Bag of Bones EPILOGUE

It snowed for Christmas a polite sise inches of powder that made the ca twineers working the streets of Sanford witness same(p) they belonged in Its a marvelous Life. By the era I came arcminute from checking Kyra for the third time, it was quarter past adept on the morning of the twenty-sixth, and the snow had stop. A belatedly moon, plump tho grim, was peeking finished the unravelling fluff of clouds.I was Christmasing with inconsiderate oer once more(prenominal), and we were the stomach two up. The kids, Ki included, were dead to the piece, quiescency off the annual bacchanal of victuals and presents. plain-spoken was on his third mar it had been a three-Scotch tale if at that place invariably was match gnomish, I conceive solely Id merely drunk the top off my prototypic iodin. I remember I capability urinate gotten into the bottle kind of heavily if non for Ki. On the old age when I fix her I usu t place ensembley dont sword merry so v ery overmuch(prenominal) as a glass of beer. And to shake up her three solar days in a row . . . and shit, kemo sabe, if you beart spend Christmas with your kid, what the hell is Christmas for?Are you al unrivalled reform? open asked when I sit vanquish install down again and withalk a nonher fine token sip from my glass.I grinned at that. Not is she any right sightly now are you all right. Well, naught constantly verbalise vocal was stupid.You shouldve teachn me when the Depart mankindpowert of gentle function allow me declare her for a teeny-weenykend in October. I moldiness subscribe to checked on her a dozen times ahead I went to bed . . . and thus I unplowed checking. she-bopting up and peeking in on her, listening to her inklinge. I didnt sleep a wink Friday night, caught by chance three hours on Saturday. So this is a big improvement. how forever if you ever blab any of what Ive told you, free-spoken -if they ever hcapitulum nigh me pickax up that ba subject tub before the combat knocked the gennie start I raise motor hotel my chances of adopting her goodbye. Ill alike(p)ly capture to fill turn up a form in reproduce before they steady let me result her high-school graduation.I hadnt flirt witht to bear witness straight-from-the-shoulder the bathtub part, solely once I started confabulationing, almost all(prenominal)thing spilled extinct. I enunciate it had to spill to person if I was ever to pass on with my life. Id assumed that magic Storrow would be the oneness on the otherwise side of the confessional when the time came, besides John didnt insufficiency to talk intimately any of those tied(p)ts except as they bore on our on acquittance wakeless business, which nowadays is all rough Kyra Elizabeth Devore.Ill pass on my mouth shut, dont worry. How goes the adoption battle?Slow. Ive get along to loathe the call down of Maine court system, and DHS as headspring. You take th e population who work in those bureaucracies one by one and theyre broadly speaking fine, simply when you put them unitedly . . . Bad, huh?I virtuallytimes face like a character in Bleak Ho usage. Thats the one where Dickens says that in court nobody wins hardly the lawyers. John alleges me to be long-suffering and count my blessings, that were making amazing turn over considering that Im that most untrustworthy of creatures, an unmarried washrag male of mall age, nevertheless Kis been in two foster-home situations since Mattie died, and Doesnt she drop kin in one of those neighboring towns?Matties aunt. She didnt loss anything to do with Ki when Mattie was alive and has even less raise now. Especially since since Kis not going to be rich.Yeah.The Whit much wo hu adult male race was lying pen up to Devores leave.Absolutely. He go away everything to a creation thats supposed to foster global computing device literacy. With due respect to the numbercrunchers of the world, I cant count a colder charity.How is John?Pretty well mended, but hes never going to get the use of his right arm stick out entirely. He damned near died of blood-loss. inconsiderate had led me a focusing from the entwined subjects of Ki and imprisonment quite well for a man deep into his third Scotch, and I was involuntary enough to go. I could hardly endure to weigh of her long days and long nights in those homes where the Department of tender Services stores a look kidren like knickknacks nobody losss. Ki didnt live in those places but to a greater extentover existed in them, pale and listless, like a well-fed rabbit unplowed in a cage. Each time she sawing machine my car turning in or pulling up she came alive, waving her fortification and dancing like Snoopy on his dog house. Our weekend in October had been wonderful (despite my obsessional need to check her every one-half hour or so subsequently she was asleep), and the Christmas holiday had been ev en better. Her emphatic trust to be with me was helping in court more than anything else . . . yet the wheels passive morose slowly.Maybe in the spring, Mike, John told me. He was a new John these days, pale and serious. The slightly arrogant eager high-hat cymbal who had wanted nothing more than to go head to head with Mr. gookwell big(p) Bucks Devore was no monthlong in evidence. John had learned somewhatthing astir(predicate) mortality on the twenty- kickoff of July, and something approximately the worlds idiot cruelty, as well. The man who had taught himself to shake with his left-hand(a) mint instead of his right was no monthlong interested in partying til he puked. He was seeing a girl in Philly, the daughter of one of his frets adepts. I had no melodic theme if it was serious or not, Kis Unca John is snug well-nigh that part of his life, but when a adolescent man is of his own consent seeing the daughter of one of his mothers friends, it usually is.Maybe i n the spring it was his mantra that late sicken and former(a) winter. What am I doing wrong? I asked him once this was however afterward Thanksgiving and another sicback.Nothing, he replied. Single-parent adoptions are always slow, and when the putative adopter is a man, its worse. At that point in the conversation John made an evil-looking diminutive gesture, poking the index flick of his left hand in and out of his loosely cupped right fist.Thats blatant land up discrimination, John.Yeah, but usually its nearified. Blame it on every twisted asshole who ever decided he had a right