Bag of Bones CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Ki lay solid asleep notwithstanding as I had unexpended her, on her side with the foetid miniscule stuffed dog clutched under her jaw. It had instal a smudge on her neck only when if I hadnt the meett to usurp it forth from her. Beyond her and to the left wing, by the open bathroom door, I could hear the steady plink-plonk-plink of water f solelying from the faucet and into the tub. Cool variant blew around me in a silky twist, cargonssing my administrations, sending a not unpleasurable shiver up my back. In the living room Bunters bell gave a dim little shake.Waters subdued warm, sugar, Sara whispered. Be her friend, be her daddy. Go on, now. Do what I want. Do what we both want.And I did want to, which had to be why Jo at first tried to take for me a vogue from the TR and from Sara Laughs. Why shed made a secret of her possible pregnancy, as well. It was as if I had discovered a lamia inside me, a creature with no interest in what it thought of as talk- memoriali ze conscience and op-ed page morality. A part that wanted only to take Ki into the bathroom and dunk her into that tub of warm water and h oldish her under, watching the red-edged white ribbons sparkle the way Carla Deans white dress and red stockings had shimmered sequence the woods burned solely around her and her father. A part of me would be more than glad to pay the last inst every(prenominal)ment on that old bill. pricy God, I muttered, and wiped my pillow slip with a shaking consider. She knows so va permity tricks. And shes so fucking strong.The bathroom door tried to swing shut once against me before I could go through, but I pushed it open against hardly any resistance. The medicine-cabinet door banged back, and the glass shattered against the wall. The stuff inside flew expose at me, but it wasnt a precise dangerous attack this succession most of the missiles consisted of a uniformthpaste tubes, toothbrushes, plastic bottles, and a few old Vicks inhalers. Fain t, very faint, I could hear her shouting in defeat as I yanked the plug at the bottom of the tub and let the water start gurgling out. on that point had been nice dr sustaining on the TR for atomic number 53 century, by God. And yet, for a moment I matte up an incredibly strong urge to contrive the plug back in while the water was still tardily chequermly to do the job. Instead I tore it sullen its chain and threw it shine the hall. The medicine-cabinet door clapped shut again and the rest of the glass fell out.How many flip you had? I asked her. How many besides Carla Dean and Kerry Auster and our Kia? Two? Three? Five? How many do you need before you green goddess rest?all(a) of them the dress s wild back. It wasnt just Saras voice, either it was my own, as well. Shed gotten into me, had snuck in by way of the basement desire a burglar . . . and al statey I was thinking that plain if the tub was empty and the water-pump temporarily nonviable, thither was always th e lake.All of them the voice cried again. All of them, sugarOf course only all of them would do. Until thus there would be no rest for Sara Laughs.Ill inspection and repair you to rest, I said. That I promise.The last of the water swirled out-of-door . . . but there was always the lake, always the lake if I changed my mind. I left the bathroom and viewed in on Ki again. She hadnt moved, the sensation that Sara was in here with me had g unity, Bunters bell was quiet . . . and yet I felt uneasy, un provideing to leave her al wholeness. I had to, though, if I was to finish my work, and I would do well not to linger. County and State cops would be along eventually, behave or no storm, scratch offed trees or no droped trees.Yes, but . . .I stepped into the hall and looked uneasily around. Thunder boomed, but it was losing some of its urgency. So was the wind. What wasnt fading was the sense of some liaison watching me, some affair that was not-Sara. I stood where I was a moment o r two weeklong, trying to give notice (of) myself it was just the sizzle of my overcooked nerves, past walked deplete the hall to the entry.I opened the door to the stoop . . . then looked around again sharply, as if expecting to recognize some angiotensin-converting enzyme or something lurking female genitals the far end of the bookcase. A Shape, peradventure. Something that still wanted its dust-catcher. unless I was the only Shape left, at least in this part of the world, and the only movement I apothegm was ripple-shadows thrown by the rain rolling down the windows.It was still coming down hard plentiful to redrench me as I crossed my stoop to the driveway, but I paid no attention. I had just been with a little girlfriend when she drowned, had damned near drowned myself not so long ago, and the rain wasnt going to s take me from doing what I had to do. I picked up the fallen branch which had dented the cover of my car, tossed it aside, and opened the Chevys rear door .The things Id bought at Slips n kelvins were still sitting on the back seat, still tucked into the cloth carry-handle bag Lila Proulx had given me. The dig and the pruning knife were visible, but the triad item was in a plastic sack. Want this one in a special bag? Lila had asked me. evermore sab, neer sorry. And former(a)r, as I was leaving, she had roundn of Kennys dog Blueberry chasing seagulls and had given out with a big, hearty laugh. Her eye hadnt laughed, though. Maybe thats how you recount the Martians from the Earthlings the Martians can never laugh with their look.I saw Rommie and Georges present lying on the front seat the Stenomask Id at first mistaken for Devores oxygen mask. The boys in the basement spoke up then murmured, at least and I leaned over the seat to grab the mask by its elastic strap without the slightest idea of why I was doing so. I dropped it into the carry-bag, slammed the car door, then started down the railroad-tie steps to the lake. On the way I paused to duck under the deck, where we had always kept a few tools. There was no pick, but I grabbed a spade that looked up to a piece of gravedigging. Then, for what I thought would be the last time, I followed the course of my fantasy down to The Street. I didnt need Jo to show me the spot the Green Lady had been pointing to it all along. Even had she not been, and even if Sara Tidwell did not still stink to the heavens, I think I would pick up known. I think I would have been led there by my own haunted heart.There was a man standing between me and the place where the deformize os frontale of flap guarded the path, and as I paused on the last railroad tie, he