Stephen King - The Plant

“My own mother was crazy!” she cried at me in a whispered shriek. She pistoned her tiny fists in the air, I think expressing her frustration that I should continue to balk over a point that was so clear to her... perhaps because she had been there, she had seen Mama's craziness at its fruitiest, and I had not. “She lived the last part of her life crazy and she died crazy! That will was crazy!”

“We earned this here,” Sophie said, first patting Maddy's back and then drawing her gently away from me, “so never mind your talk about stealing. She tried to give away what was ours. I don't blame her for it, she was crazy, but it's not going to stand. Riddie, you just want to take all your Boy Scout ideas on out of here and let us finish our business.”

“That's right,” Evvie said. “Go on down and get a glass of wine. If Boy Scouts drink wine, that is. Tell them we'll be down directly.”

I looked at Floyd. He nodded, not smiling now. By then none of them were smiling. Smiling was done. “That's it, little brother. And never mind that oh-poor-me look on your face. You stuck your nose in where it didn't belong. If you got bee-stung, it's nobody's fault but your own.”

At the last I looked at Maddy. Just hoping. Well, hope in one hand and shit in the other; even a puffick idiot knows how that one turns out.

“Go on,” she said. “I can't bear to look at you.”

I went back down the stairs like a man in a dream, and when Aunt Olympia laid her hand on my arm and asked what was wrong up there, I smiled and said nothing, we were just talking over old times and got a little hot under the collar. The Southern family at its finest; paging Tennessee Williams. I said I was going into town to get a few things, and when Aunt Olly asked me what things—meaning what had she forgotten when she stocked for Mama's last party—I didn't answer her. I just went on out, marching straight ahead with that meaningless little smile on my face, and got into my rental car. Basically what I've done since is just keep going. I left a few clothes and a paperback book, and they can stay there until the end of the age, as far as it concerns me. And all the while I've been moving I've also been replaying what I saw as I stood unnoticed in her doorway: drawers pulled out and underwear scattered and them on the bed with their hands full of her things and the cover of her tin box set aside. And everything they said may have been true, or partially true (I think the most convincing lies are almost always partially true), but what I remember most clearly is their overheard laughter, which had nothing in it of absconding partners or husbands teetering on the edge of insolvency or credit card bills long past due and stamped with those ugly red-ink warnings. Nothing to do with kids needing money for college, either. The rue count, in other words, was zero. The laughter I overheard was that of pirates or trolls who have found buried treasure and are dividing it up, perchance by the light of a silver dollar pancake moon. I went down the stairs and down the back porch steps and away from that place like a man in a dream, and I am still that dreamer, sitting in a train with ink splattered all the way up my hand to the wrist and several pages of scribbling, probably indecipherable, now behind me. How foolish it is to write, what a pitiful bulwark against this world's hard realities and bitter home truths. How terrible to say, “This is all I have.” Everything aches: hand, wrist, arm, head, heart. I am going to close my eyes and try to sleep... at least to doze.

It's Maddy's face that terrifies me. Greed has made her a stranger to me. A terrible stranger, like one of those female monsters in the Greek fairy-tales. No doubt I am a prig, just as they said, a self-righteous prig, but nothing will change what I saw in their eyes when they didn't know I was seeing them.

Nothing.

More than my book, I find it's the simplicities of work that I long for—Kenton's endless self-analysis and agonizing, Gelb's amusing fixation with the dice, Porter's even more amusing fixation with the seat of Sandra Jackson's office chair. I wouldn't even mind having it off with her again, starring in one of her fantasies. I want the simplicity of my janitor's cubby, where all things are known, normal, unsurprising. I want to see if that pitiful little ivy is maintaining its toehold on life.

Around moonset, the Silver Meteor crossed the Mason-Dixon line. My sisters and my brother are on the other side of that line now, and I'm glad.

I can't wait to get back to New York.

Later/8 A. M.

Slept for almost five hours. My neck is stiff and my back feels like a mule kicked me, but on the whole I feel a little better. At least I was able to eat a little breakfast. I thought the idea I woke with might go away in the dining car, but it has remained clear. The idea—the intuition—is that if I were to go into the office instead of switching trains for Dobbs Ferry, I might feel better yet. I feel drawn there. It's as though I had a dream about the place, one I can't quite remember.

Maybe it's the plant—Zenith the ivy. My subconscious telling me to go in and water the poor little thing before it dies of thirst.

Well... why not?

Zero hour approaching. I plan to make my entry into the Publishing House of Satan across the street in 2–3 hours. “Crazy Guitar Gertie” disguise put away. Respectable businessman in weekend clothes now, HA!

Look out, you Designated Jew. I will be in your office by noon, waiting

On Monday morning your ass is mine.

No more dreams of CARLOS. He may be gone. Good. One less thing to worry about.

Saturday morning. As soon as I finish this entry, I leave for Zenith House of Kaka-Poop. Have my “special suitcase” with all sakred sacrifice knives. They are “plenty sharp,” too! I am dressed nice, like a business-man on his Saturday in the city. I should have no problems penetrating into that house of thiefs and mockers.

Wonder if Kenton got my “little present.”

Wonder if he knows what's happening with his girl-friend or should I say ex girlfriend. Too bad he'll be dead before she can give him anymore “pussy.” Innocent blood! Innocent blood from her if no other first!

Myself I will die a virgin and I am glad.

I hope and expect to be locked away in Kenton's office by noon today. I have plenty of snacks and two sodas in with my knives and I will be able to “hold out” until Monday just fine.

No more dreams of “The General” and his Designated Juice. That's a load off my mind.

And now for you, John Kenton. Betrayer of my dreams, thief of my book. Why wait for the abbalah to do what I can do myself?

COME DEMETER!

COME GREEN!

Following next month's installment of this story—next month's very long installment of this story—The Plant will be going back into hibernation so that I can continue work on Black House (the sequel to The Talisman, written in collabo-ration with Peter Straub). I also need to complete work on two new novels (the first, Dreamcatcher, will be available from Scribner's next March) and see if I can't get going on The Dark Tower again. And my agent insists I need to take a breather so that foreign translation and publication of The Plant—also in installments, also on the Net—can catch up with American publication. Yet don't despair. The last time The Plant furled its leaves, the story remained dormant for nineteen years. If it could survive that, I'm sure it can survive a year or two while I work on other projects.