by Стивен Кинг
“There’s always the lake if things get too bad. Hey Sid?”
“Hey what?” Like I’ll let you go, Hey what went back to childhood. It was sort of comforting; it was also sort of spooky. “Our folks all came from Prout’s Neck, right? I mean on Daddy’s side.” Mom came from another world entirely—one where the men wear Lacoste polo shirts, the women always wear full slips under their dresses, and everyone knows the second verse of “Dixie” by heart. She had met my dad in Portland while competing in a college cheerleading event.
Materfamilias came from Memphis quality, darling, and didn’t let you forget it. “I guess so,” he said. “Yeah. But don’t go asking me a lot of family-tree questions, Mike—I’m still not sure what the difference is between a nephew and a cousin, and I told Jo the same thing.”
“Did you?”
Everything inside me had gone very still… but I can’t say I was surprised. Not by then. “Uh-huh, you bet.”
“What did she want to know?”
“Everything I knew. Which isn’t much. I could have told her all about Ma’s great-great-grandfather, the one who got killed by the Indians, but Jo didn’t seem to care about any of Ma’s folks.”
“When would this have been?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might.”
“Okay, let’s see. I think it was around the time Patrick had his appendectomy. Yeah, I’m sure it was. February of ’94. It might have been March, but I’m pretty sure it was February.” Six months from the Rite Aid parking lot. Jo moving into the shadow of her own death like a woman stepping beneath the shade of an awning. Not pregnant, though, not yet. Jo making day-trips to the TR. Jo asking questions, some of the sort that made people feel bad, according to Bill Dean. . but she’d gone on asking just the same. Yeah. Because once she got onto something, Jo was like a terrier with a rag in its jaws. Had she been asking questions of the man in the brown sport-coat?
Who was the man in the brown sportcoat?
“Pat was in the hospital, sure. Dr. Alpert said he was doing fine, but when the phone rang I jumped for it—I half-expected it to be him, Alpert, saying Pat had had a relapse or something.”
“Where in God’s name did you get this sense of impending doom, Sid?”
“I dunno, buddy, but it’s there. Anyway, it’s not Alpert, it’s Johanna. She wants to know if we had any ancestors—three, maybe even four generations back who lived there where you are, or in one of the surrounding towns. I told her I didn’t know, but you might. Know, I mean. She said she didn’t want to ask you because it was a surprise. Was it a surprise?”
“A big one,” I said. “Daddy was a lobsterman—”
“Bite your tongue, he was an artist—’a seacoast primitive.” Ma still calls him that.” Siddy wasn’t quite laughing.
“Shit, he sold lobster-pot coffee-tables and lawn-puffins to the tourists when he got too rheumatic to go out on the bay and haul traps.”
“I know that, but Ma’s got her marriage edited like a movie for television.’’
How true. Our own version of Blanche Du Bois. “Dad was a lobster-man in Prout’s Neck. He—”
Siddy interrupted, singing the first verse of “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”
in a horrible offkey tenor.
“Come on, this is serious. He had his first boat from his father, right?”
“That’s the story,” Sid agreed. “Jack Noonan’s Lazy Betty, original owner Paul Noonan. Also of Prout’s. Boat took a hell of a pasting in Hurricane Donna, back in 1960. I think it was Donna.”
Two years after I was born. “And Daddy put it up for sale in ’63.”
“Yep.
I don’t know whatever became of it, but it was Grampy Paul’s to begin with, all right. Do you remember all the lobster stew we ate when we were kids, Mikey?”
“Seacoast meatloaf,” I said, hardly thinking about it. Like most kids raised on the coast of Maine, I can’t imagine ordering lobster in a restau-rant-that’s for fiatlanders. I was thinking about Grampy Paul, who had been born in the 1890s. Paul Noonan begat Jack Noonan, Jack Noonan begat Mike and Sid Noonan, and that was really all I knew, except the Noonans had all grown up a long way from where I now stood sweating my brains out.
They shit in the same pit.
Devore had gotten it wrong, that was all—when we Noonans weren’t wearing polo shirts and being Memphis quality, we were Prout’s Neckers.
