JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 91 из 425When the Beach Boys gave way to Rare Earth, I got out of the car, opened the storage cabinet, and pulled out two plastic garbage cans. There was a guy named Stan Proulx who came down to yank the trash twice a week (or there was four years ago, I reminded myself), one of Bill Dean’s farflung network of part-timers working for cash off the books, but I didn’t think Stan would have been down to collect the current accumulation of swill because of the holiday, and I was right. There Were two plastic garbage bags in each can. I hauled them out (cursing myself for a fool even while I was doing it) and untwisted the yellow ties.
I really don’t think I was so obsessed that I would have dumped a bunch of wet garbage out on my stoop if it had come to that (of course I’ll never know for sure, and maybe that’s for the best), but it didn’t. No one had lived in the house for four years, remember, and it’s occupancy that produces garbage—everything from coffee-grounds to used sanitary napkins. The stuff in these bags was dry trash swept together and carted out by Brenda Meserve’s cleaning crew.
There were nine vacuum-cleaner disposal bags containing forty-eight months of dust, dirt, and dead flies. There were wads of paper towels, some smelling of aromatic furniture polish and others of the sharper but still pleasant aroma of Windex. There was a moldy mattress pad and a silk jacket which had that unmistakable dined-upon-by-moths look. The jacket certainly caused me no regrets; a mistake of my young manhood, it looked like something from the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” era.
Goo-goo-joob, baby. There was a box filled with broken glass… another filled with unrecognizable (and presumably out-of-date) plumbing fixtures. . a torn and filthy square of carpet. . done-to-death dishtowels, faded and ragged. . the old oven-gloves I’d used when cooking burgers and chicken on the barbecue… The sticker was in a twist at the bottom of the second bag. I’d known I would find it—from the moment I’d felt that faintly tacky patch on the sign, I’d known—but I’d needed to see it for myself. The same way old Doubting Thomas had needed to get the blood under his fingernails, I suppose. I placed my find on a board of the sunwarmed stoop and smoothed it out with my hand.
It was shredded around the edges. I guessed Bill had probably used a putty-knife to scrape it off. He hadn’t wanted Mr. Noo-nan to come back to the lake after four years and discover some beered-up kid had slapped a radio-station sticker on his driveway sign. Gorry, no, ’t’wouldn’t be proper, deah.
I really don’t think I was so obsessed that I would have dumped a bunch of wet garbage out on my stoop if it had come to that (of course I’ll never know for sure, and maybe that’s for the best), but it didn’t. No one had lived in the house for four years, remember, and it’s occupancy that produces garbage—everything from coffee-grounds to used sanitary napkins. The stuff in these bags was dry trash swept together and carted out by Brenda Meserve’s cleaning crew.
There were nine vacuum-cleaner disposal bags containing forty-eight months of dust, dirt, and dead flies. There were wads of paper towels, some smelling of aromatic furniture polish and others of the sharper but still pleasant aroma of Windex. There was a moldy mattress pad and a silk jacket which had that unmistakable dined-upon-by-moths look. The jacket certainly caused me no regrets; a mistake of my young manhood, it looked like something from the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” era.
Goo-goo-joob, baby. There was a box filled with broken glass… another filled with unrecognizable (and presumably out-of-date) plumbing fixtures. . a torn and filthy square of carpet. . done-to-death dishtowels, faded and ragged. . the old oven-gloves I’d used when cooking burgers and chicken on the barbecue… The sticker was in a twist at the bottom of the second bag. I’d known I would find it—from the moment I’d felt that faintly tacky patch on the sign, I’d known—but I’d needed to see it for myself. The same way old Doubting Thomas had needed to get the blood under his fingernails, I suppose. I placed my find on a board of the sunwarmed stoop and smoothed it out with my hand.
It was shredded around the edges. I guessed Bill had probably used a putty-knife to scrape it off. He hadn’t wanted Mr. Noo-nan to come back to the lake after four years and discover some beered-up kid had slapped a radio-station sticker on his driveway sign. Gorry, no, ’t’wouldn’t be proper, deah.