Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

At last I sat down in my desk chair, hearing the same old creaks as it took my weight and the same old rumble of the casters as I rolled it forward, snugging my legs into the kneehole. Then I sat facing the keyboard, sweating hard, still remembering the high board at the Y, how springy it had been under my bare feet as I walked its length, remembering the echoing quality of the voices below me, remembering the smell of chlorine and the steady low throb of the air-exchangers: fwung-fwung-fwung-fwung, as if the water had its own secret heartbeat. I had stood at the end of the board wondering (and not for the first time!) if you could be paralyzed if you hit the water wrong. Probably not, but you could die of fear. There were documented cases of that in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, which served me as science between the ages of eight and fourteen.

Go on/Jo’s voice cried. My version of her voice was usually calm and collected; this time it was shrill. Stop dithering andgo on!

I reached for the IBM’s rocker-switch, now remembering the day I had dropped my Word Six program into the Powerbook’s trash. Goodbye, oldpal, I had thought.

“Please let this work,” I said. “Please.”

I lowered my hand and flicked the switch. The machine came on. The Courier ball did a preliminary twirl, like a ballet dancer standing in the wings, waiting to go on. I picked up a piece of paper, saw my sweaty fingers were leaving marks, and didn’t care. I rolled it into the machine, centered it, then wrote Chapter One and waited for the storm to break.



CHAPTER 4

The ringing of the phone—or, more accurately, the way I received the ringing of the phone—was as familiar as the creaks of my chair or the hum of the old IBM Selectric. It seemed to come from far away at first, then to approach like a whistling train coming down on a crossing.

There was no extension in my office or Jo’s; the upstairs phone, an old-fashioned rotary-dial, was on a table in the hall between them—in what Jo used to call “no-man’s-land.” The temperature out there must have been at least ninety degrees, but the air still felt cool on my skin after the office. I was so oiled with sweat that I looked like a slightly pot-bellied version of the muscle-boys I sometimes saw when I was working out.

“Hello?”

“Mike? Did I wake you? Were you sleeping?” It was Mattie, but a different one from last night. This one wasn’t afraid or even tentative; this one sounded so happy she was almost bubbling over. It was almost cer tainly the Mattie who had attracted Lance Devore. “Not sleeping,” I said. “Writing a little.”

“Get out! I thought you were retired.