Stephen King-The Dead Zone (Part Two and Three)

PART TWO
The Laughing Tiger

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The boy read slowly, following the words with his finger, his long brownfootball-player’s legs stretched out on the chaise by the pool in the brightclear light of June.

‘"Of course young Danny Ju … Juniper … young Danny Juniper was dead, and I….. . suppose that there were few in the world who would say he had not deduh. -. dee…" Oh, shit, I don’t know.’

‘"Few in the world who would say he had not deserved his death,"‘ Johnny Smithsaid. ‘Only a slightly fancier way of saying that most would agree that Danny’sdeath was a good thing.’

Chuck was looking at him, and the familiar mix of emotions was crossing hisusually pleasant face: amusement, resentment, embarrassment, and a trace ofsullenness. Then he sighed and looked down at the Max Brand Western again.

‘"Deserved his death. But it was my great trah … truhjud…"‘

‘Tragedy,’ Johnny supplied.

‘"But it was my great tragedy that he had died just as he was about toredeem some of his e-e-evil work by one great service to the world.

"Of course that . .. ….. . that ….. . sih

Chuck closed the book, looked up at Johnny, and smiled brilliantly.

‘Let’s quit for the day, Johnny, what do you say?’ Chuck’s smile was his mostwinning, the one that had probably tumbled cheerleaders into bed all over NewHampshire. ‘Doesn’t that pool look good? You bet it does. The sweat is runningright off your skinny, malnourished little bod.’

Johnny had to admit – at least to himself – that the pool did look good. Thefirst couple of weeks of the Bicentennial Summer of ’76 had been uncommonly hotand sticky’. From behind them, around on the other side of the big, graciouswhite house, came the soporific drone of the riding lawnmower as Ngo Phat, theVietnamese groundsman, mowed what Chuck called the front forty. It was a soundthat made you want to drink two glasses of cold lemonade and then nod off tosleep.

‘No derogatory comments about my skinny bod,’ he said. ‘Besides, we juststarted the chapter.’

‘Sure, but we read two before it.’ Wheedling.

Johnny sighed. Usually he could keep Chuck at it, but not this afternoon. Andtoday the kid had fought his way gamely through the way John Sherburne had setup his net of guards around the Amity jail and the way the evil Red Hawk hadbroken through and killed Danny Juniper.

‘Yeah, well, just finish this page, then,’ he said. ‘That word you’re stuckon’s "sickened". No teeth in that one, Chuck.’

‘Good man!’ The grin widened. ‘And no questions, right?’

‘Well… maybe just a few.’

Chuck scowled, but it was a puton; he was getting off easy and knew it. Heopened the paperback with the picture of the gunslinger shouldering his waythrough a set of saloon batwings again and began to read in his slow, haltingvoice … a voice so different from his normal speaking voice that it couldhave belonged to a different young man altogether.

‘"Of course that suh . . sickened me at’ once. But it was… was nothing towhat waited for me at the bedside of poor Tom Keyn.. . Kenyon.

"‘He had been shot through the body and he was fast drying when I…"‘

‘Dying,’ Johnny said quietly. ‘Context, Chuck. Read for context.

‘Fast drying,’ Chuck said, and giggled. Then he resumed ‘" … and he was fastdying when I ar-ar when I arrived."‘

Johnny felt a sadness for Chuck steal over him as he watched the boy, hunchedover the paperback copy of Fire’ Brain, a good oat opera that shouldhave read like the wind – and instead, here was Chuck, following Max Brand’ssimple point-to-point prose with a laboriously moving finger. His father, RogerChatsworth, owned Chatsworth Mills and Weaving, a very big deal indeed insouthern New Hampshire. He owned this sixteen-room house in Durham, and therewere five people on the staff, including Ngo Phat, who went down to Portsmouthonce a week to take United States citizenship classes. Chatsworth drove arestored 1957 Cadillac convertible. His wife, a sweet, clear-eyed woman offorty-two, drove a Mercedes. Chuck had a Corvette. The family fortune was inthe neighborhood of five million dollars.

And Chuck, at seventeen, was what God had really meant when he breathed lifeinto the clay, Johnny often thought. He was a physically lovely human being. Hestood six-two and weighed a good muscular one hundred and ninety pounds. Hisface was perhaps not quite interesting enough to be truly handsome, but it wasacne- and pimple-free and set off by a pair of striking green eyes which hadcaused Johnny to think that the only other person he knew with really greeneyes was Sarah Hazlett. At his high school, Chuck was the apotheosis of theBMOC, almost ridiculously so. He was captain of the baseball and footballteams, president of the junior class during the school year just ended, andpresident-elect of the student council this coming fall. And most amazing ofall, none of it had gone to his head. In the words of Herb Smith, who had beendown once to check out Johnny’s new digs, Chuck was ‘a regular guy’. Herb hadno higher accolade in his vocabulary. In addition, he was someday going to bean exceedingly rich regular guy.

