Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(19)

“Brazilian Suburban, wasn’t it? Turbodiesel.”

Freeman’s bushy eyebrows shot up and he grinned. “Goddam right! Casey Kingsley, he’s the boss, bought it at an auction last year. It’s a corker. Pulls like a sonofabitch. The instrument panel’s from a Suburban, too. The seats I put in myself.”

The shine was fading now, but Dan got one last thing. “From a GTO Judge.”

Freeman beamed. “That’s right. Found em in a junkyard over Sunapee way. The shifter’s a high-hat from a 1961 Mack. Nine-speed. Nice, huh? You lookin for work or just lookin?”

Dan blinked at the sudden change of direction. Was he looking for work? He supposed he was. The hospice he’d passed on his amble up Cranmore Avenue would be the logical place to start, and he had an idea—didn’t know if it was the shining or just ordinary intuition—that they’d be hiring, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to go there just yet. Seeing Tony in the turret window had been unsettling.

Also, Danny, you want to be a little bit farther down the road from your last drink before you show up there askin for a job application form. Even if the only thing they got is runnin a buffer on the night shift.

Dick Hallorann’s voice. Christ. Dan hadn’t thought of Dick in a long time. Maybe not since Wilmington.

With summer coming—a season for which Frazier most definitely had a reason—people would be hiring for all sorts of things. But if he had to choose between a Chili’s at the local mall and Teenytown, he definitely chose Teenytown. He opened his mouth to answer Freeman’s question, but Hallorann spoke up again before he could.

You’re closing in on the big three-oh, honey. You could be runnin out of chances.

Meanwhile, Billy Freeman was looking at him with open and artless curiosity.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m looking for work.”

“Workin in Teenytown, wouldn’t last long, y’know. Once summer comes and the schools let out, Mr. Kingsley hires local. Eighteen to twenty-two, mostly. The selectmen expect it. Also, kids work cheap.” He grinned, exposing holes where a couple of teeth had once resided. “Still, there are worse places to make a buck. Outdoor work don’t look so good today, but it won’t be cold like this much longer.”

No, it wouldn’t be. There were tarps over a lot of stuff on the common, but they’d be coming off soon, exposing the superstructure of small-town resort summer: hotdog stands, ice cream booths, a circular something that looked to Dan like a merry-go-round. And there was the train, of course, the one with the teeny passenger cars and the big turbodiesel engine. If he could stay off the sauce and prove trustworthy, Freeman or the boss—Kingsley—might let him drive it a time or two. He’d like that. Farther down the line, when the municipal department hired the just-out-of-school local kids, there was always the hospice.

If he decided to stay, that was.

You better stay somewhere, Hallorann said—this was Dan’s day for hearing voices and seeing visions, it seemed. You better stay somewhere soon, or you won’t be able to stay anywhere.

He surprised himself by laughing. “It sounds good to me, Mr. Freeman. It sounds really good.”

5

“Done any grounds maintenance?” Billy Freeman asked. They were walking slowly along the flank of the train. The tops of the cars only came up to Dan’s chest, making him feel like a giant.

“I can weed, plant, and paint. I know how to run a leaf blower and a chainsaw. I can fix small engines if the problem isn’t too complicated. And I can manage a riding mower without running over any little kids. The train, now . . . that I don’t know about.”

“You’d need to get cleared by Kingsley for that. Insurance and shit. Listen, have you got references? Mr. Kingsley won’t hire without em.”

“A few. Mostly janitorial and hospital orderly stuff. Mr. Freeman—”

“Just Billy’ll do.”

“Your train doesn’t look like it could carry passengers, Billy. Where would they sit?”

Billy grinned. “Wait here. See if you think this is as funny as I do. I never get tired of it.”

Freeman went back to the locomotive and leaned in. The engine, which had been idling lazily, began to rev and send up rhythmic jets of dark smoke. There was a hydraulic whine along the whole length of The Helen Rivington. Suddenly the roofs of the passenger wagons and the yellow caboose—nine cars in all—began to rise. To Dan it looked like the tops of nine identical convertibles all going up at the same time. He bent down to look in the windows and saw hard plastic seats running down the center of each car. Six in the passenger wagons and two in the caboose. Fifty in all.

When Billy came back, Dan was grinning. “Your train must look very weird when it’s full of passengers.”

“Oh yeah. People laugh their asses off and burn yea film, takin pitchers. Watch this.”

There was a steel-plated step at the end of each passenger car. Billy used one, walked down the aisle, and sat. A peculiar optical illusion took hold, making him look larger than life. He waved grandly to Dan, who could imagine fifty Brobdingnagians, dwarfing the train upon which they rode, pulling grandly out of Teenytown Station.

As Billy Freeman rose and stepped back down, Dan applauded. “I’ll bet you sell about a billion postcards between Memorial Day and Labor Day.”