Bag of Bones Part 17

Now, at last, I thought I had a clear picture. Lance Devore had written his father an unthinkable letter - unthinkable, that was, if you happened to be Max Devore. The letter said that Lance didn't want to hear from his father again, and Mattie didn't, either. He wouldn't be welcome in their home (the Modair trailer wasn't quite the humble woodcutter's cottage of a Brothers Grimm tale, but it was close enough for kissing). He wouldn't be welcome to visit following the birth of their baby, and if he had the gall to send the child a present then or later, it would be returned. Stay out of my life, Dad. This time you've gone too far to forgive.

There are undoubtedly diplomatic ways of handling an offended child, some wise and some crafty . . . but ask yourself this: would a diplomatic father have gotten himself into such a situation to begin with? Would a man with even minimal insight into human nature have offered his son's fiancee a bounty (one so enormous it probably had little real sense or meaning to her) to give up her firstborn child? And he'd offered this devil's bargain to a girl-woman of seventeen, an age when the romantic view of life is at absolute high tide. If nothing else, Devore should have waited awhile before making his final offer. You could argue that he didn't know if he had had awhile, but it wouldn't be a persuasive argument. I thought Mattie was right - deep in that wrinkled old prune which served him as a heart, Max Devore thought he was going to live forever. awhile, but it wouldn't be a persuasive argument. I thought Mattie was right - deep in that wrinkled old prune which served him as a heart, Max Devore thought he was going to live forever.

In the end, he hadn't been able to restrain himself. There was the sled he wanted, the sled he just had to have, on the other side of the window. All he had to do was break the gla.s.s and take it. He'd been doing it all his life, and so he had reacted to his son's e-mail not craftily, as a man of his years and abilities should have done, but furiously, as the child would have done if the gla.s.s in the shed window had proved immune to his hammering fists. Lance didn't want him meddling? Fine! Lance could live with his backwoods Daisy Mae in a tent or a trailer or a G.o.dd.a.m.ned cowbarn. He could give up the cushy surveying job, as well, and find real employment. See how the other half lived!

In other words, you can't quit on me, son. You're fired.

'We didn't fall into each other's arms at the funeral,' Mattie said, 'don't get that idea. But he was decent to me - which I didn't expect - and I tried to be decent to him. He offered me a stipend, which I refused. I was afraid there might be legal ramifications.'

'I doubt it, but I like your caution. What happened when he saw Kyra for the first time, Mattie? Do you remember?'

'I'll never forget it.' She reached into the pocket of her dress, found a battered pack of cigarettes, and shook one out. She looked at it with a mixture of greed and disgust. 'I quit these because Lance said we couldn't really afford them, and I knew he was right. But the habit creeps back. I only smoke a pack a week, and I know d.a.m.ned well even that's too much, but sometimes I need the comfort. Do you want one?'

I shook my head. She lit up, and in the momentary flare of the match, her face was way past pretty. What had the old man made of her her? I wondered.

'He met his granddaughter for the first time beside a hea.r.s.e,' Mattie said. 'We were at Dakin's Funeral Home in Motton. It was the "viewing." Do you know about that?'

'Oh yes,' I said, thinking of Jo.

'The casket was closed but they still call it a viewing. Weird. I came out to have a cigarette. I told Ki to sit on the funeral parlor steps so she wouldn't get the smoke, and I went a little way down the walk. This big gray limo pulled up. I'd never seen anything like it before, except on TV. I knew who it was right away. I put my cigarettes back in my purse and told Ki to come. She toddled down the walk and took hold of my hand. The limo door opened, and Rogette Whitmore got out. She had an oxygen mask in one hand, but he didn't need it, at least not then. He got out after her. A tall man - not as tall as you, Mike, but tall - wearing a gray suit and black shoes as s.h.i.+ny as mirrors.'

She paused, thinking. Her cigarette rose briefly to her mouth, then went back down to the arm of her chair, a red firefly in the weak moonlight.

'At first he didn't say anything. The woman tried to take his arm and help him climb the three or four steps from the road to the walk, but he shook her off. He got to where we were standing under his own power, although I could hear him wheezing way down deep in his chest. It was the sound a machine makes when it needs oil. I don't know how much he can walk now, but it's probably not much. Those few steps pretty well did him in, and that was almost a year ago. He looked at me for a second or two, then bent forward with his big, bony old hands on his knees. He looked at Kyra and she looked up at him.'

