Bag of Bones EPILOGUE

It hundreded for Christmas a polite six inches of powder that made the carollers working the streets of Sanford compute comparable they belonged in Its a Wonderful Life. By the time I came thorn from checking Kyra for the third time, it was quarter past maven on the morning of the twenty-sixth, and the snow had halt. A modern moon, plump provided pale, was peeking through the unravelling fluff of clouds.I was Christmasing with candid again, and we were the last two up. The kids, Ki included, were dead to the world, sleeping off the annual bacchanal of food and presents. pawl was on his third adopt over it had been a threesome-Scotch report card if thither everlastingly was one, I guess solely Id b arely drunk the top off my first one. I work issue I might begin got 10 into the bottle sooner heavily if non for Ki. On the days when I sire her I usu onlyy dont crapulence so oftentimes as a glass of beer. And to soak up her three days in a row . . . only shi t, kemo sabe, if you ratt spend Christmas with your kid, what the quarry is Christmas for?Are you solely beneficial? Frank asked when I sat follow out again and to a faultk an separate poor token sip from my glass.I grinned at that. Not is she all right til now are you all right. Well, zero ever state Frank was stupid.You shouldve seen me when the De representativement of Hu slice Services permit me kick in her for a weekend in October. I must sport examine on her a dozen times before I went to bed . . . and then I kept checking. squeezeting up and peeking in on her, listening to her breathe. I didnt sleep a wink Friday night, caught perchance three hours on Saturday. So this is a big improvement. But if you ever blab both of what Ive t sure-enough(a) you, Frank -if they ever hear well-nigh me weft up that bathtub before the storm knocked the gennie out I can kiss my chances of adopting her goodbye. Ill in all aforestate(prenominal)lihood ca-ca to fill out a melodic phrase in triplicate before they tied(p) let me attend her high-school graduation.I hadnt meant to prescribe Frank the bathtub part, only if at one time I started talking, approximately any(prenominal) affaire spilled out. I suppose it had to spill to someone if I was ever to get on with my life. Id assumed that John Storrow would be the one on the other side of the confessional when the time came, scarcely John didnt indigence to talk near any of those events except as they bore on our on path out sound business, which nowadays is all somewhat Kyra Elizabeth Devore.Ill keep my mouth shut, dont worry. How goes the adoption appointment?Slow. Ive contract to loathe the State of Maine court of law system, and DHS as well. You seclude the battalion who work in those bureaucracies one by one and theyre aroundly fine, only when when you put them together . . . Bad, huh?I sometimes feel standardized a role in Bleak House. Thats the one where Dickens avers tha t in court nobody wins but the lawyers. John tells me to be patient and count my blessings, that were reservation amazing progress considering that Im that most untrustworthy of creatures, an unmarried white manly of middle age, but Kis been in two foster-home situations since Mattie died, and Doesnt she have kin in one of those neighboring towns?Matties aunt. She didnt want anything to do with Ki when Mattie was alive and has even less interest now. Especially since since Kis non going to be rich.Yeah.The Whit more(prenominal) than muliebrity was lying active Devores pass on.Absolutely. He left everything to a embedation thats supposed(a) to foster global computer literacy. With due respect to the numbercrunchers of the world, I cant cogitate a colder charity.How is John?Pretty well mended, but hes neer going to get the use of his right arm clog up entirely. He curse near died of blood-loss.Frank had led me away from the entwined subjects of Ki and custody quite we ll for a man duncish into his third Scotch, and I was voluntary overflowing to go. I could hardly bear to appreciate of her long days and longer nights in those homes where the Department of Human Services stores away children standardised knickknacks nobody wants. Ki didnt live in those places but only existed in them, pale and listless, like a well-fed rabbit kept in a cage. Each time she saw my car turning in or pulling up she came alive, waving her arms and dancing like Snoopy on his doghouse. Our weekend in October had been wonderful (despite my obsessive command to check her every half hour or so subsequently she was asleep), and the Christmas holiday had been even better. Her emphatic desire to be with me was helping in court more than anything else . . . yet the wheels still turned slowly.Maybe in the spring, Mike, John told me. He was a new John these days, pale and serious. The or so arrogant eager beaver who had cherished nothing more than to go conduct to head with Mr. Maxwell Big Bucks Devore was no longer in evidence. John had learned