by Стивен Кинг
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 Lance’s reply was a more polite version of Buddy Jellison’s “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 year’s leave of absence. His father wasn’t pleased. His father smelled what he called “girl trouble.”
“Yeah, but it’s a damned long sniff from California to Maine,” Bill Dean said, leaning against the driver’s 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 they’re paid.”
“People like Royce Merrill?”
“Royce might be one,” he agreed, “but he wouldn’t be the only one. Times around here don’t go between bad and good; if you’re 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 Dean’s judgment of him) who denned and did business in Motton. Eventually Osgood had hired a lawyer from Castle Rock. The greasy fella’s initial job, when the summer of ’94 ended and Lance Devote 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, “We’re both men of the world, in a quiet and settled sort of way—you don’t 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 might’ve done to keep it from comin off I heard he even tried to bribe Reverend Gooch into refusin to hitch em, but I think that’s stupid, they just would have gone someplace else. “Sides, I don’t see much sense in repeating what I don’t 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 groom’s father would put in an appearance, but he never did.”
Out popped the forefinger. Added to the thumb, it made a pistol.
“Mat-tie 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 wasn’t a week old, and it was just the right size.” Out with the second finger. “I don’t know that Lance Devore’s old man absolutely refused to help em financially, but I do know they were living in that trailer down below Dickie’s Garage, and that makes me think they were havin a pretty hard skate.”
“Devore put on the choke-chain,” I said. “It’s 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, less’n a month before he died, Lance Devore shows up at the post-office counter in the Lakeview General. He’s got a manila envelope he wants to send, but first he needs to show Carla Decinces what’s inside. She said he was all fluffed out, like daddies sometimes get over their kids when they’re small.”
I nodded, amused at the idea of skinny, stuttery Lance Devore all fluffed out. But I could see it in my mind’s eye, and the image was also sort of sweet.
“It was a studio pitcher they’d gotten taken over in the Rock. Showed the kid… what’s her name? Kayla?”
“Kyra.”
’55yuh, they call em anything these days, don’t 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 hadn’t suspected there could be so much woods in the whole world. Said it was awful cunnin, she did.”
“Cunnin as a cat a-runnin,” I murmured.
“Sknd 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. “Don’t know if it did,” he said. “Wasn’t enough time to tell, one way or the other. Lance had bought one of those little satellite dishes, like what you’ve got here. There was a bad storm the day he put it up—hail, high wind, blowdowns along the lakeshore, lots oflightnin. 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 he’d left his socket wrench on the trailer roof. He went up to get it so it wouldn’t get all wet n rusty—”
“He was struck by lightning? Jesus, Bill!”
“Lightnin struck, all right, but it hit across the way. You go past the place where Wasp Hill Road runs into 68 and you’ll see the stump of the tree that stroke knocked over. Lance was comin down the ladder with his socket wrench when it hit. If you’ve never had a lightnin bolt tear right over your head, you don’t know how scary it is—it’s like havin a drunk driver veer 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 prick stand up. It’s 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 wasn’t 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 still wasn’t in. And there he was, layin on the ground 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 wouldn’t come for their weddin, but he came for his son’s funeral and he’s been here ever since. He didn’t 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. Don’t talk about this, Mattie had asked me on the morning of the Fourth. It’s not a good time Jar 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.” ’yuh.”
“B
ill, 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 19937”
“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 lookand 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 roGET, 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?”
’kyuh.” 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 DVAV.
“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 god-dam 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 mi& 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. I paused in the entry, struck by a sudden idea, and called Ward Han-kins, the guy in Waterville who handles my taxes and my few non-writing-related business affairs. “Mike,” he said heartily. “How’s the lake?”
“The lake’s cool and the weather’s hot, just the way we like it,” I said. “Ward, you keep all the records we send you for five years, don’t you? Just in case IRS decides to give us some grief?.”
“Five is accepted practice,” he sai
d, “but I hold your stuff for seven—in the eyes of the tax boys, you’re a mighty fat pigeon.” Better afatpigeon than ap/astic owl, I thought but didn’t say. What I said was “That includes desk calendars, right? Mine and. Jo’s, 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 Jo’s 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? “I’m looking for two plastic owls,” I said. Ward probably thought I was talking to him, but I’m not sure I was. “I know that sounds weird, but it’s what I’m doing.
Can 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 wasn’t alone and I knew it. I was afraid, I’d be a liar to say I wasn’t.