Stephen King - The Plant 3

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T h e P l a n t

by Stephen King

part three of a novel in progress

p h i l t r u m p r e s s

Bangor, Maine 

S Y N O P S I S

JOHN KENTO N , who majored in English and was President of the Brown University

Literary Society, has had a rude initiation into the real world as one of Zenith House’s

four editors. Zenith House, which captured only 2% of the total paperback market the

year before (1980), is dying on the vine. All of its employees are worried that Apex, the

parent corporation, may soon take extreme measures to stem the tide of red ink...and

the most likely possibility is looking more and more like terminating Zenith House,

with extreme sanction. The only hope is a drastic sales turnaround, but with Zenith’s

tiny advances and creaky distribution system, that seems unlikely.).

Enter CARLOS DETWEILLER, first in the form of a query letter received by John

Kenton. Detweiller, twenty-three, works in the Central Falls House of Flowers, and is

hawking a book he’s written called True Tales of Demon Infestations.Kenton, with the vague

idea that Detweiller may have some interesting stuﬀwhich can be rewritten by a

staﬀer, encourages Detweiller to submit sample chapters and an outline. Detweiller

instead submits the entire manuscript, along with a bundle of photographs. The mss is

even more abysmal than Kenton—who thought the book could maybe be juiced up

for The Amityville Horror audience—would have believed in his worst nightmares. Yet

the worst nightmare of all is contained in the form of the enclosed photographs. Most

are shots of painfully faked seance eﬀects, but four of them show a gruesomely realis-

tic human sacrifice, in which an old man’s heart is being pulled from his gaping

chest...and it seems very likely to Kenton that the fellow doing the pulling is none

other than Carlos Detweiller himself.

ROGER WA D E concurs with Kenton’s feeling that they have stumbled into some-

thing which is probably a police matter—and a very nasty police matter at that.

Kenton takes the photos to S G T. T Y N DA L E , who wires them to CHIEF IVERSON

in Central Falls. Carlos Detweiller is arrested, then released when an oﬃcer assigned to

surveillance sees the photos in question and remarks that he saw the so-called “sacri-

fice victim” sitting in the House of Flowers oﬃce that very day, playing solitaire and

watching Ryan’s Hope on TV.

Tyndale tries to comfort Kenton. Go home, he says, have a drink, forget it. You

made a perfectly forgivable mistake in the course of trying to do your civic duty.

Kenton burns the “sacrifice photos,” but he can’t forget; he receives a letter from

the obviously insane Carlos Detweiller, promising revenge. Two weeks later, he

receives a letter from one “Roberta Solrac,” who purports to be a great fan of Zenith’s

second-hottest author, Anthony La Scorbia (La Scorbia is responsible for a series of

nature-run-amok novels such as Rats from Hell, Ants from Hell, and Scorpions from Hell).

“She” claims to have sent La Scorbia roses, and wants to send Kenton, as La Scorbia’s

editor, a small plant “as a token of esteem.”

Kenton, no fool, realizes at once that Solrac is Carlos spelled backward...and

Detweiller, of course, worked in a greenhouse. Convinced that the “token of esteem”

is apt to be something like deadly nightshade or belladonna, Kenton sends an interof-

ﬁce memo to Riddley, instructing him to incinerate any package which comes to him

from a “Roberta Solrac.”

RIDDLEY WA L K E R , who respects Kenton more than Kenton himself would ever

believe, agrees, but privately adopts a wait-and-see attitude. Near the end of February

1981, a package from “Roberta Solrac,” addressed to John Kenton, actually does arrive.

Riddley opens the package in spite of a strong feeling that the sender—Detweiller—is

a terribly evil man. If so, the contents of the package are hardly in keeping with such

notions; it is nothing more than a sickly-looking Common Ivy with a little plastic sign

stuck into the earth of its pot. The sign reads:

H I !

M Y N A M E I S Z E N I T H

I A M A G I F T T O J O H N

F R O M R O B E R T A

Riddley puts it on a high shelf of his janitor’s room and forgets it.

For the time being.

