Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The book was big, okay? The book was major.I was afraid to neuter rooms, let alone pack up the typewriter and my slim just-begun cosmosuscript and pull in ones horns it back to Derry. That would be as dangerous as taking an infant expose in a windstorm. So I stayed, al fashions reserving the right to move tabu(p) if things got too weird (the expressive style smokers reserve the right to quit if their coughs purport too heavy), and a week passed. Things happened during that week, scarce until I met max Devore on The Street the following Friday the seventeenth of July, it would substantiate been the most important thing was that I continued to subject field on a novel which would, if finished, be c each(prenominal)ed My Childhood Fri residual. Perhaps we of all in all time echo what was illogical was the best . . . or would arrest been the best. I dont discern for sure. What I do pick out is that my real life that week had mostly to do with Andy Drake, John Shacklef ord, and a shadowy figure standing in the unintelligible background. Raymond Garraty, John Shackle-fords childhood friend. A humanity who some clocks wore a baseb completely cap.During that week, the manifestations in the house continued, more(prenominal) over at a lower level on that point was nothing bid that bloodcurdling scream. Sometimes Bunters bell rang, and sometimes the fruit and ve nameable magnets would re-form themselves into a circle . . . neer with words in the middle, though not that week. One morning I got up and the sugar advisenister was over dark, fashioning me esteem of Matties story more or less the flour. Nothing was written in the spill, besides there was a squiggle as though something had time-tested to write and failed. If so, I sympathized. I knew what that was wish.My depo before the inflamedoubtable Elmer Durgin was on Friday the tenth. On the following Tuesday I took The Street fell to Warringtons softball field, hoping for my own peek at Max Devore. It was going on six oclock when I got within hearing range of the shouts, cheers, and batted balls. A path marked with rustic signs (curlicued Ws burned into oak arrows) led past an abandoned boathouse, a couple of sheds, and a gazebo half-buried in fatefulberry creepers. I eventually came out in deep center field. A litter of potato-chip bags, locoweeddy-wrappers, and beer cans suggested that others sometimes watched the games from this vantage-point. I couldnt help intellection just almost Jo and her mysterious friend, the guy in the gray brown sportcoat, the burly guy who had slipped an arm around her waist and led her away from the game, laughing, back toward The Street. Twice over the weekend Id come keep mum to calling Bonnie Amudson, seeing if possibly I could chase that guy dispirited, couch a name on him, and both times I had support arrive at. Sleeping dogs, I told myself each time. Sleeping dogs, Michael.I had the bea beyond deep center to mys elf that evening, and it matte up comparable the right distance from ingleside plate, considering the man who usually parked his wheelc bull behind the backstop had called me a liar and I had invited him to store my telephone number where the sunshine grows dim.I neednt have stressed in any case. Devore wasnt in atten trip the light fantastic, nor was the lovely Rogette.I did spot Mattie behind the casually maintained chickenwire barrier on the first-base line. John Storrow was beside her, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, his red hair mostly corralled by a Mets cap. They stood watching the game and chatting comparable old friends for two innings before they proverb me more than enough time for me to feel grasping of Johns position, and a ex diddle jealous as well.Finally someone lofted a long fly to center, where the edge of the woods served as the only fence. The center fieldsman backed up, tho it was going to be far over his head. It was hit to my depth, off to my right. I moved in that direction without supposeing, high-footing through the shrubs that formed a zone between the mown outfield and the trees, hoping I wasnt rail through poison ivy. I caught the softball in my outstretched remaining hand, and laughed when some of the spectators cheered. The center fielder applauded me by tapping his b atomic number 18 right hand into the pocket of his glove. The batter, mean plot of land, circled the bases serenely, knowing he had hit a ground-rule home run.I tossed the ball to the fielder and as I returned to my original post among the candy-wrappers and beer cans, I looked back in and maxim Mattie and John looking at me.If anything confirms the whim that were just another species of animal, one with a middling bigger brain and a such(prenominal)(prenominal) bigger idea of our own importance in the scheme of things, its how much we can convey by gesticulate when we absolutely have to. Mattie clasped her hands to her chest, tilted her head to th e left, raised her eyebrows My hero. I held my hands to my shoulders and flipped the palms skyward Shucks, maam, twarnt nothin. John lowered his head and put his fingers to his brow, as if something there hurt You lucky sonofabitch.With those comments out of the way, I pointed at the backstop and shrugged a question. Both Mattie and John shrugged back. An inning later a diminished boy who looked like one giant exploding freckle ran out to where I was, his oversized Michael Jordan jersey churning around his shins like a dress.Guy down there gimme litre cent to say you should call im later on at his hotel over in the Rock, he give tongue to, pointing at John. He say you gimme another fifty cent if there was an answer.Tell him Ill call him around nine-thirty, I state. I dont have any change, though. Can you take up a buck?Hey, yeah, swank. He snatched it, turned away, so turned back. He grinned, revealing a set of teeth caught between Act I and Act II. With the softball players i n the background, he looked like a Norman Rockwell archetype. Guy also say tell you that was a bullshit catch.Tell