Bag of Bones CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The murk came ass and transformed that Sunday nights dusk into a liaison of decadent beauty. The sun turned red as it slid buck toward the hills and the haze picked up the glow, turning the western sky into a nosebleed. I sat expose on the deck and watched it, trying to do a crossword puzzle and not setting very c centenarian. When the phone rang, I dropped Tough Stuff on tip of my human cosmossuscript as I went to answer it. I was tired of look at the title of my confine any time I passed.Hello?Whats way s cumulation forth on up at that place? basin Storrow demanded. He didnt plane b early(a) to narrate hi. He didnt sound angry, though he sounded tot solelyy pumped. Im missing the whole infernal soap operaI invited myself to lunch on Tuesday, I state. forecast you dont mind. no thats good, the more than the merrier. He sounded as if he absolutely meant it. What a summer, huh? What a summer Anything happen effective later(a)ly? Earthquakes? Volcanoes? Mass sui cides?No freshet suicides, guilelessly the old guy died, I state.Shit, the whole world bashs grievous bodily harm Devore kicked it, he said. Surprise me, Mike Stun me Make me holler boy-howdyNo, the other old guy. Royce Merrill.I dont farawaygon who you oh, wait. The one with the gold cane who looked standardized an exhibit from Jurassic Park?Thats him.Bummer. Otherwise . . . ?Otherwise everythings under control, I said, whence image of the popped- forbidden eyes of the cat-clock and al well-nigh laughed. What stopped me was a good- observeted of realty that Mr. Good Humor Man was just an act John had re both(a)y c anyed to have a bun in the oven what, if anything, was dismissal on between me and Mattie. And what was I going to say? Nothing yet? One kiss, one instant no-count-steel warm-on, the fundamental things apply as time goes by? solely if John had other things on his mind. Listen, Michael, I called because Ive got mostthing to tell you. I bet youll be both(prenominal) amused and amazed.A state we all crave, I said. Lay it on me.Rogette Whitmore called, and . . . you didnt happen to give her my parents number, did you? Im back in New York now, tho she called me in Philly.I didnt experience your parents number. You didnt leave it on either of your machines.Oh, right field. No exculpation he consumemed too excited to think of such mundanities. I began to rule excited myself, and I didnt even agnize what the hell was going on. I gave it to Mattie. Do you think the Whitmore woman called Mattie to get it? Would Mattie give it to her?Im not certain(a) that if Mattie came upon Rogette flaming in a thoroughfare, shed piss on her to put her out.Vulgar, Michael, trs vulgarino. that he was laughing. Maybe Whitmore got it the same way Devore got yours.Probably so, I said. I dont get laid whatll happen in the months ahead, that right now Im sure shes salve got access to Max Devores personal control panel. And if anyone knows how to push the scarcetons on it, its probably her. Did she call from Palm Springs?Uh-huh. She said shed just finished a preliminary meeting with Devores attorneys cin one caserning the old mans provide. According to her, Grampa left Mattie Devore eighty one million million million dollars.I was struck silent. I wasnt amused yet, but I was sure amazed.Gets ya, dont it? John said gleefully.You mean he left it to Kyra, I said at resist. Left it in trust to Kyra.No, thats just what he did not do. I asked Whitmore three times, but by the third I was out apparel to understand. There was method in his madness. Not a good deal, but a slim. You count on, theres a specify. If he left the money to the baby child instead of to the mother, the condition would meet no weight. Its funny when you consider that Mattie isnt grand past minor status herself.Funny, I agreed, and thought of her dress sliding between my transfer and her smooth bleak waist. I also thought of Bill doyen saying tha t men who went with girls that age always looked the same, had their tongues run out even if their mouths were shut.What string did he put on the money?That Mattie remain on the TR for one year following Devores death until July 17, 1999. She can leave on day-trips, but she has to be tucked up in her TR-90 derriere every night by nine oclock, or else the legacy is forfeit. Did you ever hear such a bullshit thing in your life? external of near old George Sanders movie, that is?No, I said, and recalled my visit to the Fryeburg Fair with Kyra. Even in death hes seeking custody, I had thought, and of course this was the same thing. He treasured them here. Even in death