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He sat on the floor of the pantry with his legs out in front of him, a box of Triscuit crackers between them, looking at the door. He was eating the crackers one by one, not tasting them, only eating them because he had to eat something. When he got out of here, he was going to need his strength. All of it.

At this precise instant, he thought he had never felt quite so miserable in his entire life. His mind and body together made up a large-writ scripture of pain. His head ached terribly, the sick throb of a hangover. The attendant symptoms were there, too: his mouth tasted like a manure rake had taken a swing through it, his ears rung, his heart had an extra-heavy, thudding beat, like a tom-tom. In addition, both shoulders ached fiercely from throwing himself against the door and his throat felt raw and peeled from useless shouting. He had cut his right hand on the doorlatch.

He munched the Triscuits one by one, refusing to give in to his wretched stomach, which wanted to vomit up everything. He thought of the Excedrins in his pocket and decided to wait until his stomach had quieted a bit. No sense swallowing a painkiller if you were going to throw it right back up. Have to use your brain. The celebrated Jack Torrance brain. Aren't you the fellow who once was going to live by his wits? Jack Torrance, best-selling author. Jack Torrance, acclaimed playwright and winner of the New York Critics Circle Award. John Torrance, man of letters, esteemed thinker, winner of the Pulitzer Prize at seventy for his trenchant book of memoirs, My Life in the Twentieth Century. All any of that shit boiled down to was living by your wits.

And when he got out of here, he was going to kick some ass.

He put another Triscuit into his mouth and crunched it up.

Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are.

What it really came down to, he supposed, was their lack of trust in him.

Their failure to believe that he knew what was best for them and how to get it.

His wife had tried to usurp him, first by fair (sort of) means, then by foul. When her little hints and whining objections had been overturned by his own well-reasoned arguments, she had turned his boy against him, tried to kill him with a bottle, and then had locked him, of all places, in the goddamned fucking pantry.

(Yes but where did the liquor come from? Isn't that really the central point? You know what happens when you drink, you know it from bitter experience. When you drink, you lose your wits.) He hurled the box of Triscuits across the small room. They struck a shelf of canned goods and fell to the floor. He looked at the box, wiped his lips with his hand, and then looked at his watch. It was almost six-thirty. He had been in here for hours. His wife had locked him in here and he'd been here for fucking hours.

Still, a small interior voice nagged him.

The thing he'd never asked himself, Jack realized now, was exactly what had driven his daddy to drink in the first place. And really… when you came right down to what his old students had been pleased to call the nifty-gritty… hadn't it been the woman he was married to? A milksop sponge of a woman, always dragging silently around the house with an expression of doomed martyrdom on her face? A ball and chain around Daddy's ankle? No, not ball and chain. She had never actively tried to make Daddy a prisoner, the way Wendy had done to him. For Jack's father it must have been more like the fate of McTeague the dentist at the end of Frank Norris's great novel: handcuffed to a dead man in the wasteland. Yes, that was better. Mentally and spiritually dead, his mother had been handcuffed to his father by matrimony. Still, Daddy had tried to do right as he dragged her rotting corpse through life. He had tried to bring the four children up to know right from wrong, to understand discipline, and above all, to respect their father.

He could begin to sympathize with his father.

Well, they had been ingrates, all of them, himself included. And now he was paying the price; his own son had turned out to be an ingrate, too. But there was hope. He would get out of here somehow. He would chastise them both, and harshly. He would set Danny an example, so that the day might come when Danny was grown, a day when Danny would know what to do better than he himself had known.

He remembered the Sunday dinner when his father had caned his mother at the table… how horrified he and the others had been. Now he could see how necessary that had been, how his father had only been feigning drunkenness, how his wits had been sharp and alive underneath all along, watching for the slightest sign of disrespect.

Jack crawled after the Triscuits and began to eat them again, sitting by the door she had so treacherously bolted. He wondered exactly what his father had seen, and how he had caught her out by his playacting. Had she been sneering at him behind her hand? Sticking her tongue out? Making obscene finger gestures? Or only looking at him insolently and arrogantly, convinced that he was too stupidly drunk to see? Whatever it had been, he had caught her at it, and he had chastised her sharply. And now, twenty years later, he could finally appreciate Daddy's wisdom.