And here he sat, bent grimly over his book like a machine gunner at a lonelyoutpost, shooting the words down one by one as they came at him. He had takenMax Brand’s exciting, fast-moving story of drifting John ‘Fire Brain’ Sherburneand his confrontation with the outlaw Comanche Red Hawk and had turned it intosomething that sounded every bit as exciting as a trade advertisement forsemiconductors or radio components.

But Chuck wasn’t stupid. His math grades were good, his retentive memory wasexcellent, and he was manually adept. His problem was that he had greatdifficulty storing printed words. His oral vocabulary was fine, and he couldgrasp the theory of phonics but apparently not it – practice; and he wouldsometimes reel a sentence off flawlessly and then come up totally blank whenyou asked him to rephrase it. His father had been afraid that Chuck wasdyslexic, but Johnny didn’t think so – he had never met a dyslexic child thathe was aware of, although many parents seized on the words to explain or excusethe reading problems of their children. Chuck’s problem seemed more general – aloose, across-the-board reading phobia.

It was a problem that had become more and more apparent over the last fiveyears of Chuck’s schooling, but his parents had only begun to take it seriously- as Chuck had – when his sports eligibility became endangered. And that wasnot the worst of it. This winter would be Chuck’s last good chance to take theScholastic Achievement Tests, if he expected to start college in the fall of1977. The maths were not much of a problem, but the rest of the exam… well…if he could have the questions read aloud to him, he would do anaverage-to-good job. Five hundreds, no sweat. But they don’t let you bring areader with you when you take the SATs, not even if your dad is a biggie in theworld of New Hampshire business.

‘"But I found him a ch … changed man. He knew what lay before him and hiscourage was ……. supper superb. He asked for nothing; he regretted nothing.All the terror and the nerv … nervousness which had puss … possett…possessed him so long as he was cuh cuh … culafronted …confronted by an unknown fate…"‘

Johnny had seen the ad for a tutor in the Maine’ Time’s and had appliedwithout too much hope. He had moved down to Kittery in mid-February, needingmore than anything else to get away from Pownal, from the boxful of mail eachday, the reporters who had begun to find their way to the house inever-increasing numbers, the nervous women with the wounded eyes who had just’dropped by’ because ‘they just happened to be in the neighborhood’ (one ofthose who had just dropped by because she just happened to be in theneighborhood had a Maryland license plate; another was driving a tired old Fordwith Arizona tags). Their hands, stretching out to touch him…

In Kittery he had discovered for the first time that an anonymous name likeJohn-no-middle-initial-Smith had its advantages. His third day in town he hadapplied for a job as a shortorder cook, putting down his experience in the UMOcommons and one summer cooking at a boys’ camp in the Rangely Lakes asexperience. The diner’s owner, a tough-as-nails widow named Ruby Pelletier, hadlooked over his application and said, ‘You’re a teensy bit overeducated forslinging hash. You know that, don’t you, slugger?’

‘That’s right,’ Johnny said. ‘I went and educated my-self right out of the jobmarket.’

Ruby Pelletier put her hands on her scrawny hips, threw her head back, andbellowed laughter. ‘You think you can keep your shit together at two in themorning when twelve CB cowboys pull in all at once and order scrambled eggs,bacon, sausage, french toast, and flap-jacks?’

‘I guess maybe,’ Johnny said.

‘I guess maybe you don’t know what the eff I’m talking about just yet,’ Rubysaid, ‘but I’ll give you a go, college boy. Go get yourself a physical so we’resquare with the board of health and bring me back a clean bill. I’ll put youright on.’

He had done that, and after a harum-scarum first two weeks (which included apainful rash of blisters on his right hand from dropping a french-fry basketinto a well of boiling fat a little too fast), he had been riding the jobinstead of the other way around. When he saw Chatsworth’s ad, he had sent hisresume to the box number. In the course of the resume he had listed his specialed credentials, which included a one-semester seminar in learning disabilitiesand reading problems.