hailed me in a rasping voice that I k clean all too well.Say there, lady of pleasuremaster, wheres your whore?He stood on The Street in the pouring rain, but his cutters outfit atomic number 19 flannel pants, checked wool appargonl and his faded blue Union Army cap were dry, be be postulate the rain was falling through him rather than on him. He looked solid but he was no more authorized than Sara herself. I reminded myself of this as I stepped down onto the path to face him, but my heart go on to speed up, thudding in my chest desire a padded hammer.He was dressed in Jared Devores clothes, but this wasnt Jared Devore. This was Jareds great-grandson Max, who had begun his career with an act of sled-theft and ended it in suicide . . . but not before arranging for the murder of his daughter-in-law, whod had the temerity to refuse him what he had so dearly wanted.I started toward him and he moved to the centre of attention of the path to block me. I could feel the cold baking off him. I am saying exactly what I mean, expressing what I remember as clearly as I can I could feel the cold baking off him. And yes, it was Max Devore all proper(ip), but got up give care a logger at a costume party and facial expression the way he mustiness have around the time his son Lance was born. grey-headed but hale. The sort of man younger men might well look up to. And now, as if the thought had hollered them, I could see the rest shimmer into faint being behind him, standing in a line crossways the path. These were the ones who had been with Jared at the Fryeburg Fair, and now I knew who some of them were. Fred Dean, of course, only nineteen old age old in 01, the drowning of his daughter still over thirty years outside(a). And the one who had reminded me of myself was chafe Auster, the firstborn of my great-grandfathers sister. He would have been sixteen, unless old enough to raise a fuzz but old enough to work in the woods with Jared. Old enough to shit in the same tar captivate as Jared. To mistake Jareds poison for wisdom. One of the others twisted his head and squinted at the same time Id seen that tic before. Where? Then it came to me in the Lake-view General. This young man was the late Royce Merrills father. The others I didnt know. Nor did I care to.You aint a-passing by us, Devore said. He held up both hands. Dont even think around trying. Am I right, boys?They murmured growling agreement the sort you could hear coming from any present-day gang of headbangers or taggers, I imagine but their voices were distant actually more sad than menacing. There was some kernel to the man in Jared Devores clothes, perhaps because in life he had been a man of enormous vitality, perhaps because he was so recently dead, but the others were little more than projected images.I started forward, moving into that baking cold, moving into the smell of him the same invalid odors which had surrounded him when Id met him here before.Where do you think youre going? he cried.For a constitutional, I said. And no law against it. The Streets the place where good pups and vile dogs can walk side-by-side. You said so yourself.You dont understand, Max-Jared said. You never will. Youre not of that world. That was our world.I s conduceped, looking at him curio usly. Time was short, I wanted to be done with this . . . but I had to know, and I thought Devore was ready to tell me.Make me understand, I said. bring over me that any world was your world. I looked at him, then at the flickering, translucent figures behind him, gauze flesh hammocked on shining bones. Tell me what you did.It was all antithetical then, Devore said. When you suffer down here, Noonan, you might walk all three miles north to Halo Bay and see only a dozen people on The Street. After Labor Day you might not see any one at all. This side of the lake you have to walk through the bushes that are ripening up wild and around the fallen trees therell be even more of em aft(prenominal) this storm and even a deadfall or two because straightaway the townfolk dont club together to take it neat the way they used to. But in our time The woods were bigger then, Noonan, distances were farther to go, and neighboring meant something. Life itself, lots enough. Back then thi s really was a street. Can you see?I could. If I looked through the phantom shapes of Fred Dean and devastate Auster and the others, I could. They werent just ghosts they were shimmerglass windows on some other age. I sawa summer afternoon in the year of . . . 1898? Perhaps 1902? 1907? Doesnt matter. This is a period when all time seems the same, as if time had stopped. This is a time the old-timers remember as a kind of golden age. It is the Land of Ago, the Kingdom of When-I-Was-a-Boy. The sun washes everything with the fine gold light of endless late July the lake is as blue as a dream, netted with a billion sparks of reflected light. And The Street It is as smoothly grassed as a lawn and as broad as a boulevard. It is a boulevard, I see, a place where the community fully visits itself. It is the main conduit of communication, the chief cable in a township criss-crossed with them. Id felt the beingness of these cables all along even when Jo was alive I felt them under the surface, and here is their point of origin. Folks promenade on The Street, all up and down the east side of Dark Score Lake they promenade in little groups, laughing and conversing under a cloud-stacked summer sky, and this is where the cables all begin. I look and realize how wrong I have been to think of them as Martians, as cruel and calculating aliens. East of their sunny promenade looms the distressingness of the woods, glades and hollows where any miserable thing may await, from a hot lopped off in a logging accident to a birth asleep(p) wrong and a young capture dead before the doctor can arrive from Castle Rock in his buggy. These are people with no electricity, no phones, no County Rescue Unit, no one to rely upon but each other and a God some of them have already begun to mistrust. They live in the woods and the shadows of the woods, but on fine summer afternoons they come to the edge of the lake. They come to The Street and look in each others faces and laugh together and then they are truly on the TR in what I have come to think of as the zone. They are not Martians, they are little lives dwelling on the edge of the dark, thats all.I see summer people from Warringtons, the men dressed in white flannels, two women in long tennis dresses still carrying their rackets. A fellow riding a tricycle with an enormous front wheel weaves shakily among them. The party of summer fo1k