Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

Sara and the Red-Top Boys (sometimes there was a Red-Top Girl in there, as well; membership in the band was fluid, changing with every performance) played around western Maine for over ayear, maybe closer to two years. In towns all up and down the Western Line—Farmington, Skowhegan, Bridgton, Gates Falls, Castle Rock, Morton, Fryeburg—you’ll still come across their old show-posters at barn bazaars and junk-atoriums. Sara and the Red-Tops were great favorites on the circuit, and they got along all right at home on the TR, too, which never surprised me. At the end of the day Robert Frost—that utilitarian and often unpleasant poet—was right: in the northeastern three we really do believe that good fences make good neighbors. We squawk and then keep a miserly peace, the kind with gimlet eyes and a tucked-down mouth. “They pay their bills,” we say. “I ain’t never had to shoot one a their dogs,” we say. “They keep themselves to themselves,” we say, as if isolation were a virtue. And, of course, the defining virtue: “They don’t take charity.”

And at some point, Sara Tidwell became Sara Laughs.

In the end, though, TR-90 mustn’t have been what they wanted, because after playing a county fair or two in the late summer of 1901, the clan moved on. Their neat little cabins provided summer-rental income for the Day family until 1933, when they burned in the summer fires which charred the east and north sides of the lake. End of story.

Except for her music, that was. Her music had lived.

I got up from the rock I had been sitting on, stretched my arms and my back, and walked back down the lane, singing one of her songs as I went.

Dring my hike back down the lane to the house, I tried to think about nothing at all. My first editor used to say that eighty-five percent of what goes on in a novelist’s head is none of his business, a sentiment I’ve never believed should be restricted to just writers. So-called higher thought is, by and large, highly overrated. When trouble comes and steps have to be taken, I find it’s generally better to just stand aside and let the boys in the basement do their work. That’s blue-collar labor down there, non-union guys with lots of muscles and tattoos.

Instinct is their specialty, and they refer problems upstairs for actual cogitation only as a last resort.

When I tried to call Mattie Devote, an extremely peculiar thing happened—one that had nothing at all ro do with spooks, as far as I could tell. Instead of an open-hum line when I pushed the cordless’s on button, I got silence. Then, just as I was thinking I must have left the phone in the north bedroom off the hook, I realized ir wasn’t complete silence.