The Shining

would reel it in, examine the sinker and hook below it, and then toss it out again.
“He’s gettin brown,” Hallorann said.
“Yes. Very brown.” She looked at him fondly.
He took out a cigarette, tamped it, lit it. The smoke raftered away lazily in the sunny afternoon. “What about those dreams he’s been havin?”
“Better,” Wendy said. “Only one this week. It used to be every night, sometimes two and three times. The explosions. The hedges. And most of all… you know.”
“Yeah. He’s going to be okay, Wendy.”
She looked at him. “Will he? I wonder.”
Hallorann nodded. “You and him, you’re coming back. Different, maybe, but okay. You ain’t what you were, you two, but that isn’t necessarily bad.”
They were silent for a while, Wendy moving the rocking chair back and forth a little, Hallorann with his feet up on the porch rail, smoking. A little breeze came up, pushing its secret way through the pines but barely ruffling Wendy’s hair. She had cut it short.
“I’ve decided to take Al-Mr. Shockley-up on his offer,” she said.
Hallorann nodded. “It sounds like a good job. Something you could get interested in. When do you start?”
“Right after Labor Day. When Danny and I leave here, we’ll be going right on to Maryland to look for a place. It was really the Chamber of Commerce brochure that convinced me, you know. It looks like a nice town to raise a kid in. And I’d like to be working again before we dig too deeply into the insurance money Jack left. There’s still over forty thousand dollars. Enough to send Danny to college with enough left over to get him a start, if it’s invested right.”
Hallorann nodded. “Your mom?”
She looked at him and smiled wanly. “I think Maryland is far enough.”
“You won’t forget old friends, will you?”
“Danny wouldn’t let me. Go on down and see him, he’s been waiting all day.”
“Well, so have L” He stood up and hitched his cook’s whites at the hips. “The two of you are going to be okay,” he repeated. “Can’t you feel it?”
She looked up at him and this time her smile was warmer. “Yes,” she said. She took his hand and kissed it. “Sometimes I think I can.”
“The shrimp creole,” he said, moving to the steps. “Don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
He walked down the sloping, graveled path that led to the dock and then out along the weather-beaten boards to the end, where Danny sat with his feet in the clear water. Beyond, the lake widened out, mirroring the pines along its verge. The terrain was mountainous around here, but the mountains were old, rounded and humbled by time. Hallorann liked them just fine.
“Catchin much?” Hallorann said, sitting down next to him. He took off one shoe, then the other. With a sigh, he let his hot feet down into the cool water.
“No. But I had a nibble a little while ago.”
“We’ll take a boat out tomorrow morning. Got to get out in the middle if you want to catch an eatin fish, my boy. Out yonder is where the big ones lay.”
“How big?”
Hallorann shrugged. “Oh… sharks, marlin, whales, that sort of thing.”
“There aren’t any whales!”
“No blue whales, no. Of course not. These ones here run to no more than eighty feet. Pink whales.”
“How could they get here from the ocean?”
Hallorann put a hand on the boy’s reddish-gold hair and rumpled it. “They swim upstream, my boy. That’s how.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
They were silent for a time, looking out over the stillness of the lake, Hallorann just thinking. When he looked back at Danny, he saw that his eyes had filled with tears.
Putting an arm around him, he said, “What’s this?”
“Nothing,” Danny whispered.
“You’re missin your dad, aren’t you?”
Danny nodded. “You always know.” One of the tears spilled from the corner of his right eye and trickled slowly down his cheek.
“We can’t have any secrets,” Hallorann agreed. “That’s just how it is.”
Looking at his pole, Danny said: “Sometimes I wish it had been me. It was my fault. All my fault.”
Hallorann said, “You don’t like to talk about it around your mom, do you?”
“No. She wants to forget it ever happened. So do I, but-”
“But you can’t.”
“No.”
“Do you need to cry?”
The boy tried to answer, but the words were swallowed in a sob. He leaned his head against Hallorann’s shoulder and wept, the tears now flooding down his face. Hallorann held him and said nothing. The boy would have to shed his tears again and again, he knew, and it was Danny’s luck that he was still young enough to be able to do that. The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge.
When he had quieted a little, Hallorann said, “You’re gonna get over this. You don’t think you are right now, but you will. You got the shi-”