It was unlikely that Devore’s great-grandfather and my own would have had anything to do with each other in any case; the old rip had been twice my age, and that meant the generations didn’t match up.
But if he had been totally wrong, what had Jo been on about? “Mike?” Sid asked. “Are you there?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay? You don’t sound so great, I have to tell you.”
“It’s the heat,” I said. “Not to mention your sense of impending doom.
Thanks for calling, Siddy.”
“Thanks for being there, brother.”
“Kickin,” I said.
I went out to the kitchen to get a glass of cold water. As I was filling it, I heard the magnets on the fridge begin sliding around. I whirled, spilling some of the water on my bare feet and hardly noticing. I was as excited as a kid who thinks he may glimpse Santa Claus before he shoots back up the chimney.
I was barely in time to see nine plastic letters drawn into the circle from all points of the compass. CARLADEAN, they spelled. . but only for a second. Some presence, tremendous but unseen, shot past me. Not a hair on my head stirred, but there was still a strong sense of being buffeted, the way you’re buffeted by the air of a passing express train if you’re standing near the platform yellow-line when the train bolts through. I cried out in surprise and groped my glass of water back onto the counter, spilling it. I no longer felt in need of cold water, because the temperature in the kitchen of Sara Laughs had dropped off the table.
I blew out my breath and saw vapor, as you do on a cold day in January.
One puff, maybe two, and it was gone—but it had been there, all right, and for perhaps five seconds the film of sweat on my body turned to what felt like a slime of ice.
CARLADEAN exploded outward in all directions—it was like watching an atom being smashed in a cartoon. Magnetized letters, fruits, and vegetables flew off the front of the refrigerator and scattered across the kitchen. For a moment the fury which fuelled that scattering was something I could almost taste, like gunpowder.
And something gave way before it, going with a sighing, rueful whisper I had heard before: “Oh Mike. Oh Mike.” It was the voice I’d caught on the Memo-Scriber tape, and although I hadn’t been sure then, I was now—it was Jo’s voice.
But who was the other one? Why had it scattered the letters?
Carla Dean. Not Bill’s wife; that was Yvette. His mother? His grandmother?
I walked slowly through the kitchen, collecting fridge-magnets like prizes in a scavenger hunt and sticking them back on the Kenmore by the handful. Nothing snatched them out of my hands; nothing froze the sweat on the back of my neck; Bunter’s bell didn’t ring. Still, I wasn’t alone, and I knew it.
CARLADEAN: Jo had wanted me to know.
Something else hadn’t. Something else had shot past me like the Wabash Cannonball, trying to scatter the letters before I could read them.
Jo was here; a boy who wept in the night was here, too.
And what else?
What else was sharing my house with me?
I didn’t see them at first, which wasn’t surprising; it seemed that half of Castle Rock was on the town common as that sultry Saturday afternoon edged on toward evening. The air was bright with hazy midsummer light, and in it kids swarmed over the playground equipment, a number of old men in bright red vests—some sort of club, I assumed—played chess, and a group of young people lay on the grass listening to a teenager in a headband playing the guitar and singing one I remembered from an old lan and Sylvia record
, a cheery tune that went “Ella Speed was havin her. lovin fun, John Martin shot Ella with a Colt jrty-one…”
I saw no joggers, and no dogs chasing Frisbees. It was just too god-dam hot.
