JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 220 из 425It could well have been taken at the Fryeburg Fair, and as old and faded as it was, it had a simple, elemental power that all Osteen’sown photos put together could not match. You have seen photographs of western and Depression-era bandidos that have that same look of eerie truth—stern faces above tight ties and collars, eyes not quite lost in the shadows of antique hatbrims.
Sara stood front and center, wearing a black dress and her guitar. She was not outright smiling in this picture, but there seemed to be a smile in her eyes, and I thought they were like the eyes in some paintings, the ones that seem to follow you wherever you move in the room. I studied the photo and thought of her almost spiteful voice in my dream:
What do you want to know, sugar? I suppose I wanted to know about her and the others—who they had been, what they were to each other when they weren’t singing and playing, why they’d left, where they’d gone.
Both of her hands were clearly visible, one posed on the strings of her guitar, the other on the frets, where she had been making a G-chord on an October Fair-day in the year 1900. Her fingers were long, artistic, bare of rings. That didn’t necessarily mean that she and Son Tidwell weren’t married, of course, and even if they hadn’t been, the little boy who’d been caught in the trap could have been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Except the same ghost of a smile lurked in Son Tidwell’s eyes. The resemblance was remarkable. I had an idea that the two of them had been brother and sister, not man and wife.
I thought about these things on my way home, and I thought about cables that were felt rather than seen. . but mostly I found myself thinking about Lindy Briggs—the way she had smiled at me, the way, a little later on, she had not smiled at her bright young librarian with the high-school certification. That worried me.
Then I got back to the house, and all I worried about was my story and the people in it—bags of bones which were putting on flesh daily.
Michael Noonan, Max Devore, and Rogette Whitmore played out their horrible little comedy scene Friday evening. Two other things which bear narrating happened before that.
The first was a call from John Storrow on Thursday night. I was sitting in front of the TV with a baseball game running soundlessly in front of me (the MUTE button with which most remote controls come equipped may be the twentieth century’s finest invention). I was thinking about Sara Tidwell and Son Tidwell and Son Tidwell’s little boy. I was thinking about Storyville, a name any writer just had to love. And in the back of my mind I was thinking about my wife, who had died pregnant.
“Hello?” I said.
Sara stood front and center, wearing a black dress and her guitar. She was not outright smiling in this picture, but there seemed to be a smile in her eyes, and I thought they were like the eyes in some paintings, the ones that seem to follow you wherever you move in the room. I studied the photo and thought of her almost spiteful voice in my dream:
What do you want to know, sugar? I suppose I wanted to know about her and the others—who they had been, what they were to each other when they weren’t singing and playing, why they’d left, where they’d gone.
Both of her hands were clearly visible, one posed on the strings of her guitar, the other on the frets, where she had been making a G-chord on an October Fair-day in the year 1900. Her fingers were long, artistic, bare of rings. That didn’t necessarily mean that she and Son Tidwell weren’t married, of course, and even if they hadn’t been, the little boy who’d been caught in the trap could have been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Except the same ghost of a smile lurked in Son Tidwell’s eyes. The resemblance was remarkable. I had an idea that the two of them had been brother and sister, not man and wife.
I thought about these things on my way home, and I thought about cables that were felt rather than seen. . but mostly I found myself thinking about Lindy Briggs—the way she had smiled at me, the way, a little later on, she had not smiled at her bright young librarian with the high-school certification. That worried me.
Then I got back to the house, and all I worried about was my story and the people in it—bags of bones which were putting on flesh daily.
Michael Noonan, Max Devore, and Rogette Whitmore played out their horrible little comedy scene Friday evening. Two other things which bear narrating happened before that.
The first was a call from John Storrow on Thursday night. I was sitting in front of the TV with a baseball game running soundlessly in front of me (the MUTE button with which most remote controls come equipped may be the twentieth century’s finest invention). I was thinking about Sara Tidwell and Son Tidwell and Son Tidwell’s little boy. I was thinking about Storyville, a name any writer just had to love. And in the back of my mind I was thinking about my wife, who had died pregnant.
“Hello?” I said.