Hearts In Atlantis

Read Hearts In Atlantis Online

Authors: Stephen King

PRAISE FOR STEPHEN KING AND

HEARTS IN ATLANTIS

“This is a spellbinding piece of literature . . . . New characters become old friends as the reader struggles with them through each test and trial (some of which are classically Kingian), hoping ultimately to survive in the end.”

—Library Journal

“King
nails
the '60s and its legacy.”

—Publishers Weekly

“An overtly autobiographical and heartfelt work.”

—The Village Voice

“Page after page, a truly mature King does everything right and deserves some kind of literary rosette. His masterpiece.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“One of the most impressive books of fiction published this year.”

—Locus

“You will see Stephen King in a new light. Read this moving, heartfelt modern tragedy and weep—weep for our lost conscience.”

—BookPage

THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON

“A gem . . . Superb.”

—San Francisco Examiner

“An absorbing tale . . . 
Tom Gordon
scores big.”

—People

“A delightful read, a literary walk in the woods.”

—USA Today

“Impressive . . . A wonderful story of courage, faith, and hope . . . It is eminently engaging and difficult to put down.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“A fast, scary read . . . King blasts a homer . . . . [He] expertly stirs the major ingredients of the American psyche—our spirituality, fierce love of children, passion for baseball, and collective fear of the bad thing we know lurks on the periphery of life.”

—
New York
Daily News

“King paints a masterful, terrifying picture of every child's (and maybe adult's) worst fear . . . . King uses that creepy-crawly paranoia to perfection.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

BAG OF BONES

“For those of you who think Stephen King writes only horror fiction, think again . . . . In
Bag of Bones
, King offers readers a rare blend of luminous prose, thought-provoking themes, and masterful storytelling.”

—The San Diego Union-Tribune

“What I admire most about
Bag of Bones
is its intelligence of voice, not only the craftsmanship—the indelible sense of place, the well-fleshed characters, the unstoppable story line—but the witty and obsessive voice of King's powerful imagination.”

—Amy Tan


Bag of Bones
is, hands down, King's most narratively subversive fiction. Whenever you're positive—just positive!—you know where this ghost story is heading, that's exactly when it gallops off in some jaw-dropping new direction.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“This is King at his clever, terrifying best.”

—Mademoiselle

“Contains some of [King's] best writing . . . This is King's most romantic book, and ghosts are up and about from the get-go . . . . The big surprise here is the emotional wallop the story packs.”

—Newsweek

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Contents

Epigraph

Part 1: 1960 Low Men in Yellow Coats

I: A Boy and His Mother. Bobby's Birthday. The New Roomer. Of Time and Strangers.

II: Doubts About Ted. Books Are Like Pumps. Don't Even Think About It. Sully Wins a Prize. Bobby Gets a Job. Signs of the Low Men.

III: A Mother's Power. Bobby Does His Job. “Does He Touch You?” The Last Day of School.

IV: Ted Goes Blank. Bobby Goes to the Beach. McQuown. The Winkle.

V: Bobby Reads the Paper. Brown, With a White Bib. A Big Chance for Liz. Camp Broad Street. An Uneasy Week. Off to Providence.

VI: A Dirty Old Man. Ted's Casserole. A Bad Dream.
Village of the Damned
. Down There.

VII: In the Pocket. The Shirt Right Off His Back. Outside the William Penn. The French Sex-Kitten.

VIII: Bobby Makes a Confession. The Gerber Baby and the Maltex Baby. Rionda. Ted Makes a Call. Cry of the Hunters.

IX: Ugly Thursday.

X: Down There Again. Corner Boys. Low Men in Yellow Coats. The Payout.

XI: Wolves and Lions. Bobby at Bat. Officer Raymer. Bobby and Carol. Bad Times. An Envelope.

Part 2: 1966 Hearts in Atlantis

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Part 3: 1983 Blind Willie

Chapter 1: 6:15
A.M.

Chapter 2: 8:15
A.M.

Chapter 3: 8:40
A.M.

Chapter 4: 9:05
A.M.

Chapter 5: 9:45
A.M.

Chapter 6: 10:00
A.M.

Chapter 7: 10:15
A.M.

Chapter 8: 10:45
A.M.

Chapter 9: 1:40
P.M.

Chapter 10: 4:25
P.M.

Chapter 11: 4:40
P.M.

