Joyland

by Stephen King

What I know now is that gallant young men rarely get pussy. Put it on a sampler and hang it in your kitchen.

Bren thought I was dense; I thought she was old; we were both probably right.

When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.

I’m not sure men know how to talk about women in any meaningful way.

He was heavyset and at least three doors down from handsome, but he was energetic and possessed of the gift of gab I sadly lacked.

“This is a badly broken world, full of wars and cruelty and senseless tragedy. Every human being who inhabits it is served his or her portion of unhappiness and wakeful nights. Those of you who don’t already know that will come to know it. Given such sad but undeniable facts of the human condition, you have been given a priceless gift this summer: you are here to sell fun.

When the music changed to the Sesame Street theme, I quit dancing, dropped to one padded knee, and held out my arms like Al Jolson. “HOWWWIE!” a little girl screamed, and all these years later I can still hear the perfect note of rapture in her voice.

I’ve done a lot of jobs in the years since then, and my current editorial gig—probably my last gig before retirement seizes me in its claws—is terrific, but I never felt so weirdly happy, so absolutely in-the-right-place, as I did when I was twenty-one, wearing the fur and doing the Hokey Pokey on a hot day in June.

You think Okay, I get it, I’m prepared for the worst, but you hold out that small hope, see, and that’s what fucks you up. That’s what kills you.

Such fires are probably illegal in the twenty-first century; the powers that be have a way of outlawing many beautiful things made by ordinary people. I don’t know why that should be, I only know it is.

It’s hard to let go. Even when what you’re holding onto is full of thorns, it’s hard to let go. Maybe especially then.

All I can say is what you already know: some days are treasure. Not many, but I think in almost every life there are a few. That was one of mine, and when I’m blue—when life comes down on me and everything looks tawdry and cheap, the way Joyland Avenue did on a rainy day—I go back to it, if only to remind myself that life isn’t always a butcher’s game. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they’re precious.

I took the twine, feeling the pull as the kite, now alive, rose above us, nodding back and forth against the blue. Annie picked up the urn and carried it down the sandy slope. I guess she dumped it there at the edge of the ocean, but I was watching the kite, and once I saw the thin gray streamer of ash running away from it, carried into the sky on the breeze, I let the string go free. I watched the untethered kite go up, and up, and up. Mike would have wanted to see how high it would go before it disappeared, and I did, too. I wanted to see that, too.