Bag of Bones CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Devore was mad, all(a) powerful, mad as a hatter, and he couldnt earn caught me at a worse, weaker, to a greater ex xt terrified piece. And I c onceptualise that foreverything from that moment on was approximeatly pre-ordained. From there to the terrible storm they inactive talk ab step to the fore in this part of the world, it all came scratch off give care a rockslide.I tangle fine the rest of Friday aft(preno(prenominal)inal)noon my talk with Bonnie unexpended a sell of questions unanswe bolshie, scarcely it had been a tonic unspoiled the aforesaid(prenominal). I nock a ve take h experient ofable stir-fry (at wholenessment for my latest plunge into the Fry-O-Lator at the Village Cafe) and ate it while I watched the evening news. On the other grimace of the lake the temperateness was sliding subjugate toward the mountains and flooding the living room with gold. When Tom Brokaw unappealing up shop, I decided to take a walk northwest a recollective The S steert Id go as far as I could and unagitated be as au accordinglyticd of acquiring home by low-spirited, and as I went Id think estimable ab egress the things Bill Dean and Bonnie Amudson had told me. Id think ab erupt(predicate) them the way I some seasons walked and impression ab come in plot-snags in whatever I was working on.I walked down the railroad-tie steps, still olfactory perception perfectly fine (confused, merely fine), started off a eagle-eyed The highroad, so paused to flavor at the Green Lady. Even with the evening sun shining to the full upon her, it was hard to master her for what she actually was just a lather tree with a half- deathly pine confirming skunk it, one and solely(a) branch of the latter(prenominal) making a pointing arm. It was as if the Green Lady were saying go north, unripened manhoodhood, go north. Well, I wasnt exactly young, except I could go north, all rightly. For awhile, at least.Yet I s withald a moment longer, uneasily stu dying the wholesaler I could influence in the bushes, not appetite the way the trivial shake of breeze larnmed to get down what was nearly a intercommunicate sneer and grin. I think perhaps I started to bump a puny bad thusly, was too preoccupied to notice it. I set off north, wondering what, exactly, Jo abilityiness confirm write . . . for by then I was starting to call up she might have written something, after all. Why else had I found my old typewriter in her studio? I would go by means of the manoeuver, I decided. I would go finished it carefully and . . . assist im drownThe express came from the woods, the piddle, from myself. A wave of silliness passed with my thoughts, lifting and scattering them uniform leaves in a breeze. I expectped. each at once I had neer entangle so bad, so b t bring forth aheadkleed, in my life. My chest was tight. My allow folded in on itself resembling a cold flower. My eyeball filled with chilly pee that was hush- hush code ilk tears, and I knew what was coming. No, I tested to say, solely the word wouldnt come out.My intercommunicate filled with the cold taste of lakewater instead, all those dark minerals, and suddenly the trees were shimmering before my eyes as if I were whole steping up at them through clear liquid, and the pressure on my chest had become dreadfully localized and taken the shapes of make its. They were holding me down.Wont it stop doing that? someone asked near cried. in that location was no one on The Street barely me, however I perceive that voice clearly. Wont it ever stop doing that?What came adjoining was no outer voice yet alien thoughts in my own head. They beat once once morest the walls of my skull interchangeable moths trap in human introduce a light-fixture . . . or inside a Japanese lantern. encourage Im drown help Im drownblue-cap man say git me blue-cap man say dassnt permit me ramblehelp Im drown lost my berries they on the pathhe holdin me he face shimmer n look bad lemme up lemme up 0 sweet Jesus lemme up oxen free allee allee oxen free? PLEASEOXEN turn you go on and stop now ALLEE OXEN FREE she outcry my realizeshe screaming it so LOUDI bent onwards in an utter panic, roughed my mouth, and from my gaping, straining mouth there pou rose-cheeked a cold flood of . . .Nothing at all.The horror of it passed and yet it didnt pass. I still felt terribly sick to my stomach, as if I had eaten something to which my soundbox had taken a violent offense, some kind of ant-powder or per prospect a killer mushroom, the kind Jos fungi guides pictured inside red borders. I staggered forward half a dozen steps, gagging dryly from a throat which still believed it was wet. There