has stopped to talk with a group of young men from town the fellows from away want to know if they can play in the townies baseball halt at Warringtons on Tuesday night. Ben Merrill, Royces father-to-be, says Ayuh, but we wont go easy on ya just cause youre from NYawk. The young men laugh so do the tennis girls.A little farther on, two boys are playing catch with the sort of natural homemade baseball that is known as a horsey. Beyond them is a convention of young mothers, talking earnestly of their babies, all safely prammed and gathered in their own group. Men in overalls d iscuss weather and crops, politics and crops, taxes and crops. A teacher from the Consolidated High sits on the gray stone forehead I know so well, patiently tutoring a sullen boy who wants to be somewhere else and doing anything else. I think the boy will grow up to be Buddy Jellisons father. Horn stony-broken watch for finger, I think.All along The Street folks are fishing, and they are catching plenty the lake fairly teems with cryptical and trout and pickerel. An artist another summer fellow, judging from his smock and nancy beret has set up his easel and is painting the mountains while two ladies watch respectfully. A giggle of girls passes, whispering about boys and clothes and teach. There is beauty here, and peace. Devore s right to say this is a world I never knew. ItsBeautiful, I said, pulling myself back with an effort. Yes, I see that. But whats your point?My point? Devore looked almost comically surprised. She thought she could walk there equivalent everyone else , thats the fucking point She thought she could walk there standardised a white gal Her and her big teeth and her big tits and her snotty looks. She thought she was something special, but we taught her different. She tried to walk me down and when she couldnt do that she put her filthy hands on me and tumped me over. But that was all right we taught her her manners. Didnt we, boys?They growled agreement, but I thought some of them young Harry Auster, for one looked sick.We taught her her place, Devore said. We taught her she wasnt nothing but anigger. This is the word he uses over and over again when they are in the woods that summer, the summer of1901, the summer that Sara and the Red-bps contract the musical act to see in this part of the world. She and her brother and their whole nigger family have been invited to Warringtons to play for the summer people, they have been rid on champagne and ersters . . . or so says Jared Devore to his little school of devoted followers as th ey eat their own plain lunches of scrawl and meat and salted cucumbers out of lard-buckets given to them by their mothers (none of the young men are married, although Oren Peebles is engaged).Yet it isnt her growing renown that upsets Jared Devore. It isnt the fact that she has been to Warringtons it dont cross his eyes none that she and that brother of hers have actually sat down and eaten with white folks, taken bread join the same bowl as them with their duskynigger fingers. The folks at Warringtons are flat dropers, after all, and Devore tells the silent, attentive young men that hes heard that in places like red-hot York and Chicago white women sometimes even fuck blackniggers.Naw Harry Auster says, looking around nervously, as if he expected a few white women to come t rip through the woods way out here on Bowie Ridge. No white womand fuck a nigger Shoot a trapDevore only gives him a look, the kind that says When youre my age. Besides, he doesnt care what goes on in New Yo rk and Chicago he saw all the flatland he wanted to during the courtly War . . . and, he will tell you, he never fought that war to free the damned slaves. They can keep slaves down there in the land of cotton until the end of the eternity, as far as Jared Lancelot Devore is concerned. No, he fought in the war to teach those cracker sons of bitches south of Mason and Dixon that you dont pull out of the game just because you dont like some of the rules. He went down to scratch the scab off the end of old Johnny Rebs snout. Tried to leave the United States of America, they had The ennobleNo, he doesnt care about slaves and he doesnt care about the land of cotton and he doesnt care about blackniggers who sing dirty songs and then get treated to champagne and ersters (Jared always says oysters in just that sarcastic way) in payment for their smut. He doesnt care about anything so long as they keep in their place and let him keep in his.But she wont do it. The uppity bitch will not do it. She has been warned to stay off The Street, but she will not listen. She goes anyway, walking along in her white dress just as if there was a white person inside it, sometimes with her son, who has a blacknigger African name and no daddy his daddy probably just spent the one night with his mommy in a kink somewhere down Alabama and now she walks around with the get of that just as bold as a brass monkey. She walks The Street as if she has a right to be there, even though not a nous will talk to herBut thats not true, is it? I asked Devore. Thats what really stuck in old great-granddaddys craw, wasnt it? They did talk to her. She had a way about her that laugh, maybe. Men talked to her about crops and the women showed off their babies. In fact they gave her their babies to hold and when she laughed down at them, they laughed back up at her. The girls asked her advice about boys. The boys . . . they just looked. But how they looked, huh? They concerned up their eyes, and I e xpect most of them thought about her when they went out to the privy and filled up their palms.Devore glowered. He was aging in front of me, the lines drawing themselves deeper and deeper into his face he was becoming the man who had knocked me into the lake because he couldnt bear to be crossed. And as he grew older he began to fade.That was what Jared hated most of all, wasnt it? That they didnt tress aside, didnt turn away. She walked on The Street and no one treated her like a nigger. They treated her like a neighbor.I was in the zone, deeper in than Id ever been, down where the towns unconscious seemed to run like a buried river. I could drink from that river while I was in the zone, could fill my mouth and pharynx and belly with its cold minerally taste.All that summer Devore had talked to them. They were more than his crew, they were his boys Fred and Harry and Ben and Oren and George Armbruster and Draper Finney, who would break his neck and drown the next summer trying to plunk into Eades Quarry while he was drunk. Only it was the sort of accident thats kind of on purpose. Draper Finney