he valued them on the TR.It wont evaporate? I asked.Of course it wont fly. Fucking crackpot might as intumesce chip in written hed give her eighty million dollars if she used blue tampons for a year. but shell get the eighty mil, all right. My heart is set on it. Ive already talked to three of our estate guys, and . . . you dont think I should kick in one of them up with me on Tuesday, do you? Will Stevensonll be the conduct man in the estate phase, if Mattie agrees. He was all but babbling. He hadnt had a thing to drink, Idve bet the farm on it, but he was sky-high on all the possibilities. Wed gotten to the happily-ever-after part of the fairy tale, as far as he was concerned Cinderella strikes piazza from the ball through a cash cloudburst. . . . course Wills a undersize bit old, John was saying, roughly three hundred or so, which means hes not exactly a fun guy at a party, but . . . Leave him home, wherefore dont you? I said. Therell be plenty of time to carve up Devores allow for later on. And in the immediate future, I dont think Matties going to have any problem observing the bullshit condition. She just got her traffic back, concoct?Yeah, the exsanguinous buffalo drops dead and the whole herd scatters John exulted. cheek at em go And the hot multimillionaire goes bac k to filing books and card out overdue notices Okay, Tuesday well just party.Good.Party til we puke.Well . . . maybe us older folks will just party until were mildly nauseated, would that be all right?Sure. Ive already called Romeo Bissonette, and hes going to bring George Kennedy, the private scout who got all that hilarious shit on Durgin. Bissonette says Kennedys a scream when he gets a drink or two in him. I thought Id bring some steaks from Peter Lugers, did I tell you that?I dont conceptualise you did.Best steaks in the world. Michael, do you realize whats happened to that young woman? 80 million dollarsShell be able to replace Scoutie.Huh?Nothing. Will you come in tomorrow night or on Tuesday?Tuesday morning most ten, into stronghold County Airport. New England Air. Mike, are you all right? You sound odd.Im all right. Im where Im conjectural to be. I think.Whats that averd to mean? I had wandered out onto the deck. In the outdo thunder grumbled. It was hotter than h ell, not a schnorchel of breeze stirring. The sunset was weaken to a baleful afterglow. The sky in the west looked same the white of a bloodshot eye.I dont know, I said, but I have an image the situation will clarify itself. Ill meet you at the airport.Okay, he said, and therefore, in a hushed, almost reverential voice Eighty million motherfucking American dollars.Its a whole lotta lettuce, I agreed, and wished him a good night.I drank black c rack upee and ate toast in the kitchen the nigh morning, observance the TV weatherman. Like so many of them these days, he had a or so mad look, as if all those Doppler radar images had driven him to the brink of something. I think of it as the Millennial Video Game look.Weve got another 36 hours of this soup to rifle through and hence theres going to be a big change, he was saying, and percentage pointed to some dark gray ice lurking in the Midwest. Tiny animated lightning-bolts danced in it like defective sparkplugs. Beyond the scum and the lightning-bolts, America looked clear all the way out to the desert country, and the stick on temperatures were cardinal degrees cooler. Well see temps in the mid-nineties today and cant look for a great deal relief tonight or tomorrow morning. But tomorrow afternoon these frontal invades will reach western Maine, and I think most of you are going to want to keep updated on weather conditions. earlier we get back to cooler air and bright clear skies on Wednesday, were probably going to see violent thunderstorms, heavy rain, hail in some locations. Tornados are rare in Maine, but some towns in western and central Maine could see them tomorrow. Back to you, Earl.Earl, the morning news guy, had the barren beefy look of a recent retiree from the Chippendales and read off the Teleprompter like one. Wow, he said. Thats quite a forecast, Vince. Tornados a possibility.Wow, I said. prescribe wow again, Earl. Do it til Im satisfied.Holy cow, Earl said just to spite me, a nd the border rang. I went to answer it, giving the waggy clock a look as I went by. The night had been quiet no sobbing, no screaming, no nocturnal adventures but the clock was disquieting, just the same. It hung there On the wall unobservant and dead, like a message full of bad news.Hello?Mr. Noonan?I knew the voice, but for a upshot couldnt place it. It was because she had called me