by Stephen King
“One lies and the other swears to it,” Jim Dooley said, and after that things happened with a speed and a ferocity Lisey could hardly credit, although every moment of the beating and mutilation that followed remained vivid in her mind for the rest of her life, right down to the sound of his dry and rapid breathing, right down to the way his khaki shirt strained at the buttons, showing little winks of the white tee-shirt he wore beneath as he slapped her across the face, backhand and then forehand, backhand and then forehand, backhand and then forehand, backhand and then forehand again. Eight blows in all, eight-eight-lay-them-straight they chanted as children skip-roping in the dooryard dust, and the sound of his skin on her skin was like dry kindling snapped over a knee, and although the hand he used was ringless—there was that much to be grateful for—the fourth and fifth blows beat the blood from her lips, the sixth and seventh sent it spraying, and the last rode high enough to smash into her nose and set that gushing, as well. By then she was crying in fear and pain. Her head thumped repeatedly against the underside of the bar sink, making her ears ring. She heard herself crying out for him to stop, that he could have whatever he wanted if he would only stop. Then he did stop and she heard herself saying, “I can give you the manuscript of a new novel, his last novel, it’s all done, he finished it a month before he died and never got a chance to revise it, it’s a real treasure, Woodsmucky’ll love it.” She had time to think That’s pretty inventive, what are you going to do if he takes you up on it, but Jim Dooley wasn’t taking her up on anything. He was on his knees in front of her, panting harshly—it was hot up here already, if she’d known she was going to be taking a beating in Scott’s study today she certainly would have turned on the air-conditioning first thing—and rummaging in his lunchsack again. There were big sweat-rings spreading out from under his arms.
“Missus, I’m sorry as hell to do this, but at least it ain’t your pussy,” he said, and she had time to register two things before he swept his left hand down the front of her, tearing open her blouse and popping the catch at the front of her bra so that her small breasts tumbled free. The first was that he wasn’t sorry a bit. The second was that the object in his right hand had almost certainly come from her very own Things Drawer. Scott had called it Lisey’s yuppie church key. It was her Oxo can opener, the one with the heavy-duty rubber handgrips.
X. Lisey and The Arguments
Against Insanity (The Good Brother)
1
The arguments against insanity fall through with a soft shirring sound.
This line kept going through Lisey’s head as she crawled from the memory nook and then slowly across the center space of her dead husband’s long and rambling office, leaving an ugly trail behind her: splotches of blood from her nose, mouth, and mutilated breast.
The blood will never come out of this carpet, she thought, and the line recurred, as if in answer: The arguments against insanity fall through with a soft shirring sound.
There was insanity in this story, all right, but the only sound she remembered just lately wasn’t whirring, purring, or shirring; it was the sound of her screams when Jim Dooley had attached her can opener to her left breast like a mechanical leech. She had screamed, and then she had fainted, and then he had slapped her awake to tell her one more thing. After that he’d let her go back under again, but he had pinned a note to her shirt—after considerately pulling off her ruined bra and buttoning the shirt back up, that was—to make sure she wouldn’t forget. She hadn’t needed the note. She remembered what he’d said perfectly.
“I’d better hear from the Prof by eight tonight, or next time the hurtin will be a lot worse. And tend yourself by yourself, Missus, you hear me, now? Tell anyone I was here and I’ll kill you.” That was what Dooley had said. To this the note pinned to her shirt had added: Let’s get this business finish, we will both be happier when it is. Signed, your good freind, “Zack”!
Lisey had no idea how long she was out the second time. All she knew was that when she came to, the mangled bra was in the wastebasket and the note was pinned to the right side of her shirt. The left side was soaked with blood. She had unbuttoned enough to take one quick peek, then moaned and averted her eyes. It looked worse than anything Amanda had ever done to herself, including the thing with the navel. As to the pain…all she could remember was something enormous and obliterating.