In late April, as he was finishing his second month at the diner, he had gottena letter from Roger Chatsworth, asking him to appear for an interview on May 5.He made the necessary arrangements to take the day off, and at 2: loon a lovelymidspring afternoon he had been sitting in Chatsworth’s study, a tall,ice-choked glass of Pepsi-Cola in one hand, listening to Stuart talk about hisson’s reading problems.

‘That sound like dyslexia to you?’ Stuart asked.

‘No. It sounds like a general reading phobia.’

Chatsworth had winced a little. ‘Jackson’s Syndrome?’ Johnny had been impressed- as he was no doubt supposed to be. Michael Carey Jackson was areading-and-grammar specialist from the University of Southern California whohad caused something of a stir nine years ago with a book called TheUnlearning Reader. The book described a loose basket of reading problemsthat had since become known as Jackson’s Syndrome. The book was a good one ifyou could get past the dense academic jargon. The fact that Chatsworthapparently had done so told Johnny a good deal about the man’s commitment tosolving his son’s problem.

‘Something like it,’ Johnny agreed. ‘But you understand I haven’t even met yourson yet, or listened to him read.’

‘He’s got course work to make up from last year. American Writers, a nine-weekhistory block, and civics, of all things. He flunked his final examthere because he couldn’t read the beastly thing. Have you got a New Hampshireteacher’s certificate?’

‘No,’ Johnny said, ‘but getting one is no problem’

‘And how would you handle the situation?’

Johnny outlined the way he would deal with it. A lot of oral reading on Chuck’spart, leaning heavily on high-impact materials such as fantasy, sciencefiction, Westerns, and boy-meets-car juvenile novels. Constant questioning onwhat had just been read. And a relaxation technique described in Jackson’sbook. ‘High achievers often suffer the most,’ Johnny said. ‘They try too hardand reinforce the block. It’s a kind of mental stutter that …

‘Jackson says that?’. Chatsworth interposed sharply.

Johnny smiled. ‘No, I say that,’ he said

‘Okay. Go on.’

‘Sometimes, if the student can totally blank his mind right after reading andnot feel the pressure to recite back right away, the circuits seem to dearthemselves. When that begins to happen, the student begins to rethink his lineof attack. It’s a positive thinking kind of thing…’

Chatsworth’s eyes had gleamed. Johnny had just touched on the linchpin of hisown personal philosophy -probably the linchpin for the beliefs of mostself-made men. ‘Nothing succeeds like success,’ he said.

‘Well, yes. Something like that.’

‘How long would it take you to get a New Hampshire certificate?’

‘No longer than it takes them to process my application. Two weeks, maybe.’

‘Then you could start on the twentieth?’

Johnny blinked. ‘You mean I’m hired?’

‘If you want the job, you’re hired. You can stay in the guest house, it’ll keepthe goddam relatives at bay this summer, not to mention Chuck’s friends – and Iwant him to really buckle down. I’ll pay you six hundred dollars a month, not aking’s ransom, but if Chuck gets along, I’ll pay you a substantial bonus.Substantial.’

Chatsworth removed his glasses and rubbed a hand across his face. ‘I love myboy, Mr. Smith. I only want the best for him. Help us out a little if youcan.’

‘I’ll try.’

Chatsworth put his glasses back on and picked up Johnny’s resume again. ‘Youhaven’t taught for a helluva long time. Didn’t agree with you?’

Here’ it comes, Johnny thought.

‘It agreed,’ he said, ‘but I was in an accident.’

Chatsworth’s eyes had gone to the scars on Johnny’s neck where the atrophiedtendons had been partially repaired. ‘Car crash?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bad one?’

‘Yes.’

‘You seem fine now,’ Chatsworth said. He picked up the resume, slammed it intoa drawer and, amazingly, that had been the end of the questions. So after fiveyears Johnny was teaching again, although his student load was only one.

---

‘"As for me, who had i … indirectly br . .~. brog … brought hisdeath upon him, he took my hand with a weak grip and smiled his for…forgiveness up to me. It was a hard moment, and I went away feeling that I haddone more harm in the world than I could ever ma make up to it.",

Chuck snapped the book closed. ‘There. Last one. in the pool’s a greenbanana.’

‘Hold it a minute, Chuck.’

‘Ahhhhhhh.. .’ Chuck sat down again, heavily, his face composing itself intowhat Johnny already thought of as his now the questions expression.Long-suffering good humor predominated, but beneath it he could sometimes seeanother Chuck: sullen, worried, and scared. Plenty scared. Because it was areader’s world, the unlettered of America were dinosaurs lumbering down a blindalley, and Chuck was smart enough to know it. And he was plenty afraid of whatmight happen to him when he got back to school this fall.