I was turning to look at the bandshell, where an eight-man combo called The Castle Rockers was setting up (I had an idea “In the Mood”
33o was about as close as they got to rock and roll), when a small person hit me from behind, grabbing me just above the knees and almost dumping me on the grass. “Gotcha!” the small person cried gleefully. “Kyra Devore!” Mattie called, sounding both amused and irritated. “You’ll knock him down!” I turned, dropped the grease-spotted Mcdonald’s bag I had been carrying, and lifted the kid up. It felt natural, and it felt wonderful. You don’t realize the weight of a healthy child until you hold one, nor do you fully comprehend the life that runs through them like a bright wire. I didn’t get choked up (“Don’t go all corny on me, Mike,” Siddy would sometimes whisper when we were kids at the movies and I got wet-eyed at a sad part), but I thought of Jo, yes. And the child she had been carrying when she fell down in that stupid parking lot, yes to that, too. Ki was squealing and laughing, her arms outspread and her hair hanging down in two amusing clumps accented by Raggedy Ann and Andy barrettes. “Don’t tackle your own quarterback!” I yelled, grinning, and to my delight she yelled it right back at me: “Don’t taggle yer own quarter-mack! Don’t taggle yer own quartermack!” I set her on her feet, both of us laughing. Ki took a step backward, tripped herself, and sat down on the grass, laughing harder than ever. I had a mean thought, then, brief but oh so clear: if only the old lizard could see how much he was missed. How sad we were at his passing. Mattie walked over, and tonight she looked as I’d half-imagined her when I first met her—like one of those lovely children of privilege you see at the country club, either goofing with their friends or sitting seriously at dinner with their parents. She was in a white sleeveless dress and low heels, her hair falling loose around her shoulders, a touch of lipstick on her mouth. Her eyes had a brilliance in them that hadn’t been there before.
When she hugged me I could smell her perfume and feel the press of her firm little breasts. I kissed her cheek; she kissed me high up on the jaw, making a smack in my ear that I felt all the way down my back. “Say things are going to be better now,” she whispered, still holding me.
“Lots better now,” I said, and she hugged me again, tight. Then she stepped away “You better have brought plenty food, big boy, because we plenty hungry womens. Right, Kyra?”
“I taggled my own quartermack,” Ki said, then leaned back on her elbows, giggling deliciously at the bright and hazy sky. “Come on,” I said, and grabbed her by the middle I toted her that way to a nearby picnic table, Ki kicking her legs and waving her arms and laughing I set her down on the bench; she slid off it and beneath the table, boneless as an eel and still laughing ’?dl right, Kyra Elizabeth,” Mattie said. “Sit up and show the other side”
“Good girl, good girl,” she said, clambering up beside me. “That’s the other side to me, Mike”
“I’m sure,” I said. Inside the bag there were Big Macs and fries for Mattie and me. For Ki there was a colorful box upon which Ronald Mcdonald and his unindicted co-conspirators capered “Mattie, I got a Happy Meal! Mike got me a Happy Meal! They have toys!”
“Well see what yours is.” Kyra opened the box, poked around, then smiled It lit up her whole face She brought out something that I at first thought was a big dust-ball For one horrible second I was back in my dream, the one of Jo under the bed with the book over her face Give me that, she had snarled It’s my dust-catcher. And something else, too—some other association, perhaps from some other dream I couldn’t get hold of it. “Mike?” Mattie asked Curiosity in her voice, and maybe borderline concern. “It’s a doggy!” Ki said “I won a doggy in my Happy Meal!” Yes; of course A dog. A little stuffed dog. And it was gray, not black… although why I’d care about the color either way I didn’t know.
“That’s a pretty good prize,” I said, taking it. It was soft, which was good, and it was gray, which was better Being gray made it all right, somehow Crazy but true I handed it back to her and smiled. “What’s his name?” Ki asked, jumping the little dog back and forth across her Happy Meal box. “What doggy’s name, Mike?” And, without thinking, I said, “Strickland.”
I thought she’d look puzzled, but she didn’t. She looked delighted.
“Stricken!” she said, bouncing the dog back and forth in ever-higher leaps over the box. “Stricken! Stricken! My dog Stricken!”
“Who’s this guy Strickland?” Mattie asked, smiling a little. She had begun to unwrap her hamburger.
’5 character in a book I read once,” I said, watching Ki play with the little puffball dog. “No one real.”
“My grampa died,” she said five minutes later.
We were still at the picnic table but the food was mostly gone.
Strick-land the stuffed puffball had been set to guard the remaining french fries. I had been scanning the ebb and flow of people, wondering who was here from the TR observing our tryst and simply burning to carry the news back home. I saw no one I knew, but that didn’t mean a whole tot, considering how long I’d been away from this part of the world.