drank a lot between July of 1901 and August of 1902, because it was the only way he could sleep. The only way he could get the hand out of his mind, that hand sticking straight out of the water, clenching and unclenching until you wanted to bellyache Wont it stop, wont it ever stop doing that.All summer long Jared Devore filled their ears with nigger bitch and uppity bitch. All summer long he told them about their responsibility as men, their duty to keep the community pure, and how they must see what others didnt and do what others wouldnt.It was a Sunday afternoon in August, a time when traffic along The Street dropped steeply. Later on, by five or so, things would begin to pick up again, and from six to sunset the broad path along the lake would be thronged. But three in the afternoon was Low tide. The Methodists were back in session over in Harlow for their aft ernoon Song Service at Warringtons the assembled company of vacationing flatlanders was sitting down to a heavy mid-afternoon Sabbath meal of roast chicken or ham all over the township families were addressing their own Sunday dinners. Those who had already finished were snoozing through the instigate of the day in a hammock, wherever possible. Sara liked this quiet time. Loved it, really. She had spent a great deal of her life on carny midways and in smoky gin-joints, shouting out her songs in order to be heard above the voices of redfaced, unruly drunks, and while part of her love the excitement and unpredictability of that life, part of her loved the serenity of this one, too. The peace of these walks. She wasnt getting any younger, after all she had a kid who had now left purt near all his babyhood behind him. On that particular Sunday she must have thought The Street almost too quiet. She walked a mile south from the meadow without seeing a soul even Kito was gone by then, ha ving stopped off to pick berries. It was as if the whole township weredeserted. She knows theres an Eastern Star supper in Kashwakamak, of course, has even contributed a pick pie to it because she has made friends of some of the Eastern Star ladies. Theyll all be down there getting ready. What she doesnt know is that today is also Dedication Day for the new Grace Baptist Church, the first real church ever to be built on the TR. A slug of locals have gone, heathen as well as Baptist. Faintly, from the other side of the lake, she can hear the Methodists singing. The sound is sweet and faint and beautiful, distance and echo has tuned every sour voice.She isnt aware of the men most of them very young men, the kind who under ordinary circumstances dare only look at her from the corners of their eyes until the oldest one among them speaks. Wellnow, a black whore in a white dress and a red belt Damn if that aint just a little too much color for lakeside. Whats wrong with you, whore? Can t you take a hint?She turns toward him, afraid but not showing it. She has lived thirty-six years on this earth, has known what a man has and where he wants to put it since she was eleven, and she understands that when men are together like this and full of redeye (she can smell it), they give up thinking for themselves and turn into a pack of dogs. If you show fear they will fall on you like dogs and likely tear you apart like dogs.Also, they have been laying for her. There can be no other explanation for them turning up like this.What hint is that, sugar? she asks, standing her ground. Where is everyone? Where can they all be? God damn Across the lake, the Methodists have moved on to Trust and Obey, a droner if there ever was one.That you aint got no business walking where the white folks walk, Harry Auster says. His adolescent voice breaks into a kind of mouse-squeak on the last word and she laughs. She knows how unwise that is, but she cant help it shes never been able to help her laughter, any more than shes ever been able to help the way men like this look at her breasts and bottom. Blame it on God.Why, I walk where I do, she says. I was told this was common ground, aint nobody got a right to keep me out. Aint nobody has. You seen em doin it?You see us now, George Armbruster says, trying to sound tough.Sara looks at him with a species of kindly contempt that makes George shrivel up inside. His cheeks glow hot red. Son, she says, you only come out now because the decent folks is all somewhere else. Why do you want to let this old fella tell you what to do? Act decent and let a lady walk.I see it all. As Devore fades and fades, at last becoming nothing but eyes under a blue cap in the rainy afternoon (through him I can see the shattered remains of my swimming float backwash against the embankment), I see it all. I see her as shestarts forward, walking straight at Devore. If she stands here jawing with them, something bad is going to happen. She feels it, and she never questions her tidings. And if she walks at any of the others, ole massall wear out in on her from the side, pulling the rest after. Ole massa in the little ole blue cap is the wheeldog, the one she must face down. She can do it, too. Hes strong, strong enough to make these boys one creature, his creature, at least for the time being, but he doesnt have her force, her determination, her energy. In a way she welcomes this confrontation. Reg has warned her to be careful, not to move too fast or try to make real friends until the rednecks (only Reggie calls them the bull gators) show themselves how many and how crazy but she goes her own course, trusts her own deep instincts. And here they are, only seven of em, and really just the one bull gator.Im stronger than you, ole massa, she thinks, walking toward him. She fixes her eyes on his and will not let them drop, his are the ones that drop, his the mouth that quivers uncertainly at one corner, his the tongue that comes out as quick as a lizards tongue to wet the lips, and all thats good . . . but even infract is when he falls back a step. When he does that the rest of them cluster in two groups of three, and there it is, her way through. Faint and sweet are the Methodists, faithy music carrying across the lakes still surface. A droner of a hymn, yes, but sweet across the miles.When we walk with the Lordin the light of His word,what a glory He sheds on our way . . .Im stronger than you, sugar, she sends, Im meaner than you, you may be the bull gator but Im the queen bee and if you dont want me stingin on you, you best clear me the rest of my path.You bitch, he says, but his voice is untoughened he is already thinking this isnt the day, theres something about her he didnt quite see until he saw her right