was other birch where the bank dropped to the lake, arciform its gabardine belly gracefully everywhere the water as if to chance on its reflection by evenings flattering light. I grabbed it equal a drunkard grabbing a lamp-post.The pressure in m y chest began to ease, provided it left field-hand(a) an support as real as rain. I hung against the tree, figuret fluttering, and suddenly I became aware that something stank an evil, polluted smell worse than a clogged vexrefactive pool which has simmered all summer nether the blazing sun. With it was a intellect of some hideous presence giving off that odor, something which should have been dead and wasnt.Oh stop, allee allee oxen free, Ill do any(prenominal)thing lone(prenominal) stop, I tried to say, and still aught came out. then(prenominal) it was gone. I could smell nothing only when the lake and the woods . . . tho I could checker something a boy in the lake, a petite drowned dark boy lying on his back off. His cheeks were puffed out. His mouth hung generally open. His eyes were as w finishe as the eyes of a statue.My mouth filled with the unmerciful iron of the lake again. Help me, lemme up, help Im drown. I leaned out, utter inside my head, screaming do wn at the dead face, and I established I was looking up at myself, looking up through the blush wine-shimmer of sunset water at a white man in blue jeans and a yellow polo shirt holding onto a trembling, birch and try outing to scream, his liquid face in motion, his eyes momentarily blotted out by the passage of a small perch coursing after a tasty bug, I was twain the dark boy and the white man, drowned in the water and drowning in the air, is this right, is this whats happening, tap once for yes twice for no.I retched nothing unless a single runner of cast, and, impossibly, a fish jumped at it. Theyll jump at almost anything at sunset something in the dying light must make them crazy. The fish hit the water again somewhat seven feet from the bank, spanking out a circular silver ripple, and it was gone the taste in my mouth, the horrible smell, the shimmering drowned face of the Negro child a Negro, that was how he would have thought of himself whose name had almost surely been Tidwell.I looked to my right and power saw a greyish forehead of rock poking out of the mulch. I thought, There, right there, and as if in confirmation, that horrible putrescent smell puffed at me again, evidently from the ground.I closed my eyes, still hanging onto the birch for dear life, feeling weak and sick and ill, and that was when Max Devore, that madman, spoke from behind me. Say there, fancy womanmaster, wheres your whore?I turned and there he was, with Rogette Whit more(prenominal)(prenominal) by his side. It was the whole condemnation I ever met him, but once was enough. Believe me, once was more than enough.His wheel prexy hardly looked like a wheel chair at all. What it looked like was a bike sidecar crossed with a lunar lander. Half a dozen chrome wheels ran along both sides. Bigger wheels four of them, I think ran in a row across the back. None looked to be exactly on the same level, and I realized each was tied into its own suspension-bed. Devore wo uld have a smooth ride everywhere ground a lot rougher than The Street. Above the back wheels was an enclosed engine compartment. Hiding Devores legs was a fiberglass nacelle, black with red pinstriping, that would not have looked out of place on a racing car. Implanted in the center of it was a devisal that looked like my DSS sitellite dish . . . some sort of computerized avoidance system, I guessed. maybe even an autopilot. The armrests were wide and covered with controls. Holstered on the left side of this machine was a green atomic number 8 tank four feet long. A hose went to a clear plastic squeeze box tube the accordion tube led to a inter which rested in Devores lap. It do me think of the old guys Stenomask. Coming on the heels of what had just happened, I might have considered this Tom Clancyish vehicle a hallucination, except for the bumper-sticker on the nacelle, infra the dish. I BLEED DODGER BLUE, it said.This evening the woman I had seen removed The Sunset Bar at Warringtons was wearing a white blouse with long sleeves and black pants so tapered they do her legs look like sheathed swords. Her narrow face and hollow cheeks made her resemble Edvard Munchs shouter more than ever. Her white hair hung virtually her face in a lank cowl. Her lips were painted so glisteningly red she seemed to be eject from the mouth.She was old and she was ugly, but she was a prize compared to Matties father-in-law. Scrawny, blue-lipped, the skin around his eyes and the corners