Stephen King – The Dark Tower

the oldies, always WCBS, and sometimes he hearsher,hears Mrs. Greta Shaw singing

along with the Four Seasons Wanda Jackson Lee “Yah-Yah” Dorsey, and sometimes he

pretends his folks die in a plane crash and she somehow doesbecome his mother and she

calls him poor little ladand poor little lost tykeand then by virtue of some magical transformation she loves him instead of just taking care of him, loves him loves him loves

him the way he loves her, she’s his mother (or maybe his wife, he is unclear about the

difference between the two), but she calls him ’Bama instead of sugarlove

(his real mother)

or hotshot

(his father)

and although he knows the idea is stupid, thinking about it in bed is fun, thinking about it

beats the penis-piss out of thinking about the Deathfly that would come and buzz over his

corpse when he died with his tongue down his throat like a stone down a well. In the

afternoon when he gets home from nursie-school (by the time he’s old enough to know it’s

actuallynursery schoolhe will be out of it) he watches Million Dollar Moviein his room. On

Million Dollar Moviethey show exactly the same movie at exactly the same time—four

o’clock—every day for a week. The week before his parents went away and Mrs. Greta

Shaw stayed the night instead of going home

(O what bliss, for Mrs. Greta Shaw negates Discordia, can you say amen)

there was music from two directions every day, there were the oldies in the kitchen

(WCBS can you say God-bomb)

and on the TV James Cagney is strutting in a derby and singing about

Harrigan—H–A–double R–I, Harrigan, that’s me!Also the one about being a real live

nephew of my Uncle Sam.

Then it’s a new week, the week his folks are gone, and a new movie, and the first time he

sees it it scares the living breathing shit out of him. This movie is calledThe Lost

Continent,and it stars Mr. Cesar Romero, and when Jake sees it again (at the advanced age

of ten) he will wonder how he could ever have been afraid of such a stupid movie as that

one. Because it’s about explorers who get lost in the jungle, see, and there are dinosaursin

the jungle, and at four years of age he didn’t realize the dinosaurs were nothing but fucking CARTOONS,no different from Tweety and Sylvester and Popeye the Sailor Man,

uck-uckuck, can ya say Wimpy, can you give me Olive Oyl. The first dinosaur he sees is a

triceratops that comes blundering out of the jungle, and the girl explorer

(Bodacious ta-tas,his father would undoubtedly have said, it’s what his father always says

about what Jake’s mother calls A Certain Type Of Girl )

screams her lungs out, and Jake would scream too if he could but his chest is locked down

with terror, o here is Discordia incarnate! In the monster’s eyes he sees the utter nothing

that means the end of everything, for pleading won’t work with such a monster and

screaming won’t work with such a monster, it’s too dumb, all screaming does is attract the monster’s attention, anddoes,it turns toward the Daisy Mae with the bodacious ta-tas and

then it chargesthe Daisy Mae with the bodacious ta-tas, and in the kitchen (the mighty

kitchen) he hears the Tokens, gone from the charts but not from our hearts, they are singing

about the jungle, the peaceful jungle, and here in front of the little boy’s huge horrified eyes is a jungle which is anything but peaceful, and it’s not a lion but a lumbering thing that

looks sort of like a rhinoceros only bigger, and it has a kind of bone collar around its neck, and later Jake will find out you call this kind of monster a triceratops,but for now it is

nameless, which makes it even worse, nameless is worse. “Wimeweh,” sing the Tokens,

“Weee-ummm-a-weh,” and of course Cesar Romero shoots the monster just before it can

tear the girl with the bodacious ta-tas limb from limb, which is good at the time, but that

night the monster comes back, the triceratopscomes back, it’s in his closet, because even at

four he understands that sometimes his closet isn’t his closet, that its door can open on

different places where there are worse things waiting.

He begins to scream, at night he can scream, and Mrs. Greta Shaw comes into the room.