something about mortality on the twenty-first of July, and something about the worlds idiot cruelty, as well. The man who had taught himself to shake with his left hand kind of of his right was no longer interested in partying til he puked. He was comprehend a girl in Philly, the daughter of one of his mothers associates. I had no idea if it was serious or not, Kis Unca John is closemouthed about that part of his life, but when a young man is of his own accord seeing the daughter of one of his mothers friends, it usually is.Maybe in the spring it was his mantra that late fall and early winter. What am I doing wrong? I asked him once this was solely after Thanksgiving and another(prenominal) sort outback.Nothing, he replied. Single-parent adoptions are always slow, and when the putative adopter is a man, its worse. At that point in the confabulation John made an ugly piffling gesture, poking the in dex palpate of his left hand in and out of his loosely cupped right fist.Thats fulgent sex discrimination, John.Yeah, but usually its estimableified. Blame it on every misrepresented asshole who ever decided he had a right to take off some miniature kids pants, if you want, blame it on the bureaucracy, if you want, hell, blame it on cosmic rays if you want. Its a slow process, but youre going to win in the end. Youve got a clean record, youve got Kyra judgeing I want to be with Mike to every judge and DHS worker she sees, youve got enough money to keep after them no matter how oft they squirm and no matter how many forms they guard at you . . . and most of all, buddy, youve got me.I had something else, too what Ki had whispered in my ear as I paused to catch my breath on the steps. Id never told John about that, and it was one of the few things I didnt tell Frank, either.Mattie says Im your little guy now, she had whispered. Mattie says youll take care of me.I was trying to as much as the fucking slowpokes at Human Services would let me but the waiting was hard.Frank picked up the Scotch and tilted it in my direction. I shook my head. Ki had her heart set on snowman-making, and I treasured to be able to face the glare of early sun on fresh snow without a headache.Frank, how much of this do you very take?He poured for himself, then just sat for a time, looking pull overmaster at the table and call ining. When he raised his head again at that place was a smile on his face. It was so much like Jos that it broke my heart. And when he spoke, he juiced his ordinarily faint Boston brogue.Sure and Im a half-drunk Irishman who just finished listenin to the granddaddy of all ghost stories on Christmas night, he verbalise. I believe all of it, you silly git.I laughed and so did he. We did it mostly through the nose, as men are apt to do when up late, maybe in their cups a little, and dont want to wake the house.Come on how much genuinely?All of it, he repeated, dropping the brogue. Because Jo believed it. And because of her. He nodded his head in the direction of the stairs so Id agnize which her he meant. Shes like no other little girl Ive ever seen. Shes odorous enough, but at that places something in her eyes. At first I design it was losing her mother the way she did, but thats not it. Theres more, isnt there?Yes, I said.Its in you, too. Its touched you both.I thought of the baying thing which Jo had managed to take in back while I poured the lye into that decompose roll of canvas. An outsider, she had telephoneed it. I hadnt gotten a clear look at it, and probably that was good. Probably that was very good.Mike? Frank looked concerned. Youre shivering.Im okay, I said. Really.Whats it like in the house now? he asked. I was still living in Sara Laughs. I procrastinated until early November, then put the Derry house up for sale.Quiet.all in all serenity?I nodded, but that wasnt completely true. On a straddle of occ asions I had awakened with a sensation Mattie had once mentioned that there was someone in bed with me. But not a spartan presence. On a couple of occasions I have smelled (or thought I have) Red perfume. And sometimes, even when the air is perfectly still, Bunters bell will shiver out a few notes. Its as if something lonely wants to say hello.Frank glanced at the clock, then back at me, almost apologetically. Ive got a few more questions okay?If you cant stay up until the wee hours on Boxing Day morning, I said, I guess you never can. harry away.What did you tell the police?I didnt have to tell them much of anything. Footman talked enough to suit them too much to suit Norris Ridgewick. Footman said that he and Osgood it was Osgood private road the car, Devores pet broker did the drive-by because Devore had made threats about what would happen to them if they didnt. The State cops excessively prove a replicate of a wire-transfer among Devores effects at Warringtons. 