Bag of Bones Part 24

I needn't have worried in any case. Devore wasn't in attendance, nor was the lovely Rogette.

I did spot Mattie behind the casually maintained chickenwire barrier on the first-base line. John Storrow was beside her, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, his red hair mostly corralled by a Mets cap. They stood watching the game and chatting like old friends for two innings before they saw me - more than enough time for me to feel envious of John's position, and a little jealous as well.

Finally someone lofted a long fly to center, where the edge of the woods served as the only fence. The center fielder backed up, but it was going to be far over his head. It was. .h.i.t to my depth, off to my right. I moved in that direction without thinking, high-footing through the shrubs that formed a zone between the mown outfield and the trees, hoping I wasn't running through poison ivy. I caught the softball in my outstretched left hand, and laughed when some of the spectators cheered. The center fielder applauded me by tapping his bare right hand into the pocket of his glove. The batter, meanwhile, circled the bases serenely, knowing he had hit a ground-rule home run.

I tossed the ball to the fielder and as I returned to my original post among the candy-wrappers and beer cans, I looked back in and saw Mattie and John looking at me.

If anything confirms the idea that we're just another species of animal, one with a slightly bigger brain and a much much bigger idea of our own importance in the scheme of things, it's how much we can convey by gesture when we absolutely have to. Mattie clasped her hands to her chest, tilted her head to the left, raised her eyebrows - bigger idea of our own importance in the scheme of things, it's how much we can convey by gesture when we absolutely have to. Mattie clasped her hands to her chest, tilted her head to the left, raised her eyebrows - My hero My hero. I held my hands to my shoulders and flipped the palms skyward Shucks, ma'am, 't'warn't nothin Shucks, ma'am, 't'warn't nothin. John lowered his head and put his fingers to his brow, as if something there hurt - You lucky sonofab.i.t.c.h You lucky sonofab.i.t.c.h.

With those comments out of the way, I pointed at the backstop and shrugged a question. Both Mattie and John shrugged back. An inning later a little boy who looked like one giant exploding freckle ran out to where I was, his oversized Michael Jordan jersey churning around his shins like a dress.

'Guy down there gimme fifty cent to say you should call im later on at his hotel over in the Rock,' he said, pointing at John. 'He say you gimme another fifty cent if there was an answer.'

'Tell him I'll call him around nine-thirty,' I said. 'I don't have any change, though. Can you take a buck?'

'Hey, yeah, sw.a.n.k.' He s.n.a.t.c.hed it, turned away, then turned back. He grinned, revealing a set of teeth caught between Act I and Act II. With the softball players in the background, he looked like a Norman Rockwell archetype. 'Guy also say tell you that was a bulls.h.i.t catch.'

'Tell him people used to say the same thing about Willie Mays all the time.'

'Willie who?'

Ah, youth. Ah, mores. 'Just tell him, son. He'll know.'

I stayed another inning, but by then the game was getting drunk, Devore still hadn't shown, and I went back home the way I had come. I met one fisherman standing out on a rock and two young people strolling along The Street toward Warrington's, their hands linked. They said hi and I hi'd them back. I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness.

Some people check their phone answering machines when they get home; that summer I always checked the front of the fridge. Eenie-meenie-chili-beanie, as Bullwinkle Moose used to say, the spirits are about to speak. That night they hadn't, although the fruit and vegetable magnets had re-formed into a sinuous shape like a snake or perhaps the letter S taking a nap:

A little later I called John and asked him where Devore had been, and he repeated in words what he had already told me, and much more economically, by gesture. 'It's the first game he's missed since he came back,' he said. 'Mattie tried asking a few people if he was okay, and the consensus seemed to be that he was . . . at least as far as anyone knew.'

'What do you mean she tried tried asking a few people?' asking a few people?'

'I mean that several wouldn't even talk to her. "Cut her dead," my parents' generation would have said.' Watch it, buddy Watch it, buddy, I thought but didn't say, that's only half a step from my generation that's only half a step from my generation. 'One of her old girlfriends spoke to her finally, but there's a general att.i.tude about Mattie Devore. That man Osgood may be a s.h.i.tty salesman, but as Devore's Mr. Moneyguy he's doing a wonderful job of separating Mattie from the other folks in the town. Is Is it a town, Mike? I don't quite get that part.' it a town, Mike? I don't quite get that part.'

