Read Online The Plant by Stephen King - Free Book Online Page B

to just suddenly jump on a plane and “wing your way into the golden west”—I wouldn’t see you if you did. I’m not ready to see you face to face, John—my feelings are still too much in flux and my self-image too much in a state of transition. We will meet again, yes. And dare I say that I even hope you will come to our wedding? I must dare,as I see I have written it down!
    Oh, John, I do love you,and I hope this letter has not caused you too much pain—I even hope God has been good and you may have found your own “somebody” in the last couple of weeks—in the meantime,please know that you will always (always!) be somebody to me.
    My love,
    Ruth
    PS—And although it is trite,it is also true: I hope we can always be friends.
    63

i n t e r o f f i c e m e m o
    t o : Roger Wade
    f r o m: John Kenton
    r e : Resignation
    I’ve been a trifle formal here because this really is a letter of resignation, Roger, memo form or no. I’ll be leaving at the end of the day—will, in fact, begin cleaning out my desk as soon as I’ve finished this. I’d rather not go into my reasons—they are personal. I realize, of course, that leaving with no prior notice is very bad form. Should you choose to take the matter up with the Apex Corporation, I would be happy to pay a reasonable assessment. I’m sorry about this, Roger. I like and respect you a great deal, but this simply has to be.
    From John Kenton’s diary
    March 16, 1981
    I haven’t tried to keep a diary since I was eleven years old, when my Aunt Susan—dead lo these many years—gave me a small pocket diary for my birthday. It was just a cheap little thing; like Aunt Susan herself, now that I think about it.
    I kept that diary, off and on (mostly off) for almost three weeks. I might not get even that far this time, but it doesn’t really matter. This was Roger’s idea, and Roger’s ideas are sometimes good.
    64
     
    I’ve junked the novel—oh, don’t think I did anything melodramatic like casting it into the fire to commemorate the spontaneous combustion of My First Serious Love; I’m actually writing this first (and maybe last) entry in my diary on the backs of the manuscript pages. But junking a novel doesn’t have anything to do with the actual pages, anyway; what’s on the pages is just so much dead skin. The novel actually falls apart inside your head, it seems, like the parson’s wonderful one-hoss shay. Maybe the only good thing about Ruth’s cataclysmic letter is that it’s put paid to my grandiose literary aspirations. Maymonth, by John Edward Kenton, sucked that fabled hairy bird.
    Does one need to begin a diary with background information? This was not a question which crossed my mind when I was eleven—at least not that I recall. And in spite of the great shitload of English courses I’ve taken in my time, I don’t recall ever attending one which covered the Protocol of Journals. Footnotes, synopses, outlines, the proper placement of modifiers, the correct form of the business letter—these were all things in which I took instruction. But on how to start a diary I am as blank as I am, say, on how to continue your life after its light just went out.
    Here is my decision, after a full thirty seconds of weighty consideration: a little background information wouldn’t hurt. My name, as mentioned above, is John Edward Kenton; I am twenty-six years of age; I attended Brown University, where I majored in English, served as President of the Milton Society, and was exceedingly full of myself; I believed that everything in my life would eventually turn out just fine; I have since learned better. My father is dead, my mother alive and well and living in Sanford, Maine. I have three sisters. Two are married; the third is living at home and will finish her senior year at Sanford High this June.
    I live in a two-room Soho apartment which I thought quite pleasant until the last few days; now it seems drab. I work for a seedy book company which