JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 230 из 425“Bonnie?”
I took the phone away from my ear to see if the red LOW BATTERY light was on, and it squawkedmy name. I put it back.
“Bonnie, what is it?”
“There were no long drives those last nine or ten months. We talked on the phone and I remember once we had lunch in Waterville, but there were no long drives. She quit.”
I thumbed through the fax-sheets again. Meetings noted everywhere in Jo’s neat hand, Soup Kitchens of Maine among them.
“I don’t understand. She quit the Soup Kitchens board?”
Another moment of silence. Then, speaking carefully: “No, Mike. She quit all of them. She finished with Woman Shelters and Teen Shelters at the end of ’93—her term was up then. The other two, Soup Kitchens and Friends of Maine Libraries… she resigned in October or November of 1993.”
Meetings noted on all the sheets Ward had sent me. Dozens of them.
Meetings in 1993, meetings in 1994. Meetings of boards to which she’d no longer belonged. She had been down here. On all those supposed meeting-days, Jo had been on the TR. I would have bet my life on it.
But why?
Devore was mad, all right, mad as a hatter, and he couldn’t have caught me at a worse, weaker, more terrified moment. And I think that everything from that moment on was almost pre-ordained. From there to the terrible storm they still talk about in this part of the world, it all came down like a rockslide.
I felt fine the rest of Friday afternoon—my talk with Bonnie left a lot of questions unanswered, but it had been a tonic just the same. I made a vegetable stir-fry (atonement for my latest plunge into the Fry-O-Lator at the Village Cafe) and ate it while I watched the evening news. On the other side of the lake the sun was sliding down toward the mountains and flooding the living room with gold. When Tom Brokaw closed up shop, I decided to take a walk north along The Street—I’d go as far as I could and still be assured of getting home by dark, and as I went I’d think about the things Bill Dean and Bonnie Amudson had told me. I’d think about them the way I sometimes walked and thought about plot-snags in whatever I was working on.
I walked down the railroad-tie steps, still feeling perfectly fine (confused, but fine), started off along The Street, then paused to look at the Green Lady. Even with the evening sun shining fully upon her, it was hard to see her for what she actually was—just a birch tree with a half-dead pine standing behind it, one branch of the latter making a pointing arm. It was as if the Green Lady were saying go north, young man, go north. Well, I wasn’t exactly young, but I could go north, all right. For awhile, at least.
I took the phone away from my ear to see if the red LOW BATTERY light was on, and it squawkedmy name. I put it back.
“Bonnie, what is it?”
“There were no long drives those last nine or ten months. We talked on the phone and I remember once we had lunch in Waterville, but there were no long drives. She quit.”
I thumbed through the fax-sheets again. Meetings noted everywhere in Jo’s neat hand, Soup Kitchens of Maine among them.
“I don’t understand. She quit the Soup Kitchens board?”
Another moment of silence. Then, speaking carefully: “No, Mike. She quit all of them. She finished with Woman Shelters and Teen Shelters at the end of ’93—her term was up then. The other two, Soup Kitchens and Friends of Maine Libraries… she resigned in October or November of 1993.”
Meetings noted on all the sheets Ward had sent me. Dozens of them.
Meetings in 1993, meetings in 1994. Meetings of boards to which she’d no longer belonged. She had been down here. On all those supposed meeting-days, Jo had been on the TR. I would have bet my life on it.
But why?
Devore was mad, all right, mad as a hatter, and he couldn’t have caught me at a worse, weaker, more terrified moment. And I think that everything from that moment on was almost pre-ordained. From there to the terrible storm they still talk about in this part of the world, it all came down like a rockslide.
I felt fine the rest of Friday afternoon—my talk with Bonnie left a lot of questions unanswered, but it had been a tonic just the same. I made a vegetable stir-fry (atonement for my latest plunge into the Fry-O-Lator at the Village Cafe) and ate it while I watched the evening news. On the other side of the lake the sun was sliding down toward the mountains and flooding the living room with gold. When Tom Brokaw closed up shop, I decided to take a walk north along The Street—I’d go as far as I could and still be assured of getting home by dark, and as I went I’d think about the things Bill Dean and Bonnie Amudson had told me. I’d think about them the way I sometimes walked and thought about plot-snags in whatever I was working on.
I walked down the railroad-tie steps, still feeling perfectly fine (confused, but fine), started off along The Street, then paused to look at the Green Lady. Even with the evening sun shining fully upon her, it was hard to see her for what she actually was—just a birch tree with a half-dead pine standing behind it, one branch of the latter making a pointing arm. It was as if the Green Lady were saying go north, young man, go north. Well, I wasn’t exactly young, but I could go north, all right. For awhile, at least.