by Stephen King
“No,” I said. “I promised Connie I’d have breakfast with him and his partner at the Inn in the morning.”
“Partner,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “Right.”
“Now, now, Terence. Don’t go all twentieth century on me. These days they could get married in a dozen states, if they wanted. Including this one.”
“Oh, I don’t mind that, who marries who ain’t none of mine, but partner ain’t what that guy is, no matter what Connie may think. I know a freeloader when I see one. Christ, he’s half Con’s age.”
That made me think of Brianna, who was less than half my age.
I gave Terry a hug and a peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Lunch, before I head back to the airport.”
“You got it. And Jamie? You played the spots off that guitar tonight.”
I thanked him and walked to my car. I was opening the door when he spoke my name. I turned back.
“Do you remember Reverend Jacobs’s last Sunday in the pulpit? When he gave what we used to call the Terrible Sermon?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very well.”
“We were all so shocked at the time, and we chalked it up to the grief he was feeling over the loss of his wife and son. But you know what? When I think of Claire, I think I’d like to find him and shake his hand.” Terry’s arms—brawny, like our father’s—were folded over his coverall. “Because what I think now is that he was brave to say those things. What I think now is that every word was right.”
• • •
Terry might have gotten rich, but he was still thrifty, and we ate catered leftovers for Sunday lunch. For most of it, I held Cara Lynne on my lap, feeding her tiny bits of things. When it was time for me to go and I handed her back to Dawn, the baby held her arms out to me.
“No, honey,” I said, kissing that incredibly smooth forehead. “I have to go.”
She only had a dozen words or so—one of them was now my name—but I’ve read that their understanding is much greater, and she knew what I was telling her. The little face wrinkled up, she held her arms out again, and tears filled those blue eyes that were the same shade as my mother’s and my dead sister’s.
“Go quick,” Con said, “or you’ll have to adopt her.”
So I went. Back to my rental car, back to Portland Jetport, back to Denver International, back to Nederland. But I kept thinking of those chubby outstretched arms, and those tear-filled Morton Blue eyes. She was just a year old, but she had wanted me to stay longer. That’s how you know you’re home, I think, no matter how far you’ve gone from it or how long you’ve been in some other place.
Home is where they want you to stay longer.
• • •
During March of 2014, after most of the ski-bunnies had left Vail, Aspen, Steamboat Springs, and our own Eldora Mountain—came news of a monster blizzard approaching. Our piece of the famed Polar Vortex had dropped four feet on Greeley already.
I hung in at Wolfjaw for most of the day, helping Hugh and Mookie batten down the studios and the big house. I stayed until the wind began to pick up and the first flurries started to scatter down from the leaden skies. Then Georgia came out, dressed in a barncoat, earmuffs, and a Wolfjaw Ranch gimme cap. She was in full scold-mode.
“You send those guys home,” she told Hugh. “Unless you want them stuck side o’ the road somewhere until June.”
“Like the Donner Party,” I said. “But I’d never eat Mookie. Too tough.”
“Go on, you two, scat,” Hugh said. “Just double-check the studio doors on your way down to the road.”
We did so, and checked the barn for good measure. I even took the time to dole out apple slices, although Bartleby, my favorite, had died three years ago. By the time I dropped Mookie off at his rooming house, it was snowing hard and the wind was blowing thirty or more. Downtown Nederland was deserted, the traffic lights swinging and drifts already piling up in the doorways of shops that had closed early for the day.
“Get home fast!” Mookie shouted to be heard over the wind. He had knotted his bandanna over his mouth and nose, making him look like an elderly outlaw.
I did as he said, the wind shouldering at my car like a bad-tempered bully the whole way. It pushed me even harder as I made my way up the walk, clutching my collar to my face, which was clean-shaven and unprepared for what Colorado winter felt like when it decided to get serious. I had to use both hands to yank the foyer door shut once I was inside.
I checked my mailbox and saw a single letter. I pulled it out, and one glance was enough to tell me who it was from. Jacobs’s handwriting had grown shaky and spidery, but was still recognizable. The only surprise was the return address: General Delivery, Motton, Maine. Not quite my hometown, but right next door. Too close for comfort, in my opinion.
I tapped the envelope against my palm and almost obeyed my first impulse, which was to rip it to pieces, open the door, and scatter the shreds to the wind. I still imagine doing that—every day, sometimes every hour—and wonder what might have changed if I’d done so. Instead, I turned it over. There, written in the same unsteady hand, was a single sentence: You will want to read this.
I didn’t, but tore it open, anyway. I pulled out a single sheet of paper wrapped around a smaller envelope. Written on the face of this second envelope was Read my letter before opening this one. So I did.
God help me, so I did.
March 4, 2014
Dear Jamie,
I have obtained both of your e-mail addresses, business and personal (as you know, I have my methods), but I am an old man now, with an old man’s ways, and believe that important personal business should be conducted by letter and, when possible, by hand. As you can see, “by hand” is still possible for me, although for how much longer I do not know. I had a minor stroke in the fall of 2012, and another one, rather more serious, last summer. I hope you will excuse the execrable state of my handwriting.