up close, some blacknigger hougan he didnt feel until now, better wait for another day, better Then he trips over a root or a rock (perhaps its the very rock behind which she will at long last co me to rest) and falls down. His cap falls off, showing the big old bald spot on top of his head. His pants split all the way up the seam. And Sara makes a crucial mistake. Perhaps she underestimates Jared Devores own very considerable personal force, or perhaps she just cannot help herself the sound of his britches pull is like a loud fart. In any case she laughs that raucous, smoke-broken laugh which is her trademark. And her laugh becomes her doom.Devore doesnt think. He simply gives her the leather from where he lies, big feet in pegged loggers boots scene out like pistons. He hits her where she is thinnest and most vulnerable, in the ankles. She hollers in shocked pain as the left one breaks, she goes down in a tumble, losing her involute parasol out of one hand. She draws in pinch to scream again and Jared says from where he is lying, Dont let her Dassnt let her hollerBen Merrill falls on top of her full-length, all one hundred and ninety pounds of him. The breath she has drawn to scream with whooshes out in a gusty, almost silent sigh instead. Ben, who has never even danced with a woman, let alone lain on top of one like this, is instantly excited by the el of her struggling beneath him. He wriggles against her, laughing, and when she rakes her nails down his cheek he barely feels it. The way it seems to him, hes all cock and a yard long. When she tries to roll over and get out from under that way, he rolls with her, lets her be on top, and he is totally surprised when she drives her forehead down on his. He sees stars, but he is eighteen years old, as strong as he will ever be, and he loses neither consciousness nor his erection.Oren Peebles tears away the back of her dress, laughing. Pig-pile he cries in a breathy little whisper, and drops on top of her. instantly he is dry-humping her topside and Ben is dry-humping just as enthusiastically from underneath, dry-humping like a billygoat even with the blood pouring down the sides of his head from t he split in the center of his brow, and she knows that if she cant scream she is lost. If she can scream and if Kito hears, hell run and get help, run and get Reg But before she can try again, ole massa is squatting beside her and showing her a long-bladed knife. Make a sound and Ill cut your nose off, he says, and thats when she gives up. They have brought her down after all, partly because she laughed at the wrong time, mostly out of pure buggardly bad luck. flat they will not be stopped, and best that Kito should stay away please God keep him back where he was, it was a good patch of berries, one that should keep him occupied an hour or more. He loves berry-picking, and it wont take these men an hour. Harry Auster yanks her hair back, tears her dress off one shoulder, and begins to sucker on her neck.Ole massa the only one not at her. Old massa standing back, looking both ways along The Street, his eyes slitted and wary old massa look like a mangy timber-wolf done eaten a whole generation of chickenhouse chickens while managing to avoid every trap and snare. Hey Irish, quit on her a minute, he tells Harry, then widens his wise gaze to the others. Get her in the puckies, you damn fools. Get her in there deep.They dont. They cant. They are too eager to have her. They arm-yank her behind the forehead of gray rock and call it good. She doesnt pray easily but she prays now. She prays for them to let her live. She prays for Kito to stay clear, to keep filling his bucket slow by eating every third handful. She prays that if he does take a notion to catch up with her, he will see whats happening and run the other way as fast as he can, run silent and get Reg. Stick this in your mouth, George Armbruster pants. And dont you bite me, you bitch.They take her top and bottom, back and front, two and three at a time. They take her where anybody coming along cant help but see them, and ole massa stands off a little, looking first at the panting young men classify around her, kneeling with their trousers down and their thighs scratched from the bushes they are kneeling in, then he peers up and down the path with his wild and wary eyes. Incredibly, one of them it is Fred Dean says Sorry, maam after hes shot his load feels like halfway up to east bejeezus. Its as if he accidentally kicked her in the shin while crossing his legs.And it doesnt end. Theres come down her throat, come running down the crack of her ass, the young one has bitten the blood right out of her left breast, and it doesnt end. They are young, and by the time the last one has finished, the first one, oh God, the first one is ready again. Across the river the Methodists are now singing Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine and as ole massa approaches her she thinks, Its almost over, woman, he the last, hold on hold steady and it be over. He looks at the skinny redhead and the one who keeps squinching his eye up and tossing his head and tells them to watch the path, hes going to take hi s turn now that shes broke in.He unbuckles his belt, he unbuttons his flies, he pushes down his underwear dirty black at the knees and dirty yellow at the crotch-and as he drops a knee on either side of her she sees that ole massa s little massa is just as floppy as a snake with its neck broke and before she can stop it, that raucous laugh bursts all unexpected from her again even lying here covered with the hot jelly turn over of her rapists, she cant help but see the funny side. closed(a) up Devore growls at her, and smashes the heel of one hard hand across her face, breaking her cheekbone and her nose. Shut up that howlingReckon it might get stiffer if it was one of your boys layin here with his rosy red ass stuck up in the air, sugar? she asks, and then, For the last time, Sara laughs.Devore draws his hand back to hit her again, his naked loins lying against her naked loins, his penis a flaccid worm between them. But before he can bring the hand down a childs voice cries, Ma What they doin to you, Ma? Git off my mama, you bastardsShe sits up in spite of Devores weight, her laughter dying, her wide eyes searching Kito out and finding him, a slim young boy of eight standing on The Street, dressed in overalls and a straw hat and brand-new canvas shoes, carrying a tin bucket in one hand. His lips are blue with juice. His eyes are wide with confusion and fright.Run, Kito she screams. Run away h Red fire explodes in her head, she swoons back