Tracing The Trails Of The King – Night Shift

FAIR WARNING – if you have not read this book, there will likely be spoilers contained within this essay. This is the fifth essay in my ongoing series on Stephen King, and is intended to be a free discussion of the book. I cannot be held responsible if I inadvertently ruin the ending for you, so if you think this might apply to you, I would encourage you to turn back now.

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“You may have an occasion to be traveling in southern Maine yourself one of these days. Pretty part of the countryside. You may even stop by Tookey’s Bar for a drink. Nice place. They kept the name just the same. So have your drink, and then my advice to you is to keep right on moving north. Whatever you do, don’t go up that road to Jerusalem’s Lot. Especially not after dark. There’s a little girl somewhere out there. And I think she’s still waiting for her good-night kiss.”

-Stephen King, Night Shift

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Night Shift stands as Stephen King’s first collection of short stories. I will be completely honest up front and say that, although I was a huge fan of King growing up, I really didn’t care for the short stories. There were some that I really liked, The Raft, The Mist, The Body were a few that I tried and liked but for the most part, I stayed away from them. My theory on to this is that the problem wasn’t as much as I didn’t like them or that I had trouble getting into them, but rather, the exact opposite. One of King’s strengths, in my opinion, is in his ability to craft an extremely potent narrative, one that takes you by the collar and holds your face down to the page. It can be emotionally taxing and draining, each book you read. So the problem with the short story collections is that, you have to experience that same cycle, but a dozen times over, as opposed to the one experience of a novel. You read a story, have your gut wrenched out and then, just as you are getting your bearings, you have to start all over with a new story. I think it was just too much for me to have to be constantly re-investing myself in the next story.

So even now, as an adult, I was still a little hesitant to take on the short story collection. Still, as a matter of point, I couldn’t just skip them. Also, as someone who writes short stories, I realized that I had plenty to learn from the one who clearly had demonstrated many times over, the ability to pull it off.

Spoiler alert – my mind was blown wide open.

In the course of this project, this was the first book where I wasn’t re-reading something I had read before. Reading a Stephen King book for the first time is a uniquely awesome experience as it is but, on top of that, realizing how wrong I had been with my views of his shorter work was awesome to behold. I recently saw King in an interview to promote the release of his newest collection, The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams, and he talked about how much he loves short stories, about how the brief nature of the story forces the narrative to be so potent and powerful. Reading this book, you definitely feel the same way.

I liked pretty much every story in the book, but there were a few standouts.

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I AM THE DOORWAY

This story is behind one of the iconic cover images for this book. The main character of the, Arthur is an astronaut who has just returned from an extraterrestrial mission in which he was exposed to some kind of organic contagion. What starts as discomfort in his hands, soon becomes worse as eyes start to appear, embedded in his skin and he soon figures out that some kind of sentient entity is using his body as a doorway to see into our world, from theirs. Before long, he realizes that, not stopping at observation, the aliens are evidently taking control of his body as well.

I loved this story, not just because the idea behind is is incredibly original, but the way he executes the narrative is fantastic. I normally am not a huge fan of the first person, but it works extremely well for this story and, without giving away too much about the end, King managed to take me completely off guard with the closing lines of the story. I often try to, in my own writing, find that perfect line, the button that will close the story in a way that makes the reader smile and King is definitely a master of this technique.

I also loved the ambiguity of the story in the lack of overt detail. You don’t really know if what he is seeing is actually happening, as the story is stuck in the perceptions of the narrator. Everything has to be taken with a grain of salt as we don’t know how credible he is, and I think the tragedy of the story is augmented by the nagging thought in the back of your head that maybe he is hallucinating all of this.

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NIGHT SURF

King is famous for his tendency to place references and characters from his books all over the place. This story takes place in the America, or what is left of it in the aftermath of Captain Trips, placing it into the universe of The Stand. Most of the country has been wiped out by the disease, but a tiny percentage has been left behind. It is centered around a group of teenagers and the lives that they are now living in the wake of the virus.

