Bag of Bones CHAPTER TEN

Around nine oclock, a pickup came d give birth the drive musical mode and park bum my Chevrolet. The truck was new a Dodge Ram so clean and chrome-shiny it looked as if the ten-day p new-fashi atomic number 53ds had expert make off that morning simply it was the descriptorred shade of off-w settle up peerless as the last one and the sign on the drivers adit was the one I remembered WILLIAM BILL DEAN CAMP CHECKING CARETAKING LIGHT CARPENTRY, plus his earphone number. I went out on the fend for stoop to meet him, coffee transfuse in my hand.Mike charge cried, climbing crop up from behind the wheel. Yankee men dont hug thats a truism you can indue right up in that location with tough guys dont dance and real men dont eat quiche exclusively Bill pumped my hand well-nigh hard enough to slop coffee from a cup that was triple-quarters empty, and gave me a seekty clap on the back. His grin revealed a splendidly blatant set of false teeth the kind which used to be ba ttle cryed Roebuckers, because you got them from the catalogue. It occurred to me in passing that my ancient interlocutor from the Lakeview General fink could meet used a pair. It certainly would have improved mealtimes for the nosy elderly fuck. Mike, youre a sight for sore eyesGood to see you, too, I said, grinning. Nor was it a false grin I snarl each right. Things with the power to scare the living shit out of you on a thundery midnight in most cases seem tho interesting in the bright light of a spend morning. Youre look well, my friend.It was true. Bill was four age older and a for raise upful grayer around the edges, plainly former(a)wise the same. Sixty- quintuplet? Seventy? It didnt military issue. t here was no waxy look of ill health round him, and none of the returning-away in the face, principally around the eyes and in the cheeks, that I associate with encroaching infirmity.Sore you, he said, letting go of my hand. We was all so sorry about Jo, Mike. tr ibe in town estimation the world of her. It was a shock, with her so young. My wife conveyed if Id give you her condolences special. Jo made her an afghan the year she had the pneumonia, and Yvette aint never forgot it.Thanks, I said, and my voice wasnt rather my own for a moment or two. It seemed that on the TR my wife was hardly dead at all. And thank Yvette, too.Yuh. E trulythin okay with the house? Othern the air conditioner, I mean. Buggardly affaire Them at the Western Auto promised me that part last week, and now theyre saying maybe non until August first.Its okay. Ive got my Powerbook. If I sine qua non to use it, the kitchen table lead do fine for a desk. And I would want to use it so homoy crosswords, so tiny time.Got your hot water okay?All thats fine, simply at that place is one problem.I s primeped. How did you submit your care lockr you thought your house was haunted? Probably there was no good way probably the best affair to do was to go at it head-on. I had questions, til now I didnt want right to nibble around the edges of the subject and be coy. For one thing, Bill would perceive it. He talent have bought his false teeth out of a catalogue, nevertheless he wasnt stupid.Whats on your mind, Mike? Shoot.I dont accredit how youre going to progress to this, simply He smiled in the way of a man who suddenly understands and held up his hand. Guess maybe I tell apart already.You do? I entangle an enormous sense of relief and I could hardly wait to sense out what he had experienced in Sara, perhaps while drive outing for dead lightbulbs or making sure the roof was holding the snow all right. What did you hear?Mostly what Royce Merrill and Dickie Brooks have been telling, he said. Beyond that, I dont know much. Me and mothers been in Virginia, remember. Only got back last night around eight oclock. Still, its the big topic down to the store.For a moment I remained so glacial on Sara Laughs that I had no psyche what he was lecture about. All I could opine was that folks were gossiping about the strange noises in my house. wherefore the name Royce Merrill clicked and everything else clicked with it. Merrill was the elderly possum with the gold-headed cane and the salacious wink. Old Four-Teeth. My caretaker wasnt talking about ghostly noises he was talking about Mattie Devore.Lets get you a cup of coffee, I said. I need you to tell me what Im stepping in here.When we were seated on the deck, me with fresh coffee and Bill with a cup of tea (Coffee burn me at both ends these days, he said), I asked him first to tell me the Royce Merrill-Dickie Brooks version of my encounter with Mattie and Kyra.It hug druged out to be better than I had expected. both(prenominal) old men had seen me rest at the side of the road with the lesser missy in my arms, and they had observed my Chevy parked halfway into the ditch with the drivers-side admittance open, however apparently neither of them had seen Kyra usi ng the snowy line of Route 68 as a tightrope. As if to compensate for this, however, Royce claimed that Mattie had give me a big my hero hug and a kiss on the rima oris.Did he get the part about how I grabbed her by the ass and slipped her rough tongue? I asked.Bill grinned. Royces imagination aint stretched that far-off since he was fifty or so, and that was forty or more year ago.I never touched her. Well . . . there had been that moment when the back of my hand went sliding along the curve of her breast, only when that had been inadvertent, whatever the young noblewoman herself might think about it.Shite, you dont need to tell me that, he said. silence . . . He said that merely the way my mother always had, letting it trail off on its own, resembling the tail of some ill-omened kite.But what?Youd do well to keep your distance from her, he said. Shes nice enough almost a town girl, dont you know scarce shes trouble. He paused. No, that aint quite fair to her. Shes in trouble.The old man wants custody of the baby, doesnt he?Bill set his teacup down on the deck rail and looked at me with his eyebrows raised. Reflections from the lake ran up his cheek in