of his mouth a dark exploded purple, he looked like something an archeologist might reckon in the burial room of a pyramid, encircled by his stuffed wives and pets, bedizened with his favorite jewels. A few wisps of white hair still clung to his unsmooth skull more tufts sprang from enormous ears which seemed to have melted like go up sculptures left out in the sun. He was wearing white cotton fiber pants and a billowy blue shirt. Add a teentsy black beret and he would have loo ked like a French mechanic from the nineteenth century at the end of a very long life.Across his lap was a lambast of some black wood. Snugged over the end was a bright red bicycle grip. The fingers grasping it looked powerful, but they were going as black as the johne itself. His circulation was failing, and I couldnt venture what his feet and his lower legs must look like.Whore run off and left you, has she?I tried to say something. A croak came out of my mouth, nothing more. I was still holding the birch. I let go of it and tried to straighten up, but my legs were still weak and I had to grab it again.He nudged a silver supply switch and the chair came ten feet closer, halving the outdo between us. The sound it made was a silky whisper reflection it was like watching an evil magic carpet. Its many wheels rose and shake off independent of one another and news bulletined in the declining sun, which had begun to take on a reddish cast. And as he came closer, I felt the pal pate of the man. His system was rotting out from under him, but the force around him was undeniable and daunting, like an electrical storm. The woman paced beside him, regarding me with silent amusement. Her eyes were pinkish. I fictitious then that they were gray and had picked up a bit of the coming sunset, but I think now she was an albino.I always liked a whore, he said. He drew the word out, making it horrrrrrr. Didnt I, Rogette?Yes, sir, she said. In their place.some terms their place was on my face he cried with a kind of kookie perkiness, as if she had contradicted him. Where is she, young man? Whose face is she sitting on right now? I wonder. That smart lawyer you found? Oh, I agnize all about him, right down to the Unsatisfactory Conduct he got in the third grade. I make it my business to fill out things. Its the secret of my success.With an enormous effort, I straightened up. What are you doing here?Having a constitutional, same as you. And no law against it, is the re?The Street belongs to anyone who wants to use it. You havent been here long, young whoremaster, but surely youve been here long enough to know that. Its our var. of the town common, where well(p) pups and vile dogs may walk side-by-side.Once more development the pay not bunched around the red bicycle grip, he picked up the oxygen mask, sucked deeply, then dropped it back in his lap. He grinned an atrocious grin of complicity that revealed gums the subterfuge of iodine.She swell? That diminutive horrrrrr of yours? She must be good to have kept my son prisoner in that nasty little trailer where she lives. And then along comes you even before the worms had finished with my boys eyes. Does her kitty suck?Shut up.Rogette Whitmore threw back her head and laughed. The sound was like the scream of a rabbit caught in an owls talons, and my flesh crawled. I had an supposition she was as crazy as he was. Thank God they were old. You struck a nerve there, Max, she said.What do you want? I took a breath . . . and caught a taste of that putrescence again. I gagged. I didnt want to, but I couldnt help it.Devore straightened in his chair and breathed deeply, as if to mock me. In that moment he looked like Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, striding along the margin and telling the world how over overmuch he loved the smell of napalm in the morning. His grin widened. Lovely place, just here, isnt it? A cozy spot to stop and think, wouldnt you say? He looked around. This is where it happened, all right. Ayuh.Where the boy drowned.I thought Whitmores grin looked momentarily uneasy at that. Devore didnt. He clutched for his translucent oxygen mask with an old mans overwide grip, fingers that grope rather than reach. I could see little bubbles of mucus clinging to the inside. He sucked deep again, put it down again.Thirty or more folks have drowned in this lake, and thats just the ones they know about, he said. Whats one boy, more or less?I dont get it. Were there 2 Tidwell boys who died here? The one that got melodic line-poisoning and the one Do you care about your soul, Mr. Noonan? Your fadeless soul? Gods pouferfly caught in a cocoon of flesh that allow for soon stink like mine?I said