Bag of Bones by Stephen King

The tail of his shirt was out, and there was a suspicious lump at the back. It was either a gun or a beeper and looked too big to be a beeper. I glanced at the car again. Blackwall tires. And on the dashboard, oh look at this, a covered blue bubble. The better to creep up on you unsuspected, Gramma.

‘Michael Noonan?’ He was handsome in a way that would be attractive to certain women — the kind who cringe when anybody in their immediate vicinity raises his voice, the kind who rarely call the police when things go wrong at home because, on some miserable secret level, they believe they deserve things to go wrong at home. Wrong things that result in black eyes, dislocated elbows, the occasional cigarette burn on the booby. These are women who more often than not call their husbands or lovers daddy, as in ‘Can I bring you a beer, daddy?’ or ‘Did you have a hard day at work, daddy?’

‘Yes, I’m Michael Noonan. How can I help you?’

This version of daddy turned, bent, and grabbed something from the litter of paperwork on the passenger side of the front seat. Beneath the dash, a two-way radio squawked once, briefly, and fell

silent. He turned back to me with a long, buff-colored folder in one hand. Held it out. ‘This is yours.’

When I didn’t take it, he stepped forward and tried to poke it into one of my palms, which would presumably cause me to close my fingers in a kind of reflex. Instead I raised both hands to shoulder-level, as if he had just told me to put em up, Muggsy.

He looked at me patiently, his face as Irish as the Arlen brothers’ but without the Arlen look of kindness, openness, and curiosity. What was there in place of those things was a species of sour amusement, as if he’d seen all of the world’s pissier behavior, most of it twice. One of his eyebrows had been split open a long time ago, and his cheeks had that reddish windburned look that indicates either ruddy good health or a deep interest in grain-alcohol products. He looked like he could knock you into the gutter and then sit on you to keep you there. I been good, daddy, get off me, don’t be mean.

‘Don’t make this tough. You’re gonna take service of this and we both know it, so don’t make this tough.’

‘Show me some ID first.’

He sighed, rolled his eyes, then reached into one of his shirt pockets. He brought out a leather folder and flipped it open. There was a badge and a photo ID. My new friend was George Footman, Deputy Sheriff, Castle County. The photo was flat and shadowless, like something an assault victim would see in a mugbook.

‘Okay?’ he asked. I took the buff-backed document when he held it out again. He stood there, broadcasting that sense of curdled amusement as I scanned it. I had been subpoenaed to appear in the Castle Rock office of Elmer Durgin, Attorney-at-Law, at ten o’clock on the morning of July 10, 1998 — Friday, in other words. Said Elmer Durgin had been appointed guardian ad litem of Kyra Elizabeth Devore, a minor child. He would take a deposition from me concerning any knowledge I might have of Kyra Elizabeth Devore in regard to her well-being. This deposition would be taken on behalf of Castle County Superior Court and Judge Noble Rancourt. A stenographer would be present. I was assured that this was the court’s depo, and nothing to do with either Plaintiff or Defendant.

Footman said, ‘It’s my job to remind you of the penalties should you fail — ‘

‘Thanks, but let’s just assume you told me all about those, okay? I’ll be there.’ I made shooing gestures at his car. I felt deeply disgusted . . . and I felt interfered with. I had never been served with a process before, and I didn’t care for it.

He went back to his car, started to swing in, then stopped with one hairy arm hung over the top of the open door. His Rolex gleamed in the hazy sunlight.

‘Let me give you a piece of advice,’ he said, and that was enough to tell me anything else I needed to know about the guy. ‘Don’t fuck with Mr. Devore.’

‘Or he’ll squash me like a bug,’ I said.

‘Huh?’

‘Your actual lines are, ‘Let me give you a piece of advice — don’t fuck with Mr. Devore or he’ll squash you like a bug.”

I could see by his expression — half past perplexed, going on angry — that he had meant to say something very much like that. Obviously we’d seen the same movies, including all those in which Robert De Niro plays a psycho. Then his face cleared.

‘Oh sure, you’re the writer,’ he said.

‘That’s what they tell me.’

‘You can say stuff like that ’cause you’re a writer.’

‘Well, it’s a free country, isn’t it?’

‘Ain’t you a smartass, now.’

‘How long have you been working for Max Devore, Deputy? And does the County Sheriffs office know you’re moonlighting?’

‘They know. It’s not a problem. You’re the one that might have the problem, Mr. Smartass Writer.’

I decided it was time to quit this before we descended to the kaka-poopie stage of name-calling.

‘Get out of my driveway, please, Deputy.’

He looked at me a moment longer, obviously searching for that perfect capper line and not finding it. He needed a Mr. Smartass Writer to help him, that was all. ‘I’ll be looking for you on Friday,’ he said.

‘Does that mean you’re going to buy me lunch? Don’t worry, I’m a fairly cheap date.’

His reddish cheeks darkened a degree further, and I could see what they were going to look like when he was sixty, if he didn’t lay off the firewater in the meantime. He got back into his Ford and reversed up my driveway hard enough to make his tires holler. I stood where I was, watching him go. Once he was headed back out Lane Forty-two to the highway, I went into the house. It occurred to me that Deputy Footman’s extracurricular job must pay well, if he could afford a Rolex. On the other hand, maybe it was a knockoff.

Settle down, Michael, Jo’s voice advised. The red rag is gone now, no one’s waving anything in front of you, so just settle —

I shut her voice out. I didn’t want to settle down; I wanted to settle up. I had been interfered with.

I walked over to the hall desk where Jo and I had always kept our pending documents (and our desk calendars, now that I thought about it), and tacked the summons to the bulletin board by one corner of its buff-colored jacket. With that much accomplished, I raised my fist in front of my eyes, looked at the wedding ring on it for a moment, then slammed it against the wall beside the bookcase. I did it hard enough to make an entire row of paperbacks jump. I thought about Mattie Devore’s baggy shorts and Kmart smock, then about her father-in-law paying four and a quarter million dollars for Warrington’s. Writing a personal goddamned check. I thought about Bill Dean saying that one way or another, that little girl was going to grow up in California.

I walked back and forth through the house, still simmering, and finally ended up in front of the fridge. The circle of magnets was the same, but the letters inside had changed. Instead of hello

they now read

help r

‘Helper?’ I said, and as soon as I heard the word out loud, I understood. The letters on the fridge consisted of only a single alphabet (no, not even that, I saw; g and x had been lost someplace), and I’d have to get more. If the front of my Kenmore was going to become a Ouija board, I’d need a good supply of letters. Especially vowels. In the meantime, I moved the h and the e in front of the r.

Now the message read

lp her

I scattered the circle of fruit and vegetable magnets with my palm, spread the letters, and resumed pacing. I had made a decision not to get between Devore and his daughter-in-law, but I’d wound up between them anyway. A deputy in Cleveland clothing had shown up in my driveway, complicating a life that already had its problems . . . and scaring me a little in the bargain. But at least it was a fear of something I could see and understand. All at once I decided I wanted to do more with the summer than worry about ghosts, crying kids, and what my wife had been up to four or five years ago . . . if, in fact, she had been up to anything. I couldn’t write books, but that didn’t mean I had to pick scabs.

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