ripples, plentiful him an exotic look. Howd you know?Guesswork, but of the educated variety. Her father-in-law foretelled me Saturday night during the fireworks. And while he never came right out and tell his purpose, I doubt if Max Devore came all the way back to TR-90 in westbound Maine to repo his daughter-in-laws Jeep and preview. So whats the story, Bill?For several moments he only looked at me. It was almost the look of a man who knows you have contracted a serious disease and isnt sure how much he ought to tell you. Being looked at that way made me profoundly uneasy. It also made me feel that I might be readyting Bill Dean on the spot. Devore had roots here, after all. And, as much as Bill might worry me, I didnt. Jo and I were from away. It could have been worse it could have been M assachusetts or New York but Derry, although in Maine, was alleviate away.Bill? I could use a little navigational help if you You want to stay out of his way, he said. His easy smile was gone. The mans mad.For a moment I thought Bill only meant Devore was pissed off at me, and then I took another look at his face. No, I decided, he didnt mean pissed off he had used the word mad in the most literal way.Mad how? I asked. Mad like Charles Manson? manage Hannibal Lecter? How?Say like Howard Hughes, he said. Ever read any of the stories about him? The lengths hed go to to get the things he cherished? It didnt matter if it was a special kind of hot dog they only sold in L.A. or an airplane designer he wanted to steal from Lockheed or Mcdonnell-Douglas, he had to have what he wanted, and he wouldnt rest until it was under his hand. Devore is the same way. He always was even as a boy he was entrustful, according to the stories you hear in town.My own dad had one he used to tell. He said little Max Devore broke into Scant Larribees tack-shed one winter because he wanted the limber Flyer Scant give his boy Scooter for Christmas. Back around 1923, this would have been. Devore cut both his pass on on broken glass, Dad said, but he got the sleigh. They found him near midnight, sliding down Sugar Maple Hill, holding his hands up to his chest when he went down. Hed bled all over his mittens and his snowsuit. in that locations other stories youll hear about Maxie Devore as a kid if you ask youll hear fifty opposite ones and some may even be true. That one about the sled is true, though. Id bet the farm on it. Because my father didnt lie. It was once morest his religion.Baptist?Nosir, Yankee.1923 was many moons ago, Bill. Sometimes people change.Ayuh, but loosely they dont. I havent seen Devore since he come back and moved into Warringtons, so I cant say for sure, but Ive heard things that stir me think that if he has changed, its for the worse. He didnt come all the way across the country cause he wanted a vacation. He wants the kid. To him shes just another version of Scooter Larribees Flexible Flyer. And my strong advice to you is that you dont want to be the window-glass between him and her.I sipped my coffee and looked out at the lake. Bill gave me time to think, scraping one of his workboots across a splatter of birdshit on the postings while I did it. Crowshit, I reckoned only crows crap in such(prenominal) long and exuberant splatters. matchless thing seemed absolutely sure Mattie Devore was roughly nine miles up Shit Creek with no paddle. Im not the cynic I was at twenty is anyone? but I wasnt naive enough or idealistic enough to believe the law would protect Ms. Doublewide against Mr. data processor . . . not if Mr. Computer decided to play dirty. As a boy hed taken the sled he wanted and gone sliding by himself at midnight, bleeding hands not a concern. And as a man? An old man who had been getting every sled he wanted fo r the last forty years or so?Whats the story with Mattie, Bill? Tell me.It didnt take him long. Country stories are, by and large, simple stories. Which isnt to say theyre not often interesting.Mattie Devore had start-offed life as Mattie Stanch bailiwick, not quite from the TR but from just over the line in Motton. Her father had been a logger, her mother a home beautician (which made it, in a ghastly way, the perfect country marriage). There were three kids. When Dave Stanch-field missed a curve over in Lovell and drove a fully loaded pulptruck into Kewadin Pond, his leave behind kinda lost heart, as they say. She died soon after. There had been no insurance, other than what Stanchfield had been obliged to carry on his Jimmy and his skidder.Talk about your Brothers Grimm, huh? Subtract the Fisher-Price toys behind the house, the two pole hairdryers in the basement beauty salon, the old rustbucket Toyota in the driveway, and you were right there Once upon a time there lived a pa ltry widow and her three children.Mattie is the princess of the piece poor but glorious (that she was beautiful I could personally testify). Now enter the prince. In this case hes a gangling stuttering redhead named calamus Devore. The child of Max Devores sunset years. When hurl met Mattie, he was twenty-one. She had just turned seventeen. The meeting took place at Warringtons, where Mattie had landed a pass job as a waitress. cock Devore was staying across the lake on the Upper Bay, but on Tuesday nights there were pickup softball games at Warringtons, the townies against the summer folks, and he usually canoed across to play. Softball is a great thing for the transmit Devores of the world when youre standing at the plate with a bat in your hands, it doesnt matter if youre gangly. And it sure doesnt matter if you stutter.He confused em quite considerable over to Warringtons, Bill said. They didnt know which team he belonged on the Locals or the Aways. drive didnt care eith er side was fine with him. Some weeks hed play for one, some weeks tother. Either one was more than happy to have him, too, as he could hit a ton and field like an angel. Theyd put him at first base a lot because he was tall, but he was really vitiated there. At second or nobbletop . . . my Hed jump and twirl around like that guy Noriega.You might mean