JК
The Colorado Kid :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 76 из 81below was a photograph credited to one Vincent Teague—who would have been just thirtyseven back then, if she had her math right. The crisp blackandwhite showed a Little League field with a billboard in deep center readingHANCOCK LUMBERALWAYS KNOWS THE SCORE! to stephanie the photo looked as if it had been snapped at twilight. The few adults in the single set of sagging bleachers were standing and looking up into the sky. So was the ump, who stood straddling home plate with his mask in his right hand. One set of players—the visiting team, she assumed—was bunched tightly together around third base, as if for comfort. The other kids, wearing jeans and jerseys with the wordsHANCOCK LUMBER printed on the back, stood in a rough line across the infield, all staring upward. And on the mound the little boy who had been pitching held his glove up to one of the bright circles which hung in the sky just below the clouds, as if to touch that mystery, and bring it close, and open its heart, and know its story.
Afterword
Depending on whether you liked or hatedThe Colorado Kid (I think for many people there’ll be no middle ground on this one, and that’s fine with me), you have my friend Scott to thank or blame. He brought me the news clipping that got it going.
Every writer of fiction has had somebody bring him or her a clipping from time to time, sure that the subject will make a wonderful story. “You’ll only have to change it around a little,” the clippingbearer says with an optimistic smile. I don’t know how this works with other writers, but it had never worked with me, and when Scott handed me an envelope with a cutting from a Maine newspaper inside, I expected more of the same. But my mother raised no ingrates, so I thanked him, took it home, and tossed it on my desk. A day or two later I tore the envelope open, read the feature story inside, and was immediately galvanized.
I have lost the clipping since, and for once Google, that twentyfirst century idiot savant, has been of no help, so all I can do is summarize from memory, a notoriously unreliable reference source. Yet in this case that hardly matters, since the feature story was only the spark that lit the little fire that burns through these pages, and not the fire itself.
What caught my eye immediately upon unfolding the clipping was a drawing of a bright red purse. The story was of the young woman who had owned it. She was seen one day walking the main street of a small island community off the coast of Maine with that red purse over her arm. The next day she was found dead on one of the island beaches,sans purse or identification of any kind.
Afterword
Depending on whether you liked or hatedThe Colorado Kid (I think for many people there’ll be no middle ground on this one, and that’s fine with me), you have my friend Scott to thank or blame. He brought me the news clipping that got it going.
Every writer of fiction has had somebody bring him or her a clipping from time to time, sure that the subject will make a wonderful story. “You’ll only have to change it around a little,” the clippingbearer says with an optimistic smile. I don’t know how this works with other writers, but it had never worked with me, and when Scott handed me an envelope with a cutting from a Maine newspaper inside, I expected more of the same. But my mother raised no ingrates, so I thanked him, took it home, and tossed it on my desk. A day or two later I tore the envelope open, read the feature story inside, and was immediately galvanized.
I have lost the clipping since, and for once Google, that twentyfirst century idiot savant, has been of no help, so all I can do is summarize from memory, a notoriously unreliable reference source. Yet in this case that hardly matters, since the feature story was only the spark that lit the little fire that burns through these pages, and not the fire itself.
What caught my eye immediately upon unfolding the clipping was a drawing of a bright red purse. The story was of the young woman who had owned it. She was seen one day walking the main street of a small island community off the coast of Maine with that red purse over her arm. The next day she was found dead on one of the island beaches,sans purse or identification of any kind.