Bag of bones by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Horror, Suspense, Widowers, Horror & ghost stories, Horror - General, Fiction - Horror, Literary, Anthologies (non-poetry), Ghost, Ghost stories, Authors, Custody of children, Grandfathers, Widows, Maine
ISBN: 9780671024239
Publisher: New York Pocket Books 1999.
Published: 1999-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

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 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, I thought but didn't say, that's only half a step from my generation. 'One of her old girlfriends spoke to her finally, but there's a general attitude about Mattie Devore. That man Osgood may be a shitty salesman, but as Devore's Mr. Moneyguy he's doing a wonderful job of separating Mattie from the other folks in the town. Is 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? 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 asshole.'

'That's a Boston Post 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.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.