Different Seasons: Four Novellas

by Stephen King

I got him a new rock-hammer—the one I’d gotten him nineteen years ago had, as I told you, plumb worn out. Nineteen years!

Even Andy Dufresne follows the Beam

Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living or get busy dying.

His idea was that people made up politics so they could do things. Like when he wanted to feel around under Sharon Ackerman’s dress last year. Sharon said it was bad for him to want to do that, even though he could tell from her tone of voice that the idea sort of excited her. So he told her he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up and then she let him. That was politics.

And halfway through the act itself she had gurgled up from the blanket they were lying on: “I just love to fuck!” It was the tone of voice another girl might have used to express her love for strawberry whirl ice cream.

One night when I was nine, just to see what would happen: I said, “Please pass those goddam spuds.” And my mom said: Denny, Auntie Grace called today and she asked after you and Gordon.