JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 192 из 425Here is what I knew beyond that point, the secretarial work I’d do over the next several weeks, assuming that my marvellously recovered ability to work held up:
One day when Karen Whiting was three, the phone had rung while she and her mother were sitting in the patio hot tub. Regina thought of asking the yard-guy to answer it, then decided to get it herself-their regular man was out with the flu, and she didn’t feel comfortable about asking a stranger for a favor. Cautioning her daughter to sit still, Regina hopped out to answer the phone. When Karen put up a hand to keep from being splashed as her mother left the tub, she dropped the doll she had been bathing. When she bent to pick it up, her hair became caught in one of the hot tub’s powerful intakes. (It was reading of a fatal acci dent like this that had originally kicked the story off in my mind two or three years before.)
The yard-man, some no-name in a khaki shirt sent over by a day-labor outfit, saw what was happening. He raced across the lawn, dove headfirst into the tub, and yanked the child from the bottom, leaving hair and a good chunk of scalp clogging the jet when he did. He’d give her artificial respiration until she began to breathe again. (This would be a wonderful, suspenseful scene, and I couldn’t wait to write it.) He would refuse all of the hysterical, relieved mother’s offers of recompense, although he’d finally give her an address so that her husband could talk to him. Only both the address and his name, John Sanborn, would turn out to be a fake.
Two years later the ex-hooker with the respectable second life sees the man who saved her child on the front page of the Miami paper. His name is given as John Shackleford and he has been arrested for the rape-murder of a nine-year-old girl. And, the article goes on, he is suspected in over forty other murders, many of the victims children.
“Have you caught Baseball Cap?” one of the reporters would yell at the press conference. “Is John Shackleford Baseball Cap?”
“Well,” I said,going downstairs, “they sure think he is.”
I could hear too many boats out on the lake this afternoon to make nude bathing an option. I pulled on my suit, slung a towel over my shoulders, and started down the path—the one which had been lined with glowing paper lanterns in my dream—to wash off the sweat of my nightmares and my unexpected morning’s labors.
There are twenty-three railroad-tie steps between Sara and the lake. I had gone down only four or five before the enormity of what had just happened hit me. My mouth began to tremble. The colors of the trees and the sky mixed together as my eyes teared up.
One day when Karen Whiting was three, the phone had rung while she and her mother were sitting in the patio hot tub. Regina thought of asking the yard-guy to answer it, then decided to get it herself-their regular man was out with the flu, and she didn’t feel comfortable about asking a stranger for a favor. Cautioning her daughter to sit still, Regina hopped out to answer the phone. When Karen put up a hand to keep from being splashed as her mother left the tub, she dropped the doll she had been bathing. When she bent to pick it up, her hair became caught in one of the hot tub’s powerful intakes. (It was reading of a fatal acci dent like this that had originally kicked the story off in my mind two or three years before.)
The yard-man, some no-name in a khaki shirt sent over by a day-labor outfit, saw what was happening. He raced across the lawn, dove headfirst into the tub, and yanked the child from the bottom, leaving hair and a good chunk of scalp clogging the jet when he did. He’d give her artificial respiration until she began to breathe again. (This would be a wonderful, suspenseful scene, and I couldn’t wait to write it.) He would refuse all of the hysterical, relieved mother’s offers of recompense, although he’d finally give her an address so that her husband could talk to him. Only both the address and his name, John Sanborn, would turn out to be a fake.
Two years later the ex-hooker with the respectable second life sees the man who saved her child on the front page of the Miami paper. His name is given as John Shackleford and he has been arrested for the rape-murder of a nine-year-old girl. And, the article goes on, he is suspected in over forty other murders, many of the victims children.
“Have you caught Baseball Cap?” one of the reporters would yell at the press conference. “Is John Shackleford Baseball Cap?”
“Well,” I said,going downstairs, “they sure think he is.”
I could hear too many boats out on the lake this afternoon to make nude bathing an option. I pulled on my suit, slung a towel over my shoulders, and started down the path—the one which had been lined with glowing paper lanterns in my dream—to wash off the sweat of my nightmares and my unexpected morning’s labors.
There are twenty-three railroad-tie steps between Sara and the lake. I had gone down only four or five before the enormity of what had just happened hit me. My mouth began to tremble. The colors of the trees and the sky mixed together as my eyes teared up.