1983 he is still working on his penance, it seems possible or even likely that some new fate befalls him in 1999, because that same baseball glove appears in the possession of the late John Sullivan.
THE CRIMSON KING: An enormously powerful entity serving chaos, the Crimson King is working to unravel the ties that bind the infinite multiverse together.
THE LOW MEN: The low men are supernatural creatures who are employees of and enforcers for the Crimson King.
HEARTS IN ATLANTIS: TRIVIA
• Stephen King attended the University of Maine at Orono during the same period (1966–1970) as Carol Gerber, Pete Riley, and the others, though the version of the campus in Hearts in Atlantis has been altered for the purposes of the story.
• The segment Blind Willie first appeared, in very different form, in the magazine Antaeus in 1994, and later, also in different form, in the small press collection of the author’s work Six Stories (1997).
The Complete Stephen King Universe Page 10