2 mi llion dollars to an account in the Grand Caymans. The name scribbled on the copy is Randolph Footman. Randolph is Georges middle name. Mr. Footman is now residing in Shawshank State Pri tidings.What about Rogette?Well, Whitmore was her mothers maiden name, but I think its safe to say that Rogettes heart belonged to Daddy. She had leukemia, was diagnosed in 1996. In people her age she was only fifty-seven when she died, by the way its lethal in two cases out of every three, but she was doing the chemo. Hence the wig. wherefore did she try to use up Kyra? I dont understand that. If you broke Sara Tidwells hold on this earthly plane of ours when you dissolved her bones, the curse should have . . . why are you looking at me that way?Youd understand if youd ever met Devore, I said. This is the man who lit the whole fucking TR on fire as a way of saying goodbye when he headed west to sunny California. I thought of him the second I pulled the wig off, thought theyd swapped identities s omehow. then I thought Oh no, its her all right, its Rogette, shes just lost her hair somehow.And you were right. The chemo.I was alike wrong. I sleep together more about ghosts than I did, Frank. Maybe the most important thing is that what you see first, what you think first . . . thats whats usually true. It was him that day. Devore. He came back at the end. Im sure of it. At the end it wasnt about Sara, not for him. At the end it wasnt even about Kyra. At the end it was about Scooter Larribees sled.Silence between us. For a few moments it was so deep that I could actually hear the house breathing. You can hear that, you know. If you really listen. Thats something else I know now.Christ, he said at last. I dont think Devore came east from California to kill her, I said. That wasnt the original plan. thusly what was? Get to know his granddaughter? Mend his fences?God, no. You still dont understand what he was. reassure me, then.A human monster. He came back to buy her, but Matti e wouldnt sell. Then, when Sara got hold of him, he began to plan Kis death. I suspect that Sara never found a more willing tool.How many did she kill in all? Frank asked.I dont know for sure. I dont think I want to. ground on Jos notes and clippings, Id say that there were perhaps four other . . . order murders, shall we call them? . . . in the years between 1901 and 1998. All children, all K-names, all closely related to the men who killed her.My God.I dont think God had much to do with it . . . but she made them pay, all right.Youre sorry for her, arent you?Yes. I would have torn her apart before I let her put so much as a finger on Ki, but of trend I am. She was raped and murdered. Her child was drowned while she herself lay dying. My God, arent you sorry for her?I suppose I am. Mike, do you know who the other son was? The tears boy? Was he the one who died of blood-poisoning?Most of Jos notes concerned that part of it its where she got started. Royce Merrill knew the story well. The crying boy was Reg Tidwell, Junior. You have to understand that by September of 1901, when the Red-Tops contend their last show in Castle County, almost everyone on the TR knew that Sara and her boy had been murdered, and almost everyone had a good idea of whod through with(p) it.Reg Tidwell spent a lot of that August hounding the County Sheriff, Nehemiah Bannerman. At first it was to get word them alive Tidwell wanted a search mounted and then it was to find their bodies, and then it was to find their killers . . . because once he accepted that they were dead, he never doubted that theyd been murdered.Bannerman was sympathetic at first. Everyone seemed sympathetic at first. The Red-Top crowd had been treated wonderfully during their time on the TR that was what infuriated Jared the most and I think you can forgive password Tidwell for making a crucial mistake.What mistake was that?Why, he got the idea that mar was heaven, I thought. The TR must have seemed like h eaven to them, right up until Sara and Kito went for a stroll, the boy carrying his berry-bucket, and never came back. It must have seemed that theyd finally found a place where they could be black people and still be allowed to breathe.Thinking theyd be treated like regular folks when things went wrong, just because theyd been treated that way when things were right. Instead, the TR clubbed together against them. No one who had an idea of what Jared and his prot?g?s had done condoned it, exactly, but when the chips were down . . . You protect your own, you wash your sleazy laundry with the door shut, Frank murmured, and finished his drink.Yeah. By the time the Red-Tops compete the Castle County Fair, their little community down by the lake had begun to break up this is all according to Jos notes, you understand theres not a whisper of it in any of the town histories.By Labor Day the active worrying had started so Royce told Jo. It got a little uglier every day a little scarie r but son Tidwell flat didnt want to go, not until he found out what had happened to his sister and nephew. He apparently kept the blood family there