Insomnia

by Stephen King

There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race. —Iris Murdoch Nuns and Soldiers

“I know,” he said, “but I’m really—” —all right, he meant to finish, and then he looked up from his hands, looked into her dark eyes again, and what he saw there made it impossible to finish for a moment. There was a weary sadness in her eyes . . . or was it loneliness? Maybe both. In any case, those were not the only things he saw in them. He also saw himself. You’re being silly, the eyes looking into his said. Maybe we both are. You’re seventy and a widower, Ralph. I’m sixty-eight and a widow. How long are we going to sit on your porch in the evenings with Bill McGovern as the world’s oldest chaperone? Not too long, I hope, because neither of us is exactly fresh off the showroom lot.

“Hullo,” Dorrance said. The book he was holding was a paperback—Cemetery Nights, by a man named Stephen Dobyns. “Hello, Dor,” he said. “Good book?” Dorrance looked down at the book as if he’d forgotten he had one, then smiled and nodded. “Yes, very good. He writes poems that are like stories. I don’t always like that, but sometimes I do.”

Done-bun-can’t-be-undone.

Dorrance thrust the book of poems into Ralph’s right hand—the one not holding the Westerns—with surprising force. “One of them starts, ‘Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else.’ ”

And before Ralph could say another word, Old Dor cut across the lawn to the sidewalk. He turned left and started toward the Extension with his face turned dreamily up to the blue sky where the leaves flew wildly, as if to some rendezvous over the horizon.

So you took us onto the elevator . . . or maybe that wasn’t good enough for the likes of us and you just trotted us up the fire stairs. Got us acclimated a little at a time so we wouldn’t strip our gears completely, I imagine. And it was easy. All you had to do was rob us of our sleep until we were half-crazy. Lois’s son and daughter-in-law want to put her in a theme-park for geriatrics, did you know that? And my friend Bill McGovern thinks I’m ready for Juniper Hill.

There are those of your kind who feel that everything happens by design, and there are those who feel all events are simply a matter of luck or chance. The truth is that life is both random and on purpose, although not in equal measure.

If I had some wings, I’d fly you all around; If I had some money, I’d buy you the goddam town; If I had the strength, then maybe I coulda pulled you through; If I had a lantern, I’d light the way for you, If I had a lantern, I’d light the way for you. —Michael McDermott “Lantern”