nothing. The inquisitiveness of what had happened before he arrived was passing. What replaced it was his incredible personal magnetism. I have never in my life felt so much raw force. There was nothing supernatural about it, either, and raw is exactly the right word. I might have run. Under other circumstances, Im sure I would have. It certainly wasnt bravery that kept me where I was my legs still felt rubbery, and I was afraid(predicate) I might fall down.Im going to give you one chance to save your soul, Devore said. He raised a bony finger to ornament the concept of one. Go aside, my fine whoremaster. Right now, in the clothes you stand up in. Dont bother to pack a bag, dont even stop to make sure you turned off the stoveburners. Go. cast off t he whore and leave the whorelet.Leave them to you.Ayuh, to me. Ill do the things that need to be done. Souls are for liberal arts majors, Noonan. I was an engineer.Go fuck yourself.Rogette Whitmore made that screaming-rabbit sound again. The old man sat in his chair, head lowered, grinning sallowly up at me and looking like something raised from the dead. Are you sure you want to be the one, Noonan? It doesnt payoff to her, you know you or me, its all the same to her.I dont know what youre talking about.I drew another deep breath, and this time the air tasted all right. I took a step away from the birch, and my legs were all right, too. And I dont care. Youre never getting Kyra. Never in what remains of your scaly life. Ill never see that happen.Pal, youll see plenty, Devore said, grinning and showing me his iodine gums. Before Julys done, youll likely have seen so much youll wish youd ripped the living eyes out of your head in June.Im going home. Let me pass.Go home then, how cou ld I stop you? he asked. The Street belongs to everyone. He groped the oxygen mask out of his lap again and took another healthy pull. He dropped it into his lap and settled his left hand on the arm of his Buck Rogers wheelchair.I stepped toward him, and almost before I knew what was happening, he ran the wheelchair at me. He could have hit me and hurt me preferably badly bustn one or both of my legs, I dont uncertainness but he stopped just short. I leaped back, but only because he allowed me to. I was aware that Whitmore was laughing again.Whats the matter, Noonan? brook out of my way. Im monition you.Whore made you jumpy, has she?I started to my left, heart to go by him on that side, but in a flash he had turned the chair, pushover it forward, and cut me off.Get out of the TR, Noonan. Im giving you good ad I broke to the right, this time on the lake side, and would have slipped by him quite neatly except for the fist, very small and hard, that hammered the left side of my face. The blue-eyed(a) bitch was wearing a ring, and the stone cut me behind the ear. I felt the sting and the warm flow of blood. I pivoted, stuck out both transfer, and pushed her. She fell to the needle-carpeted path with a squawk of surprised outrage. At the next instant something clouted me on the back of the head. A momentary orange shine lit up my sight. I staggered backward in what felt like slow motion, waving my arms, and Devore came into view again. He was slued around in his wheelchair, scaly head thrust forward, the cane hed hit me with still upraised. If he had been ten years younger, I believe he would have fractured my skull instead of just creating that momentary orange light.I ran into my old friend the birch tree. I raised my hand to my ear and looked unbelievingly at the blood on the tips of my fingers. My head ached from the blow he had fetched me.Whitmore was struggling to her feet, brushing pine needles from her slack and looking at me with a furious smi le. Her cheeks had filled in with a thin pink flush. Her too-red lips were pulled back to show small teeth. In the light of the setting sun her eyes looked as if they were burning.Get out of my way, I said, but my voice sounded small and weak.No, Devore said, and laid the black barrel of his cane on the nacelle that curved over the front of his chair. Now I could see the little boy who had been determined to have the sled no matter how badly he cut his hands getting it. I could see him very clearly. No, you whore-fucking sissy. I wont.He shoved the silver toggle switch again and the wheelchair rushed silently at me. If I had extended where I was, he would have run me through with his cane as surely as any evil duke was ever run through in an Alexandre Dumas story. He in all probability would have crushed the fragile bones in his right hand and torn his right arm clean out of its socket in the collision, but this man had never cared about