Duma Key by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page A

see its eye like glass. I see its leg, how it bends like broke, and that word is crookit . My head hurts.
    Girls come in. Maria and Hannah come in. She doesn’t like them the way she likes the twins. The twins are little, like her.
    She thinks I called Maria and Hannah the Big Meanies in the used-to-know and realizes she knows again. It’s another thing that’s come back. The name for another detail. She will forget again, but the next time she remembers, she will remember longer. She’s almost sure of it.
    She thinks When I try to say Hannah I say “Ird! Ird!” When I try to say Maria I say “Wee! Wee!” And they laugh, those meanies. I cry. I want my Daddy and can’t remember how to say him; that word is gone again. Words like birds, they fly and fly and fly away. My sisters talk. Talk, talk, talk. My throat is dry. I try to say thirsty. I say “First! First!” But they only laugh, those meanies. I’m under the bandage, smelling the iodine, smelly the sweaty, listening to them laugh. I scream at them, scream loud, and they run away. Nan Melda comes, her head all red because her hair is wrapped in the snarf. Her roundies flash flash flash in the sun and you call those roundies bracelets . I say “First, first!” and Nan Melda doesn’t know. So then I say “Ass! Ass!” and Nan makes me go potty even though I don’t need to go potty. I’m on the potty and see and point. “Ass! Ass!” Daddy comes in. “What’s this shouting about?” with all white bubbles on his face except for one smoothie. That’s where he slid the thing that makes the hair go away. He sees how I point. He understands. “Why she is thirsty.” Fills up the glass. The room is full of sunny. Dust floats in the sunny and his hand goes through the sunny with the glass and you call that pretty. I drink every drink. I cry more afterwards, but from better. He kiss me kiss me kiss me, hug me hug me hug me, and I try to say him—“Daddy!”—and still can’t. Then I think around sideways to his name, and John is there, so I think that in my mind and while I think John I “Daddy!” out my mouth and he hug me hug me some more.
    She thinks Daddy is my first word on this side of the bad thing.
    The truth is in the details.

2—Big Pink
    i
    Kamen’s geographical worked, but when it came to fixing what was wrong with my head, I think the Florida part was coincidental. It’s true that I lived there, but I never really lived there. No, Kamen’s geographical worked because of Duma Key, and Big Pink. For me, those places came to constitute their own world.
    I left St. Paul on November tenth with hope in my heart but no real expectations. Kathi Green the Rehab Queen came to see me off. She kissed me on the mouth, hugged me hard, and whispered “May all your dreams come true, Eddie.”
    â€œThanks, Kathi,” I said. I was touched even though the dream I fixed on was of Reba the Anger-Management Doll, grown to the size of an actual child, sitting in the moonlit living room of the house I’d shared with Pam. That dream coming true I could live without.
    â€œAnd send me a picture from Disney World. I long to see you in mouse ears.”
    â€œI will,” I said, but I never got to Disney World. Sea World, Busch Gardens, or Daytona Speedway, either.
    When I left St. Paul, flying in a Lear 55 (successful retirement has its privileges), it was twenty-four andspitting the first snowflakes of another long northern winter. When I landed in Sarasota it was eighty-five and sunny. Even crossing the tarmac to the private air terminal, still clumping along on my trusty red crutch, I thought I could feel my hip saying thank you.
    When I look back on that time, it’s with the strangest stew of emotions: love, longing, terror, horror, regret, and the deep sweetness only those who’ve been near death can know. I think