Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(167)

“You know our Fred—junk food junkie. Mickey D’s is his second home. Sometimes he looks when he runs across Cranmore Avenue, sometimes he doesn’t. Just expects people to stop for him.” She wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue, looking like a little kid who’s just gotten a mouthful of something bad. Brussels sprouts, maybe. “That attitude.”

Dan knew Fred’s routine, and he knew the attitude.

“He was going for his evening cheeseburger,” Claudette said. “The cops took the woman who hit him to jail—chick was so drunk she could hardly stand up, that’s what I heard. They brought Fred here. His face is scrambled eggs, his chest and pelvis are crushed, one leg’s almost severed. If Emerson hadn’t been here doing rounds, Fred would have died right away. We triaged him, stopped the bleeding, but even if he’d been in peak condition . . . which dear old Freddy most definitely ain’t . . .” She shrugged. “Emerson says they will send an ambo after the Castle Rock mess is cleaned up, but he’ll be gone by then. Dr. Emerson wouldn’t commit on that, but I believe Azreel. You better go on down there, if you’re going. I know you never cared for him . . .”

Dan thought of the fingermarks the orderly had left on poor old Charlie Hayes’s arm. Sorry to hear it—that was what Carling had said when Dan told him the old man was gone. Fred all comfy, rocked back in his favorite chair and eating Junior Mints. But that is what they’re here for, isn’t it?

And now Fred was in the same room where Charlie had died. Life was a wheel, and it always came back around.


4

The door of the Alan Shepard Suite was standing half-open, but Dan knocked anyway, as a courtesy. He could hear the harsh wheeze-and-gurgle of Fred Carling’s breathing even from the hall, but it didn’t seem to bother Azzie, who was curled up at the foot of the bed. Carling was lying on a rubber sheet, wearing nothing but bloodstained boxer shorts and an acre of bandages, most of them already seeping blood. His face was disfigured, his body twisted in at least three different directions.

“Fred? It’s Dan Torrance. Can you hear me?”

The one remaining eye opened. The breathing hitched. There was a brief rasp that might have been yes.

Dan went into the bathroom, wetted a cloth with warm water, wrung it out. These were things he had done many times before. When he returned to Carling’s bedside, Azzie got to his feet, stretched in that luxurious, bowed-back way cats have, and jumped to the floor. A moment later he was gone, to resume his evening’s patrol. He limped a little now. He was a very old cat.

Dan sat on the side of the bed and gently rubbed the cloth over the part of Fred Carling’s face that was still relatively whole.

“How bad’s the pain?”

That rasp again. Carling’s left hand was a twisted snarl of broken fingers, so Dan took the right one. “You don’t need to talk, just tell me.”

(not so bad now)

Dan nodded. “Good. That’s good.”

(but I’m scared)

“There’s nothing to be scared of.”

He saw Fred at the age of six, swimming in the Saco with his brother, Fred always snatching at the back of his suit to keep it from falling off because it was too big, it was a hand-me-down like practically everything else he owned. He saw him at fifteen, kissing a girl at the Bridgton Drive-In and smelling her perfume as he touched her breast and wished this night would never end. He saw him at twenty-five, riding down to Hampton Beach with the Road Saints, sitting astride a Harley FXB, the Sturgis model, so fine, he’s full of bennies and red wine and the day is like a hammer, everybody looking as the Saints tear by in a long and glittering caravan of f*ck-you noise; life is exploding like fireworks. And he sees the apartment where Carling lives—lived—with his little dog, whose name is Brownie. Brownie ain’t much, just a mutt, but he’s smart. Sometimes he jumps up in the orderly’s lap and they watch TV together. Brownie troubles Fred’s mind because he will be waiting for Fred to come home, take him for a little walk, then fill up his bowl with Gravy Train.

“Don’t worry about Brownie,” Dan said. “I know a girl who’d be glad to take care of him. She’s my niece, and it’s her birthday.”

Carling looked up at him with his one functioning eye. The rattle of his breath was very loud now; he sounded like an engine with dirt in it.

(can you help me please doc can you help me)

Yes. He could help. It was his sacrament, what he was made for. It was quiet now in Rivington House, very quiet indeed. Somewhere close, a door was swinging open. They had come to the border. Fred Carling looked up him, asking what. Asking how. But it was so simple.

“You only need to sleep.”

(don’t leave me)

“No,” Dan said. “I’m here. I’ll stay here until you sleep.”

Now he clasped Carling’s hand in both of his. And smiled.

“Until you sleep,” he said.

May 1, 2011–July 17, 2012





AUTHOR’S NOTE


My first book with Scribner was Bag of Bones, in 1998. Anxious to please my new partners, I went out on tour for that novel. At one of the autographing sessions, some guy asked, “Hey, any idea what happened to the kid from The Shining?”

This was a question I’d often asked myself about that old book—along with another: What would have happened to Danny’s troubled father if he had found Alcoholics Anonymous instead of trying to get by with what people in AA call “white-knuckle sobriety”?