JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 116 из 425She’d gotten it most of the way from the restaurant wing with no trouble, but there had been heavy rain earlier in the week, and the cart finally bogged down in a soft spot. Lance’s team was up, and Lance was sitting at the end of the bench, waiting his turn to hit. He saw the girl in the white shorts and blue Warrington’s polo shirt struggling with the bogged handcart, and got up to help her.
Three weeks later they were inseparable and Mattie was pregnant; ten weeks later they were married; thirty-seven months later, Lance Devote was in a coffin, done with softball and cold beer on a summer evening, done with what he called “woodsing,” done with fatherhood, done with love for the beautiful princess. Just another early finish, hold the happily-ever-after.
Bill Dean didn’t describe their meeting in any detail; he only said, “They met at the field—she was runnin out the beer and he helped her out of a boghole when she got her handcart stuck.”
Mattie never said much about that part of it, so I don’t know much.
Except I do. . and although some of the details might be wrong, I’d bet you a dollar to a hundred 1 got most of them right. That was my summer for knowing things I had no business knowing.
It’s hot, for one thing—’94 is the hottest summer of the decade and July is the hottest month of the summer. President Clinton is being upstaged by Newt and the Republicans. Folks are saying old Slick Willie may not even run for a second term. Boris Yeltsin is reputed to be either dying of heart disease or in a dry-out clinic. The Red Sox are looking better than they have any right to. In Derry, Johanna Arlen Noonan is maybe starting to feel a little whoopsy in the morning. If so, she does not speak of it to her husband.
I see Mattie in her blue polo shirt with her name sewn in white script above her left breast. Her white shorts make a pleasing contrast to her tanned legs. I also see her wearing a blue gimme cap with the red W for Warrington’s above the long bill. Her pretty dark-blonde hair is pulled through the hole at the back of the cap and falls to the collar of her shirt. I see her trying to yank the handcart out of the mud without upsetting the keg of beer. Her head is down; the shadow thrown by the bill of the cap obscures all of her face but her mouth and small set chin.
“Luh-let m-me h-h-help,” Lance says, and she looks up. The shadow cast by the cap’s bill falls away, he sees her big blue eyes—the ones she’ll pass on to their daughter. One look into those eyes and the war is over without a single shot fired; he belongs to her as surely as any young man ever belonged to any young woman.
Three weeks later they were inseparable and Mattie was pregnant; ten weeks later they were married; thirty-seven months later, Lance Devote was in a coffin, done with softball and cold beer on a summer evening, done with what he called “woodsing,” done with fatherhood, done with love for the beautiful princess. Just another early finish, hold the happily-ever-after.
Bill Dean didn’t describe their meeting in any detail; he only said, “They met at the field—she was runnin out the beer and he helped her out of a boghole when she got her handcart stuck.”
Mattie never said much about that part of it, so I don’t know much.
Except I do. . and although some of the details might be wrong, I’d bet you a dollar to a hundred 1 got most of them right. That was my summer for knowing things I had no business knowing.
It’s hot, for one thing—’94 is the hottest summer of the decade and July is the hottest month of the summer. President Clinton is being upstaged by Newt and the Republicans. Folks are saying old Slick Willie may not even run for a second term. Boris Yeltsin is reputed to be either dying of heart disease or in a dry-out clinic. The Red Sox are looking better than they have any right to. In Derry, Johanna Arlen Noonan is maybe starting to feel a little whoopsy in the morning. If so, she does not speak of it to her husband.
I see Mattie in her blue polo shirt with her name sewn in white script above her left breast. Her white shorts make a pleasing contrast to her tanned legs. I also see her wearing a blue gimme cap with the red W for Warrington’s above the long bill. Her pretty dark-blonde hair is pulled through the hole at the back of the cap and falls to the collar of her shirt. I see her trying to yank the handcart out of the mud without upsetting the keg of beer. Her head is down; the shadow thrown by the bill of the cap obscures all of her face but her mouth and small set chin.
“Luh-let m-me h-h-help,” Lance says, and she looks up. The shadow cast by the cap’s bill falls away, he sees her big blue eyes—the ones she’ll pass on to their daughter. One look into those eyes and the war is over without a single shot fired; he belongs to her as surely as any young man ever belonged to any young woman.