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Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 106 из 425I reached out to touch it, and my hand faltered an inch or two short as a memory of an old dream (give me that it’s my dust-catcher) slipped across my mind much as that queer draft ad slipped across my face. Then it was gone, and I pulled the plastic, over off. Underneath it was my old green IBM Selectric, which I hadn’o ees.sgpr thought of in years. I leaned closer, knowing that the typewriter ball would be Courier—my old favorite—even before I saw it.
What in God’s name was my old typewriter doing out here? Johanna painted (although not very well), she took photographs (very good ones indeed)
and sometimes sold them, she knitted, she crocheted, she wove and dyed cloth, she could play eight or ten basic chords on the guitar. She could write, of course; most English majors can, which is why they become English majors. Did she demonstrate any blazing degree of literary creativity? No. After a few experiments with poetry as an undergrad, she gave up that particular branch of the arts as a bad job. You writejr both of us, Mike, she had said once. That’s allyours,’ I’ll just take a little taste of everything else. Given the quality of her poems as opposed to the quality of her silks, photographs, and knitted art, I thought that was probably wise.
But here was my old IBM. Why?
“Letters,” I said. “She found it down cellar or something, and rescued it to write letters on.”
Except that wasn’t Jo. She showed me most of her letters, often urging me to write little postscripts of my own, guilt-tripping me with that old saying about how the shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot (“and the writer’s friends would never hear from him if it weren’t for Alexander Graham Bell,” she was apt to add). I hadn’t seen a typed personal letter from my wife in all the time we’d been married—if nothing else, she would have considered it shitty etiquette. She could type, producing mistake-free business letters slowly yet methodically, but she always used my desktop computer or her own Powerbook for those chores.
“What were you up to, hon?” I asked, then began to investigate her desk drawers.
Brenda Meserve had made an effort with these, but Jo’s fundamental nature had defeated her. Surface order (spools of thread segregated by color, for instance) quickly gave way to Jo’s old dear jumble. I found enough of her in those drawers to hurt my heart with a hundred unexpected memories, but I found no paperwork which had been typed on my old IBM, with or without the Courier ball. Not so much as a single page.
What in God’s name was my old typewriter doing out here? Johanna painted (although not very well), she took photographs (very good ones indeed)
and sometimes sold them, she knitted, she crocheted, she wove and dyed cloth, she could play eight or ten basic chords on the guitar. She could write, of course; most English majors can, which is why they become English majors. Did she demonstrate any blazing degree of literary creativity? No. After a few experiments with poetry as an undergrad, she gave up that particular branch of the arts as a bad job. You writejr both of us, Mike, she had said once. That’s allyours,’ I’ll just take a little taste of everything else. Given the quality of her poems as opposed to the quality of her silks, photographs, and knitted art, I thought that was probably wise.
But here was my old IBM. Why?
“Letters,” I said. “She found it down cellar or something, and rescued it to write letters on.”
Except that wasn’t Jo. She showed me most of her letters, often urging me to write little postscripts of my own, guilt-tripping me with that old saying about how the shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot (“and the writer’s friends would never hear from him if it weren’t for Alexander Graham Bell,” she was apt to add). I hadn’t seen a typed personal letter from my wife in all the time we’d been married—if nothing else, she would have considered it shitty etiquette. She could type, producing mistake-free business letters slowly yet methodically, but she always used my desktop computer or her own Powerbook for those chores.
“What were you up to, hon?” I asked, then began to investigate her desk drawers.
Brenda Meserve had made an effort with these, but Jo’s fundamental nature had defeated her. Surface order (spools of thread segregated by color, for instance) quickly gave way to Jo’s old dear jumble. I found enough of her in those drawers to hurt my heart with a hundred unexpected memories, but I found no paperwork which had been typed on my old IBM, with or without the Courier ball. Not so much as a single page.