The handcuffs had been removed, and Dooley had even left her a glass of water. Lisey drank it greedily. When she tried to get to her feet, however, her legs were trembling too badly to hold her. So she had crawled out of the alcove on all fours, dripping blood and bloody sweat on Scott’s carpet as she went (ah, but she’d never cared for that oyster-white anyway, it showed every speck of dirt), hair plastered to her forehead, tears drying on her cheeks, blood drying to a crust on her nose, lips, and chin.
At first she thought she was headed for the phone, probably to call Deputy Buttercluck in spite of Dooley’s admonitions and the failure of the Castle County Sheriff’s Department to protect her on its first try. Then that line of poetry
(the arguments against insanity)
started to go through her head and she saw Good Ma’s cedar box lying overturned on the carpet between the stairs going down to the barn and the desk Scott had called Dumbo’s Big Jumbo. The cedar box’s contents were spilled on the carpet in an untidy litter. She understood that the box and its spilled contents had been her destination all along. She especially wanted the yellow thing she could see draped over the bent purple shape of The Antlers menu.
The arguments against insanity fall through with a soft shirring sound.
From one of Scott’s poems. He didn’t write many, and those he did he almost never published—he said they weren’t good, and he wrote them just for himself. But she had thought that one very good, even though she hadn’t been entirely sure what it meant, or even what it was about. She had particularly liked that first line, because sometimes you just heard things going, didn’t you? They fell down, level after level, leaving a hole you could look through. Or fall into, if you weren’t careful.
SOWISA, babyluv. You’re bound for the rabbit-hole, so strap on nice and tight.
Dooley must have brought Good Ma’s box up to the study because he thought it had to do with what he wanted. Guys like Dooley and Gerd Allen Cole, aka Blondie, aka Monsieur Ding-Dong for the Freesias, thought everything had to do with what they wanted, didn’t they? Their nightmares, their phobias, their midnight inspirations. What had Dooley thought was in the cedar box? A secret list of Scott’s manuscripts (perhaps in code)? God knew. In any case he’d dumped it out, seen nothing but a jumble of uninteresting rickrack (uninteresting to him, at least), and then dragged the widow Landon deeper into the study, looking for a place where he could cuff her up before she regained consciousness. The pipes under the bar sink had done quite nicely.
Lisey crawled steadily toward the scattered contents of the box, her eyes fixed on the yellow knitted square. She wondered if she would have discovered it on her own. She had an idea the answer was no; she had gotten her fill of memories. Now, however—
The arguments against insanity fall through with a soft shirring sound.
So it seemed. And if her precious purple curtain finally came down, would it make that same soft, sad sound? She wouldn’t be at all surprised. It had never been much more than spun cobwebs to begin with; look at all she’d already remembered.
No more, Lisey, you don’t dare, hush.
“Hush yourself,” she croaked. Her outraged breast throbbed and burned. Scott had gotten his chest-wound; now she had hers. She thought of him coming back up her lawn that night, coming out of the shadows while Pluto barked and barked and barked next door. Scott holding up what had been a hand and was now nothing but a clot of blood with things that looked vaguely like fingers sticking out of it. Scott telling her it was a blood-bool, and it was for her. Scott later soaking that sliced-up meat in a basin filled with weak tea, telling her how it was somethin
g
(Paul thought this up)
his brother had shown him how to do. Telling her all the Landons were fast healers, they had to be. This memory fell through to the one beneath, the one where she and Scott were sitting under the yum-yum tree four months later. The blood fell down in a sheet, Scott told her, and Lisey asked if Paul soaked his cuts in tea afterward and Scott had said no—
Hush, Lisey—he never said that. You never asked and he never said.
But she had asked. She had asked him all sorts of things, and Scott had answered. Not then, not under the yum-yum tree, but later on. That night, in bed. Their second night in The Antlers, after making love. How could she have forgotten?
Lisey lay for a moment on the oyster-white carpet, resting. “Never forgot,” she said. “It was in the purple. Behind the curtain. Big difference.” She fixed her eyes on the yellow square and began crawling again.