Nureyev, I said.He shrugged. Point is, he was somethin to see. And folks liked him. He fit in. Its mostly young folks that play, you know, and to them its how you do, not who you are. Besides, a lot of em dont know Max Devore from a localisation in the ground.Unless they read The Wall Street Journal and the computer magazines, I said. In those, you run across the name Devore about as often as you run across the name of God in the Bible.No foolin?Well, I consider that in the computer magazines God is more often spelled Gates, but you know what I mean.I spose. But even so, its been sixty-five years since Max Devore spent any real ti me on the TR. You know what happened when he odd, dont you?No, wherefore would I?He looked at me, surprised. consequently a kind of veil seemed to fall over his eyes. He blinked and it cleared. Tell you another time it aint no clandestine but I need to be over to the Harrimans by eleven to check their sump-pump. Dont want to get sidetracked. Point I was tryin to make is just this Lance Devore was accepted as a nice young cruela who could hit a softball three hundred and fifty feet into the trees if he struck it just right. There was no one old enough to hold his old man against him not at Warringtons on Tuesday nights, there wasnt and no one held it against him that his family had dough, either. Hell, there are lots of wealthy people here in the summer. You know that. None worth as much as Max Devore, but beingness rich is only a matter of degree.That wasnt true, and I had just enough money to know it. Wealth is like the Richter scale-once you pass a certain point, the jum ps from one level to the next arent double or triple but some amazing and ruinous multiple you dont even want to think about. Fitzgerald had it straight, although I guess he didnt believe his own insight the very rich are different from you and me. I thought of telling Bill that, and decided to keep my oral cavity shut. He had a sump-pump to fix.Kyras parents met over a keg of beer stuck in a mudhole. Mattie was running the usual Tuesday-night keg out to the softball field from the main grammatical construction on a pusher. Shed gotten it most of the way from the restaurant wing with no trouble, but there had been heavy rain earlier in the week, and the cart at last bogged down in a soft spot. Lances team was up, and Lance was sitting at the end of the bench, waiting his turn to hit. He saw the girl in the white shorts and blue Warringtons polo shirt struggling with the bogged handcart, and got up to help her. Three weeks later they were inseparable and Mattie was pregnant ten w eeks later they were married cardinal calendar months later, Lance Devore was in a coffin, make with softball and cold beer on a summer evening, done with what he called woodsing, done with fatherhood, done with love for the beautiful princess. Just another early finish, hold the happily-ever-after.Bill Dean didnt describe their meeting in any detail he only said, They met at the field she was runnin out the beer and he helped her out of a boghole when she got her handcart stuck.Mattie never said much about that part of it, so I dont know much. Except I do . . . and although some of the details might be wrong, Id bet you a dollar to a hundred 1 got most of them right. That was my summer for knowing things I had no business knowing.Its hot, for one thing 94 is the hottest summer of the decade and July is the hottest month of the summer. President Clinton is being upstaged by Newt and the Republicans. Folks are saying old Slick Willie may not even run for a second term. Boris Yelt sin is reputed to be either dying of heart disease or in a dry-out clinic. The Red Sox are spirit better than they have any right to. In Derry, Johanna Arlen Noonan is maybe starting to feel a little whoopsy in the morning. If so, she does not speak of it to her husband.I see Mattie in her blue polo shirt with her name sewn in white script higher up her left breast. Her white shorts make a pleasing contrast to her tanned legs. I also see her wearing a blue gimme cap with the red W for Warringtons above the long bill. Her pretty darkening-blonde hair is pulled through the hole at the back of the cap and falls to the collar of her shirt. I see her trying to yank the handcart out of the mud without upsetting the keg of beer. Her head is down the shadow thrown by the bill of the cap obscures all of her face but her mouth and small set chin.Luh-let m-me h-h-help, Lance says, and she looks up. The shadow cast by the caps bill falls away, he sees her big blue eyes the ones shell pass o n to their daughter. One look into those eyes and the war is over without a single shot fired he belongs to her as surely as any young man ever belonged to any young woman.The rest, as they say around here, was just courtin.The old man had three children, but Lance was the only one he seemed to care about. (Daughters craziern a shithouse mouse, Bill said matter-of-factly. In some laughin academy in calcium. Think I heard she caught her a cancer, too.) The fact that Lance had no interest in computers and software truly seemed to please his father. He had another son who was capable of running the business. In another way, however, Lance Devores older half brother wasnt capable at all there would be no grandchildren from that one.Rump-wrangler, Bill said. Understand theres a lot of that going around out there in California.There was a fair amount of it going around on the TR, too, I imagined, but thought it not my place to offer sexual cultivation to my caretaker.Lance Devore had b een attending Reed College in Oregon, majoring in forestry the kind of guy who falls in love with green flannel pants, red suspenders, and the sight of condors at dawn. A Brothers Grimm woodcutter, in fact, once you got past the academic jargon. In the summer between his junior and senior years, his father had summoned him to the family compound in Palm Springs, and had presented him with a boxy lawyers suitcase crammed with maps, aerial photos, and legal papers. These had little order that Lance could