Mr. Noonan. To Brenda Meserve Id been Mike for almost fifteen years.Mrs M.? Brenda? What I cant work for you anymore, she said, all in a rush. Im sorry I cant give you proper notice I never stopped work for anyone without giving notice, not even that old drunk Mr Croyden but I have to. Please understand.Did Bill find out I called you? I swear to God, Brenda, I never said a word No. I havent spoken to him, nor he to me. I just cant come back to Sara Laughs. I had a bad dream last night. A solemn dream. I dreamed that . . . somethings mad at me. If I come back, I could have an accident. It wou ld look like an accident, at least, but . . . it wouldnt be.Thats silly, Mrs M., I wanted to say. Youre surely past the age where you opine in campfire stories nigh ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties.But of course I could say no such thing. What was going on in my house was no campfire story. I knew it, and she knew I did.Brenda, if Ive caused you any trouble, Im rattling sorry.Go away, Mr. Noonan . . . Mike. Go back to Derry and stay for awhile. Its the take up thing you could do.I heard the letter sliding on the electric refrigerator and turned. This time I actually saw the circle of fruits and vegetables form. It stayed open at the top long enough for four garner to slide inside. Then a little plastic lemon plugged the hole and completed the circle.yats,the letters said, thence swapped themselves around, qualificationstayThen both the circle and the letters bust up.Mike, please. Mrs. M. was crying. Royces funeral is tomorrow. Everyone in the TR who matters the old-timers will be there. Yes, of course they would. The old ones, the bags of bones who knew what they knew and unplowed it to themselves. Except some of them had talked to my wife. Royce himself had talked to her. Now he was dead. So was she.It would be best if you were gone. You could take that young woman with you, maybe. Her and her little girl.But could I? I somehow didnt think so. I thought the three of us were on the TR until this was over . . . and I was starting to have an idea of when that would be. A storm was coming. A summer storm. Maybe even a tornado.Brenda, thanks for employment me. And Im not letting you go. Lets just call it a leave of absence, shall we? ok . . . whatever you want. Will you at least think about what I said?Yes. In the meantime, I dont think Id tell anyone you called me, all right?No she said, sounding shocked. Then But theyll know. Bill and Yvette . . . Dickie countenance at the garage . . . old Anthony Weyland and Buddy Jellison and all th e others . . . theyll know. Goodbye, Mr. Noonan. Im so sorry. For you and your wife. Your lamentable wife. Im so sorry. Then she was gone.I held the phone in my hand for a long time. Then, like a man in a dream, I put it down, crossed the room, and took the eyeless clock off the wall. I threw it in the trash and went down to the lake for a swim, remembering that W. E Harvey story imposing Heat, the one that ends with the line The heat is enough to drive a man mad.Im not a bad swimmer when people arent pelting me with shivers, but my first shore-to-plasterers float-to-shore lap was tentative and unrhythmic ugly because I unbroken expecting something to reach up from the bottom and grab me. The drowned boy, maybe. The second lap was infract, and by the third I was relishing the increased kick of my heart and the glib coolness of the water rushing past me. Halfway through the 4th lap I pulled myself up the floats ladder and collapsed on the boards, feeling better than I had si nce my encounter with Devore and Rogette Whitmore on Friday night. I was still in the zone, and on top of that I was experiencing a glorious endorphin rush. In that state, even the cast down Id felt when Mrs M. told me she was resigning her position ebbed away. She would come back when this was over of course she would. In the meantime, it was probably best she stay away.Somethings mad at me. I could have an accident.Yes indeed. She might cut herself. She might fall down a rush of cellar stairs. She might even have a stroke trial across a hot parking lot.I sat up and looked at Sara on her hill, the deck jutting out over the drop, the pressure ties descending. Id only been out of the water for a few minutes, but already the days sticky heat was folding over me, stealing my rush. The water was still as a mirror. I could see the house reflected in it, and in the reflection Saras windows became watchful eyes.I thought that the focus of all the phenomena the epicentre was very like ly on The Street between the real Sara and its drowned image. This is where it happened, Devore