Lisey's Story by Stephen King
--You gonna jump you coward or am I gonna have to cut him again?
--Don't, Daddy! Scott shrieks.--Please don't cut 'im no more, I'll jump!
--Then do so! Daddy's top lip rolls back to show his teeth. His eyes roll in their sockets, they roll roll roll like he's looking for folks in the corners, and maybe he is, prolly he is, because sometimes they hear him talking to folks who ain't there. Sometimes Scott and his brother call them the Bad-Gunky Folks and sometimes the Bloody Bool People.
--You do it, Scooter! You do it, you ole Scoot! Yell Geronimo and then paratroops over the side! No cowardy kikes in this family! Right now!
--GEROMINO! he yells, and although his feet tremble and his legs jerk, he still can't make himself jump. Cowardy legs, cowardy kike legs. Daddy doesn't give him another chance. Daddy cuts deep into Paul's arm and the blood falls down in a sheet. Some goes on Paul's shorts and some goes on his sneaks and most goes on the floor. Paul grimaces but doesn't cry out. His eyes beg Scott to make it stop, but his mouth stays shut. His mouth will not beg.
At U.S. Gypsum (which the boys call U.S. Gyppum because it's what their Daddy calls it) the men call Andrew Landon Sparky or sometimes Mister Sparks. Now his face looms over Paul's shoulder and his fluff of whitening hair stands up as if all the lectricity he works with has gotten inside of him and his crooked teeth show in a Halloween grin and his eyes are empty because Daddy is gone, he's a goner, there's nothing in his shoes but the bad-gunky, he's no longer a man or a daddy but just a blood-bool with eyes.
--Stay up there this time and I'll cut off his ear, says the thing with their Daddy's lectric hair, the thing standing up in their Daddy's shoes.--Stay up there next time and I'll cut his mothersmuckin throat, I don't give a shit. Up to you, Scooter Scooter you ole Scoot. You say you love him but you don't love him enough to stop me cutting him, do you? When all you have to do is jump off a sweetmother three-foot bench! What do you think of that, Paul? What have you got to say to your chickenkike little brother now?
But Paul says nothing, only looks at his brother, dark blue eyes locked on hazel ones, and this hell will go on for another twenty-five hundred days; seven endless years. Do what you can and let the rest go is what Paul's eyes say to Scott and it breaks his heart and when he jumps from the bench at last (to what part of him is firmly convinced will be his death) it isn't because of their father's threats but because his brother's eyes have given him permission to stay right where he is if in the end he's just too scared to do it.
To stay on the bench even if it gets Paul Landon killed.
He lands and falls on his knees in the blood on the boards and begins crying, shocked to find he is still alive, and then his father's arm is around him, his father's strong arm is lifting him up, now in love rather than in anger. His father's lips are first on his cheek and then pressed firmly against the corner of his mouth.
--See, Scooter old Scooter you old Scoot? I knew you could do it.
Then Daddy is saying it's over, the blood-bool is over and Scott can take care of his brother. His father tells him he's brave, one brave little sumbitch, his father says he loves him and in that moment of victory Scott doesn't even mind the blood on the floor, he loves his father too, he loves his crazy blood-bool Daddy for letting it be over this time even though he knows, even at three he knows that next time will come.
9
Scott stops, looks around, spies the wine. He doesn't bother with the glass but drinks straight from the bottle. "It really wasn't much of a jump," he says, and shrugs. "Looked like a lot to a three-year-old, though."
"Scott, my God," Lisey says. "How often was he like that?"
"Often enough. A lot of the times I've blocked out. That time on the bench, though, that one's stone clear. And like I said, it can stand for the rest."
"Was it . . . was he drunk?"
"No. He almost never drank. Are you ready for Part Two of the story, Lisey?"
"If it's like Part One, I'm not sure I am."
"Don't worry. Part Two is 'Paul and the Good Bool.' No, I take that back, it's 'Paul and the Best Bool,' and it was only a few days after the old man made me jump off the bench. He got called in to work, and as soon as his truck was out of sight, Paul told me to be good while he went down to Mulie's." He stops, laughs, and shakes his head as people do when they realize they're being silly. "Mueller's. That's what it really was. I told you about going back to Martensburg when the bank auctioned off the home place, right? Just before I met you?"