He wasn't going to be able to reason with her, he could see that now. He had tried to reason with her in the Colorado Lounge, and she had refused to listen, had hit him over the head with a bottle for his pains. But there would be another time, and soon. He would get out of here.

Of course you could say Daddy had been foolish to marry such a woman, to have handcuffed himself to that corpse in the first place… and a disrespectful corpse at that. But when the young marry in haste they must repent in leisure, and perhaps Daddy's daddy had married the same type of woman, so that unconsciously Jack's daddy had also married one, as Jack himself had. Except that his wife, instead of being satisfied with the passive role of having wrecked one career and crippled another, had opted for the poisonously active task of trying to destroy his last and best chance: to become a member of the Overlook's staff, and possibly to rise… all the way to the position of manager, in time. She was trying to deny him Danny, and Danny was his ticket of admission. That was foolish, of course -- why would they want the son when they could have the father? -- but employers often had foolish ideas and that was the condition that had been made.

He suddenly held his breath and cocked his head. Somewhere a piano was playing boogie-woogie and people were laughing and clapping along. The sound was muffled through the heavy wooden door, but audible. The song was "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight." His hands curled helplessly into fists; he had to restrain himself from battering at the door with them. The party had begun again. The liquor would be flowing freely. Somewhere, dancing with someone else, would be the girl who had felt so maddeningly nude under her white silk gown.

"Yes, sir. Indeed it is. You appear to have been locked in."

"You'll pay for this!" he howled. "Goddam you two, you'll pay! You'll take your goddam medicine for this, I promise you! You --"

"Grady? Is that you?"

"Here, here, now," a mild voice said just outside the door, "No need to shout, old fellow. I can hear you perfectly well." Jack lurched to his feet

"Let me out, Grady. Quickly."

"I see you can hardly have taken care of the business we discussed, sir. The correction of your wife and son."

"I do!" Jack shouted. "I do, I swear it!"

"You let them lock you in?" Grady's voice registered wellbred surprise. "Oh, dear. A woman half your size and a little boy? Hardly sets you off as being of top managerial timber, does it?"

"Will you indeed, sir? I wonder." Well-bred surprise was replaced by well-bred regret. "I'm pained to say that I doubt it. I -- and others -- have really come to believe that your heart is not in this, sir. That you haven't the… the belly for it"

"They're the ones who locked me in. Pull the bolt, for God's sake!"

A pulse began to beat in the clockspring of veins at Jack's right temple. "Let me out, Grady. I'll take care of them."

"Yes! Yes!"

"Perhaps, Mr. Torrance, we should have been dealing with her all along."

"I'll bring him, I swear it," Jack said. His face was against the door now. He was sweating. "She won't object. I swear she won't. She won't be able to."

"You would bring us your son?"

"Your wife would object to that very strongly, Mr. Torrance. And she appears to be… somewhat stronger than we had imagined. Somewhat more resourceful. She certainly seems to have gotten the better of you." Grady tittered.

"You would have to kill her, I fear," Grady said coldly.

"You'll give your word on it, sir?" Grady persisted.

"I'll do what I have to do. Just let me out."

"My word, my promise, my sacred vow, whatever in hell you want. If you --" There was a flat snap as the bolt was drawn back. The door shivered open a quarter of an inch. Jack's words and breath halted. For a moment he felt that death itself was outside that door.

The feeling passed.

He pushed the pantry door open; the hinges squealed faintly.

He whispered: "Thank you, Grady. I swear you won't regret it. I swear you won't." There was no answer. He became aware that all sounds had stopped except for the cold swooping of the wind outside.

Leaning against it was one of the roque mallets from the equipment shed.

The kitchen was empty. Grady was gone. Everything was still and frozen beneath the cold white glare of the fluorescent bars. His eyes caught on the large chopping block where the three of them had eaten their meals.

Standing on top of it was a martini glass, a fifth of gin, and a plastic dish filled with olives.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then a voice much deeper and much more powerful than Grady's, spoke from somewhere, everywhere… from inside him.

(Keep your promise, Mr. Torrance.)

"I will," he said. He heard the fawning servility in his own voice but was unable to control it. "I will."

He walked to the chopping block and put his hand on the handle of the mallet.

Swung it.

Jack Torrance began to smile.

He hefted it.

It hissed viciously through the air.