Jacky reached the large elm in the backyard, the elm where last
year his father had smoke-drugged a colony of wasps then burned
their nest with gasoline. The boy went up the haphazardly hung
nailed-on rungs like greased lightning, and still he was nearly not
fast enough. His father's clutching, enraged hand grasped the boy's
ankle in a grip like flexed steel, then slipped a little and succeeded
only in pulling off Jacky's loafer. Jacky went up the last, three
rungs and crouched on the floor of the tree house, 12 feet above the
ground, panting and crying on his hands and knees.
His father seemed to go crazy. He danced around the tree like an
Indian, Bellowing his rage. He slammed his fists into the tree,
making bark fly and bringing lattices of blood to his knuckles. He
kicked it. His huge moon face was white with frustration and red
with anger.
'Please, Daddy,' Jacky moaned. 'Whatever I said ... I'm sorry I
said it...'
'Come down! You come down out of there take your fucking
medicine, you little cur! Right now!'
'I Will ... I will If you promise not to ... to hit me too hard ... not
hurt me... just spank me but not hurt me...'
'Get out of that tree!' his father screamed.
Jacky looked toward the house but that was hopeless. His mother
had retreated somewhere far away, to neutral ground.
'GET OUT RIGHT NOW!'
'Oh, Daddy, I don't dare!' Jacky cried out, and that was the truth.
Because now his father might kill him.
There was a period of stalemate. A minute, perhaps, or perhaps
two. His father circled the tree, puffing and blowing like a whale.
Jacky turned around and around on his hands and knees, following
the movements. They were like parts of a visible clock.
The second or third time he came back to the ladder nailed to the
tree, Torrance stopped. He looked speculatively at the ladder. And
laid his hands on the rung before his eyes. He began to climb.
'No, Daddy, it won't hold you,' Jacky whispered.
But his father came on relentlessly, like fate, like death, like doom.
Up and up, closer to the tree house. One rung snapped off under
his hands and he almost fell but caught the next one with a grunt
and a lunge. Another one of the rungs twisted around from the
horizontal to the perpendicular under his weight with a rasping
scream of pulling nails, but it did not give way, and then the
working, congested face was visible over the edge of the tree-
house floor, and for that one moment of his childhood Jack
Torrance had his father at bay; if he could have kicked that face
with the foot that still wore its loafer, kicked it where the nose
terminated between the piggy eyes, he could have driven his father
backward off the ladder, perhaps killed him (If he had killed him,
would anyone have said anything but Thanks, Jacky'?) But it was
love that stopped him, and love that, let him just his face in his
hands and give up as first one of his father's pudgy, short-fingered