Yes. I could see it . . . except not in color, not in an image like a photograph. I saw it as a woodcut, just one more harsh ill.u.s.tration from Grimm's Fairy Tales Grimm's Fairy Tales. The little girl looks up wide-eyed at the rich old man - once a boy who went triumphantly sliding on a stolen sled, now at the other end of his life and just one more bag of bones. 'In my imagining, Ki was wearing a hooded jacket and Devore's grandpa mask was slightly askew, allowing me to see the tufted wolf-pelt beneath. What big eyes you have, Grandpa, what a big nose you have, Grandpa, what big teeth you have, too.

'He picked her up. I don't know how much effort it cost him, but he did. And - the oddest thing - Ki let let herself be picked up. He was a complete stranger to her, and old people always seem to scare little children, but she let him pick her up. 'Do you know who I am?' he asked her. She shook her head, but the way she was looking at him . . . it was as if she herself be picked up. He was a complete stranger to her, and old people always seem to scare little children, but she let him pick her up. 'Do you know who I am?' he asked her. She shook her head, but the way she was looking at him . . . it was as if she almost almost knew. Do you think that's possible?' knew. Do you think that's possible?'

'Yes.'

'He said, "I'm your grandpa." And I almost grabbed her back, Mike, because I had this crazy idea . . . I don't know . . . '

'That he was going to eat her up?'

Her cigarette paused in front of her mouth. Her eyes were round. 'How do you know that? How can can you know that?' you know that?'

'Because in my mind's eye it looks like a fairy tale. Little Red Riding Hood and the Old Gray Wolf. What did he do then?'

'Ate her up with his eyes. Since then he's taught her to play checkers and Candyland and box-dots. She's only three, but he's taught her to add and subtract. She has her own room at Warrington's and her own little computer in it, and G.o.d knows what he's taught her to do with that . . . but that first time he only looked at her. It was the hungriest look I've ever seen in my life.

'And she looked back. It couldn't have been more than ten or twenty seconds, but it seemed like forever. Then he tried to hand her back to me. He'd used up all his strength, though, and if I hadn't been right there to take her, I think he would have dropped her on the cement walk.

'He staggered a little, and Rogette Whitmore put an arm around him. That was when he took the oxygen mask from her - there was a little air-bottle attached to it on an elastic - and put it over his mouth and nose. A couple of deep breaths and he seemed more or less all right again. He gave it back to Rogette and really seemed to see me for the first time. He said, "I've been a fool, haven't I?" I said, "Yes, sir, I think you have." He gave me a look, very black, when I said that. I think if he'd been even five years younger, he might have hit me for it.'

'But he wasn't and he didn't.'

'No. He said, 'I want to go inside. Will you help me do that?' I said I would. We went up the mortuary steps with Rogette on one side of him, me t sort of like a harem girl. It wasn't a very nice feeling. When we got into the vestibule, he sat down to catch his breath and take a little more oxygen. Rogette turned to Kyra. I think that woman's got a scary face, it reminds me of some painting or other - '

'The Cry? The one by Munch?'

'I'm pretty sure that's the one.' She dropped her cigarette - she'd smoked it all the way down to the filter - and stepped on it, grinding it into the bony, rock-riddled ground with one white sneaker. 'But Ki wasn't scared of her a bit. Not then, not later. She bent down to Kyra and said, 'What rhymes with lady?' and Kyra said 'Shady!' right off. Even at two she loved rhymes. Rogette reached into her purse and brought out a Hershey's Kiss. Ki looked at me to see if she had permission and I said, 'All right, but just one, and I don't want to see any of it on your dress.' Ki popped it into her mouth and smiled at Rogette as if they'd been friends since forever.

'By then Devore had his breath back, but he looked tired - the most tired man I've ever seen. He reminded me of something in the Bible, about how in the days of our old age we say we have no pleasure in them. My heart kind of broke for him. Maybe he saw it, because he reached for my hand. He said, "Don't shut me out." And at that moment I could see Lance in his face. I started to cry. I said, "I won't unless you make me."'

I could see them there in the funeral home's foyer, him sitting, her standing, the little girl looking on in wide-eyed puzzlement as she sucked the sweet Hershey's Kiss. Canned organ music in the background. Poor old Max Devore had been crafty enough on the day of his son's viewing, I thought. Don't shut me out, indeed.