such things he left cost-counting to the li ttle people. If I had hesitated out of shock or incredulity, he would have killed me, Im sure of it. Instead, I trilled to my left. My sneakers slid on the needle-slippery embankment for a moment. Then they lost contact with the earth and I was falling.I hit the water awkwardly and much too close to the bank. My left foot struck a sink root and twisted. The pain was huge, something that felt like a thunderclap sounds. I opened my mouth to scream and the lake poured in that cold metallic dark taste, this time for real. I cough uped it out and sneezed it out and floundered away from where I had landed, thought The boy, the dead boys down here, what if he reaches up and grabs me?I turned over on my back, still flailing and coughing, very aware of my jeans clinging clammily to my legs and crotch, thinking absurdly about my wallet I didnt care about the credit tease or drivers license, but I had 2 good snapshots of Jo in there, and they would be ruined.Devore had almost run himse lf over the embankment, I saw, and for a moment I thought he still might go. The front of his chair jutted over the place where I had fallen (I could see the short tracks of my sneakers just to the left of the bitchs partially exposed roots), and although the forward wheels were still grounded, the crumbly earth was zip out from beneath them in dry little avalanches that rolled down the slope and pit-a-patted into the water, creating interlocking ripple patterns. Whitmore was clinging to the back of the chair, yanking on it, but it was much too heavy for her if Devore was to be saved, he would have to save himself. standing(a) waist-deep in the lake with my clothes floating around me, I grow for him to go over.The purplish claw of his left hand recaptured the silver toggle switch after several attempts. wholeness finger hooked it backward, and the chair reversed away from the embankment with a final shower of stones and dirt. Whitmore leaped prankishly to one side to keep her fee t from being run over.Devore fiddled some more with his controls, turned the chair to face me where I stood in the water, some seven feet out from the overhanging birch, and then nudged the chair forward until he was on the edge of The Street but safely away from the drop off. Whitmore had turned away from us simply she was bent over with her butt poking in my direction. If I thought about her at all, and I cant remember that I did, I speak up I thought she was getting her breath back.Devore appeared to be in the take up shape of the three of us, not even needing a hit from the oxygen mask sitting in his lap. The late light was full in his face, making him look like a half-rotted jack-o-lantern which has been soaked with bollocks up and set on blaze.Enjoying your blow? he asked, and laughed.I looked around, hoping to see a strolling couple or perhaps a fisherman looking for a place where he could wet his line one more time before dark . . . and yet at the same time I hoped Id see no one. I was angry, hurt, and scared. Most of all I was embarrassed. I had been dunked in the lake by a man of eighty- basketball team . . . a man who showed every sign of hanging around and making sport of me.I began wading to my right south, back toward my house. The water was about waist-deep, cool and almost refreshing now that I was used to it. My sneakers squelched over rocks and go down tree-branches. The ankle Id twisted still hurt, but it was supporting me. Whether it would continue to once I got out of the lake was another question.Devore twiddled his controls some more. The chair pivoted and came rolling belatedly along The Street, keeping pace with me easily.I didnt introduce you properly to Rogette, did I? he said. She was quite an athlete in college, you know. Softball and field ice hockey were her specialties, and shes held onto at least some of her skills. Rogette, demonstrate your skills for this young man.Whitmore passed the slowly despicable wheelchair on the left. For a moment she was blocked out by it. When I could see her again, I could also see what she was holding. She hadnt been bent over to get her breath.Smiling, she strode to the edge of the embankment with her left arm curled against her midriff, cradling the rocks she had picked up from the edge of the path. She selected a chunk roughly the size of a golfball, drew her hand back to her ear, and threw it at me. Hard. It whizzed by my left temple and splash into the water behind me.Hey I shouted, more startled than afraid. Even after everything that had preceded it, I couldnt believe this was happening.Whats wrong with you, Rogette? Devore asked chidingly. You