"No, Scott."
He looks puzzled--for a moment almost frighteningly vague. "No?"
"No." This isn't the time to tell him he's told her next to nothing about his childhood--
Next to nothing? Nothing at all. Until today, under the yum-yum tree.
"Well," he says (a little doubtfully), "I got a letter from Daddy's bank--First Rural of Pennsylvania . . . you know, like there was a Second Rural out there somewhere . . . and they said it was out of court after all these years and I was set for a piece of the proceeds. So I said what the smuck and went back. First time in seven years. I graduated Martensburg Township High when I was sixteen. Took a lot of tests, got a papal dispensation. Surely I told you that."
"No, Scott."
He laughs uneasily. "Well, I did. Go, you Ravens, peck em and deck em." He makes a cawing sound, laughs more uneasily still, then takes a big glug of wine. It's almost gone. "The home place ended up going for seventy grand, something like that, of which I got thirty-two hundred, big smogging deal, huh? But anyway, I took a ride around our part of Martensburg before the auction and the store was still there, a mile down the road from the home place, and if you'd told me when I was a kid it was only a mile I would have said you were full of shit up to your tick-tock. It was empty, all boarded up, FOR SALE sign in front but so faded you could hardly read it. The sign on the roof was actually in better shape, and that one said MUELLER'S GENERAL STORE. Only we always called it Mulie's, see, because that 'us what Daddy called it. Like he called U.S. Steel U.S. Beg Borrow and Steal . . . and he'd call The Burg Pittsburgh Shitty . . . and . . . oh dammit, Lisey, am I crying?"
"Yes, Scott." Her voice sounds faraway to her own ears.
He takes one of the paper napkins that came with the picnic lunch and wipes his eyes. When he puts the napkin down, he's smiling. "Paul told me to be good when he was gone to Mulie's and I did what Paul said. I always did. You know?"
She nods. You're good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.
"Anyway, when he came back I saw he had two bottles of RC and I knew he was going to make a good bool, and that made me happy. He told me to go in my bedroom and look at my books awhile so he could make it. It took him a long time and I knew it was going to be a long good bool, and I was happy about that, too. Finally he hollered to me to come out to the kitchen and look on the table."
"Did he ever call you Scooter?" Lisey asks.
"Not him, not never. By the time I got out there t' kitchen, he was gone. He 'us hidin. But I knew he 'us watching me. There was a piece of paper on the table that said BOOL! and then it said--"
"Wait a second," Lisey said.
Scott looks at her, eyebrows raised.
"You were three . . . he was six . . . or maybe going on seven--"
"Right--"
"But he could write little riddles and you could read them. Not only read them, figure them out."
"Yes?" Raised eyebrows asking what the big deal is.
"Scott--did your crazy Daddy understand he was abusing a couple of smucking child prodigies?"
Scott surprises her by throwing back his head and laughing. "That would have been the least of his concerns!" he says. "Just listen, Lisey. Because that was the best day I can remember having as a kid, maybe because it was such a long day. Probably someone at the Gypsum plant screwed up and the old man had to put in some serious overtime, I don't know, but w
"No babysitter?"
He doesn't reply, only looks at her as if she might have a screw loose.
"No neighbor-lady checking in?"
"Our nearest neighbors were four miles away. Mulie's was closer. That's how Daddy liked it, and believe me, that's the way people in town liked it, too."
"All right. Tell me Part Two. 'Scott and the Good Bool.'"
" 'Paul and the Good Bool. The Great Bool. The Excellent Bool.'" His face smooths out at the memory. One to balance the horror of the bench. "Paul had a notebook with blue-ruled lines, a Dennison notebook, and when he made stations of the bool, he'd take a sheet out and then fold it so he could tear it into strips. That made the notebook last longer, do you see?"
"Yes."
