Bag of Bones by Stephen King

‘Well, that’s good,’ he said. ‘That’s real good news. A lot of folks down here’ve missed you, Mike.

Quite a few that want to condole with you about your wife, don’t you know.’

Was there the faintest note of reproach in his voice, or was that just my imagination? Certainly Jo and I had cast a shadow in the area; we had made significant contributions to the little library which served the Motton-Kashwakamak-Castle View area, and Jo had headed the successful fund drive to get an area bookmobile up and running. In addition to that, she had been part of a ladies’

sewing circle (afghans were her specialty), and a member in good standing of the Castle County Crafts Co-op. Visits to the sick . . . helping out with the annual volunteer fire department blood drive . . . womaning a booth during Summerfest in Castle Rock . . . and stuff like that was only where she had started. She didn’t do it in any ostentatious Lady Bountiful way, either, but unobtrusively and humbly, with her head lowered (often to hide a rather sharp smile, I should add

— my Jo had a Biercean sense of humor). Christ, I thought, maybe old Bill had a right to sound reproachful.

‘People miss her,’ I said.

‘Ayuh, they do.’

‘I still miss her a lot myself. I think that’s why I’ve stayed away from the lake. That’s where a lot of our good times were.’

‘I s’pose so. But it’ll be damned good to see you down this way. I’ll get busy. The place is all right

— you could move into it this afternoon, if you was a mind — but when a house has stood empty the way Sara has, it gets stale.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ll get Brenda Meserve to clean the whole shebang from top to bottom. Same gal you always had, don’t you know.’

‘Brenda’s a little old for comprehensive spring cleaning, isn’t she?’

The lady in question was about sixty-five, stout, kind, and gleefully vulgar. She was especially fond of jokes about the travelling salesman who spent the night like a rabbit, jumping from hole to hole. No Mrs. Danvers she.

‘Ladies like Brenda Meserve never get too old to oversee the festivities,’ Bill said. ‘She’ll get two or three girls to do the vacuuming and heavy lifting. Set you back maybe three hundred dollars.

Sound all right?’

‘Like a bargain.’

‘The well needs to be tested, and the gennie, too, although I’m sure both of em’s okay. I seen a hornet’s nest by Jo’s old studio that I want to smoke before the woods get dry. Oh, and the roof of the old house — you know, the middle piece — needs to be reshingled. I shoulda talked to you about that last year, but with you not using the place, I let her slide. You stand good for that, too?’

‘Yes, up to ten grand. Beyond that, call me.’

‘If we have to go over ten, I’ll smile and kiss a pig.’

‘Try to have it all done before I get down there, okay?’

‘Coss. You’ll want your privacy, I know that . . . just so long’s you know you won’t get any right away. We was shocked when she went so young; all of us were. Shocked and sad. She was a dear.’

From a Yankee mouth, that word rhymes with Leah.

‘Thank you, Bill.’ I felt tears prickle my eyes. Grief is like a drunken house guest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug. ‘Thanks for saying.’

‘You’ll get your share of carrot-cakes, chummy.’ He laughed, but a little doubtfully, as if afraid he was committing an impropriety. ‘I can eat a lot of carrot-cake,’ I said, ‘and if folks overdo it, well, hasn’t Kenny Auster still got that big Irish wolfhound?’

‘Yuh, that thing’d eat cake til he busted!’ Bill cried in high good humor. He cackled until he was coughing. I waited, smiling a little myself. ‘Blueberry, he calls that dog, damned if I know why.

Ain’t he the gormiest thing!’ I assumed he meant the dog and not the dog’s master. Kenny Auster, not much more than five feet tall and neatly made, was the opposite of gormy, that peculiar Maine adjective that means clumsy, awkward, and clay-footed.

I suddenly realized that I missed these people — Bill and Brenda and Buddy Jellison and Kenny Auster and all the others who lived year-round at the lake. I even missed Blueberry, the Irish wolfhound, who trotted everywhere with his head up just as if he had half a brain in it and long strands of saliva depending from his jaws.

‘I’ve also got to get down there and clean up the winter blowdown,’ Bill said. He sounded embarrassed. ‘It ain’t bad this year — that last big storm was all snow over our way, thank God —

but there’s still a fair amount of happy crappy I ain’t got to yet. I shoulda put it behind me long before now. You not using the place ain’t an excuse. I been cashing your checks.’ There was something amusing about listening to the grizzled old fart beating his breast; Jo would have kicked her feet and giggled, I’m quite sure.

‘If everything’s right and running by July Fourth, Bill, I’ll be happy.’

‘You’ll be happy as a clam in a mudflat, then. That’s a promise.’ Bill sounded as happy as a clam in a mudflat himself, and I was glad. ‘Goingter come down and write a book by the water? Like in the old days? Not that the last couple ain’t been fine, my wife couldn’t put that last one down, but

— ‘

‘I don’t know,’ I said, which was the truth. And then an idea struck me. ‘Bill, would you do me a favor before you clean up the driveway and turn Brenda Meserve loose?’

‘Happy to if I can,’ he said, so I told him what I wanted.

Four days later, I got a little package with this laconic return address: DEAN/GEN DELIV/TR-90

(DARK SCORE). I opened it and shook out twenty photographs which had been taken with one of those little cameras you use once and then throw away.

Bill had filled out the roll with various views of the house, most conveying that subtle air of neglect a place gets when it’s not used enough . . . even a place that’s caretook (to use Bill’s word) gets that neglected feel after awhile.

I barely glanced at these. The first four were the ones I wanted, and I lined them up on the kitchen table, where the strong sunlight would fall directly on them. Bill had taken these from the top of the driveway, pointing the disposable camera down at the sprawl of Sara Laughs. I could see the moss which had grown not only on south wings, as well. I could see the litter of fallen branches and the drifts of pine needles on the driveway. Bill must have been tempted to clear all that away before taking his snaps, but he hadn’t. I’d told him exactly what I wanted — ‘warts and all’ was the phrase I had used — and Bill had given it to me.

The bushes on either side of the driveway had thickened a lot since Jo and I had spent any significant amount of time at the lake; they hadn’t exactly run wild, but yes, some of the longer branches did seem to yearn toward each other across the asphalt like separated lovers.

Yet what my eye came back to again and again was the stoop at the foot of the driveway. The other resemblances between the photographs and my dreams of Sara Laughs might only be coincidental (or the writer’s often surprisingly practical imagination at work), but I could explain the sunflowers growing out through the boards of the stoop no more than I had been able to explain the cut on the back of my hand.

I turned one of the photos over. On the back, in a spidery script, Bill had written: These fellows are way early . . . and trespassing!

I flipped back to the picture side. Three sunflowers, growing up through the boards of the stoop.

Not two, not four, but three large sunflowers with faces like searchlights.

Just like the ones in my dream.

CHAPTER SIX

On July 3rd of 1998, I threw two suitcases and my Powerbook in the trunk of my mid-sized Chevrolet, started to back down the driveway, then stopped and went into the house again. It felt empty and somehow forlorn, like a faithful lover who has been dropped and cannot understand why. The furniture wasn’t covered and the power was still on (I understood that The Great Lake Experiment might turn out to be a swift and total failure), but 14 Benton Street felt deserted, all the same. Rooms too full of furniture to echo still did when I walked through them, and everywhere there seemed to be too much dusty light.

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