never used to throw like a girlfriend. Get himThe second rock passed two inches over my head. The third was a authority tooth-smasher. I batted it away with an angry, fearful shout, not noticing until later that it had bruised my palm. At the moment I was only aware of her hateful, smiling face the face of a woman who has plunked down two dollars in a carny shooting-pitch and means to win the big stuffed teddybear even if she has to blast away all night.And she threw fast. The rocks hailed down around me, some scatter into the ruddy water to my left or right, creating little geysers. I began to backpedal, afraid to turn and swim for it, afraid that she would throw a real big one the minute I did. Still, I had to get out of her range. Devore, meanwhile, was laughing a wheezy old mans laugh, his wretched face crunched in on itself like the face of a malicious apple-doll. one and only(a) of her rocks struck me a hard, painful blow on the collarbone and bounced utmost into the air. I cried out, and she did, too Hai, like a karate fighter whos gotten in a good kick.So much for orderly retreat. I turned, swam for deeper water, and the bitch brained me. The head start two rocks she threw after I began to swim seemed to be range-finders. There was a pause when I had time to think Im doing it, Im getting beyond her subject of . . . and then something hit the back of my head. I felt it and heard it the same way it went CLONK, like something youd read in a Batman comic.The turn up of the lake went from bright orange to bright red to dark scarlet. Faintly I could hear Devore yelling approval and Whitmore squealing her strange laugh. I took in another mouthful of iron-tasting water and was so dazed I had to remind myself to spit it out, not swallow it. My feet now felt too heavy for liquified, and my damn sneakers weighed a ton. I put them down to stand up and couldnt find the bottom I had gotten beyond my depth. I looked in toward the shore. It was spectacular, blazing in the sunset like stage-scenery lit with bright orange and red gels. I was probably twenty feet out from the shore now. Devore and Whitmore were at the edge of The Street, watching. They looked like Dad and Mom in a Grant Wood painting. Devore was using the mask again, but I could see him grinning inside it. Whitmore was grinning, too. much water sloshed in my mouth. I spit most of it out, but some went down, making me cough and half-retch. I started to sink below the surface and fought my way back up, not limpid but only splashing wildly, expending nine times the energy I needed to stay afloat. Panic made its first appearance, nibbling through my dazed bewilderment with bang-up little rat teeth. I realized I could hear a high, sweet buzzing. How many blows had my poor old head taken? One from Whitmores fist . . . one from Devores cane . . . one rock . . . or had it been two?Christ, I couldnt remember. Get hold of yourself, for Gods sake youre not going to let him beat you this way, are you? Drown you like that little boy was drowned?No, not if I could help it.I trod water and ran my left hand down the back of my head. Not too far above the nape I encountered a goose-egg that was still rising. When I pressed on it the pain made me feel like throwing up and fainting at the same time. Tears rose in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. There were only traces of blood on the tips of my fingers when I looked at them, but it was hard to tell about cuts when you were in the water.You look like a woodchuck caught out in the rain, Noonan Now his voice seemed to roll to where I was, as if across a great distance.Fuck you I called. Ill see you in jail for thisHe looked at Whitmore. She looked back with an identical expression, and they both laughed. If someone had put an Uzi in my hands at that moment, I would have killed them both with no disbelief and then asked for a second clip so I could machine-gun the bodies.With no Uzi to hand, I began to dogpaddle south, toward my house. They paced me along The Street, he rolling in his whisper-quiet wheelchair, she walking beside him as solemn as a nun and pausing every now and then to pick up a likely-looking rock.I hadnt swum enough to be tired, but I was. It was mostly shock, I suppose. Finally I tried to cajole a breat h at the wrong time, swallowed more water, and panicked completely. I began to swim in toward the shore, abstracted to get to where I could stand up. Rogette Whitmore began to fire rocks at me immediately, first using the ones she had lined up between her left arm and her midriff, then those shed stockpiled in Devores lap. She was warmed up, she wasnt throwing like a girl anymore, and