I tried to buy you off and when that didn't work I upped the stakes and tried to buy the baby. When that also failed, I told my son that you and he and my grandchild could choke on the dirt of your own decision. In a way, I'm the reason he was where he was when fell and broke his neck, but don't shut me out, Mattie, I'm just a poor old geezer, so don't shut me out. I tried to buy you off and when that didn't work I upped the stakes and tried to buy the baby. When that also failed, I told my son that you and he and my grandchild could choke on the dirt of your own decision. In a way, I'm the reason he was where he was when fell and broke his neck, but don't shut me out, Mattie, I'm just a poor old geezer, so don't shut me out.

'I was stupid, wasn't I?'

'You expected him to be better than he was. If that makes you stupid, Mattie, the world could use more of it.'

'I did did have my doubts,' she said. 'It's why I wouldn't take any of his money, and by last October he'd quit asking. But I let him see her. I suppose, yeah, part of it was the idea there might be something in it for Ki later on, but I honestly didn't think about that so much. Mostly it was him being her only blood link to her father. I wanted her to enjoy that the way any kid enjoys having a grandparent. What I didn't want was for her to be infected by all the c.r.a.p that went on before Lance died. have my doubts,' she said. 'It's why I wouldn't take any of his money, and by last October he'd quit asking. But I let him see her. I suppose, yeah, part of it was the idea there might be something in it for Ki later on, but I honestly didn't think about that so much. Mostly it was him being her only blood link to her father. I wanted her to enjoy that the way any kid enjoys having a grandparent. What I didn't want was for her to be infected by all the c.r.a.p that went on before Lance died.

'At first it seemed to be working. Then, little by little, things changed. I realized that Ki didn't like her 'white poppa' so much; for one thing. Her feelings about Rogette are the same, but Max Devore's started to make her nervous in some way I don't understand and she can't explain. I asked her once if he'd ever touched her anywhere that made her feel funny. I showed her the places I meant, and she said no. I believe her, but . . . he said something or did something. I'm almost sure of it.'

'Could be no more than the sound of his breathing getting worse,' I said. 'That alone might be enough to scare a child. Or maybe he had some kind of spell while she was there. What about you, Mattie?'

'Well . . . one day in February Lindy Briggs told me that George Footman had been in to check the fire extinguishers and the smoke detectors in the library. He also asked if Lindy had found any beer cans or liquor bottles in the trash lately. Or cigarette b.u.t.ts that were obviously homemade.'

'Roaches, in other words.'

'Uh-huh. And d.i.c.kie Osgood has been visiting my old friends, I hear. Chatting. Panning for gold. Digging the dirt.'

'Is there any to dig?'

'Not much, thank G.o.d.'

I hoped she was right, and I hoped that if there was stuff she wasn't telling me, John Storrow would get it out of her.

'But through all this you let Ki go on seeing him.'

'What would pulling the plug on the visits have accomplished? And I thought that allowing them to go on would at least keep him from speeding up any plans he might have.'

That, I thought, made a lonely kind of sense.

'Then, in the spring, I started to get some extremely creepy, scary feelings.'

'Creepy how? Scary how?'

'I don't know.' She took out her cigarettes, looked at them, then stuffed the pack back in her pocket. 'It wasn't just that my father-in-law was looking for dirty laundry in my closets, either. It was Ki. I started to worry about ICI all the time she was with him . . . with them them. Rogette would come in the BMW they'd bought or leased, and Ki would be sitting out on the steps waiting for her. With her bag of toys if it was a day-visit, with her little pink Minnie Mouse suitcase if it was an overnight. And she'd always come back with one more thing than she left with. My father-in-law's a great believer in presents. Before popping her into the car, Rogette would give me that cold little smile of hers and say, "Seven o'clock then, we'll give her supper" or "Eight o'clock then, and a nice hot breakfast before she leaves." I'd say okay, and then Rogette would reach into her bag and hold out a Hershey's Kiss to Ki just the way you'd hold a biscuit out to a dog to make it shake hands. She'd say a word and Kyra would rhyme it. Rogette would toss her her treat - woof-woof, good dog, I always used to think - and off they'd go. Come seven in the evening or eight in the morning, the BMW would pull in right where your car's parked now. You could set your clock by the woman. But I got worried.'

