JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 165 из 425“Even if it took three generations to do it,’ he said. At the time I took it as a veiled criticism of Lance.”
“It’s ridiculous, however he meant it,” I said. “My family is from the coast. Prout’s Neck. Other side of the state. My dad was a fisherman and so was his father before him. My great-grandfather, too. They trapped lobsters and threw nets, they didn’t cut trees.” All that was true, and yet my mind tried to fix on something. Some memory connected to what she was saying. Perhaps if I slept on it, it would come back to me.
“Could he have been talking about someone in your wife’s family?”
“Nope.
There are Arlens in Maine—they’re a big family—but most are still in Massachusetts. They do all sorts of things now, but if you go back to the eighteen-eighties, the majority would have been quarrymen and stonecutters in the Malden-Lynn area. Devore was pulling your leg, Mattie.” But even then I suppose I knew he wasn’t. He might have gotten some part of the story wrong—even the sharpest guys begin to lose the edge of their recollection by the time they turn eighty-five—but Max Devore wasn’t much of a leg-puller. I had an image of unseen cables stretching beneath the surface of the earth here on the TR—stretching in all directions, unseen but very powerful.
My hand was resting on top of my car door, and now she touched it briefly. “Can I ask you one other question before you go? It’s stupid, I warn you.”
“Go ahead. Stupid questions are a specialty of mine.”
“Do you have any idea at all what that “Bartleby’ story is about?”
I wanted to laugh, but there was enough moonlight for me to see she was serious, and that I’d hurt her feelings if I did. She was a member of Lindy Briggs’s readers’ circle (where I had once spoken in the late eighties), probably the youngest by at least twenty years, and she was afraid of appearing stupid.
“I have to speak first next time,” she said, “and I’d like to give more than just a summary of the story so they know I’ve read it. I’ve thought about it until my head aches, and I just don’t see. I doubt if it’s one of those stories where everything comes magically clear in the last few pages, either. And I feel like I should see—that it’s right there in front of me.”
That made me think of the cables again—cables running in every direction, a subcutaneous webwork connecting people and places. You couldn’t see them, but you could feel them. Especially if you tried to get away.
“It’s ridiculous, however he meant it,” I said. “My family is from the coast. Prout’s Neck. Other side of the state. My dad was a fisherman and so was his father before him. My great-grandfather, too. They trapped lobsters and threw nets, they didn’t cut trees.” All that was true, and yet my mind tried to fix on something. Some memory connected to what she was saying. Perhaps if I slept on it, it would come back to me.
“Could he have been talking about someone in your wife’s family?”
“Nope.
There are Arlens in Maine—they’re a big family—but most are still in Massachusetts. They do all sorts of things now, but if you go back to the eighteen-eighties, the majority would have been quarrymen and stonecutters in the Malden-Lynn area. Devore was pulling your leg, Mattie.” But even then I suppose I knew he wasn’t. He might have gotten some part of the story wrong—even the sharpest guys begin to lose the edge of their recollection by the time they turn eighty-five—but Max Devore wasn’t much of a leg-puller. I had an image of unseen cables stretching beneath the surface of the earth here on the TR—stretching in all directions, unseen but very powerful.
My hand was resting on top of my car door, and now she touched it briefly. “Can I ask you one other question before you go? It’s stupid, I warn you.”
“Go ahead. Stupid questions are a specialty of mine.”
“Do you have any idea at all what that “Bartleby’ story is about?”
I wanted to laugh, but there was enough moonlight for me to see she was serious, and that I’d hurt her feelings if I did. She was a member of Lindy Briggs’s readers’ circle (where I had once spoken in the late eighties), probably the youngest by at least twenty years, and she was afraid of appearing stupid.
“I have to speak first next time,” she said, “and I’d like to give more than just a summary of the story so they know I’ve read it. I’ve thought about it until my head aches, and I just don’t see. I doubt if it’s one of those stories where everything comes magically clear in the last few pages, either. And I feel like I should see—that it’s right there in front of me.”
That made me think of the cables again—cables running in every direction, a subcutaneous webwork connecting people and places. You couldn’t see them, but you could feel them. Especially if you tried to get away.