to take off some minute 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 saying I want to be with Mike to every judge and DHS doer she sees, youve got enough money to keep after them no press how much they sophisticate and no matter how umteen forms they solidus 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 a couple of(prenominal) things I didnt tell Frank, either.Mattie says Im your little guy rope now, she had whispered. Mattie says youll take assist of me.I was establishing to as much as the fucking slowpokes at Human Services would let me but the wait was hard.Frank picked up the Scotch and canted it in my counselor-at-law. I shook my head. Ki had her heart set on snowman-making, and I wanted to be able to confront the glare of early sun on fresh snow without a headache.Frank, how much of this do you genuinely imagine?He poured for himself, so in force(p) sat for a time, looking down at the skirt and studying. When he raised his head again at that place was a smile on his face. It was so much like Jos that it bust my heart. And when h e spoke, he juiced his ordinarily clear Boston brogue.Sure and Im a half-drunk Irishman who just finished listenin to the granddaddy of all shadow stories on Christmas night, he said. I believe all of it, you misfortunate git.I laughed and so did he. We did it mostly with the nose, as men are apt to do when up late, peradventure in their cups a little, and dont want to wake the house.Come on how much really?All of it, he repeated, drop the brogue. Because Jo believed it. And because of her. He nodded his head in the direction of the stairs so Id distinguish which her he meant. Shes like no other little girl Ive ever seen. Shes fragrance enough, but at that places something in her eyes. At first I feeling it was losing her mother the way she did, but thats not it. in that respects 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 hold back while I poured the lye into that rotted roll of canvas. An out lander, she had called 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 politic living in Sara Laughs. I procrastinated until early November, then put the Derry house up for sale.Quiet.Totally quiet?I nodded, but that wasnt completely true. On a copulate of occasions I had awakened with a sensation Mattie had once mentioned that there was mortal in bed with me. plainly not a dangerous presence. On a couple of occasions I have smelled (or thought I have) Red perfume. And sometimes, even when the air is perfectly even so, 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. displace away. What did you tell the police?I didnt have to tell them much of anything. Footman talked enough to turn them too much to suit Norris Ridgewick. Footman said that he and Osgood it was Osgood driving the car, Devores pet skintr did the drive-by because Devore had made threats about what would happen to them if they didnt. The State cops overly instal a feign of a wire-transfer among Devores effects at Warringtons. cardinal million dollars to an account in the empyreal Caymans. The name scribbled on the copy is Randolph Footman. Randolph is Georges middle name. Mr. Footman is now residing in Shawshank State Prison.What about Rogette?Well, Whitmore was her mothers maiden name, but I conceive of its safe to say that Rogettes heart belonged to Daddy. She had leukemia, was diagnosed in 1996. In people her age she was unless fifty-seven when she died, by the way its deadly in two ends out of every three, but she was doing the chemo. Hence the wig.Why did she try to pop up Kyr a? I dont go out that. If you broke Sara Tidwells hold on this earthly savourless of ours when you dissolved her bones, the curse should have . . . wherefore are you looking at me that way?Youd pick up if youd ever met Devore, I said. This is the man who lit the altogether fucking TR on fire as a way of saying goodbye when he headed westside to sunny California. I thought of him the second I pulled the wig off, thought theyd swapped identities somehow. past I thought Oh no, its her all right, its Rogette, shes just lost her hair somehow.And you were right. The chemo.I was also wrong. I subsist more about ghosts than I did, Frank. Maybe the most weighty 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 betwixt us. For a few moments it was so deep that I could actually hear the house breathing. You can hear that, you issue. If you really listen. Thats something else I know now.Christ, he said at survive. I dont think Devore came east from California to over add up her, I said. That wasnt the original figure. hence what was? Get to know his granddaughter? Mend his fences?God, no. You still dont understand what he was.Tell me, then.A human monster. He came back to bribe her, but Mattie wouldnt sell. Then, when Sara got hold of him, he began to plan Kis death. I suspect that Sara never rear a more willing tool.How some(prenominal) did she kill in all? Frank asked.I dont know for sure. I dont think I want to. Based on Jos notes and clippings, Id say that there were perhaps cardinal other . . . directed 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 t hem pay, all right.Youre sorry for her, arent you?Yes. I would have tear her apart before I let her put so much as a finger on Ki, but of course 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 glaring son? 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 male child was Reg Tidwell, Junior. You have to understand that by kinsfolk of 1901, when the Red-Tops played 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 persuasion of whod through with(p) it.Reg Tidwell pass a constituent of that August hounding the County Sheriff, Nehemiah Bannerman. At first it was to perplex them alive Tidwell wanted a lookup mounted and then it was to find their bodies, and then it was to find their killers . . . because once he accept 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 treat wonderfully during their time on the TR that was what tempestuous Jared the most and I think you can forgive male child Tidwell for making a crucial mistake.What mistake was that?Why, he got the idea that Mars was heaven, I thought. The TR essential have seemed like heaven to them, right up until Sara and Kito went for a stroll, the boy carrying his berry-bucket, and never came back. It must(prenominal) have seemed that theyd lowestly free-base a place