'It's just the TR,' I said absently. 'There's no real way to explain it.

Do you actually believe Devore's bribing everyone everyone? That doesn't say much for the old Wordsworthian idea of pastoral innocence and goodness, does it?'

'He's spreading money and using Osgood - maybe Footman, too - to spread stories. And the folks around here seem at least as honest as honest politicians.'

'The ones who stay bought?'

'Yeah. Oh, and I saw one of Devore's potential star witnesses in the Case of the Runaway Child. Royce Merrill. He was over by the equipment shed with some of his cronies. Did you happen to notice him?'

I said I had not.

'Guy must be a hundred and thirty,' John said. 'He's got a cane with a gold head the size of an elephant's a.s.shole.'

'That's a Boston Post Boston Post cane. The oldest person in the area gets to keep it.' cane. The oldest person in the area gets to keep it.'

'And I have no doubt he came by it honestly. If Devore's lawyers put him on the stand, I'll debone him.' There was something chilling in John's gleeful confidence.

'I'm sure,' I said. 'How did Mattie take getting cut dead by her old friends?' I was thinking of her saying that she hated Tuesday nights, hated to think of the softball games going on as they always had at the field where she had met her late husband.

'She did okay,' John said. 'I think she's given most of them up as a lost cause, anyway.' I had my doubts about that - I seem to remember that at twenty-one lost causes are sort of a specialty - but I didn't say anything. 'She's hanging in. She's been lonely and scared, I think that in her own mind she might already have begun the process of giving Kyra up, but she's got her confidence back now. Mostly thanks to meeting you. Talk about your fantastically lucky breaks.'

Well, maybe. I flashed on Jo's. brother Frank once saying to me that he didn't think there was any such thing as luck, only fate and inspired choices. And then I remembered that image of the TR criss-crossed with invisible cables, connections that were unseen but as strong as steel.

'John, I forgot to ask the most important question of all the other day, after I gave my depo. This custody case we're all so concerned about . . . has it even been scheduled?'

'Good question. I've checked three ways to Sunday, and Bissonette has, too. Unless Devore and his people have pulled something really slippery, like filing in another court district, I don't think it has been.'

'Could they do that? File in another district?'

'Maybe. But probably not without us finding out.'

'So what does it mean?'

'That Devore's on the verge of giving up,' John said promptly. 'As of now I see no other way of explaining it. I'm going back to New York first thing tomorrow, but I'll stay in touch. If anything comes up here, you do the same.'

I said I would and went to bed. No female visitors came to share my dreams. That was sort of a relief.

When I came downstairs to recharge my iced-tea gla.s.s late Wednesday morning, Brenda Meserve had erected the laundry whirligig on the back stoop and was hanging out my clothes. This she did as her mother had no doubt taught her, with pants and shirts on the outside and undies on the inside, where any pa.s.sing nosyparkers couldn't see what you chose to wear closest to your skin.

'You can take these in around four o'clock,' Mrs. M. said as she prepared to leave. She looked at me with the bright and cynical eye of a woman who has been 'doing for' well-off men her entire life. 'Don't you forget and leave em out all night - dewy clothes don't ever feel fresh until they're warshed again.'

I told her most humbly that I would remember to take in my clothes. I then asked her - feeling like a spy working an emba.s.sy party for information - if the house felt all right to her.

'All right how?' she asked, c.o.c.king one wild eyebrow at me.

'Well, I've heard funny noises a couple of times. In the night.'

She sniffed. 'It's a log house, ennit? Built in relays, so to speak. It settles, one wing against t'other. That's what you hear, most likely.'

'No ghosts, huh?' I said, as if disappointed.

'Not that I've ever seen,' she said, matter-of-fact as an accountant, 'but my ma said there's plenty down here. She said this whole lake is haunted. By the Micmacs that lived here until they was driven out by General Wing, by all the men who went away to the Civil War and died there - over six hundred went from this part of the world, Mr. Noonan, and less than a hundred and fifty came back . . . at least in their bodies. Ma said this side of Dark Score's also haunted by the ghost of that Negro boy who died here, poor tyke. He belonged to one of the Red-Tops, you know.'