I’m pretty sure the tea-cure came later, Lisey. Yeah, I know it did.
Scott lying next to her, smoking, watching the smoke from his cigarette go up and up, to that place where it disappeared. The way the stripes on a barber-pole disappear. The way Scott himself sometimes disappeared.
I know, because by then I was doing fractions.
In school?
No, Lisey. He said this in a tone that said more, that said she should know better. Sparky Landon had never been that kind of Daddy. Me n Paul, we ’us home-schooled. Daddy called public school the Donkey Corral.
But Paul’s cuts that day—the day you jumped from the bench—they were bad? Not just nicks?
A long pause while he watched the smoke rise and stack and disappear, leaving only its trail of sweetish-bitter fragrance behind. At last, flat: Daddy cut deep.
To that dry certainty there seemed no possible reply, so she had kept silent.
And then he’d said: Anyway, that’s not what you want to ask. Ask what you want, Lisey. Go ahead, I’ll tell you. But you have to ask.
She either couldn’t remember what had come next or wasn’t ready to, but now she remembered how they had left their refuge under the yum-yum tree. He had taken her in his arms beneath that white umbrella and they had been outside in the snow an instant later. And now, crawling on her hands and knees toward the overturned cedar box, memory
(insanity)
fell through
(with a soft shirring sound)
and Lisey finally allowed her mind to believe what her second heart, her secret hidden heart, had known all along. For a moment they had been neither under the yum-yum tree nor out in the snow but in another place. It had been warm and filled with hazy red light. It had been filled with the sound of distant calling birds and tropical smells. Some of these she knew—frangipani, jasmine, bougainvillea, mimosa, the moist breathing earth upon which they knelt like the lovers they most surely were—but the sweetest ones were unknown to her and she ached for their names. She remembered opening her mouth to speak, and Scott putting the side of his hand
(hush)
to her mouth. She remembered thinking how strange it was that they should be dressed for winter in such a tropical place, and she saw he was afraid. Then they had been outside in the snow. That crazy downpouring October snow.
How long had they been in the between-place? Three seconds? Maybe even less. But now, crawling because she was too weak and shocked to stand, Lisey was at last willing to own up to the truth of it. By the time they made it back to The Antlers that day, she’d gotten a fair distance toward convincing herself it hadn’t happened, but it had.
“Happened again, too,” she said. “Happened that night.”
She was so smucking thirsty. Wanted another drink of water in the worst way, but of course the bar alcove was behind her, she was going the wrong way for water and she could remember Scott singing one of Ole Hank’s songs as they drove back that Sunday, singing All day I’ve faced the barren waste, Without a single taste of water, cool water.
You’ll get your drink, babyluv.
“Will I?” Still nothing but a crow-croak. “A drink of water would surely help. This hurts so bad.”
To this there was no reply, and perhaps she didn’t need one. She had finally reached the scatter of objects around the overturned cedar box. She reached out for the yellow square, plucked it off the purple menu, and closed it tight in her hand. She lay on her side—the one that didn’t hurt—and looked at it closely: the little lines of knits and purls, those tiny locks. There was blood on her fingers and it smeared on the wool, but she hardly noticed. Good Ma had knitted dozens of afghans out of squares like this, afghans of rose and gray, afghans of blue and gold, afghans of green and burnt orange. They were Good Ma’s specialty and spilled from her needles, one after the other, as she sat in front of the chattering TV at night. Lisey remembered how, as a child, she had thought such knitted blankets were called “africans.” Their female cousins (Angletons, Darbys, Wiggenses, and Washburns as well as Debushers almost beyond counting) had all been gifted with africans when they married; each of the Debusher girls had gotten at least three. And with each african came one extra square in the same shade or pattern. Good Ma called these extra squares “delights.” They were meant as table decorations, or to be framed and hung on the wall. Because the yellow african had been Good Ma’s wedding present to Lisey and Scott, and because Scott had always loved it, Lisey had saved the accompanying delight in the cedar box. Now she lay bleeding on his carpet, holding the square, and gave up trying to forget. She thought, Bool! The End!, and began to cry. She understood she was incapable of coherence, but maybe that was all right; order would come later, if it was needed.