'That they might get tired of the legal process and just s.n.a.t.c.h her?'

This seemed to me a reasonable concern - so reasonable I could hardly believe Mattie had ever let her little girl go to the old man in the first place. In custody cases, as in the rest of life, possession tends to be nine tenths of the law, and if Mattie was telling the truth about her past and present, a custody hearing was apt to turn into a tiresome production even for the rich Mr. Devore. s.n.a.t.c.hing might, in the end, look like a more efficient solution.

'Not exactly,' she said. 'I guess it's the logical thing, but that wasn't really it. I just got afraid. There was nothing I could put my finger on. It would get to be quarter past six in the evening and I'd think, "This time that white-haired b.i.t.c.h isn't going to bring her back. This time she's going to . . . '''

I waited. When nothing came I said, 'Going to what?'

'I told you, I don't know,' she said. 'But I've been afraid for Ki since spring. By the time June came around, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I put a stop to the visits. Kyra's been off-and-on p.i.s.sed at me ever since. I'm pretty sure that's most of what that Fourth of July escapade was about. She doesn't talk about her grandfather very much, but she's always popping out with "What do you think the white nana's doing now, Mattie?" or "Do you think the white nana would like my new dress?" Or she'll run up to me and say "Sing, ring, king, thing," and ask for a treat.'

'What was the reaction from Devore?'

'Complete fury. He called again and again, first asking what was wrong, then making threats.'

'Physical threats?'

'Custody threats. He was going to take her away, when he was finished with me I'd stand before the whole world as an unfit mother, I didn't have a chance, my only hope was to relent and let me see my granddaughter, G.o.ddammit let me see my granddaughter, G.o.ddammit.'

I nodded. '"Please don't shut me out" doesn't sound like the guy who called while I was watching the fireworks, but that does.'

'I've also gotten calls from d.i.c.kie Osgood, and a number of other locals,' she said. 'Including Lance's old friend Richie Lattimore. Richie said I wasn't being true to Lance's memory.'

'What about George Footman?'

'He cruises by once in awhile. Lets me know he's watching. He hasn't called or stopped in. You asked about physical threats - just seeing Footman's cruiser on my road feels like a physical threat to me. He scares me. But these days it seems as if everything does.'

'Even though Kyra's visits have stopped.'

'Even though. It feels . . . thundery. Like something's going to happen. And every day that feeling seems to get stronger.'

'John Storrow's number,' I said. 'Do you want it?'

She sat quietly, looking into her lap. Then she raised her head and nodded. 'Give it to me. And thank you. From the bottom of my heart.'

I had the number on a pink memo-slip in my front pocket. She grasped it but did not immediately take it. Our fingers were touching, and she was looking at me with disconcerting steadiness. It was as if she knew more about my motives than I did myself.

'What can I do to repay you?' she asked, and there it was.

'Tell Storrow everything you've told me.' I let go of the pink slip and stood up. 'That'll do just fine. And now I have to get along. Will you call and tell me how you made out with him?'

'Of course.'

We walked to my car. I turned to her when we got there. For a moment I thought she was going to put her arms around me and hug me, a thank-you gesture that might have led anywhere in our current mood - one so heightened it was almost melodramatic. But it was a melodramatic situation, a fairy-tale where there's good and bad and a lot of repressed s.e.x running under both.

Then headlights appeared over the brow of the hill where the market stood and swept past the All-Purpose Garage. They moved toward us, brightening. Mattie stood back and actually put her hands behind her, like a child who has been scolded. The car pa.s.sed, leaving us in the dark again . . . but the moment had pa.s.sed, too. If there had been a moment.

'Thanks for dinner,' I said. 'It was wonderful.'

'Thanks for the lawyer, I'm sure he'll be wonderful, too,' she said, and we both laughed. The electricity went out of the air. 'He spoke of you once, you know. Devore.'

I looked at her in surprise. 'I'm amazed he even knew who I was. Before this, I mean.'

'He knows, all right. He spoke of you with what I think was genuine affection.'

'You're kidding. You must be.'

'I'm not. He said that your great-grandfather and his great-grandfather worked the same camps and were neighbors when they weren't in the woods - I think he said not far from where Boyd's Marina is now. 'They s.h.i.+t in the same pit,' is the way he put it. Charming, huh? He said he guessed that if a couple of loggers from the TR could produce millionaires, the system was working the way it was supposed to. "Even if it took three generations to do it," he said. At the time I took it as a veiled criticism of Lance.'

