Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

With the softball players in the background, he looked like a Norman Rockwell archetype. “Guy also say tell you that was a bullshit catch.”

“Tell him people used to say the same thing about Willie Mays all the time.”

“Willie who?”

Ah, youth. Ah, mores. “Just tell him, son. He’ll know.”

I stayed another inning, but by then the game was getting drunk, Devore still hadn’t shown, and I went back home the way I had come. I met one fisherman standing out on a rock and two young people strolling along The Street toward Warrington’s, their hands linked. They said hi and I hi’d them back. I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness.

Some people check their phone answering machines when they get home; that summer I always checked the front of the fridge.

Eenie-meenie-chili-beanie, as Bullwinkle Moose used to say, the spirits are about to speak. That night they hadn’t, although the fruit and vegetable magnets had re-formed into a sinuous shape like a snake or perhaps the letter S taking a nap:

A little later I called John and asked him where Devore had been, and he repeated in words what he had already told me, and much more economically, by gesture. “It’s the first game he’s missed since he came back,” he said. “Mattie tried asking a few people if he was okay, and the consensus seemed to be that he was… at least as far as anyone knew.”

“What do you mean she tried asking a few people?”

“I mean that several wouldn’t even talk to her. “Cut her dead,’ my parents’ generation would have said.” Watch it, buddy, I thought but didn’t say, that’s only ha/fa stepjom my generation. “One of her old girlfriends spoke to her finally, but there’s a general attitude about Mattie Devore. That man Osgood may be a shitty salesman, but as Devore’s Mr. Moneyguy he’s doing a wonderful job of separating Mattie from the other folks in the town. Is it a town, Mike? I don’t quite get that part.”

“It’s just the TR,” I said absently. “There’s no real way to explain it.

Do you actually believe Devore’s bribing everyone? That doesn’t say much for the old Wordsworthian idea of pastoral innocence and goodness, does it?”

“He’s spreading money and using Osgood—maybe Footman, too—to spread stories. And the folks around here seem at least as honest as honest politicians.”

“The ones who stay bought?”

“Yeah. Oh, and I saw one of Devore’s potential star witnesses in the Case of the Runaway Child. Royce Merrill.