JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 362 из 425”
“I want my mommy! I want my Mattie!”
I walked her the way I think you’re supposed to walk babies who have colic. She understood too much for a three-year-old, and her suffering was consequently more terrible than any three-year-old should have to bear. So I held her in my arms and walked her, her shorts damp with urine and rainwater under my hands, her arms fever-hot around my neck, her cheeks slathered with snot and tears, her hair a soaked clump from our brief dash through the downpour, her breath acetone, her toy a strangulated black clump that sent dirty water trickling over her knuckles. I walked her. Back and forth we went through Sara’s living room, back and forth through dim light thrown by the overhead and one lamp. Generator light is never quite steady, never quite still—it seems to breathe and sigh. Back and forth through the ceaseless low chiming of Bunter’s bell, like music from that world we sometimes touch but never really see. Back and forth beneath the sound of the storm. I think I sang to her and I know I touched her with my mind and we went deeper and deeper into that zone together. Above us the clouds ran and the rain pelted, dousing the fires the lightning had started in the woods. The house groaned and the air eddied with gusts coming in through the broken kitchen window, but through it all there was a feeling of rueful safety.
A feeling of coming home.
At last her tears began to taper off. She lay with her cheek and the weight of her heavy head on my shoulder, and when we passed the lakeside windows I could see her eyes looking out into the silver-dark storm, wide and unblinking. Carrying her was a tall man with thinning hair. I realized I could see the dining-room table right through us. Our reflections are ghosts already, I thought.
“Ki? Can you eat something?”
“Not hung’y.”
“Can you drink a glass of milk?”
“No, cocoa. I cold.”
“Yes, of course you are. And I have cocoa.”
I tried to put her down and she held on with panicky tightness, scrambling against me with her plump little thighs. I hoisted her back up again, this time settling her against my hip, and she subsided.
“Who’s here?” she asked. She had begun to shiver. “Who’s here ’sides us?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s a boy,” she said. “I saw him there.” She pointed Strickland toward the sliding glass door which gave on the deck (all the chairs out there had been overturned and thrown into the corners; one of the set was missing, apparently blown right over the rail). “He was black like on that funny show me and Mattie watch. There are other black people, too.
“I want my mommy! I want my Mattie!”
I walked her the way I think you’re supposed to walk babies who have colic. She understood too much for a three-year-old, and her suffering was consequently more terrible than any three-year-old should have to bear. So I held her in my arms and walked her, her shorts damp with urine and rainwater under my hands, her arms fever-hot around my neck, her cheeks slathered with snot and tears, her hair a soaked clump from our brief dash through the downpour, her breath acetone, her toy a strangulated black clump that sent dirty water trickling over her knuckles. I walked her. Back and forth we went through Sara’s living room, back and forth through dim light thrown by the overhead and one lamp. Generator light is never quite steady, never quite still—it seems to breathe and sigh. Back and forth through the ceaseless low chiming of Bunter’s bell, like music from that world we sometimes touch but never really see. Back and forth beneath the sound of the storm. I think I sang to her and I know I touched her with my mind and we went deeper and deeper into that zone together. Above us the clouds ran and the rain pelted, dousing the fires the lightning had started in the woods. The house groaned and the air eddied with gusts coming in through the broken kitchen window, but through it all there was a feeling of rueful safety.
A feeling of coming home.
At last her tears began to taper off. She lay with her cheek and the weight of her heavy head on my shoulder, and when we passed the lakeside windows I could see her eyes looking out into the silver-dark storm, wide and unblinking. Carrying her was a tall man with thinning hair. I realized I could see the dining-room table right through us. Our reflections are ghosts already, I thought.
“Ki? Can you eat something?”
“Not hung’y.”
“Can you drink a glass of milk?”
“No, cocoa. I cold.”
“Yes, of course you are. And I have cocoa.”
I tried to put her down and she held on with panicky tightness, scrambling against me with her plump little thighs. I hoisted her back up again, this time settling her against my hip, and she subsided.
“Who’s here?” she asked. She had begun to shiver. “Who’s here ’sides us?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s a boy,” she said. “I saw him there.” She pointed Strickland toward the sliding glass door which gave on the deck (all the chairs out there had been overturned and thrown into the corners; one of the set was missing, apparently blown right over the rail). “He was black like on that funny show me and Mattie watch. There are other black people, too.