Stephen King - The Plant

“And Detweiller?” Bill asked in a hushed voice. “Same deal?”

Roger's eyes met mine for a moment, questioning. Then we shook our heads, both at the same time.

“Why not?” Herb asked.

“Too dangerous,” I said.

We waited for Zenith to speak again, to contradict the idea, perhaps, but there was nothing.

“Then what?” Herb asked plaintively. “What are we supposed to do with him? What are we supposed to do with his goddam briefcase? For that matter, what are we supposed to do with any little pieces of the General we come across in the back corridor? His belt-buckle, for instance?”

Before any of us could answer, a man's voice called from the reception area. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

We looked at each other in utter surprise, in that first moment too shocked for panic.

When I got to the train station, I stuck my suitcase into the first unoccupied coin-op locker I came to, snatched the key with the big orange head out of the lock, and dropped it into my pocket, where it will undoubtedly stay at least until tomorrow. The worst is over—for now—but I can't even think about getting my luggage, or doing any sort of ordinary chore. Not yet. I'm too exhausted. Physically, yes, but I'll tell you what's worse: I'm morally exhausted. I think that is a result of returning to Zenith House so soon upon the heels of my nightmare falling-out with my sisters and brother. Any high moral ground I might have claimed when the train pulled out of Birmingham is all gone now, I can assure you. It's hard to feel moral after you've crossed the George Washington Bridge with a body in the back of a borrowed panel truck. Very hard indeed. And I can't get that goddamned whitebread John Denver song out of my head. “There's a fire softly burning, supper's on the stove, gee it's good to be back home again.” That's one wad I'm tard of chewin', Uncle Michael might have said.

But 490 Park Avenue did feel like home. Does. In spite of all the horror and strangeness, it feels like home. Kenton knows. The others, too, but Kenton knows it best of all. I've grown to like them all (in my own admittedly involuted way), but Kenton is the one I respect. And if this situation starts to spin out of control, I believe it's Kenton that I'd go to. Although I must say this before plunging back into narrative: I'm afraid of myself now. Afraid of my capacity to do ill, and to carry on doing ill until it's too late to turn around and make amends.

In other words, the situation may already be out of control, and me with it.

Gee, it's good to be back home again.

Well, let it go. I'm tired and I still have a lot to tell, so that's best. I feel a moral tract itching to get out, but we'll just save it for another day, shall we?

I told the cab driver to take me to 490, then changed my mind and had him drop me at Park and Twenty-ninth, instead. I wanted to scout a little bit, I suppose. Get the lay of the land and creep up on the blind side. It's important to make one thing clear: the range of the telepathy generated from the plant, while wider, is still limited to the vicinity of the building... unless the situation is extreme, as it was during the death-struggle between Hecksler and the Mad Florist.

I don't know if I expected police, SWAT teams, or fire trucks, but all I saw was Sandra Jackson, pacing up and down in front of the building, looking half-distracted with worry and indecision. She didn't see me. I don't think she would have seen Robert Redford if he'd strolled by stark naked. As I walked toward her, she went to the building's door, hands cupped to the sides of her face, then seemed to come to a decision. She spun on her heels and started toward the street, clearly meaning to cross to the uptown side.

“Sandra!” I called, breaking into a trot. “Sandra, hold on!”

She turned, first startled, then relieved. I saw she was wearing a big pink button on her coat which read I LUV CONY ISLAND! She started running toward me, and I realized it was the first time I had ever seen her in a pair of sneakers. She threw herself into my arms so hard she almost knocked me onto the sidewalk.

“Riddley, Riddley, thank God you came back early,” she babbled. “I took a cab all the way from Cony Island... cost a fortune... my niece thinks I'm either crazy or in love... I... what are you doing here?”

“Just think of me as the cavalry in a John Wayne movie,” I said, and set her back on her feet. That much was easy. Getting her to let go, I thought, might not be. She clung like a barnacle.

“Tell me you've got your office keys,” she said, and I could smell something sweet on her breath—cotton candy, maybe.

“I've got them,” I said, “but I can't get them unless you let go of me, honey child.” I called her that with no irony whatsoever. It's what Mama always called us when we came in with scraped knees, or upset from being teased.

She let go and looked up at me solemnly, as big-eyed as a waif in one of those velvet paintings. “Something's different about you, Riddley. What is it?”

I shrugged and shook my head. “Don't know. Maybe we can discuss it at another time.”

“John's enemy is dead. So is Herb's. I think they killed each other.”

That wasn't what she thought, not exactly, but I took her by the arm and lead her back toward the door. The only thing I wanted right then was to get her off the street. People were looking at us strangely, and not because she's white and I'm black. And people who see a crying woman on a sunny Saturday afternoon are apt to remember her, even in a city where instant amnesia is the rule rather than the exception.

“The rest of them are up there,” she said, “but I forgot my damned keys. I'd just decided to go across to Smiler's and try calling them when you showed up. Thank God you did.”

“Thank God I did,” I agreed, and used my keys to let us into the lobby.

We smelled it as soon as we got off on Five, and in the Zenith House reception area, it was strong enough to knock you down. A spicy aroma. And green. Sandra was clutching my hand hard enough to hurt.

“Hello?” I called. “Is anyone here?”

Nothing for a moment. Then I heard Wade say, “It's Riddley.” To which Porter replied, “Don't be an ass.” To which Gelb replied, “Yes. It is.”

“Are you guys all right?” Sandra asked. She still had me by my hand and was dragging me toward the hall. At first I didn't want to go... and then I did.

We got around LaShonda's desk and there they were. At first I hardly noticed them, though. The only thing I had eyes for was the plant. No more tired, bedraggled little ivy in a pot. The Brazilian rainforest has been transplanted to Park Avenue South. It was everywhere.

“Riddley,” Kenton said with obvious relief. “Sandra.”

“What are you doing here, Riddley?” Gelb asked. “I thought you weren't coming back until the middle of next week.”

“My plans changed,” I said. “I got in on the train less than an hour ago.”

“What happened to your accent?” Porter asked. He was standing there with that crazy plant growing all around his feet, caressing his ankles, for God's sake, and looking at me with beetle-browed suspicion. At me with suspicion!

“That's it,” Sandra breathed. “That's what's different.”

I freed my hand from her grip, feeling that I might need my fingers in reasonable working order before the day was done. The picture (a picture, anyway) was coming clear in my head: a kind of silent movie, in fact. I was getting some of it from them and some of it from Zenith.

The suspicion had left Herb Porter's face. It was only my lack of accent which had bothered him, not me. What I felt as we stood there amid that green madness was a sense of family, a sense of all I had missed down in Alabama, and I embraced it. Away from the plant it is still possible to question, to mistrust. Within its range of influence? Never. These were my brothers, Sandra my sister (although the relationship between she and I is admittedly an incestuous one). And the plant? Our father, which art in Zenith. Color—white, black, green—was just then the least important thing about us. This afternoon it was us against the world.