The Shining

out to my car with my bags?”
“If my mommy says I can.”
“You can,” Wendy said, “but you’ll have to have that jacket buttoned.” She leaned forward to do it but Hallorann was ahead of her, his large brown fingers moving with smooth dexterity.
“I’ll send him right back in,” Hallorann said.
“Fine,” Wendy said, and followed them to the door. Jack was still looking around for Ullman. The last of the Overlooks guests were checking out at the desk.

There were four bags in a pile just outside the door. Three of them were giant, battered old suitcases covered with black imitation alligator hide. The last was an oversized zipper bag with a faded tartan skin.
“Guess you can handle that one, can’t you?” Hallorann asked him. He picked up two of the big cases in one hand and hoisted the other under his arm.
“Sure,” Danny said. He got a grip on it with both hands and followed the cook down the porch steps, trying manfully not to grunt and give away how heavy it was.
A sharp and cutting fall wind had come up since they had arrived; it whistled across the parking lot, making Danny wince his eyes down to slits as he carried the zipper bag in front of him, bumping on his knees. A few errant aspen leaves rattled and turned across the now mostly deserted asphalt, making Danny think momentarily of that night last week when he had wakened out of his nightmare and had heard-or thought he heard, at least-Tony telling him not to go.
Hallorann set his bags down by the trunk of a beige Plymouth Fury. “This ain’t much car,” he confided to Danny, “just a rental job. My Bessie’s on the other end. She’s a car. 1950 Cadillac, and does she run sweet? I’ll tell the world. I keep her in Florida because she’s too old for all this mountain climbing. You need a hand with that?”
“No, sir,” Danny said. He managed to carry it the last ten or twelve steps without grunting and set it down with a large sigh of relief.
“Good boy,” Hallorann said. He produced a large key ring from the pocket of his blue serge jacket and unlocked the trunk. As he lifted the bags in he said: “You shine on, boy. Harder than anyone I ever met in my life. And I’m sixty years old this January.”
“Huh?”
“You got a knack,” Hallorann said, turning to him. “Me, I’ve always called it shining. That’s what my grandmother called it, too. She had it. We used to sit in the kitchen when I was a boy no older than you and have long talks without even openin our mouths.”
“Really?”
Hallorann smiled at Danny’s openmouthed, almost hungry expression and said, “Come on up and sit in the car with me for a few minutes. Want to talk to you.” He slammed the trunk.
In the lobby of the Overlook, Wendy Torrance saw her son get into the passenger side of Hallorann’s car as the big black cook slid in behind the wheel. A sharp pang of fear struck her and she opened her mouth to tell Jack that Hallorann had not been lying about taking their son to Florida-there was a kidnaping afoot. But they were only sitting there. She could barely see the small silhouette of her son’s head, turned attentively toward Hallorann’s big one. Even at this distance that small head had a set to it that she recognizedit was the way her son looked when there was something on the TV that particularly fascinated him, or when he and his father were playing old maid or idiot cribbage. Jack, who was still looking around for Ullman, hadn’t noticed. Wendy kept silent, watching Hallorann’s car nervously, wondering what they could possibly be talking about that would make Danny cock -his head that way.
In the car Hallorann was saying: “Get you kinda lonely, thinkin you were the only one?”
Danny, who had been frightened as well as lonely sometimes, nodded. “Am I the only one you ever met?” he asked.
Hallorann laughed and shook his head. “No, child, no. But you shine the hardest.”
“Are there lots, then?”
“No,” Hallorann said, “but you do run across them. A lot of folks, they got a little bit of shine to them. They don’t oven know it. But they always seem to show up with flowers when their wives are feelin blue with the monthlies, they do good on school tests they don’t even study for, they got a good idea how people are feelin as soon as they walk into a room. I come across fifty or sixty like that. But maybe only a dozen, countin my gram, that knew they was shinin.”
“Wow,” Danny said, and thought about it. Then: “Do you know Mrs. Brant?”
“Her?” Hallorann asked scornfully. “She don’t shine. Just sends her supper back two-three times every night.”
“I know she doesn’t,” Danny said earnestly. “But do you know the man in the gray uniform that gets the