Joyland(9)

"It." Finally, "it."

"I want it," I said, and felt my cheeks heat up. It wasn't just the room I was talking about.

"I know you do. It's all over your darn face." As if she knew what I was thinking, and maybe she did. She grinned-a big wide one that made her almost Dickensian in spite of her flat bosom and pale skin. "Your own little nest. Not the Palace of Versailles, but your own. Not like having a dorm room, is it?

Even a single?"

"No," I admitted. I was thinking I'd have to talk my dad into putting another five hundred bucks into my bank account, to keep me covered until I started getting paychecks. He'd grouse but come through. I just hoped I wouldn't have to play the Dead Mom card. She had been gone almost four years, but Dad carried half a dozen pictures of her in his wallet, and still wore his wedding ring.

"Your own job and your own place," she said, sounding a bit dreamy. "That's good stuff, Devin. Do you mind me calling you Devin?"

"Make it Dev."

"All right, I will." She looked around the little room with its Joyland





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sharply sloping roof-it was under an eave-and sighed. "The thrill doesn't last long, but while it does, it's a fine thing. That sense of independence. I think you'll fit in here. You've got a carny look about you."

"You're the second person to tell me that." Then I thought of my conversation with Lane Hardy in the parking lot. "Third, actually."

"And I bet I know who the other two were. Anything else I can show you? The bathroom's not much, I know, but it beats having to take a dump in a dormitory bathroom while a couple of guys at the sinks fart and tell lies about the girls they made out with last night."

I burst into roars of laughter, and Mrs. Emmalina Shoplaw joined me.

?

We descended by way of the outside stairs. "How's Lane Hardy?"

she asked when we got to the bottom. "Still wearing that stupid beanie of his?"

"It looked like a derby to me."

She shrugged. "Beanie, derby, what's the cliff?"

"He's fine, but he told me something . . . "

She was giving me a head-cocked look. Almost smiling, but not quite.

"He told me the Joyland funhouse-Horror House, he called it-is haunted. I asked him if he was pulling my leg, and he said he wasn't. He said you knew about it."

"Did he, now."

"Yes. He says that when it comes to Joyland, you know more than he does."





34


STEPHEN KING


"Well," she said, reaching into the pocket of her slacks and bringing out a pack of Winstons, "I know a fair amount. My husband was chief of engineering down there until he took a heart attack and died. When it turned out his life insurance was lousy-and borrowed against to the hilt in the bargain-I started renting out the top two stories of this place. What else was I going to do? We just had the one kid, and now she's up in New York, working for an ad agency." She lit her cigarette, inhaled, and chuffed it back out as laughter. "Working on losing her southern accent, too, but that's another story. This overgrown monstrosity of a house was Howie's playtoy, and I never begrudged him. At least it's paid off. And I like staying connected to the park, because it makes me feel like I'm still connected to him. Can you understand that?"

"Sure."

She considered me through a rising raft of cigarette smoke, smiled, and shook her head. "Nah-you're being kind, but you're a little too young."

"I lost my Mom four years ago. My dad's still grieving. He says there's a reason wife and life sound almost the same. I've got school, at least, and my girlfriend. Dad's knocking around a house just north of Kittery that's way too big for him. He knows he should sell it and get a smaller one closer to where he works-we both know-but he stays. So yeah, I know what you mean."

''I'm sorry for your loss," Mrs. Shoplaw said. "Some day I'll open my mouth too wide and fall right in. That bus of yours, is it the five-ten?"

"Yes.''

"Well, come on in the kitchen. I'll make you a toasted cheese Joyland





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and microwave you a bowl of tomato soup. You've got time.

And I'll tell you the sad story of the J oyland ghost while you eat, if you want to hear it."

"Is it really a ghost story?"

''I've never been in that damn funhouse, so I don't know for sure. But it's a murder story. That much I am sure of."

?

The soup was just Campbell's out of the can, but the toasted cheese was Muenster-my favorite-and tasted heavenly. She poured me a glass of milk and insisted I drink it. I was, Mrs.

Shoplaw said, a growing boy. She sat down opposite me with her own bowl of soup but no sandwich ("I have to watch my girlish figure") and told me the tale. Some of it she'd gotten from the newspapers and TV reports. The juicier bits came from her Joyland contacts, of whom she had many.

"It was four years ago, which I guess would make it around the same time your mother died. Do you know what always comes first to my mind when I think about it? The guy's shirt.