"Only that day he must have ripped out two sheets or even three--Lisey, it was such a long bool!" In his remembered pleasure, Lisey can see the child he was. "The strip on the table said BOOL!--the first one and the last one always said that--and then, right underneath--
10
Right underneath BOOL! it says this in Paul's big and careful capital letters:
1 FIND ME CLOSE IN SOMETHING SWEET! 16
But before considering the riddle, Scott looks at the number, savoring that 16. Sixteen stations! He is filled with a tingling, pleasurable excitement. The best part of it is knowing Paul never teases. If he promises sixteen stations, there will be fifteen riddles. And if Scott can't get one, Paul will help. Paul will call from his hiding place in a spooky scary voice (it's a Daddyvoice, although Scott won't realize this until years later, when he is writing a spooky scary story called Empty Devils), giving hints until Scott does get it. More and more often, though, Scott doesn't need the hints. He improves swiftly at the art of solving, just as Paul improves swiftly at the art of making.
Find me close in something sweet.
Scott looks around and almost at once fixes on the big white bowl standing on the table in a mote-filled bar of morning sun. He has to stand on a chair to reach it and giggles when Paul calls out in his spooky Daddyvoice,--Don't spill it, you mother!
Scott lifts the lid, and on top of the sugar is another strip of paper with another message printed in his brother's careful capital letters:
2 I'M WHERE CLIDE USED TO PLAY WITH SPULES IN THE SUN
Until he disappeared in the spring, Clyde was their cat and both boys loved him, but Daddy didn't love him because Clyde used to waow all the time to be let in or out and although neither of them says it out loud (and neither would ever dare ask Daddy), they have a good idea that something a lot bigger and a lot meaner than a fox or a fisher got Clyde. In any case, Scott knows perfectly well where Clyde used to play in the sun and hurries there now, trotting down the main hall to the back porch without giving the bloodstains under his feet or the terrible bench so much as a glance (well, maybe just one). On the back porch is a vast lumpy couch that exudes weird smells when you sit down on it.--It smells like fried farts, Paul said one day, and Scott laughed until he wet his pants. (If Daddy had been there, wetting his pants would have meant BIG TROUBLE, but Daddy was at work.) Scott goes to this couch now, where Clyde used to lie on his back and play with the spools of thread Paul and Scott would dangle above him, reaching up with his front paws and making a giant boxing shadow-cat on the wall. Now Scott falls on his knees and looks under the lumpy cushions one by one until he finds the third scrap of paper, the third station of the bool, and this one sends him to--
It doesn't matter where it sends him. What matters is that long suspended day. There are two boys who spend the morning ranging in and around a slumped distempered farmhouse far out in the country as the sun climbs slowly in the sky toward depthless shadowless noon. This is a simple tale of shouts and laughter and dooryard dust and socks that fall down until they puddle around dirty ankles; this is a story of boys who are too busy to pee inside and so water the briars on the south side of the house instead. It's about a little kid not that long out of his diapers collecting slips of paper from the foot of a ladder leading up to the barn loft, from under the porch stoop steps, from behind the junked-out Maytag washer in the backyard, and beneath a stone near the old dry well. (--Don't fall in, you little booger! says the spooky Daddyvoice, now coming from the high weeds at the edge of the bean field, which has been left fallow this year.) And finally Scott is directed this way:
15 I'M UNDERNEATH YOUR EVERY DREEM
Underneath my every dream, he thinks. Underneath my every dream . . . where is that?
--Need help, you little booger? the spooky voice intones.--Because I'm getting hungry for my lunch.
Scott is, too. It's afternoon, now, he's been at this for hours, but he asks for another minute. The spooky Daddyvoice informs him he can have thirty seconds.
Scott thinks furiously. Underneath my every dream . . . underneath my every . . .