I liked that King returned to The Stand, if for no other reason than to see that world through the eyes of a different character, to see how people deal with things differently. You get to see the morality of these kids slowly dissolve into horrible behavior, including the abduction and sacrifice of a drifter, killed to appease the gods and hopefully extend their survival. Also, you get to see the horrors and inherent despair in this world that has fallen to pieces at the hands of this faceless virus.

Again, with this story, King manages to end it in such a way that you somehow find yourself feeling even more hopeless and lost than you did when you started. Even in such little time, I felt the weight and physical presence of these characters. It is narrative potency, at its best.

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BATTLEGROUND

This is a story where, if you were to describe the premise to someone, they would likely look at you as if you had gone around the bend, but I found the absurdity of it to be the most appealing part. The main character of the story receives a package containing a collection of tiny, toy soldiers. The horror quickly unfolds as the soldiers come to life, and he discovers that of course, the little weapons are fully functional as well. It becomes clear that somehow this has been orchestrated by someone who is bent on killing him. A small war is waged with the toy army which is attacking him, gradually escalating with the huge collection of toy weapons that came, included in the set. I guarantee, you will never look at a GI-JOE the same way again.

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THE LAWNMOWER MAN

For those of you who may have seen the movie that came out in the early nineties, don’t be fooled. About the only similarities between the film and this story is that there is a man, and he has a lawn mower. This story is very short and to the point, but I love how bizarre the narrative is, and the flavor of paganism, infused into the main antagonist. I loved how well the story worked, mostly because it probably shouldn’t have. The Lawnmower Man himself is such a wildly inventive character, that it is impossible to not be drawn in. I also loved the hints and glances you get at the malevolent, higher power at work throughout. It reminded me a little of “he who walks behind the rows”, the mysterious, evil entity from Children Of The Corn. What is easily taken as comical and farce, also clearly has a dark and dangerous side.

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QUITTERS, INC.

This is one of my favorite King shorts, and is the basis for one third of the film, Cats Eye. The concept here is simple. The main character bumps into an old friend who, in the course of catching up, reveals that he has quit smoking and refers the protagonist to the company that helped him do it. Once there, he quickly discovers just how extreme the practices of this company are but by then, it’s too late.

I find myself almost incredulous throughout, that it could be possible for a customer to essentially be taken hostage by a company, and by one person’s fairly insane crusade against a product that he sees as so evil and damaging. Again, however, King’s character building is brought, full force onto this story as well. I can’t help but wonder, to what extent should it be taken to help shake people out of their addictions. If it simply doesn’t work to apply willpower in the effort to quit something, do the stakes need to be raised by causing others to be harmed by your bad decisions, just as much as you are? Clearly the owner of Quitters, Inc has made that decision

I love this story. If you don’t like smokers, see how the treatment of the main character in this story makes you feel.

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ONE FOR THE ROAD

King dips into the universe of another of his previously published novels. In it, a man comes stumbling into a bar in the middle of a snowstorm. The two locals in the bar try to help the man but soon realize that he wandered to the bar from his car, where it had broken down, near the rubble of whatever is left of Salem’s Lot. This is set quite some time after the events of the book, after the fire that Mark Petree and Ben Meers set which destroys nearly everything. They agree to drive the stranger back to his car to try and find his wife and daughter who he had left behind, and upon arriving in the Lot, they are soon set upon.

One thing that I thought was effective about this was that the narrative style of the story felt so similar to that of Salem’s Lot. One distinctive technique from the book was to employ what I thought was fairly minimalistic descriptions in a way to create foreboding and fear. King uses imagery and the isolation of the dead town to create a great narrative experience and I loved the warning at the end of the book, for those who may be traveling through, to steer clear of the town of Jeruselam’s Lot.

I think that one of the most effective teaching tools for how to be a better writer is to simply read as much and as often as you can. King himself certainly endorses the importance of reading for writers. Otherwise it would be like someone who wants to be a chef, but who doesn’t take pleasure in eating the food they are supposedly passionate about cooking. Reading this book, I had my first experience of re-sparking that old childhood love for this writer. It reminded me that although this project is going to take me several years to finish, I am in for a lot of really entertaining reading.

My name is Chad Clark, and I am proud to be a Constant Reader.

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