She sits on the edge of his bed, her face ghostly with blue-gray beautymud, and she asks

him what’s wrong ’Bama and he is actually able to tell her. He could never have told his

father or mother, had one of them been there to begin with, which they of course aren’t, but

he can tell Mrs. Shaw because while she isn’t alotdifferent from the other help—the au

pairs babysitters child minders school-walkers—she is a littledifferent, enough to put his

drawings on the fridge with the little magnets, enough to make all the difference, to hold up the tower of a silly little boy’s sanity, say hallelujah, say found not lost, say amen.

She listens to everything he has to say, nodding, and makes him say tri-CER-a-TOPS until

finally he gets it right. Getting it right is better. And then she says, “Those things were real once, but they died out a hundred million years ago, ’Bama. Maybe even more. Now don’t

bother me any more because I need my sleep.”

Jake watchesThe Lost Continenton Million Dollar Movieevery day that week. Every time

he watches it, it scares him a little less. Once, Mrs. Greta Shaw comes in and watches part

of it with him. She brings him his snack, a big bowl of Hawaiian Fluff (also one for herself) and sings him her wonderful little song: “A little snack that’s far and wee, there’s some for you and some for me, blackberry jam and blackberry tea.” There are no blackberries in

Hawaiian Fluff, of course, and they have the last of the Welch’s Grape Juice to go with it

instead of tea, but Mrs. Greta Shaw says it is the thought that counts. She has taught him to say Rooty-tooty-salutiebefore they drink, and to clink glasses. Jake thinks that’s the

absolute coolest, the cat’s ass.

Pretty soon the dinosaurs come. ’Bama and Mrs. Greta Shaw sit side by side, eating

Hawaiian Fluff and watching as a big one (Mrs. Greta Shaw says you call that kind a

Tyrannasorbet Wrecks) eats the bad explorer. “Cartoon dinosaurs,” Mrs. Greta Shaw sniffs.

“Wouldn’t you think they could do better than that.” As far as Jake is concerned, this is the most brilliant piece of film criticism he has ever heard in his life. Brilliant anduseful.

Eventually his parents come back.Top Hatenjoys a week’s run on Million Dollar

Movieand little Jakie’s night terrors are never mentioned. Eventually he forgets his fear of the triceratops and the Tyrannasorbet.

Seven

Now, lying in the high green grass and peering into the misty clearing from between the

leaves of a fern, Jake discovered that some things younever forgot.

Mind the mind-trap,Jochabim had said, and looking down at the lumbering dinosaur—a

cartoon triceratops in a real jungle like an imaginary toad in a real garden—Jake realized

that this was it. This was the mind-trap. The triceratops wasn’t real no matter how

fearsomely it might roar, no matter that Jake could actually smell it—the rank vegetation

rotting in the soft folds where its stubby legs met its stomach, the shit caked to its vast

armor-plated rear end, the endless cud drooling between its tusk-edged jaws—and hear its

panting breath. Itcouldn’t be real, it was acartoon, for God’s sake!

And yet he knew it was real enough to kill him. If he went down there, the cartoon

triceratops would tear him apart just as it would have torn apart the Daisy Mae with the

bodacious ta-tas if Cesar Romero hadn’t appeared in time to put a bullet into the thing’s

One Vulnerable Spot with his big-game hunter’s rifle. Jake had gotten rid of the hand that

had tried to monkey with his motor controls—had slammed all those doors so hard he’d

chopped off the hand’s intruding fingers, for all he knew—but this was different. He could

not close his eyes and just walk by; that was a real monster his traitor mind had created, and it could really tear him apart.

There was no Cesar Romero here to keep it from happening. No Roland, either.

There were only the low men, running his backtrail and getting closer all the time.

As if to emphasize this point, Oy looked back the way they’d come and barked once,

piercingly loud.

The triceratops heard and roared in response. Jake expected Oy to shrink against him at

that mighty sound, but Oy continued to look back over Jake’s shoulder. It was thelow men

Oy was worried about, not the triceratops below them or the Tyrannasorbet Wrecks that

might come next, or—