Misery(37)
For a couple of summers his mother had sent him to day-camp at the Malden Community Center. And they had played this game... they sat in a circle, and the game was like Annie's chapter-plays, and he almost always won... What was that game called?
He could see fifteen or twenty little boys and girls sitting in a circle in one shady corner of a playground, all of them wearing Malden Community Center tee-shirts, all listening intently as the counsellor explained how the game was played. Can You?, the name of that game was Can You?, and it really was just like the Republic cliff-hangers, the game you played then was Can You?, Paulie, and that's the name of the game now, isn't it?
Yes, he supposed it was.
In Can You? the counsellor would start a story about this guy named Careless Corrigan. Careless was lost in the trackless jungles of South America. Suddenly he looks around and sees there are lions behind him... lions on either side of him... and by-God lions ahead of him.
Careless Corrigan is surrounded by lions... and they a starting to move in. It's only five in the afternoon, but that is no problem for these kitties; as far as South American lions are concerned, that dinner-at-eight shit is for goofballs.
The counsellor had had a stopwatch, and Paul Sheldon's dozing mind saw it with brilliant clarity, although he had last held its honest silver weight in his hand more than thirty years ago. He could see the fine copperplate of the numbers the smaller needle at the bottom which recorded tenths of seconds, he could see the brand name printed in tiny letters: ANNEX.
The counsellor would look around the circle and pick one of the day-campers. "Daniel," he would say. "Can you?" The moment Can you? was out of his mouth, the counsellor would click the stopwatch into motion.
Daniel then had exactly ten seconds to go on with the story. If he did not begin to speak during those ten seconds, he had to leave the circle. But if he got Careless away from the lions, the counsellor would look at the circle again and ask the game's other question, one that recalled his current situation clearly to mind again. This question was Did he?
The rules for this part of the game were Annie's exactly. Realism was not necessary; fairness was. Daniel could say, for instance: "Luckily, Careless had his Winchester with him and plenty of ammo. So he shot three of the lions and the rest ran away." In a case like that, Daniel did. He got the stopwatch and went on with the story, ending his segment with Careless up to his hips in a pool of quicksand or something, and then he would ask someone else if he or she could, and bang down the button on the stopwatch.
But ten seconds wasn't long" and it was easy to get jammed up... easy to cheat. The next kid might well say something like "Just then this great big bird - an Andean vulture, I think - flew down. Careless grabbed its neck and made it pull him out of that quicksand." When the counsellor asked Did she?, you raised your hand if you thought she had, left it down if you thought she had blown it. In the case of the Andean vulture, the kid would almost surely have been invited to leave the circle.
Can you, Paul?
Yeah. That's how I survive. That's how come I'm able to maintain homes in both New York and L.A. and more rolling iron than there is in some used-car lots. Because I can, and it's not something to apologize for, goddammit. There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean - hell I know that. But when the counsellor asks Did he? about those guys, sometimes only a few people raise their hands. But they raise their hands for me... or for Misery... and in the end I guess they're both the same. Can I? Yeah. You bet I can. There's a million things in this world I can't do. Couldn't hit a curve ball, even back in high school. Can't fix a leaky faucet. Can't roller-skate or make an F-chord on the guitar that sounds like anything but shit. I have tried twice to be married and couldn't do it either time. But if you want me to take you away, to scare you or involve you or make you cry or grin, yeah. I can. I can bring it to you and keep bringing it until you holler uncle. I am able. I CAN.
The typewriter's insolent gunslinger-voice whispered into this deepening dream.
What we got here, friends, is a lot of two things - big talk and white space.
Can You?
Yes. Yes!
Did he?
No. He cheated. In Misery's Child the doctor never came. Maybe the rest of you forgot what happened last week, but the stone idol never forgets. Paul has to leave the circle. Pardon me, please. Now I must rinse. Now I must -
5
" - rinse, " he muttered, and slid over to the right. This dragged his left leg slightly askew, and the bolt of pain in his crushed knee was enough to wake him up. Less than five minutes had gone by. He could hear Annie washing dishes in the kitchen. Usually she sang as she did her chores. Today she was not singing; there was only the rattle of plates and the occasional hiss of rinse-water. Another bad sign. Here's a special weather bulletin for residents of Sheldon County - a tomado watch is in effect until 5.00 P.M. tonight. I repeat, a tomado watch - But it was time to stop playing games and get down to business. She wanted Misery back from the dead, but it had to be fair. Not necessarily realistic, just fair. If he could do it this morning, he could just maybe he could derail the depression he sensed coming on before it could get a real start.
Paul looked out the window, his chin on his palm. He was fully awake now, thinking fast and hard, but not really aware of the process. The top two or three layers of his conscious mind, which dealt with such things as when he had last shampooed, or whether or not Annie would be on time with his next dope allotment, seemed to have departed the scene entirely. That part of his head had quietly gone out to get a pastrami on rye, or something. There was sensory input, but he was not doing anything with it - not seeing what he was seeing, not hearing what he was hearing.