Mattie put down her burger and looked at Ki with some anxiety, but I thought the kid was okay—she had been giving news, not expressing grief.
“I know he did,” I said.
“Grampa was awful old.” Ki pinched a couple of french fries between her pudgy little fingers. They rose to her mouth, then gloop, all gone.
“He’s with Lord Jesus now. We had all about Lord Jesus in V.B.S.”
I3s, Ki, I thought, right now Grampy’s probably teaching Lord Jesus how to use Pixel Easel and asking if there might be a whore handy.
“Lord Jesus walked on water and also changed the wine into macaroni.”
“Yes, something like that,” I said. “It’s sad when people die, isn’t it?”
“It would be sad if Mattie died, and it would be sad if you died, but Grampy was old.” She said it as though I hadn’t quite grasped this con cept the first time. “In heaven he’ll get all fixed up.”
“That’s a good way to look at it, hon,” I said.
Mattie did maintenance on Ki’s drooping barrettes, working carefully and with a kind of absent love. I thought she glowed in the summer light, her skin in smooth, tanned contrast to the white dress she had probably bought at one of the discount stores, and I understood that I loved her.
Maybe that was all right. “I miss the white nana, though,” Ki said, and this time she did look sad. She picked up the stuffed dog, tried to feed him a french fry, then put him down again. Her small, pretty face looked pensive now, and I could see a whisper of her grandfather in it. It was far back but it was there, perceptible, another ghost. “Mom says white nana went back to California with Grampy’s early remains.”
“Earthly remains, Ki-bird,” Mattie said. “That means his body.”
“Will white nana come back and see me, Mike?”
“I don’t know.”
“We had a game. It was all rhymes.” She looked more pensive than ever.
“Your mom told me about that game,” I said.
“She won’t be back,” Ki said, answering her own question. One very large tear rolled down her right cheek. She picked up “Stricken,” stood him on his back legs for a second, then put him back on guard-duty. Mattie slipped an arm around her, but Ki didn’t seem to notice. “White nana didn’t really like me. She was just pretending to like me. That was her job.”
Mattie and I exchanged a glance.
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” Ki said. Over by where the kid was playing the guitar, a juggler in whiteface had started up, working with half a dozen colored balls. Kyra brightened a little. “Mommy-bommy, may I go watch that funny white man?”
“Are you done eating?”
> “Yeah, I’m full.”
“Thank Mike.”
“Don’t taggle yer own quartermack,” she said, then laughed kindly to show she was just pulling my leg. “Thanks, Mike.”
“Not a problem,” I said, and then, because that sounded a little old-fashioned: “Kickin.”
“You can go as far as that tree, but no farther,” Mattie said. “And you know why.”
“So you can see me. I will.”
She grabbed Strickland and started to run off, then stopped and looked over her shoulder at me. “I guess it was the fridgeafator people,” she said, then corrected herself very carefully and seriously.
“The ree fridge-a-rator people.” My heart took a hard double beat in my chest. “It was the refrigerator people what, Ki?” I asked.
“That said white nana didn’t really like me.” Then she ran off toward the juggler, oblivious to the heat.
Mattie watched her go, then turned back to me. “I haven’t talked to anybody about Ki’s fridgeafator people. Neither has she, until now. Not that there are any real people, but the letters seem to move around by themselves. It’s like a Ouija board.”
“Do they spell things?”
For a long time she said nothing. Then she nodded. “Not always, but sometimes.” Another pause. “Most times, actually. Ki calls it mail from the people in the refrigerator.” She smiled, but her eyes were a little scared. “Are they special magnetic letters, do you think? Or have we got a poltergeist working the lakefront?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry I brought them, if they’re a problem.”
“Don’t be silly. You gave them to her, and you’re a tremendously big deal to her right now. She talks about you all the time. She was much more interested in picking out something pretty to wear for you tonight than she was in her grandfather’s death. I was supposed to wear something pretty, too, Kyra insisted. She’s not that way about people, usually—she takes them when they’re there and leaves them when they’re gone. That’s not such a bad way for a little girl to grow up, I sometimes think.”
“You both dressed pretty,” I said. “That much I’m sure of.”