him muckle used to say the same thing about Willie Mays all the time.Willie who?Ah, youth. Ah, mores. Just tell him, son. Hell know.I stayed another inning, and by then the game was getting drunk, Devore still hadnt shown, and I went back home the way I had come. I met one fisherman standing out on a rock and two young people strolling along The Street toward Warringtons, their hands linked. They tell hi and I hid them back. I felt lonely and content at the same time. I commit that is a r be kind of happiness.Some people check their phone answering machines when they get home that summer I always checked the front of the fridge. Eenie-meenie-chili-beanie, as Bullwinkle Moose used to say, the spirits are about to speak. That night they hadnt, although the fruit and vegetable magnets had re-formed into a sinuous shape like a snake or perhaps the letter S taking a napA bittie later I called John and asked him where Devore had been, and he repeated in words what he had already told me, and much more economically, by gesture. Its the first game hes missed since he came back, he tell. Mattie tried asking a few people if he was okay, and the consensus seemed to be that he was . . . at least as far as anyone knew.What do you mean she tried asking a few people?I mean that several(prenominal) wouldnt even talk to her. Cut her dead, my parents generation would have said. Watch it, buddy, I vista but didnt say, thats only half a mensuration from my generation. One of her old girlfriends spoke to her finally, but theres a general attitude about Mattie Devore. That man Os superb may be a shitty salesman, but as Devores Mr. Moneyguy hes doing a terrific job of separating Mattie from the other family in the town. Is it a town, Mike? I dont quite get that part.Its just the TR, I said absently. theres no real way to explain it.Do you actually believe Dev ores bribing e realone? That doesnt say much for the old Wordsworthian idea of pastoral innocence and wide-cutness, does it?Hes spreading money and using Osgood perchance Footman, too to spread stories. And the folks around here seem at least as honest as honest politicians.The ones who stay bought?Yeah. Oh, and I saw one of Devores potential star witnesses in the Case of the Runaway Child. Royce Merrill. He was over by the equipment shed with some of his cronies. Did you happen to notice him?I said I had not.Guy must be a hundred and thirty, John said. Hes got a cane with a gold head the size of an elephants asshole.Thats a capital of Massachusetts Post cane. The oldest person in the area gets to keep it.And I have no doubt he came by it honestly. If Devores lawyers put him on the stand, Ill debone him. in that location was something chilling in Johns gleeful confidence.Im sure, I said. How did Mattie take getting cut dead by her old friends? I was thinking of her expression that she hated Tuesday nights, hated to think of the softball games going on as they always had at the field where she had met her late husband.She did okay, John said. I think shes given most of them up as a lost cause, anyway. I had my doubts about that I seem to remember that at twenty-one lost causes are sort of a curio but I didnt say anything. Shes hanging in. Shes been lonely and scared, I think that in her own capitulum she baron already have begun the process of prominent Kyra up, but shes got her confidence back now. Mostly thanks to meeting you. Talk about your fantastically lucky breaks.Well, maybe. I flashed on Jos. pal Frank once byword to me that he didnt think there was any such thing as luck, only fate and inspired choices. And then I remembered that image of the TR criss-crossed with infrared cables, connections that were unseen but as strong as steel.John, I forgot to ask the most important question of all the other day, after I gave my depo. This bond s case were all so concerned about . . . has it even been scheduled?Good question. Ive checked three ways to Sunday, and Bissonette has, too. Unless Devore and his people have pulled something really slippery, like filing in another court territorial dominion, I dont think it has been.Could they do that? File in another district? perhaps. only plausibly not without us finding out.So what does it mean?That Devores on the verge of giving up, John said promptly. As of now I see no other way of explaining it. Im going back to New York first thing tomorrow, but Ill stay in touch. If anything comes up here, you do the same.I said I would and went to bed. No pistillate visitors came to share my dreams. That was sort of a relief.When I came downstairs to recharge my iced-tea glass late Wednesday morning, Brenda Meserve had erected the laundry whirligig on the back stoop and was hanging out my clothes. This she did as her mother had no doubt taught her, with pants and shirts on the outsi de and undies on the inside, where any passing nosyparkers couldnt see what you chose to wear closest to your skin.You can take these in around quaternion oclock, Mrs. M. said as she prepared to leave. She looked at me with the bright and cynical eye of a womanhood who has been doing for well-off men her intact life. Dont you forget and leave em out all night dewy clothes dont ever feel fresh until theyre warshed again.I told her most humbly that I would remember to take in my clothes. I then asked her feeling like a spy working an embassy party for information if the house felt all right to her.All right how? she asked, cocking one wild eyebrow at me.Well, Ive heard funny noises a couple of times. In the night.She sniffed. Its a log house, ennit? strengthened in relays, so to speak. It settles, one wing against tother. Thats what you hear, most liable(predicate).No ghosts, huh? I said, as if disappointed.Not that Ive ever seen, she said, matter-of-fact as an accountant, but my ma said theres plenty down here. She said this whole lake is haunted. By the Micmacs that lived here until they was receiven out by General Wing, by all the men who went away to the courtly War and died there over six hundred went from this part of the