And, of course, if there was a later.
The gomers and the bad-gunky. For the Landons and the Landreaus before them, it’s always been one or the other. And it always comes out.
It was really no surprise Scott had recognized Amanda for what she was—he’d known about cutting behavior firsthand. How many times had he cut himself? She didn’t know. You couldn’t read his scars the way you could read Amanda’s, because…well, because. The one incidence of self-multilation she knew about for sure—the night of the greenhouse—had been spectacular, however. And he had learned about cutting from his father, who only turned his knife on his boys when his own body would not suffice to let the bad-gunky out.
Gomers and bad-gunky. Always one or the other. It always comes out.
And if Scott had missed the worst of the bad-gunky, what did that leave?
In December of 1995, the weather had turned rottenly cold. And something started going wrong with Scott. He had a number of speaking gigs planned after the turn of the year at schools in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona (what he referred to as The Scott Landon 1996 Western Yahoo Tour), but called his literary agent and had him cancel the whole deal. The booking agency screamed blue murder (no surprise there, that was three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of speaking dates he was talking about flushing down the commode), but Scott held firm. He said the tour was impossible, said he was sick. He was sick, all right; as that winter sank its claws in deeper, Scott Landon had been a sick man, indeed. Lisey knew as early as November that something
2
She knows something’s wrong with him, and it isn’t bronchitis, as he’s been claiming. He has no cough, and his skin’s cool to the touch, so even though he won’t let her take his temperature, won’t even let her put one of those fever-strip thingies on his forehead, she’s pretty sure he’s not running a fever. The problem seems to be mental rather than physical, and that scares the hell out of her. The one time she gets up enough courage to suggest he go see Dr. Bjorn, he just about tears her head off, accuses her of being a doctor-junkie “like the rest of your nut-box sisters.”
And how is she supposed to respond to that? What, exactly, are the symptoms he’s displaying? Would any doctor—even a sympathetic one like Rick Bjorn—take them seriously? He’s stopped listening to music when he writes, that’s one thing. And he’s not writing
much, that’s another, much bigger, thing. Forward progress on his new novel—which Lisey Landon, admittedly no great book critic, happens to love—has slowed from his usual all-out sprint to a labored crawl. Bigger still…dear Christ, where’s his sense of humor? That boisterous sense of good humor can be wearing, but its sudden absence as fall gives way to cold weather is downright spooky; it’s like the moment in one of those old jungle movies where the native drums suddenly fall silent. He’s drinking more, too, and later into the night. She has always gone to bed earlier than he does—usually much earlier—but she almost always knows when he turns in and what she smells on his breath when he does. She also knows what she sees in his trashcans up in his study, and as her worries grow, she makes a special point to look every two or three days. She’s used to seeing beer cans, sometimes a great lot of them, Scott has always liked his beer, but in December of 1995 and early January of 1996 she also begins to see Jim Beam bottles. And Scott is suffering hangovers. For some reason this bothers her more than all the rest. Sometimes he wanders the house—pale, silent, ill—until the middle of the afternoon before finally perking up. On several occasions she has heard him vomiting behind the closed bathroom door, and she knows by the speed with which the aspirin is disappearing that he’s suffering bad headaches. Nothing unusual in that, you might say; drink a case of beer or a bottle of Beam between nine and midnight, you’re gonna pay the price, Patrick. And maybe that’s all it is, but Scott has been a heavy drinker since the night she met him in that University lounge, when he had a bottle squirreled away in his jacket pocket (he shared it with her), and he’s never suffered more than the mildest of hangovers. Now when she sees the empties in his wastebasket and that only a page or two has been added to the Outlaw’s Honeymoon manuscript on his big desk (some days there are no new pages at all), she wonders just how much more he’s drinking than what she knows about.