L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L

February 25

Dear Ruth,

I’ve got a case of the mean reds, so I thought I’d pass some of them on—

see the enclosed Xeroxes, concluding with a typically impudent communi-

cation from Riddley, he of the coal-black skin and three hundred huge

white teeth.

You’ll notice that Roger kicked my ass good and hard—not much like

Roger, and doubly sobering for that very reason. I don’t think one has to be

very paranoid to see that he’s talking about the possibility of firing me. If I’d

talked this out with him over martinis at Flaherty’s after work, I doubt very

much if he would have come down so hard, and of course I had no idea he

was waiting on a call from Enders. I undoubtedly deserved the ass-kicking I

got—I haven’t really been doing my job—but he has no idea of the scare

that letter threw into me when I realized it was Detweiller again. I’m too

goddam thin-skinned for my own good, that’s what Roger thinks...but

Detweiller is scary for other, less easily grasped reasons. Being the idée that’s

gotten fixe in some crazy’s head has got to be one of the most uncomfortable

feelings in the world—if I knew Jody Foster, I think I’d give her a jingle and

tell her I know exactly how she feels. There’s an almost palpable texture of

slime about Detweiller’s communications, and oh boy, oh yeah, I wish I

could get him out of my head, but I still have nightmares about those pic-

tures.

Anyway, I have taken care of matters as well as I can, and no, I have no

intention of calling Central Falls. We have an editorial meeting tomorrow.

I’ll try to the best of my limited abilities to get back on the beam...except at

Zenith House the beam is so narrow it almost doesn’t exist.

I love you, I miss you, I long for your return. Maybe you being gone is

part of the problem. Not to make you feel guilty.

All my love,

John

From the journals of Riddley Walker

2/23/81

Like a stone thrown into a large and stagnant pond, the Detweiller aﬀair

has caused any number of ripples at my place of employment. I thought

that all of them had gone by; yet this afternoon one more rolled past, and

who is to say even that one will be the last?

I have included a Xerox of an exceedingly curious memo I received

from Kenton at 2:35 P.M. plus my own reply (the memo came just after

Gelb left,in something of a huﬀ; why he should have been in a huﬀeludes

me since today he brought his own dice and I did him the courtesy of not

even checking them, but Ah g’iss Ah woan nevuh understand dese white

folks). I think I have covered the Detweiller aﬀair to a nicety in these

pages, but I should add that it never surprised me in the least that Kenton

was the one to bring Detweiller,the rogue comet, into the erratic (and, I

fear, degenerating) orbit of Zenith House. He is brighter than Sandra

Jackson; brighter than that crap-shooting, Ivy League tie-wearing devil

William Gelb; far brighter than Herbert Porter (Porter,as previously

noted, is not above wandering into Ms. Jackson’s oﬃce after she has left

for the day and sniﬃng the seat of her oﬃce chair—a strange man, but be

it not for me to judge), and the only one of the staﬀwho might be capable

of recognizing a commercial book if it came within his purview. Right now

he is eaten up with guilt and embarrassment over l’aﬀaire Detweiller, and

can see only that he made a rather comic faux pas. He would be incapable

of seeing that his decision to even look at the Detweiller book demon-

strated that his editorial ears are still open, and still attuned to that sweet-

est of all tones—the celestial notes of Sweda cash registers in drugstores

and book emporia ringing up sales, even if it was pointed out to him.

Incapable of seeing that it proves he’s still trying.

The others have given up.

Anyway, here is this enchanting memo—between its lines I hear a

man whose nerve is temporarily shot, a man who might be capable of fac-

ing a lion but who now cannot even look at a mouse; a man who is,in con-

sequence, shrieking “Eeeek! Get rid of it! Get rid of it!” and swatting at it

with the handiest broom, which in dis case jus happen t’be Riddley, who

dus’ de awﬁshes an wipe de windows an delivah de mail. Yassuh, Mist

Kenton, I git rid of it fo you! I sholy goan get rid of dat hoodoo Solrac

woman’s package if she sen one!

Maybe.

