Bag of Bones CHAPTER NINETEEN

The teleph ane was ringing. I climbed toward it from a drowning dream where I couldnt engender my breath, rising into early sunlight, wincing at the pain in the gage of my head as I swung my feet knocked break through with(predicate)(p) of bed. The phone would quit in the beginning I got to it, they well-nigh al ways do in such situations, and hence Id lie support down and spend a fruitless ten minutes wondering who it had been in advance pay offting up for good.Ringgg . . . ringgg . . . ringgg . . .Was that ten? A dozen? Id lost count. Someone was really dedicated. I hoped it wasnt fear, and in my experience people dont try that hard when the virgins is good. I touched my fingers gingerly to the back of my head. It agony plenty, nevertheless that deep, sick ache seemed to be at peace(p). And there was no blood on my fingers when I looked at them.I padded down the hall and picked up the phone. Hello?Well, you wont pay back to worry well-nigh testifyin at the kids cu stody provein anymore, at least.Bill?Ayuh.How did you arse ab protrude along . . . I leaned more or less the corner and peered at the waggy, vexing cat-clock. Twenty minutes past cardinal and already sweltering. Hottern a bugger, as us TR Martians like to specify. How do you have it away he decided I dont drive in nothing closely his telephone line one way or t separate. Bill sounded touchy. He never called to ask my advice, and I never called to give him any.Whats happened? Whats deviation on?You havent had the TV on heretofore?I dont even have the coffee on yet.No plea from Bill he was a fellow who believed that people who didnt get up until later on six A.M. deserve whatever they got. I was awake now, though. And had a pretty good idea of what was coming.Devore killed himself outlast night, microphone. Got into a bath of warm water and pulled a plastic bag over his head. Mustnt have taken long, with his lungs the way they were.No, I thought, probably not long . In spite of the humid summer heat that already lay on the house, I shivered.Who found him? The wo small-arm?Ayuh, sure.What magazine?Shortly before midnight, they verbalise on the Channel 6 news. sound around the age 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 report I saw didnt say nothin about that. The gossip-mill down to the Lakeview General will be turnin brisk by now, comfort I aint been down yet for my share of the grain. If she helped him, I dont judge shell ever see trouble for it, do you? He was eighty-five and not well.Do you agnise if hell be buried on the TR?calcium. She said thered be services in medallion Springs on Tuesday.A sense of sur fliping oddness swept over me as I cognise the source of Matties problems powerfulness be lying in a chapel filled with flowers at the analogous time The Friends of Kyra Devore were digesting their lunches and getting ready to start throwing the Frisbee around. Its going to be a celebration, I thought wonderingly. I dont know how theyre going to handle it in The Little Chapel of the Microchips in laurel Springs, scarcely on Wasp Hill Road theyre going to be dancing and throwing their arms in the sky and holla Yes, lawd.Id never been glad to hear of anyones death before in my life, save I was glad to hear of Devores. I was sorry to feel that way, but I did. The older bastard had dumped me in the lake . . . but 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 idea how the TV guys got onto it so fast? It wasnt superfast, not with seven hours betwixt the disco rattling of the body and the seven oclock news, but TV news people have a tendency to be lazy.Whitmore called em. Had a press conference right there in Warringtons parlor at dickens oclock this morning. Took questions settin on that big maroon plush sofa, the one Jo always used to say should be in a saloon oil paintin with a naked woman lyin on it. Remember?Yeah.I saw a coupla County de correcties walkin around in the background, plus a fella I reckonized from Jaquards Funeral Home in Motton.Thats bizarre, I said. Ayuh, body pipe down upstairs, most likely, while Whitmore was runnin her gums . . . but she claimed she was solely followin the bosss orders. Said he leave a tape sayin hed done it on F absolveay night so as not to affect the cumpny decline price and involveed Rogette to call in the press right off and assure folks that the cumpny was solid, that between his son and the Board of Directors, everythin was going to be scantily acey-deucey. Then she told about the services in Palm Springs.He commits suicide, therefore holds a two A.M. press conference by proxy to soothe the stockholders.Ayuh. And it sounds just like him.A silence fell between us on the line. I tried to hypothecate and couldnt. All I knew was that I wanted to g o upstairs and work, aching head or no aching head. I wanted to rejoin Andy Drake, jakes Shackleford, and Shacklefords childhood friend, the awful Ray Garraty. There was monomania 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 little stand-offy to you, youll know why, wont you? authentic Id know. Many would blame the old mans death on me. It was crazy, given his physical condition, and it would by no bureau be a majority opinion, but the idea would gain a certain amount of credence, at least in the short run I knew that as well as I knew the trueness about John Shacklefords childhood friend.Kiddies, once upon a time there was a goose that flew back to the little unincorporated township where it had lived as a downy gosling. It began laying lovely golden eggs, and the townspeople all gathered around to marvel and receive their share. Now, however, that goose was cooked and almostone had to take the heat. Id get just about, but Matties kitchen capacity get a few degrees toastier than mine shed had the temerity to fight for her child instead 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 send wordt. Im writing a book. If I pick up my shit and move, its apt 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 important thing. Its . . . well, lets just say this ones important to me for other reasons.Wouldnt it travel as far as Derry?Are you trying to get rid of me, William?Im tryin to bear an eye out, thats all premeditationtakins my job, yknow. And dont say you werent warned the hives gonna buzz. Theres two stories going around about you, Mike. One is tha t youre shacking with Mattie Devore. The other is that you came back to write a hatchet-job on the TR. Pull out all the old skeletons you can find. polish 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 mobilize three little syllables could have 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 sudden and go even farther.Okay, I will. As far as Mattie goes Mike, you dont have toIm not shacking with her. That was never the grapple. The deal was like walking down the street, turning the corner, and seeing a big guy beating up a little guy. I paused. She and her lawyer are planning a barbecue at her place Tuesday noon. Im planning to join them. Are people from town going to think were dan cing on Devores dangerous?Some will. Royce Merrill will. Dickie Brooks 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 folks 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 introduce 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 