Welcome everyone to 2 guys to the Dark
tower came, a podcast where we discuss the
characters and connections in the ever expanding universe.
That revolves around Stephen King's dark tower. I'm
Jay Russo, and I'm Sean.
You can email us at 2 guys dark
tower at g dot com.
To support the show, visit us at patreon
dot com slash 2 guys dark tower.
In this bonus episode,
We'll cover the short story, the last rung
on the ladder found in night shift.
Let's start the show.
A man returns from his sister's funeral to
find a letter from her. He then rem
about an event from their childhood when he
saved her life.
Jam, keeping it a short and sweet. This
was a
short...
Not so sweet. Yeah. A short that's so
sweet, short story.
Parts of it are very sweet, but ultimately,
it is not a sweet story. It's actually
quite sad and It really got me in
the fields, Jay.
Me too. This story had a interesting way
of catching up with you in just a
few pages. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely.
So this is 1 of 4 stories in
night shift that was not previously published anywhere
else, so it was collected for the first
time here in night shift, and I also
found out today that night shift is the
first book of Stephen Kings
in which he writes a forward to
and then there's also an introduction by John
D mcdonald. And Jay, I don't know how
many times I've said this on the podcast,
and how many times I told it to
you separately.
But the 1 thing that I love more
than Stephen King Stories
is when Stephen King writes about his own
writing.
I just love it. So the 4 great,
but even more important is the John D
Mcdonald intro. We've talked about John D mcdonald
multiple times before on this podcast and
I've told you what a fan I am
of his Travis Mcgee books. Mh. And we
know King is a fan of John, D
Mcdonald, So it was a pleasure.
To read the John D mcdonald intro night
shift because I think
it really
speaks
not only to what a great writer king
is, but why he was so influenced by
Mcdonald why the 2 of them had such
respect for each other. Yeah.
You've talked about how... Much you like John
d Mcdonald many, many times, and I to
date have never read any of his work.
Until I read this introduction.
And
between all of your praise and
reading his introduction here, I'm convinced. I definitely
wanna crack open 1 of his books now.
And check it out.
I really like this intro too. There's a
lot of the the feeling of
how king writes about his own work Mh.
In how Mcdonald is writing about king's work,
and I I agree. There's there's a lot
of
I don't know. Sympathetic vibrations or something going
on there that I really liked Mcdonald's take
on king here. And
he calls king out on a couple of
things that I thought were pretty interesting.
Mcdonald talks about his own work and he
talks about when Every time he's published a
book. He thinks of them as tangled children,
and they're they're trying to make their way
in spite of the handy that he has
imposed upon them as their author and that
he would give a pretty penny to have
them all back and perhaps Take 1 last
good swing at every 1 of the page
by page, digging and cleaning, brushing and ref,
tidying up
And that sounds a lot like what King
has done numerous times,
including on books that we've covered on the
show. He rewrote almost every page of the
guns singer
so that it would fit more in line
with the rest of the dark tower series.
He's rewritten the stand 2 times,
and we are currently covering that in our
main feed, and it's... Kinda remarkable how much
that book has changed in the the 10
years between its first and most recent publication.
Yep. And he's and he's touched many of
his other works. What even Salem a lot
when we read, There was an additional 50
pages to that book plus all those edited
in cut scenes that we read at the
end of that special edition where things really
were different than they were in the the
novel.
And it you only need to pick up
on writing
to see what King does with a first
draft and how he goes through it and
just writes all over. I mean, that's an
excellent way of looking at how a professional
author at its own writing. For sure. Yeah.
Even Her, like, that was released for the
kindle on the kindle, Like, it was about
the kindle. Yep. And he changed that multiple
times too, which I guess is easier if
it's electronic. Yes. I suppose so...
Yeah. And the other thing about the Mcdonald
intro that I liked was just how important
story is for both of them. Yeah. And
King's talked about that before we've talked about
on this podcast and Mcdonald nails it as
well is like,
hey, this is why I did King. Like,
he knows that stories the most important thing
as an author and and I'm going to
ex the virtue of that and say, yes,
you're right King. Story isn't important, and that's
why you need to, you know, continue doing
what you do, and that's why his books
are so successful is because of that. Yep.
And there was another comment that I like
that Mcdonald made,
he talks about author intrusion, mh in various
forms, and 1 that he himself wishes didn't
happen that often, but he acknowledges that as
he puts it is 1 of his most
g failings.
And that is the author intrusion of the
mini lecture embedded in the story.
I am totally forgiving of this. If I
felt strongly against the mini lecture. I wouldn't
be able to read any high line. And
I love Hai. Hai is like,
almost covered to cover mini lecture. And it's
kind of 1 of his calling cards.