'It's ridiculous, however he meant it,' I said. 'My family is from the coast. Prout's Neck. Other side of the state. My dad was a fisherman and so was his father before him. My great-grandfather, too. They trapped lobsters and threw nets, they didn't cut trees.' All that was true, and yet my mind tried to fix on something. Some memory connected to what she was saying. Perhaps if I slept on it, it would come back to me.

'Could he have been talking about someone in your wife's family?'

'Nope.

There are Arlens in Maine - they're a big family - but most are still in Ma.s.sachusetts. They do all sorts of things now, but if you go back to the eighteen-eighties, the majority would have been quarrymen and stonecutters in the Malden-Lynn area. Devore was pulling your leg, Mattie.' But even then I suppose I knew he wasn't. He might have gotten some part of the story wrong - even the sharpest guys begin to lose the edge of their recollection by the time they turn eighty-five - but Max Devore wasn't much of a leg-puller. I had an image of unseen cables stretching beneath the surface of the earth here on the TR - -stretching in all directions, unseen but very powerful.

My hand was resting on top of my car door, and now she touched it briefly. 'Can I ask you one other question before you go? It's stupid, I warn you.'

'Go ahead. Stupid questions are a specialty of mine.'

'Do you have any idea at all all what that "Bartleby" story is about?' what that "Bartleby" story is about?'

I wanted to laugh, but there was enough moonlight for me to see she was serious, and that I'd hurt her feelings if I did. She was a member of Lindy Briggs's readers' circle (where I had once spoken in the late eighties), probably the youngest by at least twenty years, and she was afraid of appearing stupid.

'I have to speak first next time,' she said, 'and I'd like to give more than just a summary of the story so they know I've read it. I've thought about it until my head aches, and I just don't see. I doubt if it's one of those stories where everything comes magically clear in the last few pages, either. And I feel like I should should see - that it's right there in front of me.' see - that it's right there in front of me.'

That made me think of the cables again - cables running in every direction, a subcutaneous webwork connecting people and places. You couldn't see them, but you could feel them. Especially if you tried to get away. Meanwhile Mattie was waiting, looking at me with hope and anxiety.

'Okay, listen up, school's in session,' I said.

'I am. Believe me.'

'Most critics think Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn is the first modern American novel, and that's fair enough, but if "Bartleby" were a hundred pages longer, I think I'd put my money there. Do you know what a scrivener was?' is the first modern American novel, and that's fair enough, but if "Bartleby" were a hundred pages longer, I think I'd put my money there. Do you know what a scrivener was?'

'A secretary?'

'That's too grand. A copyist. Sort of like Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol. Only d.i.c.kens gives Bob a past and a family life. Melville gives Bartleby neither. He's the first existential character in American fiction, a guy with no ties . . . no ties to, you know . . . '

A couple of loggers who could produce millionaires. They s.h.i.+t in the same pit. A couple of loggers who could produce millionaires. They s.h.i.+t in the same pit.

'Mike?' 'Mike?'

'What?'

'Are you okay?'

'Sure.' I focused my mind as best I could. 'Bartleby is tied to life only by work. In that way he's a twentieth-century American type, not much different from Sloan Wilson's Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, or - in the dark version - Michael Corleone in The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather. But then Bartleby begins to question even work, the G.o.d of middle-cla.s.s American males.'

She looked excited now, and I thought it was a shame she'd missed her last year of high school. For her and also for her teachers. 'That's why he starts saying "I prefer not to"?'

'Yes. Think of Bartleby as a . . . a hot-air balloon. Only one rope still tethers him to the earth, and that rope is his scrivening. We can measure the rot in that last rope by the steadily increasing number of things Bartleby prefers not to do. Finally the rope breaks and Bartleby floats away. It's a G.o.ddam disturbing story, isn't it?'

'One night I dreamed about him,' she said. 'I opened the trailer door and there he was, sitting on the steps in his old black suit. Thin. Not much hair. I said, "Will you move, please? I have to go out and hang the clothes now." And he said, "I prefer not to." Yes, I guess you could call it disturbing.'

'Then it still works,' I said, and got into my car. 'Call me. Tell me how it goes with John Storrow.'