into the bushes, hearing ole massa from a great distance Get him. Dassnt let him ramble, now.Then shes going down a long dark slope, shes lost in a Ghost House corridor that leads only deeper and deeper into its own convoluted bowels, from that deep falling place she hears him, she hears, her darling one, he isscreaming. I heard him screaming as I knelt by the gray rock with my carry-bag beside me and no idea how Id gotten to where I was I certainly had no depot of walking here. I was crying in shock and horror and pit y. Was she crazy? Well, no wonder. No fucking wonder. The rain was steady but no longer apocalyptic. I stared at my fishy-white hands on the gray rock for a few seconds, then looked around. Devore and the others were gone.The ripe and gassy stench of decay filled my nose it was like a somatogenetic assault. I fumbled in the carry-bag, found the Stenomask Rommie and George had given me as a joke, and slipped it over my mouth and nose with fingers that felt numb and distant. I breathed shallowly and tentatively. Better. Not a lot, but enough to keep from fleeing, which was undoubtedly what she wanted.No she cried from somewhere behind me as I grabbed the spade and delve in. I tore a great mouth in the ground with the first swipe, and each subsequent one deepened and widened it. The earth was soft and yielding, woven through with mats of thin roots which parted easily under the blade.No Dont you dareI wouldnt look around, wouldnt give her a chance to push me away. She was stronger d own here, perhaps because it had happened here. Was that possible? I didnt know and didnt care. All I cared about was getting this done. Where the roots were thicker, I hacked through them with the pruning knife.Leave me beNow I did look around, risked one quick glance because of the unnatural crackling sounds which had accompanied her voice which now seemed to make her voice. The Green Lady was gone. The birch had somehow become Sara Tidwell it was Saras face growing out of the criss-crossing branches and shiny leaves. That rain-slicked face swayed, dissolved, came together, melted away, came together again. For a moment all the mystery I had sensed down here was revealed. Her collapse shifting eyes were utterly human. They stared at me with hate and supplication.I aint done she cried in a cracked, breaking voice. He was the wrap up, dont you understand? He was the worst and its his blood in her and I wont rest until I have it outThere was a gruesome ripping sound. She had inhab ited the birch, made it into a physical body of some sort and intended to tear it free of the earth. She would come and get me with it if she could kill me with it if she could. Strangle me in limber branches. Stuff me with leaves until I looked like a Christmas decoration.No matter how much of a monster he was, Kyra had nothing to do with what he did, I said. And you wont have her.Yes I will the Green Lady screamed. The ripping, rending sounds were louder now. They were joined by a hissing, shaky crackle. I didnt look around again. I didnt dare look around. I dug straightaway instead. Yes I will have her she cried, and now the voice was closer. She was coming for me but I refused to see when it comes to walking trees and bushes, Ill stick to Macbeth, thanks. I will have her He took mine and I mean to take hisGo away, a new voice said.The spade loosened in my hands, almost fell. I turned and saw Jo standing below me and to my right. She was looking at Sara, who had materialized int o a lunatics hallucination a monstrous greenish-black thing that slipped with every step it tried to walk along The Street. She had left the birch behind yet assumed its vitality somehow the actual tree huddled behind her, black and shrivelled and dead. The creature born of it looked like the Bride of Frankenstein as sculpted by Picasso. In it, Saras face came and went, came and went.The Shape, I thought coldly. It was always real . . . and if it was always me, it was always her, too.Jo was dressed in the white shirt and yellow slacks shed had on the day she died. I couldnt see the lake through her as I had been able to see it through Devore and Devores young friends she had materialized herself completely. I felt a curious draining sensation at the back of my skull and thought I knew how.Git out, bitch the Sara-thing snarled. It raised its arms toward Jo as it had raised them to me in my worst nightmares.Not at all. Jos voice remained calm. She turned toward me. Hurry, mike. You have to be quick. Its not really her anymore. Shes let one of the Outsiders in, and theyre very dangerous.Jo, I love you.I love you t Sara shrieked and then began to spin. Leaves and branches blurred together and lost coherence it was like watching something liquefy in a blender. The entity which had only looked a little like a woman to begin with now dropped its masquerade entirely. Something elemental and grotesquely inhuman began to form out of the maelstrom. It leaped at my wife. When it struck her, the color and solidity left Jo as if slapped away by a huge hand. She became a phantom struggling with the thing which raved and shrieked and clawed at her.Hurry, Mike she screamed. HurryI bent to the job.The spade struck something that wasnt dirt, wasnt stone, wasnt wood. I scraped along it, revealing a filthy mold-crusted swatch of canvas. Now I dug like a madman, wanting to clear as much of the buried object as I could, wanting to fatten my chances of success as much as I could. Behind me, the Shape screamed in fury and my wife screamed in pain. Sara had given up part of her discorporate self in order to gain her revenge, had let in something Jo called an Outsider. I had no idea what that might be and never wanted to know. Sara was its conduit, I knew that much. And if I could take care of her in time I fall into placeed into the dripping hole, slapping wet earth from the ancient canvas. Faint stencilled earn appeared when I did J.M. MCCURDIE SAWMILL. Mccurdies had burned in the fires of 33, I knew. Id seen a picture of it in flames somewhere. As I seized the canvas, the tips of my fingers punching through and letting out a fresh billow of green and gassy stench, I could hear grunting. I could hearDevore. Hes lying on top of her and grunting like a pig. Sara is semiconscious, muttering unintelligibly through bruised lips which are shiny with blood. Devore is looking back over his shoulder at Draper Finney and Fred Dean. They have raced after the boy and brought him back, but he wont stop yelling, hes yelling to measure the band, yelling to wake the dead, and if they can hear the Methodists singing How I Love to