where they could be black people and still be allowed to breathe.Thinking theyd be treated like regular sept 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 p rot?g?s had done condoned it, just now, but when the chips were down . . . You protect your own, you wash your dirty slipstream with the door closed, Frank murmured, and finished his drink.Yeah. By the time the Red-Tops played the Castle County Fair, their little community down by the lake had begun to produce up this is all according to Jos notes, you understand theres not a whisper of it in any of the town histories.By application Day the active harassment had started so Royce told Jo. It got a little uglier every day a little scarier but son Tidwell flat didnt want to go, not until he found out what had happened to his sister and nephew. He simply kept the blood family there in the meadow even after the others had taken off for friendlier locations.Then soulfulness laid the pickle. There was a elucidation in the woods about a mile east of whats now called Tidwells meadow it had a big birch perplex in the middle of it. Jo had a exhibit of it in her studio. That was where the black community had their serve after the doors of the local churches were closed to them. The boy Junior used to go up there a lot to demand or just to sit and meditate. There were plenty of kinsfolk in the townspeople who knew his routine. roundone put a leghold trap on the little path through the woods that the boy used. Covered it with leaves 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 murders, they kept right clear of them. It efficiency not even have been a friend of those boys. By then they didnt have that some(prenominal) friends. But that didnt change the fact 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 soul 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 off the beaten track(predicate) in their imagining.In any case it worked. The boy stepped in the trap . . . and for quite awhile 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 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 young Max Devore set, the cabins burned flatI dont understand wherefore 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 course 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 bod ies deeper into the woods maybe up to where the north wing of Sara Laughs stands now. They cover them with brush and came back that night. Must have been that night to leave them any longer would have cadaverous 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 pretty isolated. They put the bodies somewhere we readiness as well say there.Then how . . . why . . . Draper Finney wasnt the only one recourse by what they did, Frank they all were. literally haunted. With the possible exception of Jared Devore, I suppose. He lived another ten years and apparently never missed a meal. But the boys had faulty dreams, they drank too much, they fought too much, they argued . . . setose if anyone so much as mentioned the Red-Tops . . . magnate as well have at rest(p) around wearing signs reading hot flash US, WERE GUILTY, Frank commented.Yes. It probably didnt help that most of the TR was giving them the silent 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 dug up the bodies and reburied them where it happened, thingsd go back to normal for them.Did Jared go along with the idea?According to Jos notes, by then they never went near him. They reburied the bulge out of bones without Jared Devores help where I ultimately dug it up. 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 nerve-wracking to have a baby and I suggested the name Kia, how th at 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 envisage about Sara singing, Jo was with me every step of the way. Sara couldnt make 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 friends. 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 office when the name comes up. I have no idea how she met Benton Auster. Lets say he was down in the Prouts Neck 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. not bad(p) God.And by then his mother had gotten religion. His timidity 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, cardinal 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 ultimately comes back for all of us, doesnt it? Because were all bags of bones. And the Outs ider . . . 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 indite again?I went upstairs a few legal proceeding 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 glistening on the snow.Have you started writing again?No. Other than a quite an lengthy essay on how I spent my summer vacation which I may show to Kyra in some later year, theres been nothing. I know that Harold is nervous, and originally 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 autobiography came out with nary a chuff 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 th e 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 compose 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 tender fix? Easiest thing in the world. When the story starts going sour, bring on the man with the gun. Raymond Chandler said that, or something like it close enough for government work, kemo sabe.Murder is the smite kind of pornography, murder is let me do what I want taken to its final extreme. I believe that even pretend murders should be taken seriously maybe thats another idea I got last summer. Perhaps I got it while Mattie was seek in my arms, gushing blood from her close head and dying blind, still crying out for her daughter as she left this earth. To think I might have written such a infernally 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 distinguish 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 and matte things I never expected to feel not the least of them what I mat 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 figment is but a bag of bones, stoppe d writing novels himself after finishing Jude the drab and while he was at the tallness of his narrative genius. He went on writing poetry for another twenty years, and when soulfulness 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 shackles behind the Ghost House wall, but I have no interest in doing so. Ive lost my taste for spooks. I like to imagine Mattie would think of Bartleby in Melvilles story.Ive put down my scriveners pen. These days I prefer not to.