see, but I doubt that he cared. Imagine a comic-book collector given a crate crammed with rare old copies of Donald Duck. Imagine a movie collector given the rough cut of a never-released film starring Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe. Then imagine this avid young forester realizing that his father owned not just acres or square miles in the vast unincorporated forests of westward Maine, but entire realms.Although Max Devore had left the TR in 1933, hed kept a lively interest in t he area where hed grown up, subscribing to area newspapers and getting magazines such as Down East and the Maine Times. In the early eighties, he had begun to buy long columns of land just east of the Maine-New Hampshire border. God knew there had been plenty for bargain the paper companies which owned most of it had fallen into a recessionary pit, and many had become convinced that their New England holdings and operations would be the best place to demoralise retrenching. So this land, stolen from the Indians and clear-cut ruthlessly in the twenties and fifties, came into Max Devores hands. He might have bought it just because it was there, a good bargain he could permit to take advantage of. He might have bought it as a way of demonstrating to himself that he had really survived his childhood had, in point of fact, triumphed over it.Or he might have bought it as a toy for his belove younger son. In the years when Devore was making his major land purchases in western Maine, Lan ce would have been just a kid . . . but old enough for a perceptive father to see where his interests were tending.Devore asked Lance to spend the summer of 1994 surveying purchases which were, for the most part, already ten years old. He wanted the boy to put the paperwork in order, but he wanted more than that he wanted Lance to make sense of it. It wasnt a land-use recommendation he was looking for, exactly, although I guess he would have listened if Lance had wanted to make one he simply wanted a sense of what he had purchased. Would Lance take a summer in western Maine trying to find out what his sense of it was? At a salary of two or three thousand dollars a month?I imagine Lances reply was a more polite version of Buddy Jellisons Does a crow shit in the pine tops?The kid arrived in June of 1994 and set up shop in a tent on the far side of Dark Score Lake. He was due back at Reed in late August. Instead, though, he decided to take a years leave of absence. His father wasnt pl eased. His father smelled what he called girl trouble.Yeah, but its a damned long sniff from California to Maine, Bill Dean said, leaning against the drivers door of his truck with his sunburned arms folded. He had someone a lot closer than Palm Springs doin his sniffin for him.What are you talking about? I asked.Bout talk. People do it for free, and most are willing to do even more if theyre paid.People like Royce Merrill?Royce might be one, he agreed, but he wouldnt be the only one. Times around here dont go between bad and good if youre a local, they mostly go between bad and worse. So when a guy like Max Devore sends a guy out with a supply of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills . . . Was it someone local? A lawyer?Not a lawyer a real-estate broker named Richard Osgood (a greasy kind of fella was Bill Deans judgment of him) who denned and did business in Motton. Eventually Osgood had employ a lawyer from fortification Rock. The greasy fellas initial job, when the summer of 94 end ed and Lance Devore remained on the TR, was to find out what the hell was going on and put a stop to it.And then? I asked.Bill glanced at his watch, glanced at the sky, then centered his gaze on me. He gave a funny little shrug, as if to say, Were both men of the world, in a quiet and settled sort of way you dont need to ask a silly question like that.Then Lance Devore and Mattie Stanchfield got married in the Grace Baptist Church right up there on Highway 68. There were tales made the rounds about what Osgood mightve done to keep it from comin off I heard he even tried to bribe Reverend Gooch into refusin to hitch em, but I think thats stupid, they just would have gone someplace else. Sides, I dont see much sense in repeating what I dont know for sure.Bill unfolded an arm and began to tick items off on the leathery fingers of his right hand.They got married in the middle of September, 1994, I know that. Out popped the thumb. People looked around with some curiosity to see if the grooms father would put in an appearance, but he never did. Out popped the forefinger. Added to the thumb, it made a pistol. Mattie had a baby in April of 95, making the kiddie a dight premature . . . but not enough to matter. I seen it in the store with my own eyes when it wasnt a week old, and it was just the right size. Out with the second finger. I dont know that Lance Devores old man absolutely refused to help em financially, but I do know they were living in that trailer down below Dickies Garage, and that makes me think they were havin a pretty hard skate.Devore put on the choke-chain, I said. Its what a guy used to getting his own way would do . . . but if he loved the boy the way you seem to think, he might have come around.Maybe, maybe not. He glanced at his watch again. Let me finish up quick and get out of your sunshine . . . but you ought to hear one more little story, because it really shows how the land lies.In July of last year, lessn a month in the lead he died, La nce Devore shows up at the post-office counter in the Lakeview General. Hes got a manila envelope he wants to send, but first he ask to show Carla DeCinces whats inside. She said he was all fluffed out, like daddies sometimes get over their kids when theyre small.I nodded, amused at the idea of disrobeny, stuttery Lance Devore all fluffed out. But I could see it in my minds eye, and the image was also sort of sweet.It was a studio pitcher theyd gotten taken over in the Rock. Showed the kid . . . whats her name? Kayla?Kyra.Ayuh, they call em anything these days, dont they? It showed Kyra sittin