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Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 368 из 425I would give Kyra her bath, but first there was something I had to do. I had to go down nineteen, and after that I just might have to go down ninety-two. And I could. I had completed just over a hundred and twenty pages of manuscript, so I could. I grabbed the battery-powered lantern from the top of the cabinet where I still kept several hundred actual vinyl records, clicked it on, and set it on the table. It cast a white circle of radiance on the manuscript—in the gloom of that afternoon it was as bright as a spotlight.
On page nineteen of My Childhood Friend, Tiffi Taylor—the call-girl who had re-invented herself as Regina Whiting—was sitting in her studio with Andy Drake, reliving the day that John Sanborn (the alias under which John Shackleford had been getting by) saved her three-year-old daughter, Karen. This is the passage I read as the thunder boomed and the rain slashed against the sliding door giving on the deck:
FRIEND, by Noonan/Pg. 19
over that way, I was sure of it,” she said, “but when I couldn’t see her anywhere, I went to look in the hot tub.” She lit a cigarette. “What I saw made me feel like screaming, Andy—Karen was underwater. All that was out was her hand… the nails were turning purple. After that… I guess I dived in, but I don’t remember; I was zoned out. Everything from then on is like a dream where stuff runs together in your mind. The yard-guy—Sanborn—shoved me aide and dived. His foot hit me in the throat and I couldn’t swallow for a week. He yanked up on Karen’s arm. I thought he’d pull it off her damn shoulder, but he got her. He got her.”
In the gloom, Drake saw she was weeping. “God. Oh God, I thought she was dead. I was sure she was.”
I knew at once, but laid my steno pad along the left margin of the manuscript so I could see it better. Reading down, as you’d read a vertical crossword-puzzle answer, the first letter of each line spelled the message which had been there almost since I began the book: owls under stud 0
Then, allowing for the indent next-to-last line from the bottom: owls under studio Bill Dean, my caretaker, is sitting behind the wheel of his truck. He has accomplished his two purposes in coming here-welcoming me back to the TR and warning me off Mattie Devore. Now he’s ready to go. He smiles at me, displaying those big false teeth, those Roebuckers. “If you get a chance, you ought to look r the owls,” he tells me. I ask him what Jo would have wanted with a couple of plastic owls and he replies that they keep the crows from shitting up the woodwork.
On page nineteen of My Childhood Friend, Tiffi Taylor—the call-girl who had re-invented herself as Regina Whiting—was sitting in her studio with Andy Drake, reliving the day that John Sanborn (the alias under which John Shackleford had been getting by) saved her three-year-old daughter, Karen. This is the passage I read as the thunder boomed and the rain slashed against the sliding door giving on the deck:
FRIEND, by Noonan/Pg. 19
over that way, I was sure of it,” she said, “but when I couldn’t see her anywhere, I went to look in the hot tub.” She lit a cigarette. “What I saw made me feel like screaming, Andy—Karen was underwater. All that was out was her hand… the nails were turning purple. After that… I guess I dived in, but I don’t remember; I was zoned out. Everything from then on is like a dream where stuff runs together in your mind. The yard-guy—Sanborn—shoved me aide and dived. His foot hit me in the throat and I couldn’t swallow for a week. He yanked up on Karen’s arm. I thought he’d pull it off her damn shoulder, but he got her. He got her.”
In the gloom, Drake saw she was weeping. “God. Oh God, I thought she was dead. I was sure she was.”
I knew at once, but laid my steno pad along the left margin of the manuscript so I could see it better. Reading down, as you’d read a vertical crossword-puzzle answer, the first letter of each line spelled the message which had been there almost since I began the book: owls under stud 0
Then, allowing for the indent next-to-last line from the bottom: owls under studio Bill Dean, my caretaker, is sitting behind the wheel of his truck. He has accomplished his two purposes in coming here-welcoming me back to the TR and warning me off Mattie Devore. Now he’s ready to go. He smiles at me, displaying those big false teeth, those Roebuckers. “If you get a chance, you ought to look r the owls,” he tells me. I ask him what Jo would have wanted with a couple of plastic owls and he replies that they keep the crows from shitting up the woodwork.