So I I think that Mcdonald's
maybe
is criticizing himself a little too harshly there,
but he also knows that he he has
many lectures and probably every 1 of his
books. Right. So maybe it's not such a
bad thing. So along those lines of the
mini lecture, John D mcdonald,
main character Travis mcgee, has a friend named
Me,
who is his
his best friend who lives next door to
him and he's the 1 who gives many
of those many lectures.
He's an economist who has a very philosophical
outlook on the way the world that he
enjoys sharing with Travis and Travis shares back.
So,
Yeah. I I can't recommend Mcdonald's stuff enough
if you have any interest in crime stories
or
detective
or just sort of that hard boil neo
noir stuff. It's great stuff. Yeah. Sounds awesome.
Yeah. So in the introduction, John d Mcdonald
says
that 1 of the most resident and affecting
stories in this book is the last rung
on the ladder.
A gem.
And Jay, I'd I think I have to
agree, like, I've I've read the story twice
in the past week.
And it's probably the first time I've read
it since, you know, last time I read
night shift, which is years and years and
years and years ago. And it's a beautiful
affecting story that just really gets to you.
Mh. And it is
classic king, but not like anything we normally
get with King. There's
there's no supernatural. There's no occult there's none
of those things that King is best known
for. And while we have seen him do
things like this and portions of his book,
where he does things like this, I don't
know if he's done it better than he
has in this story. I agree. This is
definitely a standout short story for King, and
he is very good at short stories.
So this is up there. And I also
agree that this story is a real punch
to the gut.
Like like, you you hinted at it earlier
when you said this gave you all the
fields like king in his usual way sub
some of the suspense in the story by
starting off with, Some tragedy. We know that
the narrator has read a letter from his
recently deceased sister and it has devastated him.
We don't yet know why it's devastating, but
we know the result of of that devastation,
right from the beginning.
And despite that, despite setting us up for
that, and maybe even perhaps partly because of
it, by the time we read that letter
with him, We understand its significance,
and we get that punch of the gut.
Even though we might have been bracing for
it from page 1. It's 1 of the
things that makes the story so successful for
me is that it's a simple story, it's
a brief story, but it's still. A really
powerful story. Yeah. And it's not based on
any sort of trickery, Like, there's not like
a huge twist at the end?
To your point, like, it's pretty clear what's
what's happening and what's going to happen. It's
just that the way that it's all put
together and phrase and the way in these
short pages, we get to know these characters,
especially the narrator and what what he's going
through
that really gets to you,
you know, we don't get a lot from
Kitty perspective, but we're told enough throughout the
story to know what her life must have
been like. And what it was going through
and that's why it hits so hard at
the end. Yeah. I mean, I would say
1 of the key themes to the short
story
as short as it is is
something to do with faith,
and not not like faith in a religious
sense, but more faith that the world works
in a certain way,
And for kitty, it was more specifically that
her brother would always be able to help
her or help protect her in the way
that he did on the day of the
the thing in the barn.
Right. And there's a a great line that
King repeats a couple of times in the
story that Kitty was the 1 who always
knew the hay would be there. It's that
that level of faith that if she was
gonna let go of that last rung. And
allow herself to fall because her brother said
it's okay now. You can let go.
She didn't know that there was anything there
to break her fall. She just knew that
her brother was gonna do something to make
it better. Mh. And in that case, that
faith proved correct that faith was real and
she was saved.
And from that moment on, she held onto
to that faith, but was reminded over and
over again that the world isn't always gonna
work out that way.
This moment in her life as this girl
who's saved by her brother
becomes in some way more brittle or fragile,
Mh. And she just breaks by inches over
the rest of her life. Yeah. And it's
almost as if Larry
faith is broken that day.
Because he once Kitty survives
and is seen by the doctor and Larry
taken his beating in the woods shed, and
he goes to his sister.
He stunned
that sheep let go,
Right? Yeah Like, he he can't believe he's
like, wait. You you let go, not knowing
that they was hay there. Like, you did
look down.
And it almost breaks him in the opposite
way. Yeah. That he can't believe that she
would do something like that that she has
that faith,
especially placed in him. Right? Like, Right. Like
like, why me. And he gets at this
a little bit earlier,
The narrator said the lander had always held
us before. We thought it would always hold
us again, which is a philosophy that gets
men nations in trouble time after time. And
it's almost like, hey, it's gonna happen again
and again, and and that'll be okay, but
you can't think that way. It's not always
gonna be that way. Yeah. And Kitty thinks
that. She keeps thinking, like my brother will
always be there. And I think Larry thinks
the opposite. I'm not always gonna be there.
And in fact, he proves it in his
life.
Yeah. And and you don't ask me to
be there. Right... Yeah. Don't ask me to
be there, and I'm I can't be there
for you. Yeah. I guess that... Each of
their last climb of the ladder,
before it breaks
is another example of faith versus no faith.