in a big leather chair, with a pair of joke spectacles on her little snub of a nose, lookin at one of the aerial photos of the woods over across the lake in TR-100 or TR-110 part of what the old man had picked up, anyway. Carla said the baby had a surprised look on her face, as if she hadnt suspected there could be so much woods in the whole world. Said it was awful cunnin, she did.Cunnin a s a cat a-runnin, I murmured.And the envelope Registered, Express Mail was addressed to Maxwell Devore, in Palm Springs, California.Leading you to deduce that the old man either thawed enough to ask for a picture of his only grandchild, or that Lance Devore thought a picture might thaw him.Bill nodded, looking as pleased as a parent whose child has managed a difficult sum. Dont know if it did, he said. Wasnt enough time to tell, one way or the other. Lance had bought one of those little satellite dishes, like what youve got here. There was a bad storm the day he put it up hail, high wind, blowdowns along the lakeshore, lots of lightnin. That was along toward evening. Lance put his dish up in the afternoon, all done and safe, except around the time the storm commenced he remembered hed left his socket wrench on the trailer roof. He went up to get it so it wouldnt get all wet n rusty He was struck by lightning? Jesus, BillLightnin struck, all right, but it hit across the way. You g o past the place where Wasp Hill Road runs into 68 and youll see the stump of the tree that stroke knocked over. Lance was comin down the ladder with his socket wrench when it hit. If youve never had a lightnin bolt tear right over your head, you dont know how scary it is its like havin a drunk driver swerve across into your lane, headed right for you, and then swing back onto his own side just in time. Close lightnin makes your hair stand up makes your damned shortness of breath stand up. Its apt to play the radio on your steel fillins, it makes your ears hum, and it makes the air taste roasted. Lance fell off the ladder. If he had time to think anything before he hit the ground, I bet he thought he was electrocuted. Poor boy. He loved the TR, but it wasnt lucky for him.Broke his neck?Ayuh. With all the thunder, Mattie never heard him fall or yell or anything. She looked out a minute or two later when it started to hail and he passive wasnt in. And there he was, layin on the g round and lookin up into the friggin hail with his eyes open.Bill looked at his watch one final time, then swung open the door to his truck. The old man wouldnt come for their weddin, but he came for his sons funeral and hes been here ever since. He didnt want nawthin to do with the young woman But he wants the kid, I said. It was no more than what I already knew, but I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach just the same. Dont talk about this, Mattie had asked me on the morning of the Fourth. Its not a good time for Ki and me. How far along in the process has he gotten?On the third turn and headin into the home stretch, I shd say. Therell be a hearin in Castle County Superior Court, maybe later this month, maybe next. The judge could rule then to hand the girl over, or put it off until fall. I dont think it matters which, because the one thing thats never going to happen on Gods green earth is a rulin in favor of the mother. One way or another, that little girl is going to grow u p in California.Put that way, it gave me a very nasty little chill.Bill slid behind the wheel of his truck. Stay out of it, Mike, he said. Stay away from Mattie Devore and her daughter. And if you get called to court on account of seem the two of em on Saturday, smile a lot and say as little as you can.Max Devores charging that shes unfit to raise the child.Ayuh.Bill, I saw the child, and shes fine.He grinned again, but this time there was no amusement in it. Magine she is. But thats not the point. Stay clear of their business, old boy. Its my job to tell you that with Jo gone, I guess Im the only caretaker you got. He slammed the door of his Ram, started the engine, reached for the gearshift, then dropped his hand again as something else occurred to him. If you get a chance, you ought to look for the owls. What owls?Theres a couple of tensile owls around here someplace. They might be in ybasement or out in Jos studio. They come in by mail-order the fall before she passed on.The fa ll of 1993?Ayuh.That cant be right. We hadnt used Sara in the fall of 1993.Tis, though. I was down here puttin on the storm doors when Jo showed up. We had us a natter, and then the UPS truck come. I lugged the box into the entry and had a coffee I was still drinkin it then while she took the owls out of the carton and showed em off to me. Gorry, but they looked real She left not ten minutes after. It was like shed come down to do that errand special, although why anyoned drive all the way from Derry to take delivery of a couple of plastic owls I dont know.When in the fall was it, Bill? Do you remember?Second week of November, he said promptly. Me n the wife went up to Lewiston later that afternoon, to Vettes sisters. It was her birthday. On our way back we stopped at the Castle Rock Agway so Vette could get her Thanksgiving turkey. He looked at me curiously. You really didnt know about them owls?No.Thats a touch peculiar, wouldnt you say?Maybe she told me and I forgot, I said. I guess it doesnt matter much now in any case. Yet it seemed to matter. It was a small thing, but it seemed to matter. Why would Jo want a couple of plastic owls to begin with?To keep the crows from shittin up the woodwork, like theyre doing out on your deck. Crows see those plastic owls, they veer off.I burst out express skin perceptivenesss in spite of my puzzlement . . . or perhaps because of it. Yeah? That really works?Ayuh, longs you move em every now and then so the crows dont get suspicious. Crows are just about the smartest birds going, you know. You look for those owls, save yourself a lot of mess.I will, I said. Plastic owls to scare the crows away it was exactly the sort of companionship Jo would come