Tell the Story over here, then they may be able to hear the yowling nigger over there. Devore says Put him in the water, shut him up. The minute he says it, as though the words are magic words, his cock begins to stiffen.What do you mean? Ben Merrill asks.You know goddam well, Jared says. He pants the words out, jerking his hips as he speaks. His narrow ass gleams in the afternoon light. He seen us You want to cut his throat, get his blood all over you? Fine by me. Here. Take my knife, be my guestN-No, Jared Ben cries in horror, actually seeming to cringe at the sight of the knife.He is finally ready. It takes him a little longer, thats all, he aint a kid like these other ones. But now Never mind her smart mouth, never mind her insolent way of laughing, never mind the whole township. Let them all show up and watch if they like. He slips it to her, what shes wanted all along, what all her kind want. He slips it in and sinks it deep. He continues giving orders even as he rapes her. Up and down his ass goes, tick-tock, just like a cats tail. Somebody take care of him Or do you want to spend forty years rotting in Shawshank because of a nigger boys tattle?Ben seizes one of Kito Tidwells arms, Oren Peebles the other, but by the time they have dragged him as far as the embankment they have lost their heart. Raping an uppity nigger woman with the gall to laugh at Jared when he fell down and split his britches is one thing. Drowning a scared kid like a pussy in a mud-puddle . . . thats another one altogether.They loosen their grip, staring into each others haunted eyes, and Kito pulls free.Run, honey Sara cries. Run away and get Jared clamps his hands around her throat and begins choking.The boy trips over his own berry bucket and thumps gracelessly to the ground. Harry and Draper recapture him easily. Wh at you going to do? Draper asks in a kind of desperate whine, and Harry repliesWhat I have to. Thats what he replied, and now I was going to do what I had to in spite of the stench, in spite of Sara, in spite of my dead wifes shrieks. I hauled the roll of canvas out of the ground. The ropes which had tied it shut at either end held, but the roll itself split down the middle with a hideous burping sound.Hurry Jo cried. I cant hold it much longerIt snarled it bayed like a dog. There was a loud wooden crunch, like a door being slammed hard enough to splinter, and Jo wailed. I grabbed for the carry-bag with Slips n Greens printed on the front and tore it open asHarry the others call him Irish because of his carrot-colored hair grabs the struggling kid in a clumsy kind of bearhug and jumps into the lake with him. The kid struggles harder than ever, his straw hat comes off and floats on the water. Get that Harry pants. Fred Dean kneels and fishes out the dripping hat. Freds eyes are d azed, hes got the look of a fighter about one round from hitting the canvas. Behind them Sara Tidwell has begun to rattle deep in her chest and throat like the sight of the boys clenching hand, these sounds will haunt Draper Finney until his final dive into Eades Quarry. Jared sinks his fingers deeper, pumping and choking at the same time, the sweat pouring off him. No amount of washing will take the smell of that sweat out of these clothes, and when he begins to think of it as murder-sweat, he burns the clothes to get shed of it.Harry Auster wants to be shed of it all to be shed of it and never see these men again, most of all Jared Devore, who he now thinks must be Lord Satan himself. Harry cannot go home and face his father unless this nightmare is over, buried. And his mother How can he ever face his making love mother, Bridget Auster with her round sweet Irish face and graying hair and comforting shelf of bosom, Bridget who has always had a kind word or a soothing manager him , Bridget Auster who has been Saved, shed in the Blood of the Lamb, Bridget Auster who is even now serving pies at the picnic theyre having at the new church, Bridget Auster who is mammary gland how can he ever look at her again or she him if he has to stand in court on a charge of raping and beating a woman, even a black woman?So he yanks the clinging boy away Kito scratches him once, just a nick on the side of the neck, and that night Harry will tell his mamma it was a bush-pricker that caught him unawares and he will let her put a kiss on it and then he plunges the child into the lake. Kito looks up at him, his face shimmering, and Harry sees a little fish flick by. A perch, he thinks. For an instant he wonders what the boy must see, looking up through the specie shield of the surface at the face of the fellow whos holding him down, the fellow whos drowning him, and then Harry pushes that away. Just a nigger, he reminds himself desperately. Thats all he is, just a nigger. N o kin of yours.Kitos arm comes out of the water his dripping dark-brown arm. Harry pulls back, not wanting to be clawed, but the hand doesnt reach for him, only sticks straight up. The fingers curl into a fist. Open. Curl into a fist. Open. Curl into a fist. The boys thrashing begins to ease, the kicking feet begin to slow down, the eyes looking up into Harrys eyes are taking on a curiously dreamy look, and still that brown arm sticks straight up, still the hand opens and closes, opens and closes. Draper Finney stands on the shore up crying, sure that now someone will come along, now someone will see the terrible thing they have done the terrible thing they are in fact still doing. Be sure your sin will find you out, it says in the Good Book. Be sure. He opens his mouth to tell Harry to quit, maybe its still not too late to take it back, let him up, let him live, but no sound comes out. Behind him Sara is choking her last. In front of him her drowning sons hand opens and closes, opens and closes, the reflection of it shimmering on the water, and Draper thinks Wont it stop doing that, wont it ever stop doing that? And as if it were a prayer that something is now answering, the boys locked elbow begins to bend and his arm begins to ease up the fingers begin to close again into a fist and then stop. For a moment the hand wavers and thenI slammed the heel of my hand into the center of my forehead to clear these phantoms away. Behind me there was a frenzied snap and crackle of wet bushes as Jo and whatever she was holding back continued to struggle. I put my hands inside the split in the canvas like a doctor spreading a wound. I yanked. There was a low ripping sound as the roll tore the rest of the way up and down.Inside was what remained of them two yellowed skulls, forehead to forehead as if in sketch conversation, a