world, Mr. Noonan, and less than a hundred and fifty came back . . . at least in their bodies. Ma said this side of bleached Scores also haunted by the ghost of that Negro boy who died here, poor tyke. He belonged to one of the Red-Tops, you know.No I know about Sara and the Red-Tops, but not this. I paused. Did he drown?Nawp, caught in an animal trap. Struggled there for most of a whole day, screaming for help. Finally they form him. They saved the foot, but they shouldnt have. Blood-poisoning set in, and the boy died. Summer of ought-one, that was. Its why they left, I guess it was too sad to stay. But my ma used to claim the picayune fella, he stayed. She used to say that hes still on the TR.I wondered what Mrs. M. woul d say if I told her that the little fella had very likely been here to greet me when I arrived from Derry, and had been back on several occasions since. therefore there was Kenny Austers father, Normal, she said. You know that story, dont you? Oh, thats a terrible story. She looked rather pleased either at knowing such a terrible story or at having the chance to tell it.No, I said. I know Kenny, though. Hes the one with the wolfhound. Blueberry.Ayuh. He carpenters a tad and caretakes a tad, just like his father before him. His dad caretook many of these places, you know, and back just after the Second World War was over, Normal Auster drownded Kennys little crony in his back yard. This was when they lived on Wasp Hill, down where the road splits, one side going to the old boat-landin and the other to the marina. He didnt drown the tyke in the lake, though. He put him on the ground under the pump and just held him there until the baby was full of water and dead.I stood there looki ng at her, the clothes behind us snapping on their whirligig. I thought of my mouth and nose and throat full of that cold mineral taste that could have been well-water as well as lakewater down here all of it comes from the same deep aquifers. I thought of the capacity on the refrigerator help im drown.He left the baby laying right under the pump. He had a new Chevrolet, and he drove it down here to Lane Forty-two. Took his shotgun, too.You arent going to tell me Kenny Austers dad committed suicide in my house, are you, Mrs. Meserve?She shook her head. Nawp. He did it on the Brickers lakeside deck. Sat down on their porch glider and blew his damned baby-murdering head off.The Brickers? I dont You wouldnt. Hasnt been any Brickers on the lake since the sixties. They were from Delaware. Quality folks. Youd think of it as the Warshburn place, I guess, although theyre gone, now, too. Place is empty. Every now and then that stark natural born(p) fool Osgood brings someone down and shows it off, but hell neer sell it at the price hes asking. Mark my words.The Washburns I had known had compete bridge with them a time or two. Nice enough people, although probably not what Mrs. M., with her queer backcountry snobbishness, would have called quality. Their place was maybe an eighth of a mile north of mine along The Street. Past that point, theres nothing much the disregard to the lake gets steep, and the woods are massed tangles of second growth and blackberry bushes. The Street goes on to the tip of Halo Bay at the far north end of Dark Score, but once Lane Forty-two curves back to the highway, the path is for the most part used only by berry-picking expeditions in the summer and hunters in the fall.Normal, I thought. Hell of a name for a guy who had drowned his infant son under the backyard pump.Did he leave a note? Any explanation?Nawp. But youll hear folks say he haunts the lake, too. Little towns are most likely full of haunts, but I couldnt say aye, no, or ma ybe myself I aint the sensitive type. All I know about your place, Mr. Noonan, is that it smells damp no matter how much I try to get it aired out. I magine thats logs. record buildins dont go well with lakes. The damp gets into the wood.She had set her purse down between her Reeboks now she bent and picked it up. It was a countrywomans purse, black, styleless (except for the gold grommets holding the handles on), and utilitarian. She could have carried a good selection of kitchen appliances in there if she had wanted to.I cant stand here natterin all day long, though, much as I might like to. I got one more place to go before I can call it quits. Summers havest time in this part of the world, you know. Now remember to take those clothes in before dark, Mr. Noonan. Dont let em get all dewy.I wont. And I didnt. But when I went out to take them in, dressed in my bathing trunks and coated with sweat from the oven Id been working in (I had to get the air conditioner fixed, just had to) , I saw that something had altered Mrs. M.s arrangements. My jeans and shirts now hung around the pole. The underwear and socks, which had been decorously hidden when Mrs. M. drove up the driveway in her old Ford, were now on the outside. It was as if my unseen guest one of my unseen guests was saying ha ha ha.I went to the library the next day, and do renewing my library card my first order of business. lindy Briggs herself took my four bucks and entered me into the computer, first copulation me how sorry she had been to hear about Jos death. And, as with Bill, I sensed a certain reproach in her tone, as if I were to blame for such improperly delayed condolences. I supposed I was.Lindy, do you have a town account? I asked when we had finished the proprieties concerning my wife.We have two, she said, then leaned toward me over the desk, a little woman in a violently patterned sleeveless dress, her hair a gray puffball around her head, her bright eyes melted behind her bifocals . In a confidential voice she added, Neither is much good.Which one is better? I asked, matching her tone.Probably the one by Edward Osteen. He was a summer resident until the mid-fifties and lived here full-time when he retired. He wrote Dark Score Days in 1965 or 66. He had it privately published because he couldnt find a commercial house that would take it. Even the regional publishers