'No - I know about Sara and the Red-Tops, but not this.' I paused. 'Did he drown?'

'Nawp, caught in an animal trap. Struggled there for most of a whole day, screaming for help. Finally they found him. They saved the foot, but they shouldn't have. Blood-poisoning set in, and the boy died. Summer of ought-one, that was. It's why they left, I guess - it was too sad to stay. But my ma used to claim the little fella, he he stayed. She used to say that he's still on the TR.' stayed. She used to say that he's still on the TR.'

I wondered what Mrs. M. would say if I told her that the little fella had very likely been here to greet me when I arrived from Derry, and had been back on several occasions since.

'Then there was Kenny Auster's father, Normal,' she said. 'You know that story, don't you? Oh, that's a terrible story.' She looked rather pleased - either at knowing such a terrible story or at having the chance to tell it.

'No,' I said. 'I know Kenny, though. He's the one with the wolfhound. Blueberry.'

'Ayuh. He carpenters a tad and caretakes a tad, just like his father before him. His dad caretook many of these places, you know, and back just after the Second World War was over, Normal Auster drownded Kenny's little brother in his back yard. This was when they lived on Wasp Hill, down where the road splits, one side going to the old boat-landin and the other to the marina. He didn't drown the tyke in the lake, though. He put him on the ground under the pump and just held him there until the baby was full of water and dead.'

I stood there looking at her, the clothes behind us snapping on their whirligig. I thought of my mouth and nose and throat full of that cold mineral taste that could have been well-water as well as lakewater; down here all of it comes from the same deep aquifers. I thought of the message on the refrigerator: help im drown help im drown.

'He left the baby laying right under the pump. He had a new Chevrolet, and he drove it down here to Lane Forty-two. Took his shotgun, too.'

'You aren't going to tell me Kenny Auster's dad committed suicide in my house, are you, Mrs. Meserve?'

She shook her head. 'Nawp. He did it on the Brickers' lakeside deck. Sat down on their porch glider and blew his d.a.m.ned baby-murdering head off.'

'The Brickers? I don't - '

'You wouldn't. Hasn't been any Brickers on the lake since the sixties. They were from Delaware. Quality folks. You'd think of it as the Warshburn place, I guess, although they're gone, now, too. Place is empty. Every now and then that stark naturalborn fool Osgood brings someone down and shows it off, but he'll never sell it at the price he's asking. Mark my words.'

The Washburns I had known - had played bridge with them a time or two. Nice enough people, although probably not what Mrs. M., with her queer backcountry sn.o.bbishness, would have called 'quality.' Their place was maybe an eighth of a mile north of mine along The Street. Past that point, there's nothing much - the drop to the lake gets steep, and the woods are ma.s.sed tangles of second growth and blackberry bushes. The Street goes on to the tip of Halo Bay at the far north end of Dark Score, but once Lane Forty-two curves back to the highway, the path is for the most part used only by berry-picking expeditions in the summer and hunters in the fall.

Normal, I thought. h.e.l.l of a name for a guy who had drowned his infant son under the backyard pump.

'Did he leave a note? Any explanation?'

'Nawp. But you'll hear folks say he haunts the lake, too. Little towns are most likely full of haunts, but I couldn't say aye, no, or maybe myself; I ain't the sensitive type. All I know about your place, Mr. Noonan, is that it smells damp no matter how much I try to get it aired out. I 'magine that's logs. Log buildins don't go well with lakes. The damp gets into the wood.'

She had set her purse down between her Reeboks; now she bent and picked it up. It was a countrywoman's purse, black, styleless (except for the gold grommets holding the handles on), and utilitarian. She could have carried a good selection of kitchen appliances in there if she had wanted to.

'I can't stand here natterin all day long, though, much as I might like to. I got one more place to go before I can call it quits. Summer's ha'vest time in this part of the world, you know. Now remember to take those clothes in before dark, Mr. Noonan. Don't let em get all dewy.'

