The Life of Chuck

by Stephen King

“When an old man dies, a library burns down.”

But fascination is fear’s twin brother,

“What does that mean when he says ‘I am large, I contain multitudes’?” That made her smile perk up. She propped one small fist on her chin and looked at him with her pretty gray eyes. “What do you think it means?” “All the people he knows?” Chuck ventured. “Yes,” she agreed, “but maybe he means even more. Lean forward.” He leaned over her desk, where American Verse lay on top of her grade book. Very gently, she put her palms to his temples. They were cool. They felt so wonderful he had to suppress a shiver. “What’s in there between my hands? Just the people you know?” “More,” Chuck said. He was thinking of his mother and father and the baby he never got a chance to hold. Alyssa, sounds like rain. “Memories.” “Yes,” she said. “Everything you see. Everything you know. The world, Chucky. Planes in the sky, manhole covers in the street. Every year you live, that world inside your head will get bigger and brighter, more detailed and complex. Do you understand?”

He was overwhelmed with the thought of a whole world inside the fragile bowl of his skull.

He looked up, saw a million stars, and understood that for each one of those million, there was another million behind it. The universe is large, he thought. It contains multitudes. It also contains me, and in this moment I am wonderful. I have a right to be wonderful.

The scar meant more, so he had made it more. He just couldn’t make it as much more as it really was.

There was one final faint bip from the unseen monitor, then that was gone, too. The man did not fade, as ghostly apparitions did in movies; he was just gone, insisting he had never been there in the first place. He wasn’t, Chuck thought. I will insist that he wasn’t, and I will live my life until my life runs out. I am wonderful, I deserve to be wonderful, and I contain multitudes. He closed the door and snapped the lock shut.