Bag of Bones by Stephen King

‘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. Don’t talk about this, Mattie had asked me on the morning of the Fourth. It’s 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 sh’d say. There’ll 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 don’t think it matters which, because the one thing that’s never going to happen on God’s green earth is a rulin in favor of the mother. One way or another, that little girl is going to grow up 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 Devore’s charging that she’s unfit to raise the child.’

‘Ayuh.’

‘Bill, I saw the child, and she’s fine.’

He grinned again, but this time there was no amusement in it. ”Magine she is. But that’s not the point. Stay clear of their business, old boy. It’s my job to tell you that; with Jo gone, I guess I’m 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?’

‘There’s a couple of plastic owls around here someplace. They might be in y’basement or out in Jo’s studio. They come in by mail-order the fall before she passed on.’

‘The fall of 1993?’

‘Ayuh.’

‘That can’t be right.’ We hadn’t 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 she’d come down to do that errand special, although why anyone’d drive all the way from Derry to take delivery of a couple of plastic owls I don’t 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 ‘Vette’s sister’s. 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 didn’t know about them owls?’

‘No.’

‘That’s a touch peculiar, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Maybe she told me and I forgot,’ I said. ‘I guess it doesn’t 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 they’re doing out on your deck. Crows see those plastic owls, they veer off.’

I burst out laughing in spite of my puzzlement . . . or perhaps because of it. ‘Yeah? That really works?’

‘Ayuh, long’s you move em every now and then so the crows don’t 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 knowledge 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 I’ve got more time, we’ll walk the place all the way around. Woods too, if you want. I think you’ll be satisfied.’

‘I’m sure I will. Where’s Devore staying?’

The bushy eyebrows went up. ‘Warrington’s. Him and you’s practically neighbors. I thought you must know.’

I remembered the woman I’d seen — black bathing-suit and black shorts somehow 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 dashboard (a blue paisley thing the size of a football pennant) and wiped his eyes.

‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

‘Skinny woman? White hair? Face sort of like a kid’s Halloween mask?’

It was my turn to laugh. ‘That’s her.’

‘She ain’t his wife, she’s his whatdoyoucallit, personal assistant. Rogette Whitmore is her name.’

He pronounced it ro-GET, with a hard G. ‘Devore’s wives’re 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. ‘There’s people 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 we’re saying something silly: ‘Brenda Meserve says she’s a witch.’

‘And the two of them have been staying at Warrington’s almost a year?’

‘Ayuh. The Whitmore woman comes n goes, but mostly she’s been here. Thinkin in town is that they’ll stay until the custody case is finished off, then all go back to California on Devore’s private jet. Leave Osgood to sell Warrington’s, 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 Warrington’s Lodge so he wouldn’t 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 didn’t 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 she’d pin little notes — errands to run, calls to make — to my shirt, as if I were a first-grader. But wouldn’t I recall if she’d said ‘I’m going down to Sara, hon, UPS is delivering something I want to receive personally, interested in keeping a lady company?’ Hell wouldn’t I have gone? I always liked an excuse to go to the TR. Except I’d been working on that screenplay . . . and maybe pushing it a little . . . notes pinned to the sleeve of my shirt . . . If you go out when you’re finished, we need milk and orange juice . . .

I inspected what little was left of Jo’s vegetable garden 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 coming 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 had 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 hadn’t just had UPS deliver the damned things to Derry — and finally I decided I couldn’t live without actually seeing a bona fide plastic owl for myself. Maybe, I thought, going back to the house, I’d put one on the roof of my Chew when it was parked in the driveway. Forestall future bombing runs.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *