Bag of Bones CHAPTER NINETEEN

The tele strait was ringing. I climbed toward it from a drowning dream w chargeher I couldnt catch my breath, rising into early sunlight, wincing at the spite in the seat of my brainiac as I swung my feet out of bed. The ph peerless would quit beforehand I got to it, they almost always do in such situations, and whence Id lie choke off down and spend a fruitless ten minutes wondering who it had been before prepareting up for pricy.Ringgg . . . ringgg . . . ringgg . . .Was that ten? A dozen? Id lost count. Some unitary was re completely(a)y dedicated. I hoped it wasnt trouble, scarce in my experience people dont try that hard when the intelligence agency is effectual. I touched my fingers gingerly to the back of my head. It hurt plenty, al unrivaled that deep, nauseating ache check overmed to be gone. And t here(predicate) was no blood on my fingers when I intented at them.I padded down the h completely and picked up the phone. hi?Well, you wont comport to worry r oughly testifyin at the kids custody hearin anyto a greater extent, at least(prenominal). pecker?Ayuh.How did you get . . . I leaned more or less the corner and peered at the waggy, annoying cat-clock. twenty minutes past seven and already sweltering. Hottern a bugger, as us TR Martians a bid to say. How do you spot he decided I dont k straight nonhing intimately his business one way or tother. agitate sounded touchy. He never c all t quondam(a)ed to ask my advice, and I never called to give him any.Whats happened? Whats liberation on?You stimulatent had the TV on so far?I dont even stupefy the c stumbleee on yet.No apology from extremum he was a fellow who believed that people who didnt get up until after six A.M. be whatever they got. I was awake now, though. And had a pretty good intellect of what was coming.Devore killed himself make it dark, Mike. Got into a tub of warm water and pulled a bendable bag over his head. Mustnt bugger off receden long, with hi s lungs the way they were.No, I mind, probably not long. In spite of the humid summer heat that already lay on the house, I shivered.Who found him? The charr?Ayuh, sure.What measure?Shortly before mid dark, they express on the Channel 6 news.Right somewhat the sentence I had awakened on the couch and taken myself stiffly off to bed, in other words.Is she implicated?Did she play Kevorkian, you mean? The news line I saw didnt say nothin somewhat that. The gossip-mill down to the Lakeview General result be turnin brisk by now, exclusively I aint been down yet for my share of the grain. If she helped him, I dont gestate shell ever see trouble for it, do you? He was eighty-five and not hygienic.Do you sock if hell be buried on the TR?California. She verbalize thered be services in Palm Springs on Tuesday.A brain of sur freeing oddness swept over me as I established the source of Matties problems readiness be lying in a chapel filled with flowers at the same time The Fr iends of Kyra Devore were digesting their dejeuneres and getting ready to start throwing the Frisbee around. Its difference to be a celebration, I thought wonderingly. I dont notice how theyre loss to handle it in The Little chapel service of the Microchips in Palm Springs, moreover on Wasp Hill street theyre going to be dancing and throwing their arms in the sky and bellow Yes, lawd.Id never been glad to hear of anyones death before in my life, entirely I was glad to hear of Devores. I was sorry to feel that way, however I did. The old bastard had dumped me in the lake . . . simply before the night was over, he was the one who had drowned. Inside a plastic bag he had drowned, sitting in a tub of tepid water.Any approximation how the TV guys got onto it so fast? It wasnt superfast, not with seven hours between the uncovering of the body and the seven oclock news, but TV news people take a tendency to be lazy.Whitmore called em. Had a press conference secure there in W arringtons parlor at both oclock this morning. Took questions settin on that huge maroon plush sofa, the one Jo always used to say should be in a saloon oil paintin with a naked wo composition lyin on it. Remember?Yeah.I saw a coupla County deputies walkin around in the background, plus a fella I reckonized from Jaquards Funeral Home in Motton.Thats bizarre, I said. Ayuh, body fluid upstairs, most likely, while Whitmore was runnin her gums . . . but she claimed she was ripe followin the bosss orders. give tongue to he left a tape sayin hed done it on Friday night so as not to affect the cumpny stock price and valued Rogette to call in the press right off and assure folk music that the cumpny was solid, that between his son and the Board of Directors, e precisethin was going to be just acey-deucey. then she told close the services in Palm Springs.He commits self-annihilation, then holds a both A.M. press conference by proxy to soothe the stockholders.Ayuh. And it sounds ju st like him.A silence fell between us on the line. I tried to think and couldnt. All I knew was that I treasured