The Shining

and began to poke along it, pushing aside screwdrivers and adjustable wrenches, a one-lung carburetor that had been taken out of an old lawnmower, plastic boxes of screws and nails and bolts of varying sizes. The shelf was thick and dark with old grease, and the years’ accumulation of dust had stuck to it like fur. He didn’t like touching it.
He found a small, oil-stained box with the abbreviation Skid. laconically marked on it in pencil. He shook it and something rattled inside. Plugs. He held one of them up to the light, trying to estimate the gap without hunting around for the gapping tool. Fuck it, he thought resentfully, and dropped the plug back into the box. If the gap’s wrong, that’s just too damn bad. Tough fucking titty.
There was a stool behind the door. He dragged it over, sat down, and installed the four sparkplugs, then fitted the small rubber caps over each. That done, be let his fingers play briefly over the magneto. They laughed when I sat down at the piano.
Back to the shelves. This time he couldn’t find what he wanted, a small battery. A threeor four-cell. There were socket wrenches, a case filled with drills and drillbits, bags of lawn fertilizer and Vigoro for the flower beds, but no snowmobile battery. It didn’t bother him in the slightest. In fact, it made him feel glad. He was relieved. I did my best, Captain, but I could not get through. That’s fine, son. I’m going to put you in for the Silver Star and the Purple Snowmobile. You’re a credit to your regiment. Thank you, sir. I did try.
He began to whistle “Red River Valley” uptempo as he poked along the last two or three feet of shelf. The notes came out in little puffs of white smoke. He bad made a complete circuit of the shed and the thing wasn’t there. Maybe somebody had lifted it. Maybe Watson had. He laughed aloud. The old office bootleg trick. A few paperclips, a couple of reams of paper, nobody will miss this tablecloth or this Golden Regal place setting… and what about this fine snowmobile battery? Yes, that might come in handy. Toss it in the sack. White-collar crime, Baby. Everybody has sticky fingers. Under-the-jacket discount, we used to call it when we were kids.
He walked back to the snowmobile and gave the side of it a good healthy kick as he went by. Well, that was the end of it. He would just have to tell Wendy sorry, baby, but-
There was a box sitting in the corner by the door. The stool bad been right over it. Written on the top, in pencil, was the abbreviation Skid.
He looked at it, the smile drying up on his lips. Look, sir, it’s the cavalry. Looks like your smoke signals must have worked after all.
It wasn’t fair.
Goddammit, it just wasn’t fair.
Something-luck, fate, providence-had been trying to save him. Some other luck, white luck. And at the last moment bad old Jack Torrance luck had stepped back in. The lousy run of cards wasn’t over yet.
Resentment, a gray, sullen wave of it, pushed up his throat. His hands had clenched into fists again.
(Not fair, goddammit, not fair!)
Why couldn’t he have looked someplace else? Anyplace! Why hadn’t he had a crick in his neck or an itch in his nose or the need to blink? Just one of those little things. He never would have seen it.
Well, he hadn’t. That was all. It was an hallucination, no different from what had happened yesterday outside that room on the second floor or the goddam hedge menagerie. A momentary strain, that was all. Fancy, I thought I saw a snowmobile battery in that corner. Nothing there now. Combat fatigue, I guess, sir. Sorry. Keep your pecker up, son. It happens to all of us sooner or later.
He yanked the door open almost hard enough to snap the binges and pulled his snowshoes inside. They were clotted with snow and he slapped them down hard enough on the floor to raise a cloud of it. He put his left foot on the left shoe… and paused.
Danny was out there, by the milk platform. Trying to make a snowman, by the looks. Not much luck; the snow was too cold to stick together. Still, he was giving it the old college try, out there in the flashing morning, a speck of a bundled-up boy above the brilliant snow and below the brilliant sky. Wearing his hat turned around backward like Carlton Fiske.
(What in the name of God were you thinking of?)
The answer came back with no pause.
(Me. I was thinking of me.)
He suddenly remembered lying in bed the night before, lying there and suddenly he had been contemplating the murder of his wife.
In that instant, kneeling there, everything came clear to him. It was not just Danny the Overlook was working on. It was working on him, too. It wasn’t Danny who was the weak link, it was him. He was the vulnerable one, the one who could be bent and twisted until something snapped.