her aim was deadly. Stones splashed all around me. I batted another away a big one that likely would have cut open my forehead if it had hit but her follow-up struck my bicep and tore a long scratch there. Enough. I rolled over and swam back out beyond her range, gasping for breath, trying to keep my head up in injure of the growing ache in the back of my neck.When I was clear, I trod water and looked in at them. Whitmore had come all the way to the edge of the embankment, wanting to get every foot of distance she could. Hell, every damned inch. Devore was set behind her in his wheelchair. They wer e both still grinning, and now their faces were as red as the faces of imps in hell. Red sky at night, sailors delight. Another twenty minutes and it would be getting dark. Could I keep my head above water for another twenty minutes? I thought so, if I didnt panic again, but not much longer. I thought of drowning in the dark, looking up and seeing Venus just before I went under for the last time, and the panic-rat slashed me with its teeth again. The panic-rat was worse than Rogette and her rocks, much worse.Maybe not worse than Devore.I looked both ways along the lakefront, checking The Street wherever it wove out of the trees for a dozen feet or a dozen yards. I didnt care about being embarrassed anymore, but I saw no one.Dear God, where was everybody? Gone to the Mountain View in Fryeburg for pizza, or the Village Cafe for milkshakes?What do you want? I called in to Devore. Do you want me to tell you Ill butt out of your business? Okay, Ill butt outHe laughed.Well, I hadnt expect ed it to work. Even if Id been sincere about it, he wouldnt have believed me.We just want to see how long you can swim, Whitmore said, and threw another rock -a long, lazy toss that fell about five feet short of where I was.They mean to kill me, I thought. They really do.Yes. And what was more, they might well get away with it. A crazy idea, both glib and implausible at the same time, rose in my mind. I could see Rogette Whitmore tacking a notice to the cOMMUNITY DOINS board outside the Lakeview universal Store.TO THE MARTIANS OF TR-90, GREETINGSMr, MAXWELL DEVORE, everyones favorite Martian, will give each resident of the TR one(a) HUNDRED DOLLARS if no one will use The Street on FRIDAY EVENING, THE 17th OF JULY, between the hours of SEVEN and NINE P.M. Keep our SUMMER FRIENDS away, too And remember GOOD MARTIANS are like GOOD MONKEYS they SEE no evil, HEAR no evil, and SPEAK no evilI couldnt really believe it, not even in my current situation . . . and yet I almost could. At t he very least I had to open him the luck of the devil.Tired. My sneakers heavier than ever. I tried to push one of them off and succeeded only in taking in another mouthful of lakewater. They stood watching me, Devore at times picking the mask up from his lap and having a revivifying suck.I couldnt postponement until dark. The sun exits in a hurry here in western Maine as it does, I guess, in mountain country everywhere but the twilights are long and lingering. By the time it got dark enough in the west to move without being seen, the moon would have risen in the east.I found myself imagining my obituary in the New York Times, the headline course session POPULAR ROMANTIC SUSPENSE NOVELIST DROWNS IN MAINE. Debra Weinstock would provide them with the author painting from the forthcoming Helens Promise. Harold Oblowski would say all the right things, and hed also remember to put a modest (but not tiny) death notice in Publishers Weekly. He would go half-and-half with Putnam on it, and I sank, swallowed more water, and spat it out. I began pummelling the lake again and forced myself to stop. From the shore, I could hear Rogette Whitmores tinkling laughter. You bitch, I thought, you jaggy bi Mike, Jo said.Her voice was in my head, but it wasnt the one I make when Im imagining her side of a mental dialogue or when I just miss her and need to whistle her up for awhile. As if to underline this, something splashed to my right, splashed hard. When I looked in that direction I saw no fish, not even a ripple. What I saw instead was our swimming float, anchored about a hundred yards away in the sunset-colored water.I cant swim that far, baby, I croaked.Did you say something, Noonan? Devore called from the shore. He cupped a mocking hand to one of his huge waxlump ears. Couldnt quite make it out You sound all out of breath More tinkling laughter from Whitmore. He was Johnny Carson she was Ed Mcmahon.You can make it. Ill help you.The float, I realized, might be my o nly chance there wasnt another one on this part of the shore, and it was at least ten yards beyond Whitmores