On the other hand, maybe John Kenton should have to face up to the

consequences of his own actions—swat his own mouse. After all, if you

don’t swat your own, maybe you never really know what a harmless little

thing a mouse is...and is it not possible that Kenton’s useful days as an

editor may be over if he cannot stare down such occasional crazies as

Carlos “Roberta” Detweiller?

I shall ponder the matter.I think there is a very good chance no pack-

age will come, but I’ll ponder it all the same.

2/27/81

Something from the mysterious “Roberta Solrac” actually came today! I

didn’t know whether to be amused or disgusted by my own reaction,

which was staring,elemental gut-terror followed by an almost insane urge

to put the thing down the incinerator, exactly as Kenton’s note had

instructed. The physicality of my reaction as soon as my eye fell on the

return address and connected the name there with Kenton’s memo was

striking. I had a sudden spasm of shudders. Goosebumps raced up my

back.I heard a clear,ringing tone in my ears, and I could feel the hair stiﬀ-

ening on my head.

This symphony of physiological atavism lasted no more than ﬁve sec-

onds and then it subsided—but it left me as shaken as a sudden deep lance

of pain in the area of the heart. Floyd would sneer and call it “a nigger

reaction,” but it was no such thing. It was a human reaction. Not to the

thing itself—the contents of the package were something of an anticlimax

after all the sound and fury—but, I am convinced, to the hands which

placed the lid on the small white cardboard box in which the plant came;

the hands which tied twine around that box and then cut a brown paper

shopping bag in which to wrap the box for mailing, the hands which

taped and labelled and carried. Detweiller’s hands.

Am I speaking of telepathy? Yes...and no. It might be fairer to say

that I am speaking of a kind of passive psychokinesis.Dogs shy away from

people with cancer; they smell it on them. So, at least, claims my dear old

Aunt Olympia.In the same way I smelled Detweiller all over that box,and

now I understand Kenton’s upset better and have a good deal more sym-

pathy for him. I think Carlos Detweiller must be dangerously insane...but

the plant itself is no deadly nightshade or belladonna or Adder Toadstool

(although it may have been any or all of those things in Detweiller’s fever-

ish mind, I suppose). It’s only a very small and very tired-looking com-

mon ivy in a red clay pot.

If not for the “nigger reaction” (Floyd Walker)—or the “human reac-

tion” (his brother Riddley)—I might really have dumped the thing...but

after that ﬁt of the shakes,it seemed to me I had to go through with open-

ing the package or deem myself less a man. I did so, in spite of any num-

ber of gruesome images—high explosive rigged to special pressure-tapes,

noxious ﬂoods of black widow spiders, a litter of baby copperheads. And

there it was, just a small ivy-plant with yellow-edged leaves (four of them)

nodding from one tired, sagging stem. The soil itself is waxy brown. It

smells swampy and unpleasant.

There was a little plastic sign stuck in the earth which read:

H I !

M Y N A M E I S Z E N I T H

I A M A G I F T T O J O H N

F R O M R O B E R T A

It was that ﬂash of fear which drove me to open the package.

Similarly, it’s that same ﬂash which has decided me against making sure

that Kenton gets it after all, which would have been easy enough to do

(“Dat plant, Mist Kenton? Oh, drat! I g’iss I fo’got whatchoo said. I am

de mos f ’gitten’est man!”). Let the ripples end; let him forget Detweiller,

if that’s what he wants. I’ve put Zenith the Common Ivy on a shelf in my

janitorial-cum-mailroom cubicle—a shelf well above Kenton’s eye-level

(not that he stops in much anyway, unlike Gelb with his dice ﬁxation). I’ll

keep it until it dies, and then I reallywill dump it down the incinerator

chute. That will be the end of Detweiller fo sho.

Got ﬁfty pages done on the novel over the weekend.

Gelb now owes me $75.40.

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dbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbThePlantbyStephenKingpartthreeofanovelinprogressphiltrumpressBangor,Maine2000dCopyright©1983,;1985,t2000,nbyiStephenrKing.gAll/rightsnreserved.bSYNOPSISJOHNKENTON,whomajoredinEnglishandwasPresidentoftheBrownUniversityLiterarySociety,hashadarudeinitiation...

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Stephen King - The Plant 3

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