passed. She sighed. The locals bought it, but thats not many books, is it?No, I suppose not, I said.He just wasnt much of a writer. Not much of a photographer, either those little black-and-white snaps of his make my eyes hurt. Still, he tells some good stories. The Micmac Drive, General Wings trick horse, the twister in the eighteen-eighties, the fires in the nine-teen-thirties . . . Anything about Sara and the Red-Tops?She nodded, smiling. Finally got around to looking up the history of your own place, did you? Im glad to hear it. He strand an old photo of them, and its in there. He thought it was taken at the Fryeburg Fair in 1900. Ed used to say hed give a lot to hear a record made by that bunch.So would I, but none were ever made. A haiku by the Greek poet George Seferis suddenly occurred to me are these the voices of our dead friends / or just the gramophone? What happened to Mr. Osteen? I dont recall the name.Died not a year or two before you and Jo bought your place on the lake, she said. Cancer.You said there were two histories?The other one you probably know A History of Castle County and Castle Rock. Done for the county centennial, and dry as dust. Eddie Osteens book isnt very well written, but he wasnt dry. You have to give him that much. You should find them both over there. She pointed to shelves with a sign over them which read of OF MAINE INTEREST. They dont circulate. Then she brightened. Although we will happily take any nickels you should feel moved to feed into our photocopy machine.Mattie was sitting in the far corner next to a boy in a turned-around baseball cap, showing him how to use the microfilm reader. She looked up at me, smiled, and mouthed the words Nice catch. Referring to my lucky grab at Warringtons, presumably. I gave a modest little shrug before turning to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves. But she was right lucky or not, it had been a nice catch.What are you looking for?I was so deep into the two histories Id found that Matties voice made me jump. I turned around and smiled, first aware that she was wearing some light and pleasant perfume, second that Lindy Briggs was watching us from the main desk, her wel approach smile put away.Background on the area where I live, I said. Old stories. My housekeeper got me interested. Then, in a lower voice Teachers watching. Dont look around.Mattie looked startled and, I thought, a little worried. As it turned out, she was right to be worried. In a voice that was low-pitched as still still designed to carry at least as far as the desk, she asked if she could reshelve either b ook for me. I gave her both. As she picked them up she said in what was almost a cons whisper That lawyer who represented you last Friday got John a private detective. He says they may have found something interesting about the protector ad litem.I walked over to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves with her, hoping I wasnt getting her in trouble, and asked if she knew what the something interesting might be. She shook her head, gave me a professional little librarians smile, and I went away.On the ride back to the house, I tried to think about what Id read, but there wasnt much. Osteen was a bad writer who had taken bad pictures, and while his stories were colorful, they were also pretty thin on the ground. He mentioned Sara and the Red-Tops, all right, but he referred to them as a Dixie-Land octet, and even I knew that wasnt right. The Red-Tops might have played some Dixieland, but they had primarily been a blues group (Friday and Saturday nights) and a gospel group (Sunday mornings). O steens two-page summary of the Red-Tops stay on the TR made it clear that he had heard no one elses covers of Saras tunes.He confirmed that a child had died of blood-poisoning caused by a traphold wound, a story which gruellinged like Brenda Meserves . . . but why wouldnt it? Osteen had likely heard it from Mrs. M.s father or grandfather. He also said that the boy was Son Tidwells only child, and that the guitar-players real name was Reginald. The Tidwells had supposedly drifted north from the whorehouse district of New Orleans the fabled crib-and-club streets which had been known around the turn of the century as Storyville.There was no mention of Sara and the Red-Tops in the more formal history of Castle County, and no mention of Kenny Austers drownded little brother in either book. Not long before Mattie came over to speak to me, Id had a wild idea that Son Tidwell and Sara Tidwell were man and wife, and that the little boy (not named by Osteen) had been their son. I found the picture Lindy had mentioned and analyze it closely. It showed at least a dozen black people standing in a stiff group in front of what looked like a cattle exhibition. There was an old-fashioned Ferris wheel in the background. It could well have been taken at the Fryeburg Fair, and as old and faded as it was, it had a simple, elemental power that all Osteens own photos put unneurotic could not match. You have seen photographs of western and Depression-era bandidos that have that same look of eerie truth stern faces above tight ties and collars, eyes not quite lost in the shadows of antique hatbrims.Sara stood front and center, wearing a black dress and her guitar. She was not outright smiling in this picture, but there seemed to be a smile in her eyes, and I thought they were like the eyes in some paintings, the ones that seem to follow you wherever you move in the room. I studied the photo and thought of her almost spiteful voice in my dream What do you want to know, sugar? I sup pose I wanted to know about her and the others who they had been, what they were to each other when they werent singing and playing, why theyd left, where theyd gone.Both of her hands were clearly visible, one posed on the strings of her guitar, the other on the frets, where she had been making a G-chord on an October Fair-day in the year 1900. Her fingers were long, artistic, bare of rings. That didnt necessarily mean that she and Son Tidwell werent married, of