Joyland by Stephen King Page B

sketched a little salute off the tilted brim of his lid. I sent him one right back.
    He finished his work, nodded, jumped off the stage, and took the seat Rozzie had been saving for him. Fred Dean walked briskly out from the wings. “Be seated, please, all of you be seated. Before you get your team assignments, the owner of Joyland—and your employer—would like to say a few words. Please give a hand to Mr. Bradley Easterbrook.”
    We did as we were told, and an old man emerged from the wings, walking with the careful, high-stepping strides of someone with bad hips, a bad back, or both. He was tall and amazingly thin, dressed in a black suit that made him look more like an undertaker than a man who owned an amusement park. His face was long, pale, covered with bumps and moles. Shaving must have been torture for him, but he had a clean one. Ebony hair that had surely come out of a bottle was swept back from his deeply lined brow. He stood beside the podium, his enormous hands—they seemed to be nothing but knuckles—clasped before him. His eyes were set deep in pouched sockets.
    Age looked at youth, and youth’s applause first weakened, then died.
    I’m not sure what we expected; possibly a mournful foghorn voice telling us that the Red Death would soon hold sway over all. Then he smiled, and it lit him up like a jukebox. You could almost hear a sigh of relief rustle through the summer hires. I found out later that was the summer Bradley Easterbrook turned ninety-three.
    “You guys,” he said, “welcome to Joyland.” And then, before stepping behind the podium, he actually bowed to us. He took several seconds adjusting the mike, which produced a series of amplified screeks and scronks. He never took his sunken eyes from us as he did it.
    “I see many returning faces, a thing that always makes me happy. For you greenies, I hope this will be the best summer of your lives, the yardstick by which you judge all your future employment. That is no doubt an extravagant wish, but anyone who runs a place like this year in and year out must have a wide streak of extravagance. For certain you’ll never have another job like it.”
    He surveyed us, giving the poor mike’s articulated neck another twist as he did so.
    “In a few moments, Mr. Dean and Mrs. Brenda Rafferty, who is queen of the front office, will give you your team assignments. There will be seven of you to a team, and you will be expected to act as a team and work as a team. Your team’s tasks will be assigned by your team leader and will vary from week to week, sometimes from day to day. If variety is the spice of life, you will find the next three months very spicy, indeed. I hope you will keep one thought foremost in your mind, young ladies and gentlemen. Will you do that?”
    He paused as if expecting us to answer, but nobody made a sound. We only looked at him, a very old man in a black suit and a white shirt open at the collar. When he spoke again, it might have been himself he was talking to, at least to begin with.
    “This is a badly broken world, full of wars and cruelty and senseless tragedy. Every human being who inhabits it is served his or her portion of unhappiness and wakeful nights. Those of you who don’t already know that will come to know it. Given such sad but undeniable facts of the human condition, you have been given a priceless gift this summer: you are here to sell fun. In exchange for the hard-earned dollars of your customers, you will parcel out happiness. Children will go home and dream of what they saw here and what they did here. I hope you will remember that when the work is hard, as it sometimes will be, or when people are rude, as they often will be, or when you feel your best efforts have gone unappreciated. This is a different world, one that has its own customs and its own language, which we simply call the Talk. You’ll begin learning it today. As you learn to talk the Talk, you’ll learn to walk the walk. I’m not