had said. And the old-timers? closely of them probably knew what I knew that Royce Merrill had been murdered. And wasnt it possible wasnt it likely that what had killed him might come among them as they sat in their pews or gathered afterward around his large(p)? That it might steal some of their force their guilt, their memories, their TR-ness to help it finish the job?I was very glad that John was going to be at the trailer tomorrow, and Romeo Bissonette, and George Kennedy, who was so amusing when he got a drink or two in him. Glad it was going to be more than just me with Mattie and Ki when the old folks got together to give Royce Merrill his sendoff. I no longer cared very much about what had happened to Sara and the Red-Tops, or even about what was haunting my house. What I wanted was to get through tomorrow, and for Mattie and Ki to get through tomorrow. Wed eat before the ra in started and then let the predicted thunderstorms come. I thought that, if we could ride them out, our lives and futures might clarify with the weather.Is that right? I asked. I expected no answer talking out loud was a habit I had picked up since returning here but someplace in the woods east of the house, an owl hooted. Just once, as if to say it was right, get through tomorrow and things will clarify. The hoot almost brought something else to mind, some association that was ultimately too gauzy to grasp. I tried once or twice, but the only thing I could come up with was the title of a wonderful old novel I perceive the Owl Call My Name.I rolling forward off the float and into the water, grasping my knees against my chest like a kid doing a cannonball. I stayed under as long as I could, until the air in my lungs started to feel like some hot bottled liquid, and then I broke the surface. I trod water about thirty yards out until I had my breath back, then set my sights on the Green Lady and stroked for shore.I waded out, started up the railroad ties, then stopped and went back to The Street. I stood there for a moment, gathering my courage, then walked to where the birch curved her graceful belly out over the water. I grasped that white curve as I had on Friday evening and looked into the water. I was sure Id see the child, his dead eyes look up at me from his bloating brown face, and that my mouth and throat would once more fill with the render of the lake help Im drown, lemme up, oh sweet Jesus lemme up. But there was nothing. No dead boy, no ribbon-wrapped Boston Post cane, no taste of the lake in my mouth.I turned and peered at the gray forehead of rock poking out of the mulch. I thought There, right there, but it was only a conscious and unspontaneous thought, the mind voicing a memory. The olfactory modality of fall apart and the certainty that something awful had happened right there was gone.When I got back up to the house and went for a sod a, I discovered the front of the refrigerator was bare and clean. Every magnetic letter, every fruit and vegetable, was gone. I never gear up them. I might have, probably would have, if there had been more time, but on that Monday morning time was almost up.I dressed, then called Mattie. We talked about the future party, about how excited Ki was, about how nervous Mattie was about going back to work on Friday she was afraid that the locals would be mean to her, but in an odd, womanly way she was even more afraid that they would be cold to her, snub her. We talked about the money, and I quickly ascertained that she didnt believe in the reality of it. Lance used to say his father was the sympathetic of man whod show a piece of meat to a famishment dog and then eat it himself, she said. But as long as I have my job back, I wont starve and neither will Ki.But if there really are big bucks . . . ?Oh, gimme-gimme-gimme, she said, laughing. What do you think I am, crazy?Nah. By the wa y, whats going on with Kis fridgeafator people? ar they writing any new stuff?That is the weirdest thing, she said. Theyre gone.The fridgeafator people?I dont know about them, but the magnetic letters you gave her sure are. When I asked Ki what she did with them, she started crying and said Allamagoosalum took them. She said he ate them in the nub of the night, while everyone was sleeping, for a snack.Allama-who-salum?Allamagoosalum, Mattie said, sounding wearily amused. Another little legacy from her grandfather. Its a corruption of the Micmac word for boogeyman or demon I looked it up at the library. Kyra had a good many nightmares about demons and wendigos and the allama-goosalum late last winter and this spring.What a sweet old grandpa he was, I said