I have another reason for reaching out to you by letter. It’s all too easy to delete e-mails, a bit more difficult to destroy a letter someone has labored over with pen and ink. I will add a line to the back of the envelope to increase the chances of your reading this. If I get no reply, I will have to send an emissary, and that I do not want to do, as time is short.
An emissary. I didn’t like the sound of that.
When we last met, I asked you to serve as my assistant. You refused. I am asking again, and this time I am confident you will agree. You must agree, as my work is now in its final stage. All that remains is one last experiment. I am sure it will succeed, but I dare not proceed alone. I need help, and, just as important, I need a witness. Believe me when I say that you have a stake in this experiment almost as great as my own.
You think you will say no, but I know you quite well, my old friend, and I believe that after you read the enclosed letter, you will change your mind.
All best regards,
Charles D. Jacobs
The wind howled; the sound of snow hitting the panes of the door was like fine sand. The road to Boulder would be closed soon, if it wasn’t already. I held the smaller envelope, thinking something happened. I didn’t want to know what, but it felt too late to turn back now. I sat on the stairs leading to my apartment and opened the enclosure as a particularly savage gust of wind shook the building. The handwriting was as shaky as Jacobs’s, sloping down the page, but I knew it at once. Of course I did; I had received love letters, some of them quite hot, in this same hand. My stomach went soft, and for a moment I thought I might pass out. I lowered my head, the hand not holding the letter covering my eyes and squeezing my temples. When the faintness passed, I was almost sorry.
I read the letter.
Feb. 25, 2014
Dear Pastor Jacobs,
You are my last hope.
I feel crazy writing that, but it’s true. I’m trying to reach you because my friend Jenny
Knowlton urges me to do so. She is an RN and says she never believed in miracle cures (although she does believe in God). Several years ago she went to one of your healing revivals in Providence, RI, and you cured her arthritis, which was so bad she could hardly open and close her hands and she was “hooked” on OxyContin. She said to me, “I told myself I only went to hear Al Stamper sing, because I had all his old records with the Vo-Lites, but down deep I must have known why I was really there, because when he asked if there were any who would be healed, I got in the line.” She said not only did the pain in her hands and arms disappear when you touched her temples with your rings, so did the need to take the Oxy. I found that even harder to believe than the arthritis being cured, because where I live a lot of people use that stuff and I know it is very hard to “kick the habit.”
Pastor Jacobs, I have lung cancer. I lost my hair during the radiation treatments and the chemo made me throw up all the time (I have lost 60 lbs), but at the end of those hellish treatments, the cancer was still there. Now my doctor wants me to have an operation to take out one of my lungs, but my friend Jenny sat me down and said, “I am going to tell you a hard truth, honey. Mostly when they do that it’s already too late, and they know it but do it anyway because it’s all they have left.”
I turned the paper over, my head thudding. For the first time in years, I wished I were high. Being high would make it possible to look at the signature waiting for me below without wanting to scream.
Jenny says she has looked up your cures online and many more than hers appear to be valid. I know you are no longer touring the country. You may be retired, you may be sick, you may even be dead (although I pray not, for your sake as well as my own). Even if you are alive and well, you may no longer read your mail. So I know this is like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it overboard, but something—not just Jenny—urges me to try. After all, sometimes one of those bottles washes up on shore, and someone reads the message inside.
I have refused the operation. You really are my last hope. I know how thin that hope is, and probably foolish, but the Bible says, “With faith, all things are possible.” I will wait to hear . . . or not. Either way, may God bless and keep you.
Yours in hope,
Astrid Soderberg
17 Morgan Pitch Road
Mt. Desert Island, Maine 04660
(207) 555-6454
• • •
Astrid. Dear God.
Astrid again, after all these years. I closed my eyes and saw her standing beneath the fire escape, her face young and beautiful, framed in the hood of her parka.
I opened my eyes and read the note Jacobs had added below her address.
I have seen her charts and latest scans. You may trust me on this; as I said in my covering letter, I have my methods. Radiation and chemotherapy shrank the tumor in her left lung, but did not eradicate it, and more spots have shown up on her right lung. Her condition is grave, but I can save her. You may trust me on this, too, but such cancers are like a fire in dry brush—they move fast. Her time is short, and you must decide at once.
If it’s so goddam short, I wondered, why didn’t you call, or at least send your devil’s bargain by Express Mail?
But I knew. He wanted time to be short, because it wasn’t Astrid he cared about. Astrid was a pawn. I, on the other hand, was one of the pieces in the back row. I had no idea why, but I knew it was so.
The letter shook in my hand as I read the last lines.
If you agree to assist me while I finish my work this coming summer, your old friend (and, perhaps, your lover) will be saved, the cancer expelled from her body. If you refuse, I will let her die. Of course this sounds cruel to you, even monstrous, but if you knew the tremendous import of my work, you would feel differently. Yes, even you! My numbers, both landline and cell, are below. Beside me as I write this is Miss Soderberg’s number. If you call me—with a favorable answer, of course—I will call her.
The choice is yours, Jamie.