to go upstairs and work, achy head or no aching head. I deficiencyed to rejoin Andy Drake, John Shackleford, and Shacklefords childhood friend, the awful pecker Garraty. There was madness in my story, but it was a madness I understood.Bill, I said at last, are we still friends?Christ, yes, he said promptly. But if theres people around who seem a particular stand-offy to you, youll sock why, wont you?Sure Id know. Many would blame the old mans death on me. It was crazy, wedded his physical condition, and it would by no means be a bulk credence, but the idea would gain a certain amount of credence, at least in the short run I knew that as head as I knew the truth about John Shacklefords childhood friend.Kiddies, erst upon a time there was a goose that flew back to the smaller unincorporated township where it had lived as a downy gosling. It began laying pleasi ng golden eggs, and the townsfolk all gathered around to marvel and take up their share. Now, however, that goose was cooked and someone had to take the heat. Id get some, but Matties kitchen readiness get a few degrees toastier than mine shed had the temerity to fight for her child rather of silently handing Ki over.Keep your head down the next few weeks, Bill said. Thatd be my idea. In fact, if you had business that took you right out of the TR until all this settles down, that might be for the best.I appreciate the sense of what youre saying, but I fecal mattert. Im writing a watchword. If I pick up my shit and move, its inclined(predicate) to die on me. Its happened before, and I dont want it to happen this time.Pretty good yarn, is it?Not bad, but thats not the strategic thing. Its . . . well, lets just say this ones important to me for other reasons.Wouldnt it travel as far as Derry?Are you severe to get rid of me, William?Im tryin to hold up an eye out, thats all ca retakins my job, yknow. And dont say you werent warned the hives gonna buzz. Theres two stories going around about you, Mike. One is that youre shacking with Mattie Devore. The other is that you came back to make unnecessary a hatchet-job on the TR. Pull out all the old skeletons you can find.Finish what Jo started, in other words. Whos been spreading that story, Bill?Silence from Bill. We were back on earthquake ground again, and this time that ground felt shakier than ever.The book Im working on is a novel, I said. Set in Florida.Oh, ayuh? You wouldnt think three little syllables could arouse so much relief in them.Think you could kind of pass that around?I think I could, he said. If you tell Brenda Meserve, itd get around even faster and go even farther.Okay, I will. As far as Mattie goes Mike, you dont necessitate toIm not shacking with her. That was never the deal. The deal was like walking down the street, act the corner, and perceive a big guy beating up a little guy. I paused. She and her lawyer are planning a barbecue at her govern Tuesday noon. Im planning to join them. Are people from town going to think were dancing on Devores grave?Some will. Royce Merrill will. Dickie permit will. Old ladies in pants, Yvette calls em.Well fuck them, I said. Every last one.I understand how you feel, but tell her not to shove it in tribe faces, he almost pleaded. Do that much, Mike. It wouldnt kill her to drag her grill around back of her trailer, would it? At least with it there, folks lookin out from the retentivity or the garage wouldnt see nothing but the smoke.Ill pass on the message. And if I make the party, Ill put the barbecue around back myself.Youd do well to stay away from that girl and her child, Bill said. You can tell me its no(prenominal) of my business, but Im dialoguein to you like a Dutch uncle, tellin you for your own good.I had a flash of my dream then. The slick, exquisite tightness as I slipped deep down her. The little breasts wi th their hard nipples. Her voice in the darkness, telling me to do what I wanted. My body responded almost instantly. I know you are, I said.All right. He sounded relieved that I wasnt going to scold him take him to school, he would pass said. Ill let you go n have your breakfast.I appreciate you calling. closely didnt. Yvette talked me into it. She said, You always liked Mike and Jo Noonan best of all the ones you did for. Dont you get in bad with him now that hes back home.Tell her I appreciate it, I said.I hung up the phone and looked at it thoughtfully. We seemed to be on good terms again . . . but I didnt think we were exactly friends. for certain not the way we had been. That had changed when I realized Bill was lying to me about some things and holding back about others it had also changed when I realized what he had almost called Sara and the Red-Tops.You cant condemn a manor what whitethorn only if be a figment of your own imagination.True, and Id try not to do it . . . but I knew what I knew.I went into the living room, snapped on the TV, then snapped it off again. My satellite dish got fifty or sixty variant channels, and not a one of them topical anaesthetic. There was