sentimentally.Right, a real pip. She was miserable over losing the letters I barely got her calmed down before her ride to VBS came. Ki wants to know if youll come to Final Exercises on Friday afternoon, by the way. She and her f riend Billy Turgeon are going to flannelboard the story of baby Moses.I wouldnt miss it, I said . . . but of course I did. We all did.Any idea where her letters might have gone, Mike?No.Yours are still okay?mine are fine, but of course mine dont spell anything, I said, looking at the empty door of my own fridgeafator. There was sweat on my forehead. I could feel it creeping down into my eyebrows like oil. Did you . . . I dont know . . . wiz anything?You mean did I maybe hear the evil alphabet-thief as he slid through the window?You know what I mean.I suppose so. A pause I thought I heard something in the night, okay? About three this morning, actually. I got up and went into the hall. Nothing was there. But . . . you know how hot its been lately?Yes.Well, not in my trailer, not last night. It was cold as ice. I swear I could almost see my breath.I believed her. After all, I had seen mine.Were the letters on the front of the fridge then?I dont know. I didnt go up the hall far enough to see into the kitchen. I took one look around and then went back to bed. I almost ran back to bed. Sometimes bed feels safer, you know? She laughed nervously. Its a kid thing. Covers are boogeyman kryptonite. Only at first, when I got in . . . I dont know . . . I thought someone was in there already. Like someone had been hiding on the floor underneath and then . . . when I went to check the hall . . . they got in. Not a priggish someone, either.Give me my dust-catcher, I thought, and shuddered.What? Mattie asked sharply. What did you say?I asked who did you think it was? What was the first shout that came into your mind?Devore, she said. Him. But there was no one there. A pause. I wish youd been there.I do, too.Im glad. Mike, do you have any ideas at all about this? Because its very freaky.I think maybe . . . For a moment I was on the verge of telling her what had happened to my own letters. But if I started talking, where would it stop? And how much could she be expected to believe? . . . maybe Ki took the letters herself. Went walking in her sleep and chucked them under the trailer or something. Do you think that could be?I think I like the idea of Kyra strolling around in her sleep even less than the idea of ghosts with cold breath taking the letters off the fridge, Mattie said.Take her to bed with you tonight, I said, and felt her thought come back like an pointer Id rather take you.What she said, after a brief pause, was Will you come by today?I dont think so, I said. She was noshing on flavored yoghourt as we talked, eating it in little nipping bites. Youll see me tomorrow, though. At the party.I hope we get to eat before the thunderstorms. Theyre supposed to be bad.Im sure we will.And are you still thinking? I only ask because I dreamed of you when I finally fell asleep again. I dreamed of you kissing me.Im still thinking, I said. Thinking hard.But in fact I dont remember thinking about anything very hard that day. What I remember is driftin g further and further into that zone Ive explained so badly. Near dusk I went for a long walk in spite of the heat all the way out to where Lane xlii joins the highway. Coming back I stopped on the edge of Tidwells Meadow, watching the light fade out of the sky and listening to thunder rumble somewhere over New Hampshire. Once more there was that sense of how thin reality was, not just here but all over how it was stretched like skin over the blood and tissue of a organic structure we can never know clearly in this life. I looked at trees and saw arms I looked at bushes and saw faces. Ghosts, Mattie had said. Ghosts with cold breath. duration was also thin, it seemed to me. Kyra and I had really been at the Fryeburg Fair some fluctuation of it, anyway we had really visited the year 1900. And at the foot of the meadow the Red-Tops were almost there now, as they once had been, in their neat little cabins. I could almost hear the sound of their guitars, the murmur of their voices and laughter I could almost see the gleam of their lanterns and smell their beef and pork frying. Say baby, do you remember me? one of her songs went, Well I aint your honey like I used to be.Something rattled in the underbrush to my left. I turned that way, expecting to see Sara step out of the woods wearing Matties dress and Matties white sneakers. In this gloom, they would seem almost to float by themselves, until she got close to me . . .There was