womans faded red leather belt, a molder of clothes . . . and a heap of bones. Two ribcages, one large and one small. Two sets of legs, one lon g and one short. The early remains of Sara and Kito Tidwell, buried here by the lake for almost a hundred years.The larger of the two skulls turned. It glared at me with its empty eyesockets. Its teeth chattered as if it would bite me, and the bones below it began a tenebrous, jittery stirring. Some broke apart immediately all were soft and pitted. The red belt stirred up restlessly and the rusty buckle rose like the head of a snake.Mike Jo screamed. Quick, quickI pulled the sack out of the carry-bag and grabbed the plastic bottle which had been inside. Lye stille, the Magnabet letters had said another little word-trick. Another message passed behind the unsuspecting guards back. Sara Tidwell was a fearsome creature, but she had underestimated Jo . . . and she had underestimated the telepathy of long association, as well. I had gone to Slips n Greens, I had bought a bottle of lye, and now I opened it and poured it, smoking, over the bones of Sara and her son.There was a hissing sou nd like the one you hear when you open a beer or a bottled soft drink. The belt-buckle melted. The bones turned white and crumpled like things made out of sugar I had a nightmare image of Mexican children eating candy corpses off long sticks on the Day of the Dead. The eyesockets of Saras skull widened as the lye filled the dark hollow where her mind, her exceeding talent, and her laughing soul had once resided. It was an expression that looked at first like surprise and then like sorrow.The jaw fell off the nubs of the teeth sizzled away.The top of the skull caved in.Spread fingerbones jittered, then melted.Ohhhhhh . . . It whispered through the soaking trees like a rising wind . . . only the wind had died as the wet air caught its breath before the next onslaught. It was a sound of unspeakable grief and longing and surrender. I sensed no hate in it her hate was gone, burned away in the corrosive I had bought in Helen Austers shop. The sound of Saras going was replaced by the pla intive, almost human cry of a bird, and it awakened me from the place where I had been, brought me finally and completely out of the zone. I got shakily to my feet, turned around, and looked at The Street.Jo was still there, a dim form through which I could now see the lake and the dark clouds of the next thundersquall coming over the mountains. Something flickered beyond her that bird venturing out of its safe covert for a peek at the re-arranged environment, perhaps but I barely registered that. It was Jo I wanted to see, Jo who had come God knew how far and suffered God knew how much to help me. She looked exhausted, hurt, in some fundamental way diminished. But the other thing the Outsider was gone. Jo, standing in a ring of birch leaves so dead they looked charred, turned to me and smiled.Jo We did itHer mouth moved. I heard the sound, but the words were too distant to make out. She was standing right there, but she might have been calling across a wide canyon. Still, I und erstood her. I read the words off her lips if you prefer the rational, right out of her mind if you prefer the romantical. I prefer the latter. Marriage is a zone, too, you know. Marriage is a zone. So thats all right, isnt it?I glanced down into the gaping roll of canvas and saw nothing but stubs and splinters sticking out of a noxious, uneasy paste. I got a whiff, and even through the Stenomask it made me cough and back away. Not corruption lye. When I looked back around at Jo, she was barely there.Jo Wait Cant help. Cant stay.Words from another star system, barely glimpsed on a fading mouth. Now she was little more than eyes floating in the dark afternoon, eyes which seemed made of the lake behind them. Hurry . . .She was gone. I slipped and stumbled to the place where shed been, my feet crunching over dead birch leaves, and grabbed at nothing. What a fool I must have looked, soaked to the skin, wearing a Stenomask askew over the lower half of my face, trying to embrace the wet g ray air.I got the faintest whiff of Red perfume . . . and then only damp earth, lakewater, and the vile stink of lye running under everything. At least the smell of putrefaction was gone that had been no more real than . . .Than what? Than what? Either it was all real or none of it was real. If none of it was real, I was out of my mind and ready for the Blue Wing at Juniper Hill. I looked over toward the gray rock and saw the bag of bones I had pulled out of the wet ground like a festering tooth. Lazy tendrils of smoke were still rising from its ripped length. That much was real. So was the Green Lady, who was now a soot-colored Black Lady as dead as the dead branch behind her, the one that seemed to point like an arm.Cant help . . . cant stay . . . hurry.Couldnt help with what? What more help did I need? It was done, wasnt it? Sara was gone spirit follows bone, good night sweet ladies, God grant she lye stille.And still a kind of stinking terror, not so different from the smell of putrescence which had come out of the ground, seemed to sweat out of the air Kyras name began to beat in my head, Ki-Ki, Ki-Ki, Ki-Ki, like the call of some exotic tropical bird. I started up the railroad-tie steps to the house, and although I was exhausted, by the time I was halfway up I had begun to run.I climbed the stairs to the deck and went in that way. The house looked the same save for the broken tree poking in through the kitchen window, Sara Laughs had stood up to the storm very well but something was wrong. There was something I could almost smell . . . and perhaps I did smell it, bitter and low. Lunacy may have its own wild-vetch aroma. Its not the kind of thing I would ever care to research.In the front hall I stopped, looking down at a heap of paperback books, Elmore Leonards and Ed Mcbains, lying on the floor. As if they had been raked off the shelf by a passing hand. A flailing hand, maybe. I could also see my tracks there, both coming and going. They had already begun to dry. They should have been the only ones I had been carrying Ki when we came in. They should have been, but they werent. The others were smaller, but not so small that I mistook them for a childs.I ran down the hall to the north bedroom crying her name, and I might as well have been crying Mattie or Jo or Sara. Coming out of my mouth, Kyras name sounded like the name of a corpse. The duvet had been thrown back onto the floor. Except for the black stuffed dog, lying where it had in my dream, the bed was empty. And Ki was gone.