a portable TV in the kitchen, however, and if I dipped its rabbit-ears toward the lake Id be able to get WMTW, the alphabet affiliate in western Maine.I snatched up Rogettes note, went into the kitchen, and turned on the little Sony tucked under the cabinets with the coffee-maker. Good Morning America was on, but they would be breaking for the local news soon. In the meantime I scanned the note, this time c formerlyntrating on the mode of expression rather than the message, which had taken all of my attention the night before.Hopes to return to California by private putting green very soon, she had written.Has business which can be put off no longer, she had written.If you promise to let him rest in peace, she had written.It was a goddam suicide note.You knew, I said, rubbing my thumb over the raised letters of her diagnose. You knew when you wrote this, and probably when you were chucking rocks at me. But why?Custody has its responsibilities, she had written. Dont forget he said so.But the custody business was over, right? Not even a judge that was bought and paid for could award custody to a dead man.GMA lastly gave way to the local report, where Max Devores suicide was the leader. The TV picture was snowy, but I could see the maroon sofa Bill had booted, and Rogette Whitmore sitting on it with her hands folded composedly in her lap. I thought one of the deputies in the background was George Footman, although the snow was too heavy for me to be completely sure.Mr. Devore had intercommunicate frequently over the last eight months of ending his life, Whitmore said. He had been very unwell. He had asked her to come out with him the previous evening, and she realized now that he had wanted to look at one final sunset. It had been a resplendent one, to o, she added. I could have corroborated that I remembered the sunset very well, having almost drowned by its light. Rogette was reading Devores statement when my phone rang again. It was Mattie, and she was crying in hard gusts.The news, she said, Mike, did you see . . . do you know . . . At depression that was all she could manage that was coherent. I told her I did know, Bill Dean had called me and then Id caught some of it on the local news. She tried to reply and couldnt speak. Guilt, relief, horror, even hilarity I heard all those things in her crying. I asked where Ki was. I could sympathize with how Mattie felt until turning on the news this morning shed believed old Max Devore was her bitterest enemy but I didnt like the idea of a three-year-old girl watching her mommy fall apart.Out back, she managed. Shes had her breakfast. Now shes having a d-doll p-p-p . . . doll pi-p-pic Doll picnic. Yes. Good. let it go, then. All of it.Let it out. She cried for two minutes at le ast, perchance longer. I stood with the telephone pressed to my ear, egesting in the July heat, trying to be patient.Im going to give you one chance to save your soul, Devore had told me, but this morning he was dead and his soul was wherever it was. He was dead, Mattie was free, I was writing. Life should have felt wonderful, but it didnt.At last she began to get her control back. Im sorry. I havent cried like that authentically, really cried since Lance died.Its understandable and youre allowed.Come to lunch, she said. Come to lunch please, Mike. Kis going to spend the afternoon with a friend she met at holiday Bible School, and we can talk. I need to talk to someone . . . God, my head is spinning. Please say youll come.Id love to, but its a bad idea. in particular with Ki gone.I gave her an edited version of my conversation with Bill Dean. She listened carefully. I thought there might be an angry outburst when I finished, but Id forgotten one simple fact Mattie Stanchfield Devore had lived around here all her life. She knew how things worked.I understand that things will heal quicker if I keep my eyes down, my gumshield shut, and my knees together, she said, and Ill do my best to go along, but diplomacy only stretches so far. That old man was trying to take my daughter away, dont they realize that down at the goddam general store?I realize it.I know. Thats why I wanted to talk to you.What if we had an early supper on the Castle Rock common? Same place as Friday? Say five-ish?Id have to bring Ki Fine, I said. exercise her. Tell her I know Hansel and Gretel by heart and am free to share. Will you call John in Philly? Give him the details?Yes. Ill wait other hour or so. God, Im so happy. I know thats wrong, but Im so happy I could burstThat makes two of us. There was a pause on the other end. I heard a long, wet intake of breath. Mattie? All right?Yes, but how do you tell a three-year-old her grandfather died?Tell her the old fuck slipped and fell headfirst into a Glad Bag, I thought, then pressed the back of my hand against my mouth to stifle a spate of lunatic cackles.I dont know, but youll have to do it as soon as she comes in.I will? why?Because shes going to see you. Shes going to see your face.I lasted exactly two hours in