Joyland(84)

I said, "Your grandfather may not want to see me, Mike. I almost got your mother in a whole peck of trouble."

"He'll know you didn't mean to. It wasn't your fault that you worked with that guy." Mike's face grew troubled. He put down his sandwich, picked up a napkin, and coughed into it. "Mr.

Hardy seemed really nice. He took us on the rides."

A lot of girls thought he was really nice, too, I thought. "You never had a . . . a vibe about him?"

Mike shook his head and coughed some more. "No. I liked him. And I thought he liked me."

I thought of Lane on the Carolina Spin, calling Mike a crippled brat.

Annie put a hand on Mike's wand of a neck and said, "Some people hide their real faces, han. Sometimes you can tell when they're wearing masks, but not always. Even people with powerful intuitions can get fooled."

I had come for lunch, and to take them to the airport, and to say goodbye, but I had another reason, as well. "I want to ask you something, Mike. It's about the ghost who woke you up and told you I was in trouble at the park. Is that okay? Will it upset you?"

"No, but it's not like on TY. There wasn't any white see-through thing floating around and going whooo-ooo. I just woke up . . . and the ghost was there. Sitting on my bed like a real person."

"I wish you wouldn't talk about this," Annie said. "Maybe it's not upsetting him, but it's sure as hell upsetting me."





Joyland

"I just have one more question, and then I'll let it go."

"Fine." She began to clear the table.

Tuesday we had taken Mike to Joyland. Not long after midnight on Wednesday morning, Annie had shot Lane Hardy on the Carolina Spin, ending his life and saving mine. The next day had been taken up by police interviews and dodging reporters. Then, on Thursday afternoon, Fred Dean had come to see me, and his visit had nothing to do with Lane Hardy's death.

Except I thought it did.

"Here's what I want to know, Mike. Was it the girl from the funhouse? Was she the one who came and sat on your bed?"

Mike's eyes went wide. "Gosh, no! She's gone. When they go, I don't think they ever come back. It was a guy."

?

In 1991, shortly after his sixty-third birthday, my father suffered a fairly serious heart attack. He spent a week in Portsmouth General Hospital and was then sent home, with stern warnings about watching his diet, losing twenty pounds, and cutting out the evening cigar. He was one of those rare fellows who actually followed the doctor's orders, and at this writing he's eighty-five and, except for a bad hip and dimming eyesight, still good to go.

In 1973, things were different. According to my new research assistant (Coogle Chrome), the average stay back then was two weeks-the first in ICU, the second on the Cardiac Recovery floor. Eddie Parks must have done okay in ICU, because while Mike was touring Joyland on that Tuesday, Eddie was being moved downstairs. That was when he had the second heart attack.

He died in the elevator.

?



STEPHEN K I N G

"What did he say to you?" I asked Mike.

"That I had to wake up my mom and make her go to the park right away, or a bad man was going to kill you."

Had this warning come while I was still on the phone with Lane, in Mrs. Shoplaw's parlor? It couldn't have come much later, or Annie wouldn't have made it in time. I asked, but Mike didn't know. As soon as the ghost went-that was the word Mike used; it didn't disappear, didn't walk out the door or use the window, it just went-he had thumbed the intercom beside his bed. When Annie answered his buzz, he'd started screaming.

"That's enough," Annie said, in a tone that brooked no refusal. She was standing by the sink with her hands on her hips.

"I don't mind, Mom." Coughcough. "Really." Cough-coughcough.

"She's right," I said. "It's enough."

Did Eddie appear to Mike because I saved the bad-tempered old geezer's life? It's hard to know anything about the motivations of those who've Gone On (Rozzie's phrase, the caps always implied by lifted and upturned palms), but I doubt it. His reprieve only lasted a week, after all, and he sure didn't spend those last few days in the Caribbean, being waited on by topless honeys.

But . . .

I had come to visit him, and except maybe for Fred Dean, I was the only one who did. I even brought him a picture of his ex-wife. Sure, he'd called her a miserable scolding backbiting cunt, and maybe she was, but at least I'd made the effort. In the end, so had he. For whatever reason.

As we drove to the airport, Mike leaned forward from the back seat and said, "You want to know something funny, Dev?

He never once called you by name. He just called you the kiddo.

I guess he figured I'd know who he meant."



Joy land

279

I guessed so, too.

Eddie f*cking Parks.

?

Those are things that happened once upon a time and long ago, in a magical year when oil sold for eleven dollars a barrel. The year I got my damn heart broke. The year I lost my virginity.

The year I saved a nice little girl from choking and a fairly nasty old man from dying of a heart attack (the first one, at least) .

The year a madman almost killed m e o n a Ferris wheel. The year I wanted to see a ghost and didn't . . . although I guess at least one of them saw me. That was also the year I learned to talk a secret language, and how to dance the Hokey Pokey in a dog costume. The year I discovered that there are worse things than losing the girl.