‘Just a couple of questions, Chuck.’

‘Why bother? You know I won’t be able to answer them.’

‘Oh yes. This time you’ll be able to answer them all.’

‘I can never understand what I read, you ought to know that by now.’ Chucklooked morose and unhappy. ‘I don’t even know what you stick around for, unlessit’s the chow.’

‘You’ll be able to answer these questions because they’re not about thebook.’

Chuck glanced up. ‘Not about the book? Then why ask em? I thought…’

‘Just humour me, okay?’

Johnny’s heart was pounding hard, and he was not totally surprised to find thathe was scared. He had been planning this for a long time, waiting for just theright confluence of circumstances. This was as close as he was ever going toget. Mrs. Chatsworth was not hovering around anxiously, making Chuck that muchmore nervous. None of his buddies were splashing around in the pool, making himfeel self-conscious about reading aloud like a backward fourth grader. And mostimportant, his father, the man Chuck wanted to please above all others in theworld, was not here. He was in Boston at a New England Environmental Commissionmeeting on water pollution.

From Edward Stanney’s An Overview of Learning Disabilities:

‘The subject, Rupert J., was sitting in the’ third row of a movie theater.He was closest to the screen by more than six rows, and was the only one in aposition to observe that a small fire had started in the accumulated litter onthe’ floor. Ru pert J. stood up and cried "F-F-F-F-F -" while the people’behind him shouted for him to sit down and be quiet

.

‘"How did that make you feel?" l asked Rupert J

‘"I could never explain in a thousand years how it made me feel," heanswered. "J was scared, but even more than being scared, 7 was frustrated. Ifelt inadequate, not fit to be a member of the human race’. The stutteringalways made me feel that way, but now I felt impotent, too."

"‘Was there’ anything else?"

‘"Yes, I felt jealousy, because’ someone’ else would see’ the’ fire and youknow -’"Get the glory of reporting it?"

‘"Yes, that’s right. I saw the fire starting, I was the only one. And all Icould say was F-F-F-F like a stupid broken record. Not fit to be a member ofthe human race’ describes it best."

"‘And how did you break the block?"

‘"The’ day before had been my mother’s birthday. l got her half a dozenroses at the florist’s. And I stood there with all of them yelling at me and lthought: I am going to open my mouth and scream ROSES! lust as loud as I can. Igot that word all ready."

"‘Then what did you do?"

"‘I opened my mouth and screamed FIRE! at the top of my lungs."‘

It had been eight years since Johnny had read that case history in theintroduction to Stanney’s text, but he had never forgotten it. He had alwaysthought that the key word in Rupert J.’s recollection of what had happened wasimpotent. If you feel that sexual intercourse is the most importantthing on earth at this point in time, your risk of corning up with a limp penisincreases ten or a hundredfold. And if you feel that reading is the mostimportant thing on earth…

‘What’s your middle name, Chuck?’ he asked casually. ‘Murphy,’ Chuck said witha little grin. ‘How’s that for bad? My mother’s maiden name. You tell Jack orAl that, and I’ll be forced to do gross damage to your skinny body.’

‘No-fear,’ Johnny said. ‘When’s your birthday?’

‘September 8.’

Johnny began to throw the questions faster, not giving Chuck a chance to think- but they weren’t questions you had to think about.

‘What’s your girl’s name?’

‘Beth. You know Beth, Johnny…

‘What’s her middle name?’

Chuck grinned. ‘Alma. Pretty horrible, right?’

‘What’s your paternal grandfather’s name?’

‘Richard.’

‘Who do you like in the American League East this year?’

‘Yankees. In a walk.’

‘Who do you like for president?’

‘I’d like to see Jerry Brown get it.’

‘You planning to trade that Vette?’

‘Not this year. Maybe next.’

‘Your mom’s idea?’

‘You bet. She says it outraces her peace of mind.’

‘How did Red Hawk get past the guards and kill Danny Jupiter?’

‘Sherburne didn’t pay enough attention to that trapdoor leading into the jailattic,’ Chuck said promptly. without thinking, and Johnny felt a sudden burstof triumph that hit him like a knock of straight bourbon. It had worked. He hadgotten Chuck talking about roses, and he had responded with a good, healthyyell of fire!

Chuck was looking at him in almost total surprise.

‘Red Hawk got into the attic through the skylight. Kicked open the trapdoor.Shot Danny Jupiter. Shot Tom Kenyon, too.’

