Free Doctor Sleep by Stephen King Page B

seeing him—was unsettling, but right now he was glad he’d stopped here. Maybe this really was the place he’d been looking for, the one where he’d finally find a way to right his dangerously tipped life.
    You take yourself with you, wherever you go .
    He pushed the thought into a mental closet. It was a thing he was good at. There was all sorts of stuff in that closet.
4
    A cowling surrounded the locomotive on both sides, but he spied a footstool standing beneath one low eave of the Teenytown Station, carried it over, and stood on it. The driver’s cockpit contained two sheepskin-covered bucket seats. It looked to Dan as if they had been scavenged from an old Detroit muscle car. The cockpit and controls also looked like modified Detroit stock, with the exception of an old-fashioned Z-shaped shifter jutting up from the floor. There was no shift pattern; the original knob had been replaced with a grinning skull wearing a bandanna faded from red to pallid pink by years of gripping hands. The top half of the steering wheel had been cut off, so that what remained looked like the steering yoke ofa light plane. Painted in black on the dashboard, fading but legible, was TOP SPEED 40 DO NOT EXCEED.
    â€œLike it?” The voice came from directly behind him.
    Dan wheeled around, almost falling off the stool. A big weathered hand gripped his forearm, steadying him. It was a guy who looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, wearing a padded denim jacket and a red-checked hunting cap with the earflaps down. In his free hand was a toolkit with PROPERTY OF FRAZIER MUNICIPAL DEPT Dymo-taped across the top.
    â€œHey, sorry,” Dan said, stepping off the stool. “I didn’t mean to—”
    â€œS’all right. People stop to look all the time. Usually model-train buffs. It’s like a dream come true for em. We keep em away in the summer when the place is jumpin and the Riv runs every hour or so, but this time of year there’s no we, just me. And I don’t mind.” He stuck out his hand. “Billy Freeman. Town maintenance crew. The Riv ’s my baby.”
    Dan took the offered hand. “Dan Torrance.”
    Billy Freeman eyed the duffel. “Just got off the bus, I ’magine. Or are you ridin your thumb?”
    â€œBus,” Dan said. “What does this thing have for an engine?”
    â€œWell now, that’s interesting. Probably never heard of the Chevrolet Veraneio, didja?”
    He hadn’t, but knew anyway. Because Freeman knew. Dan didn’t think he’d had such a clear shine in years. It brought a ghost of delight that went back to earliest childhood, before he had discovered how dangerous the shining could be.
    â€œBrazilian Suburban, wasn’t it? Turbodiesel.”
    Freeman’s bushy eyebrows shot up and he grinned. “Goddam right! Casey Kingsley, he’s the boss, bought it at an auction last year. It’s a corker. Pulls like a sonofabitch. The instrument panel’s from a Suburban, too. The seats I put in myself.”
    The shine was fading now, but Dan got one last thing. “From a GTO Judge.”
    Freeman beamed. “That’s right. Found em in a junkyard overSunapee way. The shifter’s a high-hat from a 1961 Mack. Nine-speed. Nice, huh? You lookin for work or just lookin?”
    Dan blinked at the sudden change of direction. Was he looking for work? He supposed he was. The hospice he’d passed on his amble up Cranmore Avenue would be the logical place to start, and he had an idea—didn’t know if it was the shining or just ordinary intuition—that they’d be hiring, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to go there just yet. Seeing Tony in the turret window had been unsettling.
    Also, Danny, you want to be a little bit farther down the road from your last drink before you show up there askin for a job application form. Even if the only thing they got is runnin a buffer on the night shift