longest rockshot so far. I began to dogpaddle in that direction, my arms now as leaden as my feet. Each time I felt my head on the verge of going under I paused, treading water, telling myself to take it easy, I was in pretty good shape and doing okay, telling myself that if I didnt panic Id be all right. The old bitch and the even older bastard resumed pacing me, but they saw where I was headed and the laughter stopped. So did the taunts.For a long time the swimming float seemed to draw no closer. I told myself that was just because the light was fading, the color of the water draining from red to purple to a near-black that was the color of Devores gums, but I was able to muster less and less conviction for this idea as my breath shortened and my arms grew heavier.When I was still 30 yards away a cramp struck my left leg. I rolled sideways like a swamped sailboat, trying to reach the bunched muscle. More water poured down my throat. I tried to cough it out, then retched and went under with my stomach still trying to heave and my fingers still looking for the knotted place above the knee.Im really drowning, I thought, strangely placid now that it was happening. This is how it happens, this is it.Then I felt a hand seize me by the nape of the neck. The pain of having my hair yanked brought me back to reality in a flash it was better than an epinephrine injection. I felt another hand fasten around my left leg there was a brief but terrific sense of heat. The cramp let go and I broke the surface swimming really swimming this time, not just dog-paddling, and in what seemed like seconds I was clinging to the ladder on the side of the float, breathing in great, snatching gasps, waiting to see if I was going to be all right or if my heart was going to detonate in my chest like a hand grenade. At last my lungs started to overcome my oxygen debt, and ever ything began to calm down. I gave it another minute, then climbed out of the water and into what was now the ashes of twilight. I stood facing west for a little while, bent over with my hands on my knees, dripping on the boards. Then I turned around, meaning this time to knock over them not just a single boo but that fabled double eagle. There was no one to flip it to. The Street was empty. Devore and Rogette Whitmore were gone.Maybe they were gone. Id do well to remember there was a lot of Street I couldnt see. I sat cross-legged on the float until the moon rose, waiting and watching for any movement. Half an hour, I think. Maybe forty-five minutes. I checked my watch, but got no help there it had shipped some water and stopped at 730 P.M. To the other satisfactions Devore owed me I could now add the price of one Timex Indiglo thats $29.95, asshole, cough it up.At last I climbed back down the ladder, slipped into the water, and stroked for shore as quietly as I could. I was rest ed, my head had stopped hurt (although the knot above the nape of my neck still throbbed steadily), and I no longer felt off-balance and incredulous. In some ways, that had been the worst of it trying to supervise not just with the apparition of the drowned boy, the flying rocks, and the lake, but with the pervasive sense that none of this could be happening, that rich old software moguls did not try to drown novelists who strayed into their line of sight.Had tonights adventure been a case of simple swan into Devores view, though? A coincidental meeting, no more than that? Wasnt it likely hed been having me watched ever since the Fourth of July . . . maybe from the other side of the lake, by people with high-potential optical equipment? Paranoid bullshit, I would have said . . . at least I would have said it before the two of them almost sank me in Dark Score Lake like a kids paper boat in a mudpuddle.I decided I didnt care who might be watching from the other side of the lake. I didnt care if the two of them were still lurking on one of the tree-shielded parts of The Street, either. I swam until I could feel strands of waterweed titillation my ankles and see the crescent of my beach. Then I stood up, wincing at the air, which now felt cold on my skin. I limped to shore, one hand raised to make do off a hail of rocks, but no rocks came. I stood for a moment on The Street, my jeans and polo shirt dripping, looking first one way, then the other. It seemed I had this little part of the world to myself. Last, I looked back at the water, where weak moonlight beat a track from the thumbnail of beach out to the swimming float.Thanks, Jo, I said, then started up the railroad ties to the house. I got about halfway, then had to stop and sit down. I had never been so utterly tired in my whole life.