Chapter 12: 5:15
P.M.

Chapter 13: 5:25
P.M.

Part 4: 1999 Why We're in Vietnam

Part 5: 1999 Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling

Author's Note

About Stephen King

This is for Joseph and Leanora and Ethan:

I told you all that to tell you this
.

Number 6: What do you want?

Number 2: Information.

Number 6: Whose side are you on?

Number 2: That would be telling. We want information.

Number 6: You won't get it!

Number 2: By hook or by crook . . . we will.

The Prisoner

Simon stayed where he was, a small brown image, concealed by the leaves. Even if he shut his eyes the sow's head still remained like an after-image. The half-shut eyes were dim with infinite cynicism of adult life. They assured Simon that everything was a bad business.

W
ILLIAM
G
OLDING
,

Lord of the Flies

“We blew it.”

Easy Rider

1960: They had a stick sharpened at both ends
.

1960
L
OW
M
EN IN
Y
ELLOW
C
OATS
I. A BOY AND HIS MOTHER. BOBBY'S BIRTHDAY. THE NEW ROOMER. OF TIME AND STRANGERS.

Bobby Garfield's father had been one of those fellows who start losing their hair in their twenties and are completely bald by the age of forty-five or so. Randall Garfield was spared this extremity by dying of a heart attack at thirty-six. He was a real-estate agent, and breathed his last on the kitchen floor of someone else's house. The potential buyer was in the living room, trying to call an ambulance on a disconnected phone, when Bobby's dad passed away. At this time Bobby was three. He had vague memories of a man tickling him and then kissing his cheeks and his forehead. He was pretty sure that man had been his dad.
SADLY MISSED
, it said on Randall Garfield's gravestone, but his mom never seemed all that sad, and as for Bobby himself . . . well, how could you miss a guy you could hardly remember?

Eight years after his father's death, Bobby fell violently in love with the twenty-six-inch Schwinn in the window of the Harwich Western Auto. He hinted to his mother about the Schwinn in every way he knew, and finally pointed it out to her one night when they were walking home from the movies (the show had been
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
, which Bobby didn't understand but liked anyway, especially the part where Dorothy McGuire flopped back in a chair and showed off her long legs). As they passed the hardware store, Bobby mentioned casually that the bike in the
window would sure make a great eleventh-birthday present for some lucky kid.

“Don't even think about it,” she said. “I can't afford a bike for your birthday. Your father didn't exactly leave us well off, you know.”

Although Randall had been dead ever since Truman was President and now Eisenhower was almost done with his eight-year cruise,
Your father didn't exactly leave us well off
was still his mother's most common response to anything Bobby suggested which might entail an expenditure of more than a dollar. Usually the comment was accompanied by a reproachful look, as if the man had run off rather than died.

No bike for his birthday. Bobby pondered this glumly on their walk home, his pleasure at the strange, muddled movie they had seen mostly gone. He didn't argue with his mother, or try to coax her—that would bring on a counterattack, and when Liz Garfield counterattacked she took no prisoners—but he brooded on the lost bike . . . and the lost father. Sometimes he almost hated his father. Sometimes all that kept him from doing so was the sense, unanchored but very strong, that his mother wanted him to. As they reached Commonwealth Park and walked along the side of it—two blocks up they would turn left onto Broad Street, where they lived—he went against his usual misgivings and asked a question about Randall Garfield.

“Didn't he leave anything, Mom? Anything at all?” A week or two before, he'd read a Nancy Drew mystery where some poor kid's inheritance had been hidden behind an old clock in an abandoned mansion. Bobby didn't really think his father had left gold coins or rare stamps stashed someplace, but if there was
something
, maybe they could sell it in Bridgeport. Possibly at one of the hockshops. Bobby didn't know exactly how hocking things worked, but he knew what the shops looked like—they had three gold balls hanging out front. And he was sure the hockshop guys would be happy to help them. Of course it was just a kid's dream, but Carol Gerber up the street had a whole set of dolls her father, who was in the Navy, had sent from overseas. If fathers
gave
things—which they did—it stood to reason that fathers sometimes
left
things.

When Bobby asked the question, they were passing one of the streetlamps which ran along this side of Commonwealth Park, and Bobby saw his mother's mouth change as it always did when he ventured a question about his late father. The change made him think of a purse she had: when you pulled on the drawstrings, the hole at the top got smaller.

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