Larry goes most of the way up the
ladder and realizes The ladder is about to
give way. Yep. Like he is a hundred
percent convinced that he might not make it
to the top of the ladder and just
barely
squeak by. And then Kitty halfway up, and
he yells for her to come down and
she says, it's
fine. She still has faith in the ladder.
She's still thinking, like you said that She's
climbed this ladder. Dozens and dozens of times,
why not 1 more. Right. And that's when
it breaks. Yep. And all the way up
to that point.
There's all this faith imagery about the jump.
Right. That that
when when they jump, they feel like after
they jump, they feel like lazarus rising from
the dead, or it's it's like a newborn
being born when when they come out of
the hay.
Mh. And then there's a third time too
where he says it's like rising from the
dead as you come out of the the
hay. And so there's all this faith imagery.
And then it all falls apart.
And then at the end, the consequence for
Larry is that he needs to take a
beating,
from his father, and with every swat of
the belt,
thank God for what had happened,
and it... It's very much this idea of
faith is all tied up in this story.
Yeah. And I think a an interesting consequence
of of their shared experience there is that,
maybe consequences isn't in really the right word,
but Larry life
continues to get better from that moment on
and like, he
He high school. He goes to University. He
becomes a lawyer.
He has a successful career.
He finds his way in the world.
Yeah. But Kitty seems to have reached the
ap of her life in the moment that
she falls to the newly built. Pile of
hay that Larry used a savor. That is
the the best
happiest moment of her life when she writes
her
goodbye note to Larry, the note that we
finally read at the end of the story.
She has thought about her whole life reflected
on
every part of it and decided that she
would have preferred to die that day. Yeah.
Instead of being saved.
And
I interpret that as she's decided that nothing
after that moment in her life was worth
living for.
And as depressing as that sounds, that also
tells me that that's where her life reached
its best moment. Mh.
Yeah. And it's also the moment when the
2 of them
seem to have the most love in their
life as well.
When he sees her swan dive off of
the
the beam and the barn, he says I
loved her so much in that moment and
he said he rem is about how beautiful
she is.
And and her love for him is a
parent as well when she says, you know,
you saved me, of course, you would or
my brother and you would do anything for
me. And then after that, she has a
couple failed relationships and then becomes a call
girl, and he has a wife that they
divorce. And all they do is exchange pleasant
trees, and he's thrown himself into work. And
it seems like that was the best relationship
that they had, but it was stuck in
that moment
And he said that he he can't believe
she's grown up and that he will always
remember her is that 8 year old with
pig tails. Yeah. I I think part of
that is from the fact that I suspect
subconsciously Heath feels like he could never live
up to that moment mh. With her again.
That no matter what he ever did for
her, it would never equal, you know, saving
her life. Yeah. And while that might be
true,
the sad thing is that it it didn't
have to. Right. He doesn't have to be
superman every time he
interacts with his sister,
but I think that became a subconscious obstacle
for him to stay connected to her to
stay part of her life.
It was easier somehow for him to just
avoid her,
than it was to face the fact that
he was
lesser than in her eyes or maybe his
own. Right.
It's a hell of a story, G. It
really is. I mean, it was it, like,
11 pages or something and how how much
have we've been talking about here? Yeah. Yeah.
I hope that there are people out there
who...
Stopped before he listened to this and read
the story and if you have not,
I urge you to go back and read
that story because it it is really beautiful.
Yeah.
Jay,
even in those short 11 pages, are there
any dark tower thingies that you're aware of?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. We managed to find a
couple. Yeah. So I think we both noticed.
The first 1 is that the characters in
this story are from Hem Home to Nebraska.
You don't say... Yes.
This is the same town where mother abigail
from the stand lives and where many of
our characters
descend upon after the plague.
So in addition to that having for home
being referenced in the stand where it's probably
bust well known. It is also mentioned in
it.
Sell and the short story 19 22, which
I think takes place in Having for home.
Nice.
I have kind of a tangent
thin. It's
connected to the dark tower by way of
hearts in Atlanta, specifically the story blind willie.
And we learn about how Larry has a
clipping
of his sister suicide from the newspaper,
that he always carries. Mh. And he says
that
He carries it around not in the good
way you carry snapshots of people you want
to remember or theater tickets from a really
good show or part of the program from
a world series game. I carry that clipping
the way you carry something heavy because carrying
it is your work.
And to me that really reminded me of
blind Willie, Blind Willie kept tabs on the
coming and going of Carol Gerber,
because he felt so terribly guilty. It's why
he created all of these alternate personas for
himself, and part of that was as pen
for what he did her. And because he
believed her to be dead, it was all
the more difficult for him to ever gain
any sense of
forgiveness.
He was perpetually punishing himself. Right. And part
of that was keeping all of those newspaper
clipping about. All of the things that Carol
got up to,
including...
The terrorist act that supposedly killed her. Yeah.