by (she was like a crow herself in that way, picking up glittery pieces of information that happened to catch her interest) and act upon without bothering to tell me. All at once I was lonely for her again missing her like hell.Good. Some day when Ive got more time, well walk the place all the way around. Woods too, if you want. I think youll be satisfied.Im sure I will. Wheres Devore staying?The bushy eyebrows went up. Warringtons. Him and yous practically neighbors. I thought you must know.I remembered the woman Id seen black bathing-suit and black shorts someway combining to give her an exotic cocktail-party look and nodded. I met his wife.Bill laughed heartily enough at that to feel in need of his handkerchief. He fished it off the splasher (a blue paisley thing the size of a football pennant) and wiped his eyes.Whats so funny? I asked.Skinny woman? color hair? Face sort of like a kids Halloween mask?It was my turn to laugh. Thats her.She aint his wife, shes his whatdoyoucallit, personal assistant. Rogette Whitmore is her name. He pronounced it ro-GET, with a hard G. Devores wivesre all dead. The last one twenty years.What kind of name is Rogette? french?California, he said, and shrugged as if that one word explained everything. Theres peo ple in town scared of her.Is that so?Ayuh. Bill hesitated, then added with one of those smiles we put on when we want others to know that we know were saying something silly Brenda Meserve says shes a witch.And the two of them have been staying at Warringtons almost a year?Ayuh. The Whitmore woman comes n goes, but mostly shes been here. Thinkin in town is that theyll stay until the custody case is finished off, then all go back to California on Devores private jet. Leave Osgood to deal Warringtons, and Sell it? What do you mean, sell it?I thought you must know, Bill said, dropping his gearshift into drive. When old Hugh Emerson told Devore they closed the lodge after Thanksgiving, Devore told him he had no intention of moving. Said he was comfortable right where he was and meant to stay put.He bought the place. I had been by turns surprised, amused, and angered over the last twenty minutes, but never exactly dumbfounded. Now I was. He bought Warringtons Lodge so he wouldnt have to move to Lookout Rock Hotel over in Castle View, or rent a house.Ayuh, so he did. Nine buildins, includin the main lodge and The Sunset Bar twelve acres of woods, a six-hole golf course, and five hundred feet of shorefront on The Street. Plus a two-lane bowlin alley and a softball field. Four and a quarter million. His friend Osgood did the deal and Devore paid with a personal check. I wonder how he found room for all those zeros. See you, Mike.With that he backed up the driveway, leaving me to stand on the stoop, looking after him with my mouth open.Plastic owls.Bill had told me roughly two dozen interesting things in between peeks at his watch, but the one which stayed on top of the pile was the fact (and I did accept it as a fact he had been too positive for me not to) that Jo had come down here to take delivery on a couple of plastic goddam owls.Had she told me?She might have. I didnt remember her doing so, and it seemed to me that I would have, but Jo used to claim that when I got in the zone it was no good to tell me anything stuff went in one ear and out the other. Sometimes shed pin little notes errands to run, calls to make to my shirt, as if I were a first-grader. But wouldnt I recall if shed said Im going down to Sara, hon, UPS is delivering something I want to receive personally, interested in keeping a lady company? Hell wouldnt I have gone? I always liked an excuse to go to the TR. Except Id been working on that screenplay . . . and maybe move it a little . . . notes pinned to the sleeve of my shirt . . . If you go out when youre finished, we need milk and orange juice . . .I inspected what little was left of Jos vegetable tend with the July sun beating down on my neck and thought about owls, the plastic god-dam owls. Suppose Jo had told me she was glide slope down here to Sara Laughs? Suppose I had declined almost without hearing the offer because I was in the writing zone? Even if you granted those things, there was another question why ha d she felt the need to come down here personally when she could have just called someone and asked them to meet the delivery truck? Kenny Auster would have been happy to do it, ditto Mrs. M. And Bill Dean, our caretaker, had actually been here. This led to other questions one was why she hadnt just had UPS deliver the damned things to Derry and finally I decided I couldnt live without actually seeing a bona fide plastic owl for myself. Maybe, I thought, going back to the house, Id put one on the roof of my Chew when it was parked in the driveway. Forestall future outpouring runs.I paused in the entry, struck by a sudden idea, and called Ward Hankins, the guy in Waterville who handles my taxes and my few non-writing-related business affairs.Mike, he said heartily. Hows the lake?The lakes cool and the weathers hot, just the way we like it, I said. Ward, you keep all the records we send you for five years, dont you? Just in case IRS decides to give us some grief? louvre is accepted practice, he said, but I hold your stuff for seven in the eyes of the tax boys, youre a mighty fat pigeon.Better a fat pigeon than a plastic owl, I thought but didnt say. What I said was That includes desk calendars, right? Mine and. Jos, up until she died?You bet. Since neither of you kept diaries, it was the best way to cross-reference receipts and claimed expenses with Could you find Jos desk calendar for 1993 and see what she had going in the second week of November?Td be happy to. What in particular are you looking for?For a moment I saw myself sitting at my kitchen table in Derry on my first night as a widower, holding up a box with the words Norco Home Pregnancy Test printed on the side. Exactly what was I looking for at this late date? Considering that I had loved the lady and she was almost four years in her grave, what was I looking for? Besides