course, and even if they hadnt been, the little boy whod been caught in the trap could have been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Except the same ghost of a smile lurked in Son Tidwells eyes. The resemblance was remarkable. I had an idea that the two of them had been brother and sister, not man and wife.I thought about these things on my way home, and I thought about cables that were felt rather than seen . . . but mostly I found myself thinking about Lindy Briggs the way she had smiled at me, the way, a little later on, she had not smiled at her bright young librarian with the high-school certification. That worried me.Then I got back to the house, and all I worried about was my story and the people in it bags of bones which were putting on flesh daily.Michael Noonan, Max Devore, and Rogette Whitmore played out their horrible little comedy scene Friday evening. Two other things which bear narrating happened before that.The first was a call from John Storrow on Thursday night. I was sitting in front of the TV with a baseball game running soundlessly in front of me (the MUTE departure with which most remote controls come equipped may be the twentieth centurys finest invention). I was thinking about Sara Tidwell and Son Tidwell and Son Tidwells little boy. I was thinking about Storyville, a name any writer just had to love. And in the back of my mind I was thinking about my wife, who had died pregnant.Hello? I said.Mike, I have some wonderful news, John said. He sounded near to bursting. Romeo Bissonette may be a weird name, but theres nothing weird about the detective-guy he found for me. His name is George Kennedy, like the actor. Hes good, and hes fast. This guy could work in New York.If thats the highest compliment you can think of, you need to get out of the city more.He went on as if he hadnt heard. Kennedys real job is with a security firm the other stuff is strictly in the moonlight. Which is a great loss, believe me. He got most of this on the phone. I cant believe it.What specifically cant you believe?Jackpot, baby. Again he spoke in that tone of greedy satisfaction which I found both troubling and reassuring. Elmer Durgin has done the following things since late May paid off his car paid off his camp in Rangely Lakes caught up on about ninety years of child support Nobody pays child support for ninety years, I said, but I was just running my mouth to hear it go . . . to let off some of my own building excitement, in truth. Taint possible, Mcgee.It is if you h ave seven kids, John said, and began ululate with laughter.I thought of the pudgy self-satisfied face, the cupid-bow mouth, the nails that looked polished and prissy. He dont, I said.He do, John said, still laughing. He sounded like a complete lunatic manic, hold the depressive. He really do Ranging in ages from f-fourteen to th-th-three What a b-busy p-p-potent little prick he must have More helpless howls. And by now I was howling right along with him Id caught it like the mumps. Kennedy is going to f-f-fax me p-pictures of the whole . . . fam . . . damily We broke up completely, laughing together long-distance. I could picture John Stor-row sitting alone in his Park Avenue office, bellowing like a lunatic and scaring the cleaning ladies.That doesnt matter, though, he said when he could talk coherently again. You see what matters, dont you?Yes, I said. How could he be so stupid? Meaning Durgin, but also meaning Devore. John understood, I think, that we were talking about both h es at the same time.Elmer Durgins a little lawyer from a little township tucked away in the big woods of western Maine, thats all. How could he know that some guardian angel would come along with the resources to smoke him out? He also bought a boat, by the way. Two weeks ago. Its a twin out shape up. A big un. Its over, Mike. The home team scores nine runs in the bottom of the ninth and the fucking pennant is ours.If you say so. But my hand went off on its own expedition, made a loose fist, and knocked on the good solid wood of the coffee-table.And hey, the softball game wasnt a total loss. John was still talking between little giggling outbursts like helium balloons.No?Im taken with her.Her?Mattie, he said patiently. Mattie Devore. A pause, then Mike? Are you there?Yeah, I said. Phone slipped. Sorry. The phone hadnt slipped as much as an inch, but it came out sounding natural enough, I thought. And if it hadnt, so what? When it came to Mattie, I would be in Johns mind, at least below suspicion. desire the country-house staff in an Agatha Christie. He was twenty-eight, maybe thirty. The idea that a man twelve years older might be sexually attracted to Mattie had probably neer crossed his mind . . . or maybe just for a second or two there on the common, before he dismissed it as ludicrous. The way Mattie herself had dismissed the idea of Jo and the man in the brown sportcoat.I cant do my courtship dance while Im representing her, he said, wouldnt be ethical. Wouldnt be safe, either. Later, though . . . you can never tell.No, I said, hearing my voice as you sometimes do in moments when you are caught completely fiat-footed, hearing it as though it were coming from someone else. Someone on the radio or the record-player, maybe. Are these the voices of our dead friends, or just the gramophone? I thought of his hands, the fingers long and slender and without a ring on any of them. Like Saras hands in that old photo. No, you can never tell.We said goodbye, and I sat watching the muted baseball game. I thought about getting up to get a beer, but it seemed too far to the refrigerator a safari, in fact. What I felt was a kind of dull hurt, followed by a better emotion rueful relief, I guess youd call it. Was he too old for her? No, I didnt think so. Just about right. Prince Charming No. 2, this time in a three-piece suit. Matties luck with men might finally be changing, and if so I should be glad. I would be glad. And relieved. Because I had a book to write, and never mind the look of white sneakers flashing below a red sundress in