It's it's like the the burden of the
survivor, like, this is what what you have
to carry around with you? Yeah. In both
cases.
Another dark tower Thing is that John D
mcdonald, who wrote the introduction in who like
this story is also referenced in the Dark
tower books.
Multiple times,
most famously when
when Jake is at the Manhattan restaurant of
the mind,
the bookstore in the towers. Yeah. Cow Towers
bookstore exactly is where
they see John Mcdonald books on the
On the on the sale rack along with
the Stephen King book, which sort of shocks
them. And us says the reader. Yeah. That
was fun. Yeah. So again,
King making those connections like he likes to
do.
Mh. He's probably typing that on his old
type writer like, that bastard Mcdonald's is gonna
love this when it reads.
Alright. I think it's sounded to move to
some fun stuff in this dark story, Jay.
We got? Yeah. I found a few things
that I thought were fun.
I definitely had an an O Kirk moment.
The line that I
I noted for the O kirk moment was
the last rung on the ladder still hung
there, a sla from 1 nail.
And that's why they call it the last
rung on the ladder.
Do you see it up there? That's the
last rung on the ladder.
It's not 2 wrong left. It's just 1II
will note this isn't in my fun stuff,
but I wanna mention it. To the folks
that this is another 1 that has been
made into some dollar baby movies.
And I think
and and me reading it, I... It it
seems like a very visual novel. I sure
you could do some really
intriguing things with the the pass setting. I
I don't know how well the
the narrator part, the framing story would would
read on screen. I don't know how you
would do that, but,
I could just sort of imagine the kids
jumping off the ladder into the
into the haystack and the barn, like, just
seems visually, like, a very appropriate. So
Yeah, You just do,
you know, nor our type voice over while
Larry on an airplane in the c seat.
And he's, like,
distraught.
And then it goes, you know, the.
And then it's flash back to the... Jumping
in the Hay.
Larry would not be writing coach. And you
introduced the hay, jumping scene with, like, a
period song,
maybe a little...
Why can't I think of their name?
I don't know. Think what you talking about?
That the song that they are, the king
always is talking about
for the dark tower.
Baby can you dig in? No. The platter
song. What is it? Oh, it's twilight time.
Twilight time. Yeah.
So the by my other fun stuff is
again for Mcdonald and in in the intro
to to night shift. And Mcdonald says, do
not give a Did whoop but Stephen King
chooses an area in which to write when
he's talking about the supernatural and the occult
and and all that fun stuff.
And he says, like, humor and the occult
or the hardest things to write because
either the occult gonna come off his humorous
or the humor is not gonna make its
way through and
yeah. He praise his king for being able
to to write well and and right in
a in a hard genre, and it really
doesn't matter to him even though they don't
write in the same genre. So.
Is Mcdonald always so foul mouth saying things
like Did Whoop? I know. Right?
Gotta a censor that, John d.
Yeah.
They're rough.
I had 2 other things in fun stuff,
and they're both from Mcdonald's
introduction.
He's talking a lot about what it's like
to be a writer, and some of the
things you need to do to
become better at writing and 1 of them
is you need to read a lot. Mh,
And he says you you read everything with
grinding envy or a weary contempt.
I thought that was wonderful
because it's... You either read somebody else's working
and you and you wish you could be
that good or
there's all the rest that
I am so much better than this garbage.
Right?
But
that's awesome like that. Yeah.
The other 1 was a line that he
says,
he's talking about being able to create
realistic characters.
And he says that you need to know
yourself.
And the way to do that is that
you have to start knowing yourself so well,
that you begin to know other people
because a piece of us is in every
person we can ever meet.
And I thought that was really powerful. I
think it's
the really important thing to know to be
a good writer, but I think it's a
good thing to know to just be a
good human being.
Yeah. To to to know that you need
to understand yourself before you can
effectively understand others. But part of part of
that learning
is
the realization that there's a lot of you
and everybody and a lot of everybody in
you,
because we all have so many common experiences.
Right.
So
that is a nice line. And that's 1
of the reasons this story hits so well,
I think. Is because
I don't have a sister.
I don't have
a sibling that's committed suicide. I never saved
anyone's life like this
but the commonality of that experience and some
of the feelings that go along with all
of that?
I may have had you may have had.
And King brings it to life so well
that I think that that's what makes the
story so powerful is that we can imagine
it.
Absolutely.
Alright. Well, that's gonna be all for this
episode of 2 guys to the Dark tower
came. Thanks, Jay.
Thank you. And I wanna take a moment
to thank our patriots for continuing to support
the show and continuing to be there for
us. We really appreciate you.
Absolutely. Links to all of our social media
is available in the show notes if you
like to show please ray us on apple
podcast.
Look for more exclusive content at patreon dot
com. Slash 2 guys dark hour. For Jay
Russo, I'm Sean.
Thanks for listening.