Stephen King – The Waste Lands

“When you’ve finished your inventory of the school-supplies in the cloakroom, John,

perhaps you’d care to join us,” Ms. Avery said from behind him in her dry, cultured voice.

There was a small gust of giggles as Jake turned away from the cloakroom. Ms. Avery was

standing behind her desk with her long fingers tented lightly on the blotter, looking at him

out of her calm, intelligent face. She was wearing her blue suit today, and her hair was

pulled back in its usual bun. Nathaniel Hawthorne looked over her shoulder, frowning at

Jake from his place on the wall.

“Sorry,” Jake muttered, and closed the door. He was immediately seized by a strong

impulse to open it again, to double-check, to see if this time that other world, with its hot

sun and desert vistas, was there.

Instead he walked back to his seat. Petra Jesserling looked at him with merry, dancing eyes.

“Take me in there with you next time,” she whispered. “Then you’ll have something to look at.”

Jake smiled in a distracted way and slipped into his seat.

“Thank you, John,” Ms. Avery said in her endlessly calm voice. “Now, before you pass in your Final Essays—which I am sure will all be very fine, very neat, very specific—I should

like to pass out the English Department’s Short List of recommended summer reading. I

will have a word to say about several of these excellent books—”

As she spoke she gave a small stack of mimeographed sheets to David Surrey. David

began to hand them out, and Jake opened his folder to take a final look at what he had

written on the topic My Understanding of Truth. He was genuinely interested in this,

because he could no more remember writing his Final Essay, than he could remember

studying for his French final.

He looked at the title page with puzzlement and growing unease. MY

UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH, By John Chambers, was neatly typed and centered on

the sheet, and that was all right, but he had for some reason pasted two photographs below

it. One was of a door—he thought it might be the one at Number 10, Downing Street, in

London—and the other was of an Amtrak train. They were color shots, undoubtedly culled

from some magazine.

Why did I do that? And when did I do it?

He turned the page and stared down at the first page of his Final Essay, unable to believe or

understand what he was seeing. Then, as understanding began to trickle through his shock,

he felt an escalating sense of horror. It had finally happened; he had finally lost enough of

his mind so that other people would be able to tell.

3

MY UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH

By John Chambers

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

—T. S. “BUTCH” ELIOT

“My first thought was, he lied in every word.”

—ROBERT “SUNDANCE” BROWNING

The gunslinger is the truth.

Roland is the truth.

The Prisoner is the truth.

The Lady of Shadows is the truth.

The Prisoner and the Lady are married. That is the truth.

The way station is the truth.

The Speaking Demon is the truth.

We went under the mountains and that is the truth.

There were monsters under the mountain. That is the truth.

One of them had an Amoco gas pump between his legs

and was pretending it was his penis. That is the truth.

Roland let me die. That is the truth.

I still love him.

That is the truth.

“And it is so very important that you all read The Lord of the Flies,” Ms. Avery was saying in her clear but somehow pale voice. “And when you do, you must ask yourselves certain

questions. A good novel is often like a series of riddles within riddles, and this is a very

good novel—one of the best written in the second half of the twentieth century. So ask

yourselves first what the symbolic significance of the conch shell might be. Second—”

Far away. Far, far away. Jake turned to the second page of his Final Essay with a trembling

hand, leaving a dark smear of sweat on the first page.

When is a door not a door? When it’s a jar, and that is the truth.

Blaine is the truth.

Blaine is the truth.

What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck, and that is the truth.

Blaine is the truth.

You have to watch Blaine all the time, Blaine is a pain, and that is the truth.

I’m pretty sure that Blaine is dangerous, and that is the truth.

What is black and white and red all over? A blushing zebra, and that is the

truth.

Blaine is the truth.

I want to go back and that is the truth.

I have to go back and that is the truth.

I’ll go crazy if I don’t go back and that is the truth.

I can’t go home again unless I find a stone a rose a door and that is the truth.

Choo-choo, and that is the truth.

Choo-choo. Choo-choo.

Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo.

Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo.

I am afraid. That is the truth.

Choo-choo.

Jake looked up slowly. His heart was beating so hard that he saw a bright light like the afterimage of a flashbulb dancing in front of his eyes, a light that pulsed in and out with

each titanic thud of his heart.

He saw Ms. Avery handing his Final Essay to his mother and father. Mr. Bissette was

standing (reside Ms. Avery, looking grave. He heard Ms. Avery say in her clear, pale voice:

Your son is seriously ill. If you need proof, just look at this Final Essay.

John hasn’t been himself for the last three weeks or so, Mr. Bissette added. He seems

frightened some of the time and dazed all of the time . . . not quite there, if you see what I

mean. Je pense que John est fou . . . comprenez-vous?

Ms. Avery again: Do you perhaps keep certain mood-altering pre- scription drugs in the

house where John might have access to them?

Jake didn’t know about mood-altering drugs, but he knew his father kept several grams of

cocaine in the bottom drawer of his study desk. His father would undoubtedly think he had

been into it.

“Now let me say a word about Catch-22,” Ms. Avery said from the front of the room. “This is a very challenging book for sixth- and seventh-grade students, but you will nonetheless

find it entirely enchanting, if you open your minds to its special charm. You may think of

this novel, if you like, as a comedy of the surreal.”

I don’t need to read something like that, Jake thought. I’m living something like that, and

it’s no comedy.

He turned over to the last page of his Final Essay. There were no words on it. Instead he

had pasted another picture to the paper. It was a photograph of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

He had used a crayon to scribble it black. The dark, waxy lines looped and swooped in

lunatic coils.

He could remember doing none of this.

Absolutely none of it.

Now he heard his father saying to Mr. Bissette: Fou. Yes, he’s defi- nitely fou. A kid who’d

fuck up his chance at a school like Piper HAS to be fou, wouldn’t you say? Well . . . I can

handle this. Handling things is my job. Sunnyvale’s the answer. He needs to spend some

time in Sunnyvale, making baskets and getting his shit back together. Don’t you worry

about our kid, folks; he can run . . . but he can’t hide.

Would they actually send him away to the nuthatch if it started to seem that his elevator no

longer went all the way to the top floor? Jake thought the answer to that was a big you bet.

No way his father was going to put up with a loony around the house. The name of the

place they put him in might not be Sunnyvale, but there would be bars on the windows and

there would be young men in white coats and crepe-soled shoes prowling the halls. The young men would have big muscles and watchful eyes and access to hypodermic needles

full of artificial sleep.

They’ll tell everybody I went away, Jake thought. The arguing voices in his head were

temporarily stilled by a rising tide of panic. They’ll say I’m spending the year with my aunt

and uncle in Modesto … or in Sweden as an exchange student … or repairing satellites in

outer space. My mother won’t like it. . . she’ll cry . . . but she’ll go along. She has her

boyfriends, and besides, she always goes along with what he decides. She . . . they . . .

me . . .

He felt a shriek welling up his throat and pressed his lips tightly together to hold it in. He