He's blessedly de-quipped with ideas having to do with the subconscious mind or the id, but has already begun to think in metaphor, and the answer comes to him in a divine, happy flash. He races up the stairs as fast as his small legs will carry him, hair flying back from his tanned and grimy forehead. He goes to his bed in the room he shares with Paul, looks beneath his pillow, and sure enough, there is his bottle of RC Cola--a tall one!--along with a final slip of paper. The message on it is the same as always:
16 BOOL! THE END!
He lifts the bottle as he will much later hold up a certain silver spade (a hero is what he feels like), then turns around. Paul comes sauntering in the door, holding his own bottle of RC and carrying the church key from the Things Drawer in the kitchen.
--Not bad, Scott-O. Took you awhile, but you got there.
Paul opens his bottle, then Scott's. They clink the longnecks together. Paul says this is "having a host," and when you do it you have to make a wish.
--What do you wish for, Scott?
--I wish the Bookmobile comes this summer. What do you wish for, Paul?
His brother looks at him calmly. In a little while he will go downstairs and make them peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, taking the step-stool from the back porch, where their fatally noisy pet once slept and played, in order to get a fresh jar of Shedd's from the top shelf in the pantry. And he says
11
But here Scott falls silent. He looks at the bottle of wine, but the bottle of wine is empty. He and Lisey have taken off their parkas and laid them aside. It has grown more than warm under the yum-yum tree; it's hot, really just short of stifling, and Lisey thinks: We'll have to leave soon. If we don't, the snow lying on the fronds will melt enough to come crashing down on us.
12
Sitting in her kitchen with the menu from The Antlers in her hands, Lisey thought, I'll have to leave these memories soon, too. If I don't, something a lot heavier than snow will come crashing down on me.
But wasn't that what Scott had wanted? What he'd planned? And wasn't this bool hunt her chance to strap it on?
Oh, but I'm scared. Because now I'm so close.
Close to what? Close to what?
"Hush," she whispered, and shivered as if before a cold wind. One all the way down from Yellowknife, perhaps. But then, because she was two-minded, two-hearted: "Just a little more."
It's dangerous. Dangerous, little Lisey.
She knew it was, could already see bits of the truth shining through holes in her purple curtain. Shining like eyes. Could hear voices whispering that there were reasons why you didn't look into mirrors unless you really had to (especially not after dark and never at twilight), reasons to avoid fresh fruit after sunset and to fast completely between midnight and six AM.
Reasons not to unbury the dead.
But she didn't want to leave the yum-yum tree. Not just yet.
Didn't want to leave him.
He had wished for the Bookmobile, even at the age of three a very Scott wish. And Paul? What was Paul's
13
"What, Scott
"He said, 'I wish Daddy dies at work. That he gets lectercuted and dies.'"
She looks at him, mute with horror and pity.
Abruptly Scott begins stuffing things back into the pack. "Let's get out of here before we roast," he says. "I thought I could tell you a lot more, Lisey, but I can't. And don't say I'm not like the old man, because that's not the point, okay? The point is that everyone in my family got some of it."
"Paul, too?"
"I don't know if I can talk about Paul anymore now."
"Okay," she says. "Let's go back. We'll take a nap, then build a snowman, or something."
The look of intense gratitude he shoots her makes her feel ashamed, because really, she was ready for him to stop--she's taken in all she can process, at least for the time being. In a word, she's freaked. But she can't leave it completely, because she's got a good idea of how the rest of this story must go. She almost thinks she could finish it for him. But first she has a question.
"Scott, when your brother went after the RC Colas that morning . . . the prizes for the good bool . . ."
He's nodding, smiling. "The great bool."
"Uh-huh. When he went down to that little store . . . Mulie's . . . didn't anybody think it was weird to see a six-year-old kid come in all covered with cuts? Even if the cuts were covered with Band-Aids?"
He stops doing up the buckles on the pack and looks at her very seriously. He's still smiling, but the flush in his cheeks has faded almost entirely; his skin looks pale, almost waxy. "The Landons are fast healers," he says. "Didn't I ever tell you that?"
"Yes," she agrees. "You did." And then, freaked or not, she pushes ahead a little farther. "Seven more years," she says.
"Seven, yes." He looks at her, the pack between his bluejeaned knees. His eyes ask how much she wants to know. How much she dares to know.