the deepening gloom, or the ember of her cigarette dancing in the dark.Still, I felt really lonely for the first time since I saw Kyra marching up the white line of Route 68 in her bathing suit and flip-flops.You funny little man, said Strickland, I told the empty room. It came out before I knew I was going to say anything, and when it did, the channel on the TV changed. It went from baseball to a rerun of All in the Family and then to Ren & Stimpy. I glanced down at the remote control. It was still on the coffee-table where Id left it. The TV channel changed again, and this time I was looking at Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. There was an airplane in the background, and I didnt need to pick up the remote and turn on the sound to know that Humphrey was telling Ingrid that she was getting on that plane. My wifes all-time favorite movie. She bawled at the end without fail.Jo? I asked. Are you here?Bunters bell rang once. Very faintly. There had been several straw mans in the house, I was sure of it . . . but tonight, for the first time, I was lordly it was Jo who was with me.Who was he, hon? I asked. The guy at the softball field, who was he?Bunters bell hung still and relieve. She was in the room, though. I sensed her, something like a held breath.I remembered the ugly, gibing little message on the refrigerator after my dinner with Mattie and Ki blue rose liar ha ha.Who was he? My vo ice was unsteady, sounding on the verge of tears. What were you doing down here with some guy? Were you . . . But I couldnt bring myself to ask if she had been lying to me, cheating on me. I couldnt ask even though the presence I felt might be, lets face it, only in my own head.The TV switched away from Casablanca and here was everybodys favorite lawyer, Perry Mason, on Nick at Nite. Perrys nemesis, Hamilton Burger, was quizzical a distraught-looking woman, and all at once the sound blared on, making me jump.I am not a liar some long-ago TV actress cried. For a moment she looked right out at me, and I was stunned breathless to see Jos eyes in that black-and-white fifties face. I never lied, Mr. Burger, neverI submit that you did Burger responded. He moved in on her, leering like a vampire. I submit that you The TV suddenly went off. Bunters bell gave a single brisk shake, and then whatever had been here was gone. But I felt better. I am not a liar . . . I never lied, never.I cou ld believe that if I chose to.If I chose.I went to bed, and there were no dreams.I had taken to starting work early, before the heat could really get a hold on the study. Id drink some juice, gobble some toast, then sit behind the IBM until almost noon, watching the Courier ball dance and twirl as the pages floated through the machine and came out with writing on them. That old magic, so strange and wonderful. It never really felt like work to me, although I called it that it felt like some weird kind of mental trampoline I bounced on. Those were springs that took away all the weight of the world for awhile.At noon Id break, drive down to Buddy Jellisons greaseatorium for something nasty, then return and work for another hour or so. After that I would swim and take a long untroubled nap in the north bedroom. I had barely poked my head into the master bedroom at the south end of the house, and if Mrs. M. thought this was odd, she kept it to herself.On Friday the seventeenth, I stopp ed at the Lakeview General on my way back to the house to gas up my Chevrolet. There are pumps at the All-Purpose Garage, and the go-juice was a penny or two cheaper, but I didnt like the vibe. Today, as I stood in front of the store with the pump on automatic feed, looking off toward the mountains, Bill Deans Dodge Ram pulled in on the other side of the island. He climbed down and gave me a smile. Hows it going, Mike?Pretty fair.Brenda says youre writin up a storm.I am, I said, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask for an update on the broken second-floor air conditioner. The tip of my tongue was where it stayed. I was still too nauseated about my rediscovered ability to want to change anything about the environment in which I was doing it. Stupid, maybe, but sometimes things work just because you think they work. Its as good a definition of faith as any.Well, Im glad to hear it. Very glad. I thought he was sincere enough, but he somehow didnt sound like Bill. Not the one who had greeted me back, anyway.Ive been looking up some old stuff about my side of the lake, I said. Sara and the Red-Tops? You always were sort ofintrested in them, I remember.Them, yes, but not just them. Lots of history. I was talking to Mrs. M., and she told me about Normal Auster. Kennys father.Bills smile stayed on, and he only paused a moment in the act of unscrewing the cap on his gas tank, but I still had a sense, quite clear, that he had frozen inside. You wouldnt write about a thing like that, would you, Mike? Because theres a lot of people around here thatd feel it bad and take it wrong. I told Jo the same thing.Jo? I felt an urge to step between the two pumps and over the island so I could grab him by the arm. Whats Jo got to do with this?He looked at me cautiously and long. She didnt tell you?What are you talking about?She thought she might write something about Sara and the Red-Tops for one of the local papers. Bill was picking his words very slowly. I have a clear repo siting of that, and of how hot the sun was, beating down on my neck, and the sharpness of our shadows on the asphalt. He began to pump his gas, and the sound of the pumps motor was also very sharp. I think she even mentioned Yankee magazine. I cd be wrong about that, but I dont think I am.I was speechless. Why would she have kept quiet about the idea to try her hand at a little local history? Because she might have thought she was poaching on my ground? That was ridiculous. She had known me better than that . . . hadnt she?When did you have this conversation, Bill? Do you remember?Coss I do, he said. Same day she come down to take spoken language of those plastic