Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

Or does heidel me? Is that it? Does he jel a momentary cold draft in all this heat? One that jeh like protest ing hands, hands that would restrain if they only had substance? Then he looks away,’ then he is wading into the water besidethe Deans’ stub of a dock. Fred! I scream. For God’s sake, man, look at her! Do you think your wife put her in a white silk dress by accident? Is that anyone’s idea of a play-dress? Daddy, why are we going in the water? she asks. To get away from the fire, sugarplum. Daddy, I can’t swim! You won’t have to, he replies, and what a chill l]gel at that/Because it’s no lie—she won’t have to swim, not now, not ever. And at least Fred’s way will be more merciful than Normal Auster’s when Normal’s turn comes—more merciful than the squalling handpump, the gallons of eezing water. Her white dress floats around her like a lily. Her red stockings shimmer m the water. She hugs his neck tightly and now they are among the fleeing loons,’ the loons spank the water with their powerful wings, churning up curds of jam and staring at the man and the girl with their distraught red eyes. The air is heavy with smoke and the sky is gone. I stagger after them, wading—I can Jel the cold of the water, although I don’t splash and leave no wake. The eastern and northern edges of the lake are both on fire now there is a burning crescent around us as Fred Dean wades deeper with his daughter, carrying her as if to some baptismal rite. And still he tells himself he is trying to save her, only to save her, just as all her lij Hilda will tell herself that the child just wandered back to the cottage to look fir a toy, that she was not left behind on purpose, left in her white dress and red stockings to be JSUND by her father, who once did something unspeakable. This is the past, this is the Land of Ago, and here the sins of the fathers are visited on the children, even unto the seventh generation, which is not yet. He takes her deeper and she begins to scream. Her screams mingle with the screams of the loons until he stops the sound with a kiss upon her terrified mouth. “Love you, Daddy loves his sugarplum,” he says, and then lowers her. It is to be a full-immersion baptism, then, except there is no shorebank choir singing “Shall V Gather at the River” and no one shouting Hallelujah! and he is not letting her come back up. She struggles furiously in the white bloom of her sacrificial dress, and after a moment he cannot bear to watch her,’ he looks across the lake instead, to the west where the fire hasn’t yet touched (and never will), to the west where skies are still blue.