'I won't.' And I didn't. But when I went out to take them in, dressed in my bathing trunks and coated with sweat from the oven I'd been working in (I had to get the air conditioner fixed, just had had to), I saw that something had altered Mrs. M.'s arrangements. My jeans and shirts now hung around the pole. The underwear and socks, which had been decorously hidden when Mrs. M. drove up the driveway in her old Ford, were now on the outside. It was as if my unseen guest - to), I saw that something had altered Mrs. M.'s arrangements. My jeans and shirts now hung around the pole. The underwear and socks, which had been decorously hidden when Mrs. M. drove up the driveway in her old Ford, were now on the outside. It was as if my unseen guest - one one of my unseen guests - was saying ha ha ha. of my unseen guests - was saying ha ha ha.

I went to the library the next day, and made renewing my library card my first order of business. Lindy Briggs herself took my four bucks and entered me into the computer, first telling me how sorry she had been to hear about Jo's death. And, as with Bill, I sensed a certain reproach in her tone, as if I were to blame for such improperly delayed condolences. I supposed I was.

'Lindy, do you have a town history?' I asked when we had finished the proprieties concerning my wife.

'We have two,' she said, then leaned toward me over the desk, a little woman in a violently patterned sleeveless dress, her hair a gray puffball around her head, her bright eyes swimming behind her bifocals. In a confidential voice she added, 'Neither is much good.'

'Which one is better?' I asked, matching her tone.

'Probably the one by Edward Osteen. He was a summer resident until the mid-fifties and lived here full-time when he retired. He wrote Dark Score Days Dark Score Days in 1965 or '66. He had it privately published because he couldn't find a commercial house that would take it. Even the regional publishers pa.s.sed.' She sighed. 'The locals bought it, but that's not many books, is it?' in 1965 or '66. He had it privately published because he couldn't find a commercial house that would take it. Even the regional publishers pa.s.sed.' She sighed. 'The locals bought it, but that's not many books, is it?'

'No, I suppose not,' I said.

'He just wasn't much of a writer. Not much of a photographer, either - those little black-and-white snaps of his make my eyes eyes hurt. Still, he tells some good stories. The Micmac Drive, General Wing's trick horse, the twister in the eighteen-eighties, the fires in the nine-teen-thirties . . . ' hurt. Still, he tells some good stories. The Micmac Drive, General Wing's trick horse, the twister in the eighteen-eighties, the fires in the nine-teen-thirties . . . '

'Anything about Sara and the Red-Tops?'

She nodded, smiling. 'Finally got around to looking up the history of your own place, did you? I'm glad to hear it. He found an old photo of them, and it's in there. He thought it was taken at the Fryeburg Fair in 1900. Ed used to say he'd give a lot to hear a record made by that bunch.'

'So would I, but none were ever made.' A haiku by the Greek poet George Seferis suddenly occurred to me: Are these the voices of our dead friends / or just the gramophone? Are these the voices of our dead friends / or just the gramophone? 'What happened to Mr. Osteen? I don't recall the name.' 'What happened to Mr. Osteen? I don't recall the name.'

'Died not a year or two before you and Jo bought your place on the lake,' she said. 'Cancer.'

'You said there were two histories?'

'The other one you probably know - A History of Castle County and Castle Rock A History of Castle County and Castle Rock. Done for the county centennial, and dry as dust. Eddie Osteen's book isn't very well written, but he wasn't dry. You have to give him that much. You should find them both over there.' She pointed to shelves with a sign over them which read of OF MAINE INTEREST. 'They don't circulate.' Then she brightened. 'Although we will happily take any nickels you should feel moved to feed into our photocopy machine.'

Mattie was sitting in the far corner next to a boy in a turned-around baseball cap, showing him how to use the microfilm reader. She looked up at me, smiled, and mouthed the words Nice catch Nice catch. Referring to my lucky grab at Warrington's, presumably. I gave a modest little shrug before turning to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves. But she was right - lucky or not, it had had been a nice catch. been a nice catch.

'What are you looking for?'

