Riding the
Bullet
By Stephen King The first seven pages
I've never told anyone this story, and never thought I
would-not because I was afraid of being disbelieved,
exactly, but because I was ashamed . . . and because it was
mine. I've always felt that telling it would cheapen both me
and the story itself, make it smaller and more mundane, no
more than a camp counselor's ghost story told before
lights-out. I think I was also afraid that if I told it,
heard it with my own ears, I might start to disbelieve it
myself. But since my mother died I haven't been able to
sleep very well. I doze off and then snap back again, wide
awake and shivering. Leaving the bedside lamp on helps, but
not as much as you might think. There are so many more
shadows at night, have you ever noticed that? Even with a
light on there are so many shadows. The long ones could be
the shadows of anything, you think. Anything at all.
I was a junior at the University of Maine when Mrs.
McCurdy called about ma. My father died when I was too young
to remember him and I was an only child, so it was just Alan
and Jean Parker against the world. Mrs. McCurdy, who lived
just up the road, called at the apartment I shared with
three other guys. She had gotten the number off the magnetic
minder-board ma kept on her fridge.
"'Twas a stroke," she said in that long and
drawling Yankee accent of hers. "Happened at the
restaurant. But don't you go flyin off all half-cocked.
Doctor says it wa'ant too bad. She's awake and she's talkin."
"Yeah, but is she making sense?" I asked. I was
trying to sound calm, even amused, but my heart was beating
fast and the living room suddenly felt too warm. I had the
apartment all to myself; it was Wednesday, and both my
roomies had classes all day. "Oh, ayuh. First thing she
said was for me to call you but not to scare you. That's
pretty sensible, wouldn't you say?"
"Yeah." But of course I was scared. When
someone calls and tells you your mother's been taken from
work to the hospital in an ambulance, how else are you
supposed to feel? "She said for you to stay right there
and mind your schoolin until the weekend. She said you could
come then, if you didn't have too much studyin t'do."
Sure, I thought. Fat chance. I'd just stay here in this
ratty, beer-smelling apartment while my mother lay in a
hospital bed a hundred miles south, maybe dying. "She's
still a young woman, your ma," Mrs. McCurdy said.
"It's just that she's let herself get awful heavy these
last few years, and she's got the hypertension. Plus the
cigarettes. She's goin to have to give up the smokes."
I doubted if she would, though, stroke or no stroke,
and about that I was right-my mother loved her smokes. I
thanked Mrs. McCurdy for calling. "First thing I did
when I got home," she said. "So when are you
coming, Alan? Sad'dy?" There was a sly note in her
voice that suggested she knew better.
I looked out the window at a perfect afternoon in
October: bright blue New England sky over trees that were
shaking down their yellow leaves onto Mill Street. Then I
glanced at my watch. Twenty past three. I'd just been on my
way out to my four o'clock philosophy seminar when the phone
rang.
"You kidding?" I asked. "I'll be there
tonight." Her laughter was dry and a little cracked
around the edges-Mrs. McCurdy was a great one to talk about
giving up the cigarettes, her and her Winstons. "Good
boy! You'll go straight to the hospital, won't you, then
drive out to the house?"
"I guess so, yeah," I said. I saw no sense
in telling Mrs. McCurdy that there was something wrong with
the transmission of my old car, and it wasn't going anywhere
but the driveway for the foreseeable future. I'd hitchhike
down to Lewiston, then out to our little house in Harlow if
it wasn't too late. If it was, I'd snooze in one of the
hospital lounges. It wouldn't be the first time I'd ridden
my thumb home from school. Or slept sitting up with my head
leaning against a Coke machine, for that matter.
"I'll make sure the key's under the red
wheelbarrow," she said. "You know where I mean,
don't you?" "Sure." My mother kept an old red
wheelbarrow by the door to the back shed; in the summer it
foamed with flowers. Thinking of it for some reason brought
Mrs. McCurdy's news home to me as a true fact: my mother was
in the hospital, the little house in Harlow where I'd grown
up was going to be dark tonight- there was no one there to
turn on the lights after the sun went down. Mrs. McCurdy
could say she was young, but when you're just twenty-one
yourself, forty-eight seems ancient.
"Be careful, Alan. Don't speed."
My speed, of course, would be up to whoever I hooked a
ride with, and I personally hoped that whoever it was would
go like hell. As far as I was concerned, I couldn't get to
Central Maine Medical Center fast enough. Still, there was
no sense worrying Mrs. McCurdy.
"I won't. Thanks."
"Welcome," she said. "Your ma's going
to be just fine. And won't she be some happy to see
you."
I hung up, then scribbled a note saying what had
happened and where I was going. I asked Hector Passmore, the
more responsible of my roommates, to call my adviser and ask
him to tell my instructors what was up so I wouldn't get
whacked for cutting-two or three of my teachers were real
bears about that. Then I stuffed a change of clothes into my
backpack, added my dog-eared copy of Introduction to
Philosophy, and headed out. I dropped the course the
following week, although I had been doing quite well in it.
The way I looked at the world changed that night, changed
quite a lot, and nothing in my philosophy textbook seemed to
fit the changes. I came to understand that there are things
underneath, you see-underneath-and no book can explain what
they are. I think that sometimes it's best to just forget
those things are there. If you can, that is.