no one there, of course, it had undoubtedly been nothing but Chuck the Woodchuck headed home after a hard day at the office, but I no longer wanted to be out here, watching as the light drained out of the day and the mist came up from the ground. I turned for home.Instead of going into the house when I got back, I do my way along the path to Jos studio, where I hadnt been since the night I had interpreted my IBM back in a dream. My way was lit by intermittent flashes of heat lightning.The studio was hot but not stale. I could smell a peppery aroma that was actually pleasant, and wondered if it might be some of Jos herbs. There was an air conditioner out here, and it worked I turned it on and then just stood in front of it a little while. So much cold air on my overheated body was probably unhealthy, but it felt wonderful.I didnt feel very wonderful otherwise, however. I looked around with a growing sense of something too heavy to be mere sadness it felt like despair. I think it was caused by the tune between how little of Jo was left in Sara Laughs and how much of her was still out here. I imagined our hymeneals as a kind of playhouse and isnt that what marriage is, in large part? p set house? where only one-half the stuff was held down. Held down by little magnets or hidden cables. Something had come along and picked up our playhouse by one corner easiest thing in the world, and I supposed I should be grateful that the something hadnt resolute to draw back its foot and kick the poor thing all the way ov er. It just picked up that one corner, you see. My stuff stayed put, but all of Jos had slid . . .Out of the house and down here.Jo? I asked, and sat down in her chair. There was no answer. No thumps on the wall. No crows or owls traffic from the woods. I put my hand on her desk, where the typewriter had been, and slipped my hand across it, pickax up a film of dust.I miss you, honey, I said, and began to cry.When the weeping were over again I wiped my face with the tail of my tee-shirt like a little kid, then just looked around. There was the picture of Sara Tidwell on her desk and a photo I didnt remember on the wall this latter was old, sepia-tinted, and woodsy. Its focal point was a man-high birchwood cross in a little clearing on a slope above the lake. That clearing was gone from the geographics now, most likely, long since filled in by trees.I looked at her jars of herbs and mushroom sections, her filing cabinets, her sections of afghan. The green rag rug on the floor. T he pot of pencils on the desk, pencils she had touched and used. I held one of them poised over a blank sheet of paper for a moment or two, but nothing happened. I had a sense of life in this room, and a sense of being watched . . . but not a sense of being helped.I know some of it but not enough, I said. Of all the things I dont know, maybe the one that matters most is who wrote help her on the fridge. Was it you, Jo?No answer. I sat awhile longer hoping against hope, I suppose then got up, turned off the air conditioning, turned off the lights, and went back to the house, walking in soft bright stutters of unfocused lightning. I sat on the deck for a little while, watching the night. At some point I realized Id taken the length of blue silk ribbon out of my pocket and was winding it nervously back and forth between my fingers, making half-assed cats cradles. Had it really come from the year 1900? The idea seemed absolutely crazy and perfectly sane at the same time. The night hun g hot and hushed. I imagined old folks all over the TR perhaps in Motton and Harlow, too laying out their funeral clothes for tomorrow. In the doublewide trailer on Wasp agglomerate Road, Ki was sitting on the floor, watching a videotape of The hobo camp Book Baloo and Mowgli were singing The Bare Necessities. Mattie was on the couch with her feet up, reading the new Mary Higgins Clark and singing along. Both were wearing shorty pajamas, Kis pink, Matties white.After a little while I lost my sense of them it faded the way receiving set signals sometimes do late at night. I went into the north bedroom, undressed, and crawled onto the top sheet of my unmade bed. I fell asleep almost at once.I woke in the middle of the night with someone running a hot finger up and down the middle of my back. I rolled over and when the lightning flashed, I saw there was a woman in bed with me. It was Sara Tidwell. She was grinning. There were no pupils in her eyes. Oh sugar, Im almost back, she wh ispered in the dark. I had a sense of her reaching out for me again, but when the next flash of lightning came, that side of the bed was empty.