trouble, that was?Im looking for two plastic owls, I said. Ward probably thought I was talking to him, but Im not sure I was. I know that sounds weird, but its what Im doing. quite a little you call me back?Within the hour.Good man, I said, and hung up.Now for the actual owls themselves. Where was the most likely spot to store two such interesting artifacts?My eyes went to the cellar door. Elementary, my dear Watson.The cellar stairs were dark and mildly dank. As I stood on the landing groping for the lightswitch, the door banged shut behind me with such force that I cried out in surprise. There was no breeze, no draft, the day was perfectly still, but the door banged shut just the same. Or was sucked shut.I stood in the dark at the top of the stairs, feeling for the lightswitch, smelling that oozy smell that even good concrete foundations get after awhile if there is no proper airing-out. It was cold, much colder than it had been on the other side of the door. I wasnt alone and I knew it. I was afraid, Id be a liar to say I wasnt . . . but I was also fascinated. Something was with me. Something was in her e with me.I dropped my hand away from the wall where the switch was and just stood with my arms at my sides. Some time passed. I dont know how much. My heart was beating furiously in my chest I could feel it in my temples. It was cold. Hello? I asked.Nothing in response. I could hear the faint, irregular drip of water as condensation fell from one of the pipes down below, I could hear my own breathing, and faintly far away, in another world where the sun was out I could hear the triumphant caw of a crow. Perhaps it had just dropped a load on the hood of my car. I really need an owl, I thought. In fact, I dont know how I ever got along without one.Hello? I asked again. Can you talk?Nothing.I wet my lips. I should have felt silly, perhaps, standing there in the dark and calling to the ghosts. But I didnt. Not a bit. The damp had been replaced by a coldness I could feel, and I had company. Oh, yes. Can you tap, then? If you can shut the door, you must be able to tap.I stood there and listened to the soft, isolated drips from the pipes. There was nothing else. I was reaching out for the lightswitch again when there was a soft thud from not far below me. The cellar of Sara Laughs is high, and the upper three feet of the concrete the part which lies against the grounds frost-belt had been insulated with big ash grey-backed panels of Insu-Gard. The sound that I heard was, I am quite sure, a fist striking against one of these.Just a fist hitting a square of insulation, but every gut and muscle of my body seemed to come unwound. My hair stood up. My eyesockets seemed to be expanding and my eyeballs contracting, as if my head were trying to turn into a skull. Every inch of my skin broke out in gooseflesh. Something was in here with me. Very likely something dead. I could no longer have turned on the light if Id wanted to. I no longer had the strength to raise my arm.I tried to talk, and at last, in a husky whisper I hardly recognized, I said Are you really there?Th ud.Who are you? I could still do no better than that husky whisper, the voice of a man giving last instructions to his family as he lies on his shoemakers lastbed. This time there was nothing from below.I tried to think, and what came to my struggling mind was Tony Curtis as Harry Houdini in some old movie. According to the film, Houdini had been the Diogenes of the Ouija board circuit, a guy who spent his spare time just looking for an honest medium. Hed attended one s?ance where the dead communicated by Tap once for yes, twice for no, I said. Can you do that?Thud.It was on the stairs below me . . . but not too far below. Five steps down, six or seven at most. Not quite close enough to touch if I should reach out and moving ridge my hand in the black basement air . . . a thing I could imagine, but not actually imagine doing.Are you . . . My voice trailed off. There was simply no strength in my diaphragm. Chilly air lay on my chest like a flatiron. I gathered all my will and trie d again. Are you Jo?Thud. That soft fist on the insulation. A pause, and then Thud-thud.Yes and no.Then, with no idea why I was asking such an unmindful question Are the owls down here?Thud-thud.Do you know where they are?Thud.Should I look for them?Thud Very hard.Why did she want them? I could ask, but the thing on the stairs had no way to anHot fingers touched my eyes and I almost screamed before realizing it was sweat. I raised my hands in the dark and wiped the heels of them up my face to the hairline. They skidded as if on oil. Cold or not, I was all but bathing in my own sweat.Are you Lance Devore?Thud-thud, at once.Is it safe for me at Sara? Am I safe?Thud. A pause. And I knew it was a pause, that the thing on the stairs wasnt finished. Then Thud-thud. Yes, I was safe. No, I wasnt safe.I had regained marginal control of my arm. I reached out, felt along the wall, and found the lightswitch. I settled my fingers on it. Now the sweat on my face felt as if it were turning to ice. Are you the person who cries in the night? I asked.Thud-thud from below me, and between the two thuds, I flicked the switch. The cellar globes came on. So did a shiny hanging bulb at least a hundred and twenty-five watts over the landing. There was no time for anyone to hide, let alone get away, and no one there to try, either. Also, Mrs. Meserve admirable in so many ways had neglected to sweep the cellar stairs. When I went down to where I estimated the thudding sounds had been coming from, I left tracks in the light dust. But mine were the only ones.I blew out breath in front of me and could see it. So it had been cold, still was cold . . . but it was warming up fast. I blew out another breath and could see just a hint of fog. A third give-up the ghost and there was nothing.I ran my palm over one of the insulated squares. Smooth. I pushed a finger at it, and although I didnt push with any real force, my finger left a dimple in the silvery surface. Easy as pie. If someone had been