Stephen King - Joyland

Annie was in the passenger seat, and I thought she had never looked more beautiful than she did that October morning, in her faded jeans and a light sweater, her hair tied back with a hank of blue yarn.

“Thank you for this, Dev,” she said. “I just hope we’re doing the right thing.”

“We are,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. Because, now that it was a done deal, I had my doubts.

The Joyland sign was lit up—that was the first tiling I noticed. The second was that the summertime get-happy music was playing through the loudspeakers: a sonic parade of late sixties and early seventies hits. I had intended to park in one of the Lot A handicapped spaces—they were only fifty feet or so from the park entrance—but before I could do so, Fred Dean stepped through the open gate and beckoned us forward. Today he wasn’t wearing just any suit but the three-piecer he saved for the occasional celebrity who rated a VIP tour. The suit I had seen, but never the black silk top hat, which looked like the kind you saw diplomats wearing in old newsreel footage.

“Is this usual?” Annie asked.

“Sure,” I said, a trifle giddily. None of it was usual.

I drove through the gate and onto Joyland Avenue, pulling up next to the park bench outside the Wiggle-Waggle Village where I had once sat with Mr. Easterbrook after my first turn as Howie.

Mike wanted to get out of the van the way he’d gotten in: by himself. I stood by, ready to catch him if he lost his balance, while Annie hoisted the wheelchair out of the back. Milo sat at my feet, tail thumping, ears cocked, eyes bright.

As Annie rolled the wheelchair up, Fred approached in a cloud of aftershave. He was… resplendent. There’s really no other word for it. He took off his hat, bowed to Annie, then held out a hand. “You must be Mike’s mother.” You have to remember that Ms. wasn’t common usage back then, and, nervous as I was, I took a moment to appreciate how deftly he had avoided the Miss/Mrs. dichotomy.

“I am,” she said. I don’t know if she was flustered by his courtliness or by the difference in the way they were dressed—she amusement-park casual, he state-visit formal—but flustered she was. She shook his hand, though. “And this young man—”

“—is Michael.” He offered his hand to the wide-eyed boy standing there in his steel supports. “Thank you for coming today.”

“You’re welcome… I mean, thank you. Thank you for having us.” He shook Fred’s hand. “This place is huge.”

It wasn’t, of course; Disney World is huge. But to a ten-year-old who had never been to an amusement park, it had to look that way. For a moment I could see it through his eyes, see it new, and my doubts about bringing him began to melt away.

Fred bent down to examine the third member of the Ross family, hands on his knees. “And you’re Milo!”

Milo barked.

“Yes,” Fred said, “and I am equally pleased to meet you.” He held out his hand, waiting for Milo to raise his paw. When he did, Fred shook it.

“How do you know our dog’s name?” Annie asked. “Did Dev tell you?”

He straightened, smiling. “He did not. I know because this is a magic place, my dear. For instance.” He showed her his empty hands, then put them behind his back. “Which hand?”

“Left,” Annie said, playing along.

Fred brought out his left hand, empty.

She rolled her eyes, smiling. “Okay, right.”

This time he brought out a dozen roses. Real ones. Annie and Mike gasped. Me too. All these years later, I have no idea how he did it.

“Joyland is for children, my dear, and since today Mike is the only child here, the park belongs to him. These, however, are for you.”

She took them like a woman in a dream, burying her face in the blooms, smelling their sweet red dust.

“I’ll put them in the van for you,” I said.

She held them a moment longer, then passed them to me.

“Mike,” Fred said, “do you know what we sell here?”

He looked uncertain. “Rides? Rides and games?”

“We sell fun. So what do you say we have some?”

I remember Mike’s day at the park—Annie’s day, too—as if it happened last week, but it would take a correspondent much more talented than I am to tell you how it felt, or to explain how it could have ended the last hold Wendy Keegan still held over my heart and my emotions. All I can say is what you already know: some days are treasure. Not many, but I think in almost every life there are a few. That was one of mine, and when I’m blue—when life comes down on me and everything looks tawdry and cheap, the way Joyland Avenue did on a rainy day—I go back to it, if only to remind myself that life isn’t always a butcher’s game. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they’re precious.

Of course not all the rides were running, and that was okay, because there were a lot of them Mike couldn’t handle. But more than half of the park was operational that morning—the lights, the music, even some of the shys, where half a dozen gazoonies were on duty selling popcorn, fries, sodas, cotton candy, and Pup-A-Licious dogs. I have no idea how Fred and Lane pulled it off in a single afternoon, but they did.

We started in the Village, where Lane was waiting beside the engine of the Choo-Choo Wiggle. He was wearing a pillowtick engineer’s cap instead of his derby, but it was cocked at the same insouciant angle. Of course it was. “All aboard! This is the ride that makes kids happy, so get on board and make it snappy. Dogs ride free, moms ride free, kids ride up in the engine with me.”

He pointed at Mike, then to the passenger seat in the engine. Mike got out of his chair, set his crutches, then tottered on them. Annie started for him.

“No, Mom. I’m okay. I can do it.”

He got his balance and clanked to where Lane was standing—a real boy with robot legs—and allowed Lane to boost him into the passenger seat. “Is that the cord that blows the whistle? Can I pull it?”

“That’s what it’s there for,” Lane said, “but watch out for pigs on the tracks. There’s a wolf in the area, and they’re scared to death of him.”

Annie and I sat in one of the cars. Her eyes were bright. Roses all her own burned in her cheeks. Her lips, though tightly pressed together, were trembling.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Yes.” She took my hand, laced her fingers through mine, and squeezed almost tight enough to hurt. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“Controls green across the board!” Lane cried. “Check me on that, Michael!”

“Check!”

“Watch out for what on the tracks?”

“Pigs!”

“Kid, you got style that makes me smile. Give that yell-rope a yank and we’re off!”

Mike yanked the cord. The whistle howled. Milo barked. The airbrakes chuffed, and the train began to move.

Choo-Choo Wiggle was strictly a zamp ride, okay? All the rides in the Village were zamps, meant mostly for boys and girls between the ages of three and seven. But you have to remember how seldom Mike Ross had gotten out, especially since his pneumonia the year before, and how many days he had sat with his mother at the end of that boardwalk, listening to the rumble of the rides and the happy screams coming from down the beach, knowing that stuff wasn’t for him. What was for him was more gasping for air as his lungs failed, more coughing, a gradual inability to walk even with the aid of crutches and braces, and finally the bed where he would die, wearing diapers under his PJs and an oxygen mask over his face.

Wiggle-Waggle Village was sort of depopulated with no greenies to play the fairy-tale parts, but Fred and Lane had reactivated all the mechanicals: the magic beanstalk that shot out of the ground in a burst of steam; the witch cackling in front of the Candy House; the Mad Hatter’s tea party; the nightcap-wearing wolf who lurked beneath one of the underpasses and sprang at the train as it passed. As we rounded the final turn, we passed three houses all kids know well—one of straw, one of sticks, and one of bricks.