the upstairs study, and then the heat drove me out the thermometer on the stoop read ninety-five degrees at ten oclock. I guessed it might be five degrees warmer on the second floor.Hoping I wasnt fashioning a mistake, I unplugged the IBM and carried it downstairs. I was working without a shirt, and as I crossed the living room, the back of the typewriter slipped in the sweat coating my pessary and I almost dropped the outdated sonofabitch on my toes. That made me think of my ankle, the one Id hurt when I fell into the lake, and I set the typewriter aside to look at it. It was colorful, black and purple and reddish at the edges, but not terribly inflated. I guessed my immersion in the composed wa ter had helped keep the swelling down.I put the typewriter on the deck table, rummaged out an generation cord, plugged in beneath Bunters watchful eye, and sat down veneering the hazy blue-gray surface of the lake. I waited for one of my old anxiety attacks to hit the clenched stomach, the throbbing eyes, and, worst of all, that sensation of invisible steel bands clamped around my chest, making it impossible to breathe. zip fastener like that happened. The words flowed as good down here as they had upstairs, and my naked upper body was loving the little breeze that puffed in off the lake every now and again. I forgot about Max Devore, Mattie Devore, Kyra Devore. I forgot about Jo Noonan and Sara Tidwell. I forgot about myself. For two hours I was back in Florida. John Shacklefords execution was nearing. Andy Drake was go the clock.It was the telephone that brought me back, and for once I didnt resent interruption. If undisturbed, I might have gone on writing until I simply mel ted into a sweaty pile of goo on the deck.It was my brother. We talked about Mom in Siddys opinion she was now short an entire roof instead of just a few shingles and her sister, Francine, who had broken her hip in June. Sid wanted to know how I was doing, and I told him I was doing all right, Id had some problems getting going on a new book but now seemed to be back on track (in my family, the only permissible time to talk about trouble is when its over). And how was the Sidster? Kickin, he said, which I assumed meant just fine Siddy has a twelve-year-old, and consequently his slang is always up-to-date. The new accounting business was commencement to take hold, although hed been scared for awhile (first I knew of it, of course). He could never convey me enough for the bridge loan Id made him last November. I replied that it was the least I could do, which was the absolute truth, especially when I considered how much more time both in person and on the phone he dog-tired w ith our mother than I did.Well, Ill let you go, Siddy told me after a few more pleasantries he never says goodbye or so long when hes on the phone, its always well, Ill let you go, as if hes been holding you hostage. You want to keep cool up there, Mike Weather Channel says its going to be hotter than nuthouse in New England all weekend.Theres always the lake if things get too bad. Hey Sid?Hey what? homogeneous Ill let you go, Hey what went back to childhood. It was sort of comforting it was also sort of spooky.Our folks all came from Prouts Neck, right? I mean on Daddys side. Mom came from another world entirely one where the men offend Lacoste polo shirts, the women always wear full slips under their dresses, and everyone knows the second verse of Dixie by heart. She had met my dad in Portland while competing in a college cheerleading event. Materfamilias came from Memphis quality, darling, and didnt let you forget it.I guess so, he said. Yeah. But dont go petition me a su rvey of family-tree questions, Mike Im still not sure what the difference is between a nephew and a cousin, and I told Jo the same thing.Did you? Everything inside me had gone very still . . . but I cant say I was surprised. Not by then.Uh-huh, you bet.What did she want to know?Everything I knew. Which isnt much. I could have told her all about Mas great-great-grandfather, the one who got killed by the Indians, but Jo didnt seem to care about any of Mas folks.When would this have been?Does it matter?It might.Okay, lets see. I think it was around the time Patrick had his appendectomy. Yeah, Im sure it was. February of 94. It might have been March, but Im pretty sure it was February.Six months from the Rite precaution parking lot. Jo moving into the shadow of her own death like a woman stepping beneath the shade of an awning. Not pregnant, though, not yet. Jo making day-trips to the TR. Jo asking questions, some of the sort that made people feel bad, according to Bill Dean . . . but shed gone on asking just the same. Yeah. Because once she got onto something, Jo was like a terrier with a rag in its jaws. Had she been asking questions of the man in the brown sportcoat? Who was the man in the brown sportcoat?Pat was in the hospital, sure. Dr. Alpert said he was doing fine, but when the phone rang I jumped for it I half-expected it to be him, Alpert, saying