JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 413 из 425I’m sure they’ve got a point, and I don’t argue with them—you rarely win an argument with a genuine Yankee old-timer, never if it’s about the weather—but for me the storm of July 21, 1998, will always be the storm. And I know a little girl who feels the same. She may live until 2100, given all the benefits of modern medicine, but I think that for Kyra Elizabeth Devore that will always be the storm. The one where her dead mother came to her dressed in the lake.
The first vehicle to come down my driveway didn’t arrive until almost six o’clock. It turned out to be not a Castle County police car but a yellow bucket-loader with flashing yellow lights on top of the cab and a guy in a Central Maine Power Company slicker working the controls. The guy in the other seat was a cop, though—was in fact Norris Ridgewick, the County Sheriff himself. And he came to my door with his gun drawn.
The change in the weather the TV guy had promised had already arrived, clouds and storm-cells driven east by a chilly wind running just under gale force. Trees had continued to fall in the dripping woods for at least an hour after the rain stopped. Around five o’clock I made us toasted-cheese sandwiches and tomato soup… comfort food, Jo would have called it. Kyra ate listlessly, but she did eat, and she drank a lot of milk. I had wrapped her in another of my tee-shirts and she tied her own hair back. I offered her the white ribbons, but she shook her head decisively and opted for a rubber band instead. “I don’t like those ribbons anymore,” she said. I decided I didn’t, either, and threw them away. Ki watched me do it and offered no objection. Then I crossed the living room to the woodstove. “What are you doing?” She finished her second glass of milk, wriggled off her chair, and came over to me.
“Making a fire. Maybe all those hot days thinned my blood. That’s what my mom would have said, anyway.” She watched silently as I pulled sheet after sheet from the pile of paper I’d taken off the table and stacked on top of the woodstove, balled each one up, and slipped it in through the door. When I felt I’d loaded enough, I began to lay bits of kindling on top. “What’s written on those papers?” Ki asked. “Nothing important.”
“Is it a story?”
“Not really. It was more like… oh, I don’t know. A crossword puzzle. Or a letter.”
“Pretty long letter,” she said, and then laid her head against my leg as if she were tired. “Yeah,” I said. “Love letters usually are, but keeping them around is a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Because they…” Can come back to haunt you was what rose to mind, but I wouldn’t say it.
The first vehicle to come down my driveway didn’t arrive until almost six o’clock. It turned out to be not a Castle County police car but a yellow bucket-loader with flashing yellow lights on top of the cab and a guy in a Central Maine Power Company slicker working the controls. The guy in the other seat was a cop, though—was in fact Norris Ridgewick, the County Sheriff himself. And he came to my door with his gun drawn.
The change in the weather the TV guy had promised had already arrived, clouds and storm-cells driven east by a chilly wind running just under gale force. Trees had continued to fall in the dripping woods for at least an hour after the rain stopped. Around five o’clock I made us toasted-cheese sandwiches and tomato soup… comfort food, Jo would have called it. Kyra ate listlessly, but she did eat, and she drank a lot of milk. I had wrapped her in another of my tee-shirts and she tied her own hair back. I offered her the white ribbons, but she shook her head decisively and opted for a rubber band instead. “I don’t like those ribbons anymore,” she said. I decided I didn’t, either, and threw them away. Ki watched me do it and offered no objection. Then I crossed the living room to the woodstove. “What are you doing?” She finished her second glass of milk, wriggled off her chair, and came over to me.
“Making a fire. Maybe all those hot days thinned my blood. That’s what my mom would have said, anyway.” She watched silently as I pulled sheet after sheet from the pile of paper I’d taken off the table and stacked on top of the woodstove, balled each one up, and slipped it in through the door. When I felt I’d loaded enough, I began to lay bits of kindling on top. “What’s written on those papers?” Ki asked. “Nothing important.”
“Is it a story?”
“Not really. It was more like… oh, I don’t know. A crossword puzzle. Or a letter.”
“Pretty long letter,” she said, and then laid her head against my leg as if she were tired. “Yeah,” I said. “Love letters usually are, but keeping them around is a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Because they…” Can come back to haunt you was what rose to mind, but I wouldn’t say it.