none of my business, but Im talkin to you like a Dutch uncle, tellin you for your own good.I had a brand of my dream then. The slick, exquisite tightness as I slipped inside her. The little breasts with 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 reliev ed that I wasnt going to s frore him take him to school, he would have said. Ill let you go n have your breakfast.I appreciate you calling.Almost 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. Certainly 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 may only 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 mete out got fifty or sixty different channels, and not a one of them l ocal. There was a takeout TV in the kitchen, however, and if I dipped its rabbit-ears toward the lake Id be able to get WMTW, the ABC 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 stolon light America was on, but they would be breaking for the local news soon. In the meantime I scanned the note, this time concentrating on the mode of evidenceion rather than the message, which had taken all of my attention the night before.Hopes to return to California by private jet 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 flip over the raised earn of her name. 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 barricade he said so.But the custody business was over, right? Not even a judge that was bought and pay for could award custody to a dead man.GMA finally 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 mentioned, and Rogette Whitmore sitting on it with her pass folded composedly in her lap. I thought one of the deputies in the background was George Footman, although the snow was too strained for me to be completely sure.Mr. Devore had spoken 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 glorious one, too, 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 first 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 perceive 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 mammy 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 least, maybe longer. I stood with the telephone pressed to my ear, sweating in the July heat, trying to be patient.Im going to give you one chance to save your person, 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 really, 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 Vacation Bible School, and we can talk. I postulate to talk to someone . . . God, my head is spinning. Please say youll come.Id love to, but its a bad idea. particularly 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 look down, my mouth shut, and my knees together, she said, and Ill do my best to go along, but di plomacy 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 s top(prenominal) on the Castle jolt common? Same place as Friday? Say five-ish?Id have to bring Ki Fine, I said. crop her. Tell her I know Hansel and Gretel by heart and am willing 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, watery 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 rapturous Bag, I thought, then pressed the back of my hand against my mouth to stifle a spate of swashbuckler cackles.I dont know, but youll have to do it as soon as she comes in.I will? wherefore? 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 bite floor.Hoping I wasnt devising 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 midriff 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 red-faced at the edges, but not terribly inflated. I guessed my immersion in the cool water had helped keep the swelling down.I put the typewriter on the deck table, rummaged out an extension cord, plugged in to a lower place Bunters watchful eye, and sat down facing the hazy blue-gray surfa ce of the lake. I waited for one of my old trouble 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 unsurmountable to breathe. Nothing like that happened. The words flowed as easily 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 racing 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 melted 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 ha d 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 discuss 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 starting 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, peculiarly when I considered how much more time both in person and on the phone he spent with 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 h ostage. You want to keep cool up there, Mike Weather Channel says its going to be hotter than hell in New England all weekend.Theres always the lake if things get too bad. Hey Sid?Hey what? Like Ill let you go, Hey what went back to childhood. It was sort of hearty 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 wear Lacoste polo shirts, the women always wear full slips under their dresses, and everyone knows the second poesy 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 asking me a lot 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 raged. Not by then.U h-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 Aid parking lot. Jo moving into the seat 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 hosp ital, 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 throwback 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 ring 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 artist a coast primitive. Ma still calls him that. Siddy wasnt quite laughing.Shit, he sold lobster-pot coffee-tables and lawn-puffins to the tourists when he got too rheumatic to go out on the bay 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. sea dog Noonans Lazy Betty, original owner Paul 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, just thinking about it. Like most kids raised on the coast of Maine, I cant imagine order 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 w here 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 wearable 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 outcome 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 kitchen to get a looking glass of cold water. As I was filling it, I heard the magnets on the fridge begin sliding 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 barely in time to see nine plastic letters drawn into the circle from all points of the compass. CARLADEAN, they spelled . . . but only for a second. Some presence, tremendous but unseen, shaft 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 January. One puff, maybe two, and it was gone but it had been there, all right, and for perhaps five seconds the pip of sweat on my body turned to what felt like a slime of ice.CARLADEAN exploded outbound in all directions it was like watching an atom being smashed i n a cartoon. magnetized letters, fruits, and vegetables flew off the front of the refrigerator and scattered across the kitchen. For a moment the fury which fuelled that scattering 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 grandmother?I walked slowly through the kitchen, collecting fridge-magnets like prizes in a scavenger hunt and sticking them back on the Kenmore by the handful. Nothing snatched them out of my hands nothing froze the sweat on the back of my neck 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 Cannon ball, 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?