Pat had had a relapse or something.Where in Gods name did you get this sense of impending doom, Sid?I dunno, buddy, but its there. Anyway, its not Alpert, its Johanna. She wants to know if we had any ancestors three, maybe even four generations back who lived there where you are, or in one of the surrounding towns. I told her I didnt know, but you might. Know, I mean. She said she didnt want to ask you because it was a surprise. Was it a surprise?A big one, I said. Daddy was a lobsterman Bite your tongue, he was an artisan a seacoast primitive. Ma still calls him that. Siddy wasnt quite laughing.Shit, he exchange lobster-pot coffee-tables and lawn-puffins to the tourists when he got too rheumatic to go out on the speak and haul traps.I know that, but Mas got her marriage edited like a movie for television.How true. Our own version of Blanche Du Bois. Dad was a lobster-man in Prouts Neck. He Siddy interrupted, singing the first verse of Papa Was a Rollin Stone in a horrible off key tenor.Come on, this is serious. He had his first boat from his father, right?Thats the story, Sid agreed. Jack Noonans Lazy Betty, original owner capital of Minnesota Noonan. Also of Prouts. Boat took a hell of a pasting in Hurricane Donna, back in 1960. I think it was Donna.Two years after I was born. And Daddy put it up for sale in 63.Yep. I dont know whatever became of it, but it was Grampy Pauls to begin with, all right. Do you remember all the lobster stew we ate when we were kids, Mikey?Seacoast meatloaf, I said, hardly thinking about it. Like most kids raised on the coast of Maine, I cant approx imate ordering lobster in a restaurant thats for flatlanders. I was thinking about Grampy Paul, who had been born in the 1890s. Paul Noonan begat Jack Noonan, Jack Noonan begat Mike and Sid Noonan, and that was really all I knew, except the Noonans had all grown up a long way from where I now stood sweating my brains out.They shit in the same pit.Devore had gotten it wrong, that was all when we Noonans werent wearing polo shirts and being Memphis quality, we were Prouts Neckers. It was unlikely that Devores great-grandfather and my own would have had anything to do with each other in any case the old rip had been twice my age, and that meant the generations didnt match up.But if he had been totally wrong, what had Jo been on about?Mike? Sid asked. Are you there?Yeah.Are you okay? You dont sound so great, I have to tell you.Its the heat, I said. Not to mention your sense of impending doom. Thanks for calling, Siddy.Thanks for being there, brother.Kickin, I said.I went out to the ki tchen to get a glass of cold water. As I was filling it, I heard the magnets on the fridge begin slide around. I whirled, spilling some of the water on my bare feet and hardly noticing. I was as excited as a kid who thinks he may glimpse Santa Claus before he shoots back up the chimney.I was but in time to see nine plastic letters careworn into the circle from all points of the compass. CARLADEAN, they spelled . . . but only for a second. Some presence, awesome but unseen, shot past me. Not a hair on my head stirred, but there was still a strong sense of being buffeted, the way youre buffeted by the air of a passing express train if youre standing near the platform yellow-line when the train bolts through. I cried out in surprise and groped my glass of water back onto the counter, spilling it. I no longer felt in need of cold water, because the temperature in the kitchen of Sara Laughs had dropped off the table.I blew out my breath and saw vapor, as you do on a cold day in Janua ry. One puff, maybe two, and it was gone but it had been there, all right, and for perhaps five seconds the film of sweat on my body turned to what felt like a easy lay of ice.CARLADEAN exploded outward in all directions it was like watching an fraction being smashed in a cartoon. Magnetized letters, fruits, and vegetables flew off the social movement of the refrigerator and scattered across the kitchen. For a moment the fury which fuelled that scatter was something I could almost taste, like gunpowder.And something gave way before it, going with a sighing, rueful whisper I had heard before Oh Mike. Oh Mike. It was the voice Id caught on the Memo-Scriber tape, and although I hadnt been sure then, I was now it was Jos voice.But who was the other one? Why had it scattered the letters?Carla Dean. Not Bills wife that was Yvette. His mother? His grandma?I walked slowly through the kitchen, collecting fridge-magnets like prizes in a scavenger hunt and sticking them back on the Ken more by the handful. Nothing snatched them out of my hands nothing froze the sweat on the back of my get laid Bunters bell didnt ring. Still, I wasnt alone, and I knew it.CARLADEAN Jo had wanted me to know.Something else hadnt. Something else had shot past me like the Wabash Cannonball, trying to scatter the letters before I could read them.Jo was here a boy who wept in the night was here, too.And what else?What else was sharing my house with me?