owls. Only I raised the subject, because folks had told me she was asking around.Prying?I didnt say that, he said stiffly, you did.True, but I thought pry was what he meant. Go on.Nothing to go on about. I told her there were sore toes here and there on the TR, same as there are anyplace, and ast her not to tread on any corns if she could help it. She said she understood. Maybe she did, maybe she didnt. All I know is she kep on asking questions. Listenin to stories from old fools with more time than sense.When was this?Fall of 93, winter and spring of 94. Went all around town, she did even over to Motton and Harlow with her notebook and little tape-recorder. Anyway, thats all I know.I realized a stunning thing Bill was lying. If youd asked me before that day, Id have laughed and told you Bill Dean didnt have a lie in him. And he must not have had many, because he did it badly.I thought of calling him on it, but to what end? I needed to think, and I couldnt do it here my mind was bunceing. Given time, that roar might subside and Id see it was really nothing, no big deal, but I needed that time. When you start finding out unexpected things about a loved one whos been dead awhile, it rocks you. Take it from me, it does.Bills eyes had shifted away from mine, but now they shifted back. He looked both earnest and I could have sworn it a little scared.She ast about little Kerry Auster, and thats a good example of what I mean about steppin on sore toes. Thats not the stuff for a paper story or a magazine article. Normal just snapped. No one knows why. It was a terrible tragedy, senseless, and theres still people who could be hurt by it. In little towns things are kind of connected under the surface Yes, like cables you couldnt quite see. and the past dies slower. Sara and those others, thats a little different. They were just . . . just wanderers . . . from away. Jo could have stuck to those folks and it wouldve been all right. And say for all I know, she did. Because I never saw a single word she ever wrote. If she did write.About that he was telling the truth, I felt. But I knew something else, knew it as surely as Id known Mattie had been wearing white shorts when she called me on her day off. Sara and those others were just wanderers from away, Bill had said, but he hesi tated in the middle of his thought, substituting wanderers for the word which had come naturally to mind. Niggers was the word he hadnt said. Sara and those others were just niggers from away.All at once I found myself thinking of an old story by Ray Bradbury, Mars Is Heaven. The first space travellers to Mars discover its Green Town, Illinois, and all their well-loved friends and relatives are there. Only the friends and relatives are really alien monsters, and in the night, while the space travellers think they are sleeping in the beds of their long-dead kinfolk in a place that must be heaven, they are slaughtered to the last man.Bill, youre sure she was up here a few times in the off-season?Ayuh. Twasnt just a few times, either. Might have been a dozen times or more. Day-trips, dont you know.Did you ever see a fellow with her? Burly guy, black hair?He thought about it. I tried not to hold my breath. At last he shook his head. Few times I saw her, she was alone. But I didnt see he r every time she came. Sometimes I only heard shed been on the TR after she us gone again. Saw her in June of 94, headed up toward Halo Bay in that little car a hers. She waved, I waved back. Went down to the house later that evenin to see if she needed anythin, but shed gone. I didnt see her again. When she died later on that summer, me and Vette were so shocked. whatever she was looking for, she must never have written any of it down. I would have found the manuscript.Was that true, though? She had made many trips down here with no apparent attempts at concealment, on one of them she had even been accompanied by a strange man, and I had only found out about these visits by accident.This is hard to talk about, Bill said, but since weve gotten started hard, we might as well go the rest of the way. Livin on the TR is like the way we used to sleep four or even five in a bed when it was January and true cold. If everyone rests easy, you do all right. But if one person gets restless, ge ts tossing and turning, no one can sleep. Right now youre the restless one. Thats how people see it.He waited to see what Id say. When almost twenty seconds passed without a word from me (Harold Oblowski would have been proud), he shuffled his feet and went on.There are people in town uneasy about the interest youve taken in Mattie Devore, for instance. Now Im not sayin theres anythin going on between the two of you although theres folks who do say it but if you want to stay on the TR youre makin it tough on yourself.Why?Comes back to what I said a week and a half ago. Shes trouble.As I recall, Bill, you said she was in trouble. And she is. Im trying to help her out of it. Theres nothing going on between us but that.I seem to recall telling you that Max Devore is nuts, he said. If you make him mad, we all pay the price. The pump clicked off and he racked it up. Then he sighed, raised his hands, dropped them. You think this is easy for me to say?You think its easy for me to listen to?All right, ayuh, were in the same skiff. But Mattie Devore isnt the only person on the TR livin hand-to-mouth, you know. Theres others got their woes, as well. Cant you understand that?Maybe he saw that I understood too much and too well, because his shoulders slumped.If youre asking me to stand aside and let Devore take Matties baby without a fight, you can forget it, I said. And I hope thats not it. Because I think Id have to be quits with a man whod ask another man to do something like that.I wouldnt ask it now anywise, he said, his accent thickening almost to the point of contempt. Itd be too late, wouldnt it? And then, unexpectedly, he softened. Christ, man, Im worried about you. Let the rest of it go hang, all right? Hang high where the crows can pick it. He was lying