I was so deep into the two histories I'd found that Mattie's voice made me jump. I turned around and smiled, first aware that she was wearing some light and pleasant perfume, second that Lindy Briggs was watching us from the main desk, her welcoming smile put away.

'Background on the area where I live,' I said. 'Old stories. My housekeeper got me interested.' Then, in a lower voice: 'Teacher's watching. Don't look around.'

Mattie looked startled - and, I thought, a little worried. As it turned out, she was right to be worried. In a voice that was low-pitched yet still designed to carry at least as far as the desk, she asked if she could reshelve either book for me. I gave her both. As she picked them up she said in what was almost a con's whisper: 'That lawyer who represented you last Friday got John a private detective. He says they may have found something interesting about the guardian ad litem ad litem.'

I walked over to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves with her, hoping I wasn't getting her in trouble, and asked if she knew what the something interesting might be. She shook her head, gave me a professional little librarian's smile, and I went away.

On the ride back to the house, I tried to think about what I'd read, but there wasn't much. Osteen was a bad writer who had taken bad pictures, and while his stories were colorful, they were also pretty thin on the ground. He mentioned Sara and the Red-Tops, all right, but he referred to them as a 'Dixie-Land octet,' and even I knew that wasn't right. The Red-Tops might have played some Dixieland, but they had primarily been a blues group (Friday and Sat.u.r.day nights) and a gospel group (Sunday mornings). Osteen's two-page summary of the Red-Tops' stay on the TR made it clear that he had heard no one else's covers of Sara's tunes.

He confirmed that a child had died of blood-poisoning caused by a traphold wound, a story which sounded like Brenda Meserve's . . . but why wouldn't it? Osteen had likely heard it from Mrs. M.'s father or grandfather. He also said that the boy was Son Tidwell's only child, and that the guitar-player's real name was Reginald. The Tidwells had supposedly drifted north from the wh.o.r.ehouse district of New Orleans - the fabled crib-and-club streets which had been known around the turn of the century as Storyville.

There was no mention of Sara and the Red-Tops in the more formal history of Castle County, and no mention of Kenny Auster's drownded little brother in either book. Not long before Mattie came over to speak to me, I'd had a wild idea: that Son Tidwell and Sara Tidwell were man and wife, and that the little boy (not named by Osteen) had been their son. I found the picture Lindy had mentioned and studied it closely. It showed at least a dozen black people standing in a stiff group in front of what looked like a cattle exhibition. There was an old-fashioned Ferris wheel in the background. It could well have been taken at the Fryeburg Fair, and as old and faded as it was, it had a simple, elemental power that all Osteen's own photos put together could not match. You have seen photographs of western and Depression-era bandidos that have that same look of eerie truth - stern faces above tight ties and collars, eyes not quite lost in the shadows of antique hatbrims.

Sara stood front and center, wearing a black dress and her guitar. She was not outright smiling in this picture, but there seemed to be a smile in her eyes, and I thought they were like the eyes in some paintings, the ones that seem to follow you wherever you move in the room. I studied the photo and thought of her almost spiteful voice in my dream: What do you want to know, sugar? What do you want to know, sugar? I suppose I wanted to know about her and the others - who they had been, what they were to each other when they weren't singing and playing, why they'd left, where they'd gone. I suppose I wanted to know about her and the others - who they had been, what they were to each other when they weren't singing and playing, why they'd left, where they'd gone.

Both of her hands were clearly visible, one posed on the strings of her guitar, the other on the frets, where she had been making a G-chord on an October Fair-day in the year 1900. Her fingers were long, artistic, bare of rings. That didn't necessarily mean that she and Son Tidwell weren't married, of course, and even if they hadn't been, the little boy who'd been caught in the trap could have been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Except the same ghost of a smile lurked in Son Tidwell's eyes. The resemblance was remarkable. I had an idea that the two of them had been brother and sister, not man and wife.

I thought about these things on my way home, and I thought about cables that were felt rather than seen . . . but mostly I found myself thinking about Lindy Briggs - the way she had smiled at me, the way, a little later on, she had not smiled at her bright young librarian with the high-school certification. That worried me.

Then I got back to the house, and all I worried about was my story and the people in it - bags of bones which were putting on flesh daily.