‘That’s right, Chuck.’

‘I remembered,’ he muttered, and then looked up at Johnny, eyes widening, agrin starting at the corners of his mouth. ‘You tricked me into remembering!’

‘I just took you by the hand and led you around the side of whatever has beenin your way all this time,’ Johnny said. ‘But whatever it is, it’s still there,Chuck. Don’t kid yourself. Who was the girl Sherburne fell for?’

‘It was …’ His eyes clouded a little, and he shook his head reluctantly. ‘Idon’t remember.’ He struck his thigh with sudden viciousness. ‘I can’t rememberanything! I’m so fucking stupid!’

‘Can you remember ever having been told how your dad and mom met?’

Chuck looked up at him and smiled a little. There was an angry red place on histhigh where he had struck himself. ‘Sure. She was working for Avis down inCharleston, South Carolina. She rented my dad a car with a fiat tire.’ Chucklaughed. ‘She still claims she only married him because number two triesharder.

‘And who was that girl Sherburne got interested in?’

‘Jenny Langhorne. Big-time trouble for him. She’s Gresham’s girl. A redhead.Like Beth. She…’ He broke off, staring at Johnny as if he had just produced arabbit from the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘You did it again!’

‘No. You did it. It’s a simple trick of misdirection. Why do you say JennyLanghorne is big-time trouble for John Sherburne?’

‘Well, because Gresham’s the big wheel there in that town…’

‘What town?’

Chuck opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Suddenly he cut his eyes awayfrom Johnny’s face and looked at the pool. Then he smiled and looked back.’Amity. The same as in the flick Jaws.’

‘Good! How did you come up with the name?’

Chuck grinned. ‘This makes no sense at all, but I started thinking about tryingout for the swimming team, and there it was. What a trick. What a greattrick.’

‘Okay. That’s enough for today, I think.’ Johnny felt tired, sweaty, and very,very good. ‘You just made a breakthrough, in case you didn’t notice. Let’sswim:

Last one in’s a green banana.’

‘Johnny?’

‘What?’

‘Will that always work?’

‘If you make a habit of it, it will,’ Johnny said. ‘And every time you goaround that block instead of trying to bust through the middle of it, you’regoing to make it a little smaller. I think you’ll begin to see an improvementin your word-to-word reading before long, also. I know a couple of other littletricks. He fell silent. What he had just given Chuck was less the truth than aking of hypnotic suggestion.

‘Thanks, Chuck said. The mask of long-suffering good humor was gone, replacedby naked gratitude. ‘If you get me over this, I’ll … well, I guess I’d getdown and kiss your feet if you wanted me to. Sometimes I get so scared, I feellike I’m letting my dad down…’

‘Chuck, don’t you know that’s part of the problem?’

‘It is?’

‘Yeah. You’re … you’re overswinging. Overthrowing. Overeverything. And it maynot be just a psychological block, you know. There are people who believe thatsome reading problems, Jackson’s Syndrome, reading phobias, all of that, may besome kind of … mental birthmark. A fouled circuit, a faulty relay, a d …’He shut his mouth with a snap.

‘A what?’ Chuck asked.

‘A dead zone,’ Johnny said slowly. ‘Whatever. Names don’t matter. Results do.The misdirection trick really isn’t a trick at all. It’s educating a fallowpart of your brain to do the work of that small faulty section. For you, thatmeans getting into an oral-based train of thought every time you hit a snag.You’re actually changing the location in your brain from which your thought iscoming. It’s learning to switch-hit.’

‘But can I do it? You think I can do it?’

‘I know you can,’ Johnny said.

‘All right. Then I will.’ Chuck dived low and flat into the pool and came up,shaking water out of his long hair in a fine spray of droplets. ‘Come on in!It’s fine!’

‘I will,’ Johnny said, but for the moment he was content just to stand on thepool’s tile facing and watch Chuck swim powerfully toward the pool’s deep endto savor this success. There had been no good feeling like this when he hadsuddenly known Eileen Magown’s kitchen curtains were taking fire, no goodfeeling like this when he had uncovered the name of Frank Dodd. If God hadgiven him a talent, it was teaching, not knowing things he had no businessknowing. This was the sort of thing he had been made for, and when he had beenteaching at Cleaves Mills back in 1970, he had known it. More important, thekids had known it and responded to it, as Chuck had done just now.

‘You gonna stand there like a dummy?’ Chuck asked. Johnny dived into thepool.