again, but this time I didnt mind so much, because I thought he was lying to himself. But you need to have a care. When I said Devore was crazy, that was no figure of speech. Do you think hell bother with cour t if court cant get him what he wants? Folks died in those summer fires back in 1933. Good people. One related to me. They burned over half the goddam county and Max Devore set em. That was his going-away present to the TR. It could never be proved, but he did it. Back then he was young and broke, not yet twenty and no law in his pocket. What do you think hed do now?He looked at me searchingly. I said nothing.Bill nodded as if I had spoken. Think about it. And you remember this, Mike no man who didnt care for you would ever talk to you straight as I have.How straight was that, Bill? I was faintly aware of some tourist walking from his Volvo to the store and looking at us curiously, and when I replayed the scene in my mind later on, I realized we must have looked like guys on the verge of a fistfight. I remember that I felt like crying out of melancholy and bewilderment and an incompletely defined sense of betrayal, but I also remember being furious with this lanky old man him in h is shining-clean cotton undershirt and his mouthful of false teeth. So maybe we were close to fighting, and I just didnt know it at the time.Straight as I could be, he said, and turned away to go inside and pay for his gas.My house is haunted, I said.He stopped, back to me, shoulders hunched as if to absorb a blow. Then, slowly, he turned back. Sara Laughs has always been haunted, Mike. Youve stirred em up. Praps you should go back to Derry and let em settle. That might be the best thing. He paused, as if replaying this last to see if he concord with it, then nodded. He nodded as slowly as he had turned. Ayuh, that might be best all around.When I got back to Sara I called Ward Hankins. Then I finally made that call to Bonnie Amudson. Part of me was rooting for her not to be in at the travel agency in capital of Maine she co-owned, but she was. Halfway through my talk with her, the fax began to print out xeroxed pages from Jos appointment calendars. On the first one Ward had scrawl ed, Hope this helps.I didnt commit what I was going to say to Bonnie I felt that to do so would be a recipe for disaster. I told her that Jo had been writing something maybe an article, maybe a series of them about the township where our summerhouse was located, and that some of the locals had apparently been cheesed off by her curiosity. Some still were. Had she talked to Bonnie? Perhaps showed her an early plan?No, huh-uh. Bonnie sounded honestly surprised. She used to show me her photos, and more herb samples than I honestly cared to see, but she never showed me anything she was writing. In fact, I remember her once saying that shed decided to leave the writing to you and just take a little taste of everything else, right?Yes.I thought this was a good place to end the conversation, but the guys in the basement seemed to have other ideas. Was she seeing anyone, Bonnie?Silence from the other end. With a hand that seemed at least four miles down my arm, I plucked the fax shee ts out of the basket. Ten of them November of 1993 to August of 1994. Jottings everywhere in Jos neat hand. Had we even had a fax before she died? I couldnt remember. There was so fucking much I couldnt remember.Bonnie? If you know something, please tell me. Jos dead, but Im not. I can forgive her if I have to, but I cant forgive what I dont underst Im sorry, she said, and gave a nervous little laugh. Its just that I didnt understand at first. Seeing anyone, that was just so . . . so outside(prenominal) to Jo . . . the Jo I knew . . . that I couldnt figure out what you were talking about. I thought maybe you meant a shrink, but you didnt, did you? You meant seeing someone like seeing a guy. A boyfriend.Thats what I meant. Thumbing through the faxed calendar sheets now, my hand not quite back to its proper distance from my eyes but getting there, getting there. I felt relief at the honest bewilderment in Bonnies voice, but not as much as Id expected. Because Id known. I hadnt even needed the woman in the old Perry Mason episode to put in her two cents, not really. It was Jo we were talking about, after all. Jo.Mike, Bonnie was saying, very softly, as if I might be crazy, she loved you. She loved you.Yes. I suppose she did. The calendar pages showed how busy my wife had been. How productive. S-Ks of Maine . . . the soup kitchens. WomShel, a county-to-county network of shelters for battered women. TeenShel. Friends of Me. Libes. She had been at two or three meetings a month two or three a week at some points and Id barely noticed. I had been too busy with my women in jeopardy. I loved her too, Bonnie, but she was up to something in the last ten months of her life. She didnt give you any hint of what it might have been when you were riding to meetings of the dope Kitchens wag or the Friends of Maine Libraries?Silence from the other end.Bonnie?I took the phone away from my ear to see if the red LOW BATTERY light was on, and it squawked my name. I put it back .Bonnie, what is it?There were no long drives those last nine or ten months. We talked on the phone and I remember once we had lunch in Waterville, but there were no long drives. She quit.I thumbed through the fax-sheets again. Meetings noted everywhere in Jos neat hand, Soup Kitchens of Maine among them.I dont understand. She quit the Soup Kitchens board?Another moment of silence. Then, speaking carefully No, Mike. She quit all of them. She finished with Woman Shelters and Teen Shelters at the end of 93 her term was up then. The other two, Soup Kitchens and Friends of Maine Libraries . . . she resigned in October or November of 1993.Meetings noted on all the sheets Ward had sent me. Dozens of them. Meetings in 1993, meetings in 1994. Meetings of boards to which shed no longer belonged. She had been down here. On all those supposed meeting-days, Jo had been on the TR. I would have bet my life on it.But why?