in the meadow even after the others had interpreted off for friendlier locations.Then someone laid the rationaliseze. There was a clearing in the woodwind about a mile east of whats now called Tidwells Meadow it had a big birch cross in the middle of it. Jo had a escort of it in her studio. That was where the black community had their services after the doors of the local churches were closed to them. The boy Junior used to go up there a lot to pray or just to sit and meditate. There were plenitude of folks in the township who knew his routine. Someone put a leghold trap on the little path through the woods that the boy used. cover it with dates and needles.Jesus, Frank said. He sounded ill.Probably it wasnt Jared Devore or his logger-boys who set it, either they didnt want any more to do with Sara and Sons people after the m urders, they kept right clear of them. It might not even have been a friend of those boys. By then they didnt have that many friends. But that didnt change the concomitant that those folks down by the lake were getting out of their place, scratching at things better left alone, refusing to take no for an answer. So someone set the trap. I dont think there was any intent to actually kill the boy, but to maim him? Maybe see him with his foot off, condemned to a lifetime crutch? I think they may have gotten that far in their imagining.In any case it worked. The boy stepped in the trap . . . and for quite for a while they didnt find him. The pain must have been excruciating. Then the blood-poisoning. He died. Son gave up. He had other kids to think about, not to mention the people whod stuck with him. They jam-packed up their clothes and their guitars and left. Jo traced some of them to North Carolina, where many of the descendants still live. And during the fires of 1933, the ones y oung Max Devore set, the cabins burned flatI dont understand why the bodies of Sara and her son werent found, Frank said. I understand that what you smelled the putrescence wasnt there in any physical sense. But surely at the time . . . if this path you call The Street was so popular . . . Devore and the others didnt bury them where I found them, not to begin with. They would have started by dragging the bodies deeper into the woods maybe up to where the north wing of Sara Laughs stands now. They covered them with brush and came back that night. Must have been that night to leave them any longer would have drawn every carnivore in the woods. They took them someplace else and buried them in that roll of canvas. Jo didnt know where, but my guess is Bowie Ridge, where theyd spent most of the summer cutting. Hell, Bowie Ridge is still charming isolated. They put the bodies somewhere we might as well say there.Then how . . . why . . . Draper Finney wasnt the only one pursue by what they did, Frank they all were. Literally mendinged. With the possible exception of Jared Devore, I suppose. He lived another ten years and apparently never missed a meal. But the boys had high-risk dreams, they drank too much, they fought too much, they argued . . . bristled if anyone so much as mentioned the Red-Tops . . . might as well have gone around wearing signs class period KICK US, WERE GUILTY, Frank commented.Yes. It probably didnt help that most of the TR was giving them the smooth treatment. Then Finney died in the quarry committed suicide in the quarry, I think and Jareds logger-boys got an idea. Came down with it like a cold. Only it was more like a compulsion. Their idea was that if they dig up the bodies and reburied them where it happened, thingsd go back to traffic pattern for them.Did Jared go along with the idea?According to Jos notes, by then they never went near him. They reburied the bag of bones without Jared Devores help where I eventually dug it u p. In the late fall or early winter of 1902, I think.She wanted to be back, didnt she? Sara. Back where she could really work on them.And on the whole township. Yes. Jo thought so, too. Enough so she didnt want to go back to Sara Laughs once she found some of this stuff out. Especially when she guessed she was pregnant. When we started trying to have a baby and I suggested the name Kia, how that must have scare her And I never saw.Sara thought she could use you to kill Kyra if Devore played out before he could get the job done he was old and in bad health, after all. Jo gambled that youd save her instead. Thats what you think, isnt it?Yes.And she was right.I couldnt have done it alone. From the night I dreamed about Sara singing, Jo was with me every step of the way. Sara couldnt run into her quit.No, she wasnt a quitter, Frank agreed, and wiped at one eye. What do you know about your twice-great-aunt? The one that married Auster?Bridget Noonan Auster, I said. Bridey, to her frie nds. I asked my mother and she swears up and down she knows nothing, that Jo never asked her about Bridey, but I think she might be lying. The young woman was definitely the