thumping a fist down here, this stuff should be pitted, the thin silver skin perhaps even broken to reveal the pink fill underneath. But all the squares were smooth.Are you still there? I asked.No response, and yet I had a sense that my visitor was still there. Somewhere.I hope I didnt offend you by turning on the light, I said, and now I did feel slightly odd, standing on my cellar stairs and talking out loud, sermonizing to the spiders. I wanted to see you if I could. I had no idea if that was true or not.Suddenly so suddenly I almost lost my balance and tumbled down the stairs I whirled around, convinced the shroud-creature was behind me, that it had been the thing knocking, it, no polite M. R. James ghost but a horror from around the rim of the universe.There was nothing.I turned around again, took two or three deep, steadying breaths, and then went the rest of the way down the cellar stairs. Beneath them was a perfectly serviceable canoe, complete with paddle. In the cor ner was the accelerator stove wed replaced after buying the place also the claw-foot tub Jo had wanted (over my objections) to turn into a planter. I found a trunk filled with mistily recalled table-linen, a box of mildewy cassette tapes (groups like the Delfonics, Funkadelic, and. 38 Special), several cartons of old dishes. There was a life down here, but ultimately not a very interesting one. Unlike the life Id sensed in Jos studio, this one hadnt been cut short but evolved out of, shed like old skin, and that was all right. Was, in fact, the natural order of things.There was a photo album on a shelf of knickknacks and I took it down, both curious and wary. No bombshells this time, however tight all the pix were landscape shots of Sara Laughs as it had been when we bought it. I found a picture of Jo in bellbottoms, though (her hair parted in the middle and white lipstick on her mouth), and one of Michael Noonan wearing a flowered shirt and muttonchop sideburns that made me cring e (the bachelor Mike in the photo was a Barry White kind of guy I didnt want to recognize and yet did).I found Jos old broken treadmill, a rake Id want if I was still around here come fall, a snowblower Id want even more if I was around come winter, and several cans of paint. What I didnt find was any plastic owls. My insulation-thumping friend had been right.Upstairs the telephone started ringing.I hurried to answer it, going out through the cellar door and then reaching back in to flick off the lightswitch. This amused me and at the same time seemed like perfectly normal behavior . . . just as being careful not to step on sidewalk cracks had seemed like perfectly normal behavior to me when I was a kid. And even if it wasnt normal, what did it matter? Id only been back at Sara for three days, but already Id postulated Noonans First Law of Eccentricity when youre on your own, strange behavior really doesnt seem strange at all.I snagged the cordless. Hello?Hi, Mike. Its Ward.That was quick.The file-rooms just a short walk down the hall, he said. Easy as pie. Theres only one thing on Jos calendar for the second week of November in 1993. It says S-Ks of Maine, Freep, 11 A.M. Thats on Tuesday the sixteenth. Does it help?Yes, I said. Thank you, Ward. It helps a lot.I broke the connection and put the phone back in its cradle. Yes, it helped. S-Ks of Maine was Soup Kitchens of Maine. Jo had been on their board of directors from 1992 until her death. Freep was Freeport. It must have been a board meeting. They had probably discussed plans for feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving . . . and then Jo had driven the seventy or so miles to the TR in order to take delivery of two plastic owls. It didnt answer all the questions, but arent there always questions in the wake of a loved ones death? And no statute of limitations on when they come up.The UFO voice spoke up then. While youre right here by the phone, it said, why not call Bonnie Amudson? Say hi, see how shes doing?Jo had been on four different boards during the nineties, all of them doing charitable work. Her friend Bonnie had persuaded her onto the Soup Kitchens board when a seat fell vacant. They had gone to a lot of the meetings together. Not the one in November of 1993, presumably, and Bonnie could hardly be expected to remember that one particular meeting almost five years later . . . but if shed saved her old minutes-of-the-meeting sheets . . .Exactly what the fuck was I thinking of? Calling Bonnie, making nice, then asking her to check her December 1993 minutes? Was I going to ask her if the attendance report had my wife absent from the November meeting? Was I going to ask if maybe Jo had seemed different that last year of her life? And when Bonnie asked me why I wanted to know, what would I say?Give me that, Jo had snarled in my romance of her. In the dream she hadnt looked like Jo at all, shed looked like some other woman, maybe like the one in the Book of Proverbs, the strange woman whose lips were as honey but whose heart was full of gall and wormwood. A strange woman with fingers as cold as twigs after a frost. Give me that, its my dust-catcher.I went to the cellar door and touched the knob. I turned it . . . then let it go. I didnt want to look down there into the dark, didnt want to risk the chance that something might start thumping again. It was better to leave that door shut. What I wanted was something cold to drink. I went into the kitchen, reached for the electric refrigerator door, then stopped. The magnets were back in a circle again, but this time four letters and one number had been pulled into the center and lined up there. They spelled a single lower-case wordhelloThere was something here. Even back in broad daylight I had no doubt of that. Id asked if it was safe for me to be here and had received a mixed message . . . but that didnt matter. If I left Sara now, there was nowhere to go. I had a key to the house in Derry, but matters had to be resolved here. I knew that, too.Hello, I said, and opened the fridge to get a soda. Whoever or whatever you are, hello.