JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 224 из 425I’d drink some juice, gobble some toast, then sit behind the IBM until almost noon, watching the Courier ball dance and twirl as the pages floated through the machine and came out with writing on them.
That old magic, so strange and wonderful. It never really felt like work to me, although I called it that; it felt like some weird kind of mental trampoline I bounced on. Those were springs that took away all the weight of the world for awhile. At noon I’d break, drive down to Buddy Jellison’s greaseatorium for something nasty, then return and work for another hour or so. After that I would swim and take a long dreamless nap in the north bedroom. I had barely poked my head into the master bedroom at the south end of the house, and if Mrs. M. thought this was odd, she kept it to herself. On Friday the seventeenth, I stopped at the Lakeview General on my way back to the house to gas up my Chevrolet.
There are pumps at the All-Purpose Garage, and the go-juice was a penny or two cheaper, but I didn’t like the vibe. Today, as I stood in front of the store with the pump on automatic feed, looking off toward the mountains, Bill Dean’s Dodge Ram pulled in on the other side of the island. He climbed down and gave me a smile. “How’s it going, Mike?”
“Pretty fair.”
“Brenda says you’re writin up a storm.”
“I am,” I said, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask for an update on the broken second-floor air conditioner. The tip of my tongue was where it stayed.
I was still too nervous about my rediscovered ability to want to change anything about the environment in which I was doing it. Stupid, maybe, but sometimes things work just because you think they work. It’s as good a definition of faith as any. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Very glad.” I thought he was sincere enough, but he somehow didn’t sound like Bill.
Not the one who had greeted me back, anyway. “I’ve been looking up some old stuff about my side of the lake,” I said. “Sara and the Red-Tops?
You always were sort ofint’rested in them, I remember.”
“Them, yes, but not just them. Lots of history. I was talking to Mrs. M… and she told me about Normal Auster. Kenny’s father.” Bill’s smile stayed on, and he only paused a moment in the act of unscrewing the cap on his gas tank, but I still had a sense, quite clear, that he had frozen inside. “You wouldn’t write about a thing like that, would you, Mike? Because there’s a lot of people around here that’d feel it bad and take it wrong. I told Jo the same thing.”
“Jo?” I felt an urge to step between the two pumps and over the island so I could grab him by the arm. “What’s Jo got to do with this?” He looked at me cautiously and long.
That old magic, so strange and wonderful. It never really felt like work to me, although I called it that; it felt like some weird kind of mental trampoline I bounced on. Those were springs that took away all the weight of the world for awhile. At noon I’d break, drive down to Buddy Jellison’s greaseatorium for something nasty, then return and work for another hour or so. After that I would swim and take a long dreamless nap in the north bedroom. I had barely poked my head into the master bedroom at the south end of the house, and if Mrs. M. thought this was odd, she kept it to herself. On Friday the seventeenth, I stopped at the Lakeview General on my way back to the house to gas up my Chevrolet.
There are pumps at the All-Purpose Garage, and the go-juice was a penny or two cheaper, but I didn’t like the vibe. Today, as I stood in front of the store with the pump on automatic feed, looking off toward the mountains, Bill Dean’s Dodge Ram pulled in on the other side of the island. He climbed down and gave me a smile. “How’s it going, Mike?”
“Pretty fair.”
“Brenda says you’re writin up a storm.”
“I am,” I said, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask for an update on the broken second-floor air conditioner. The tip of my tongue was where it stayed.
I was still too nervous about my rediscovered ability to want to change anything about the environment in which I was doing it. Stupid, maybe, but sometimes things work just because you think they work. It’s as good a definition of faith as any. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Very glad.” I thought he was sincere enough, but he somehow didn’t sound like Bill.
Not the one who had greeted me back, anyway. “I’ve been looking up some old stuff about my side of the lake,” I said. “Sara and the Red-Tops?
You always were sort ofint’rested in them, I remember.”
“Them, yes, but not just them. Lots of history. I was talking to Mrs. M… and she told me about Normal Auster. Kenny’s father.” Bill’s smile stayed on, and he only paused a moment in the act of unscrewing the cap on his gas tank, but I still had a sense, quite clear, that he had frozen inside. “You wouldn’t write about a thing like that, would you, Mike? Because there’s a lot of people around here that’d feel it bad and take it wrong. I told Jo the same thing.”
“Jo?” I felt an urge to step between the two pumps and over the island so I could grab him by the arm. “What’s Jo got to do with this?” He looked at me cautiously and long.