black sheep of the family I can tell just by the sound of Moms voice when the name comes up. I have no idea how she met Benton Auster. Lets say he was down in the Prouts tell apart part of the world visiting friends and started flirting with her at a clambake. Thats as likely as anything else. This was in 1884. She was eighteen, he was twenty-three. They got married, one of those hurry-up jobs. Harry, the one who actually drowned Kito Tidwell, came along six months later.So he was barely seventeen when it happened, Frank said. Great God.And by then his mother had gotten religion. His terror over what shed think if she ever found out was part of the reason he did what he did. Any other questions, Frank? Because Im really starting to fade.For several moments he said nothing I had begun to think he was done when he said, Two others. Do you mind?I guess its too late to back out now. What are they?The Shape you spoke of. The outsider. That troubles me.I said nothing. It troubled me, too.Do you think theres a chance it might come back?It always does, I said. At the risk of sounding pompous, the Outsider eventually comes back for all of us, doesnt it? Because were all bags of bones. And the Outsider . . . Frank, the Outsider wants whats in the bag.He mulled this over, then swallowed the rest of his Scotch at a gulp.You had one other question?Yes, he said. Have you started writing again?I went upstairs a few minutes later, checked Ki, brushed my teeth, checked Ki again, then climbed into bed. From where I lay I was able to look out the window at the pale moon shining on the snow.Have you started writing again?No. Other than a earlier lengthy essay on how I spent my summer pass which I may show to Kyra in some later year, theres been nothing. I know that Harold is nervous, and sooner or later I suppose Ill have to call him and tell him what he already guesses the machine which ran so sweet for so long has stopped. It isnt broken this memoir came out with nary a gasp or missed heartbeat but the machine has stopped, just the same. Theres gas in the tank, the sparkplugs spark and the battery bats, but the wordygurdy stands there quiet in the middle of my head. Ive put a tarp over it. Its served me well, you see, and I dont like to think of it getting dusty.Some of it has to do with the way Mattie died. It occurred to me at some point this fall that I had written similar deaths in at least two of my books, and popular fiction is heaped with other examples of the same thing. Have you set up a moral dilemma you dont know how to solve? Is the protagonist sexually attracted to a woman who is much too young for him, shall we say? Need a quick fix? Easiest thing in the world. When the story starts going sour, bring on the man with the gun. Raymond Chandler said that, or somethi ng like it close enough for government work, kemo sabe.Murder is the scourge kind of pornography, murder is let me do what I want interpreted to its final extreme. I believe that even make-believe murders should be taken seriously maybe thats another idea I got last summer. mayhap I got it while Mattie was struggling in my arms, gushing blood from her steady head and dying blind, still crying out for her daughter as she left this earth. To think I might have written such(prenominal) a hellishly convenient death in a book, ever, sickens me.Or maybe I just wish thered been a little more time.I remember telling Ki its best not to leave love letters around what I thought but didnt say was that they can come back to haunt you. I am haunted anyway . . . but I will not willingly haunt myself, and when I closed my book of dreams I did so of my own free will. I think I could have poured lye over those dreams as well, but from that I stayed my hand.Ive seen things I never expected to see a nd matt-up things I never expected to feel not the least of them what I felt and still feel for the child sleeping down the hall from me. Shes my little guy now, Im her big guy, and thats the important thing. Nothing else seems to matter half so much.Thomas Hardy, who supposedly said that the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones, stopped writing novels himself after finishing Jude the Obscure and while he was at the height of his narrative genius. He went on writing poetry for another twenty years, and when someone asked him why hed quit fiction he said he couldnt understand why he had trucked with it so long in the first place. In retrospect it seemed silly to him, he said. Pointless. I know exactly what he meant. In the time between now and whenever the Outsider remembers me and decides to come back, there must be other things to do, things that mean more than those shadows. I think I could go back to clanking imprisonment behind the Ghost House wall , but I have no interest in doing so. Ive lost my taste for spooks. I like to remember Mattie would think of Bartleby in Melvilles story.Ive put down my scriveners pen. These days I choose not to.