I sat on the stairs for two minutes, taking deep breaths and willing my heart to slow. I kept thinking of her hips tilted against mine, my cock throbbing and as hard as a length of rebar, one of her hands caressing the nape of my neck as she blew cigarette smoke into my mouth.
At last I got up and climbed to my apartment, the two letters dangling from my hand. The stairs weren’t long or steep, and I was in good shape from all the bike-riding, but I still had to stop and rest twice to catch my breath before I got to the top, and my hand was shaking so badly I had to steady it with the other before I could get my key into the slot.
The day was dark and my apartment was full of shadows, but I didn’t bother to turn on any lights. What I had to do was best done quickly. I took my phone off my belt, dropped onto the couch, and dialed Jacobs’s cell. It rang a single time.
“Hello, Jamie,” he said.
“You bastard,” I said. “You fucking bastard.”
“Glad to hear from you, too. What’s your decision?”
How much did he know about us? Had I ever told him anything? Had Astrid? If not, how much had he dug up? I didn’t know and it didn’t matter. I could tell from the tone of his voice that he was only asking for form’s sake.
I told him I’d be there ASAP.
“If you want to come, of course. Delighted to have you, although I don’t actually need you until July. If you’d rather not see her . . . as she is now, I mean—”
“I’ll be on a plane as soon as the weather clears. If you can do your thing before I get there . . . fix her . . . heal her . . . then go ahead. But you will not let her leave wherever you are until I see her. No matter what.”
“You don’t trust me, do you?” He sounded as if this made him terribly sad, but I didn’t put much stock in that. He was a master at projecting emotion.
“Why would I, Charlie? I’ve seen you in operation.”
He sighed. The wind gusted, shaking the building and howling along the eaves.
“Where in Motton are you?” I asked . . . but, like Jacobs, only for form’s sake. Life is a wheel, and it always comes back around to where it started.
XI
Goat Mountain. She Waits. Bad News from Missouri.
And so, little more than six months after the brief reincarnation of Chrome Roses, I once more touched down at the Portland Jetport and once more journeyed north to Castle County. Not to Harlow this time, though. Still five miles from the home place, I turned off Route 9 and onto Goat Mountain Road. It was a warm day, but Maine had gotten belted with its own spring blizzard a few days before, and the musical sounds of melting and runoff were everywhere. Pines and spruces still crowded close to the road, their branches sagging under the weight of snow, but the road itself had been plowed and shone wetly in the afternoon sun.
I paused for a couple of minutes at Longmeadow, site of all those childhood MYF picnics, and longer at the spur leading to Skytop. I had no time to revisit the crumbling cabin where Astrid and I had lost our virginity, and couldn’t have even if there had been. The gravel was now paved, and this road had also been plowed, but the way was barred by a stout wooden gate with a padlock the size of an orc’s fist threaded through the latch. If that didn’t make the point, there was a large sign reading ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING and VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW.
A mile further up, I came to the Goat Mountain gatehouse. The way wasn’t barred, but there was a security guard wearing a light jacket over his brown uniform. The jacket was unbuttoned, maybe because the day was warm, maybe to give anyone stopping by a good view of the holstered gun on his hip. It looked like a big one.
I powered down my window, but before the guard could ask for my name, the gatehouse door opened and Charlie Jacobs came out. The bulky parka he wore couldn’t disguise how little was left of him. The last time we’d met, he had been thin. Now he was gaunt. My old fifth busin
ess was limping more severely than ever, and although he might have thought his smile of greeting warm and welcoming, it barely lifted the left side of his face, resulting in something closer to a sneer. The stroke, I thought.
“Jamie, good to see you!” He held out his hand and I shook it . . . although not without reservations. “I didn’t really expect you until tomorrow.”
“In Colorado they get the airports open fast after storms.”
“I’m sure, I’m sure. May I ride back up with you?” He nodded in the direction of the security guard. “Sam brought me down in a golf cart, and there’s a space heater in the guardhouse, but I chill very easily now, even on a day as springlike as this one. Do you remember what we used to call spring snow, Jamie?”
“Poor man’s fertilizer,” I said. “Come on, get in.”
He limped around the front of the car, and when Sam tried to take his arm, Jacobs shook him off briskly. His face didn’t work right, and the limp was actually closer to a lurch, but he was pretty spry, just the same. A man on a mission, I thought.
He got in with a grunt of relief, turned up the heater, and rubbed his gnarled hands in front of the passenger-side vent like a man warming himself over an open fire. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“Does this remind you of the approach to The Latches?” he asked, still rubbing his hands. They made an unpleasant papery sound. “It does me.”
“Well . . . except for that.” I pointed to the left, where there had once been an intermediate-level ski run called Smoky Trail. Or maybe it had been Smoky Twist. Now one of the lift cables had come down, and a couple of the chairs lay half-buried in a drift that would probably be there for another five weeks, unless the weather stayed warm.
“Messy,” he agreed, “but there’s no point fixing it. I’m going to have all the lifts taken out once the snow’s gone. I’d say my skiing days are over, wouldn’t you? Were you ever here when you were a child, Jamie?”
I had been, on half a dozen occasions, tagging along with Con and Terry and their flatlander friends, but I had no more stomach for small talk. “Is she here?”