Bag of Bones CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Devore was mad, every last(p rubynessicate) right, mad as a hatter, and he couldnt have caught me at a worse, saplesser, more terrified minute of arc. And I depend that everything from that moment on was almost pre-ordained. From in that location to the terrible storm they subdued talk s get awayly in this part of the world, it on the whole came humble corresponding a rockslide.I entangle fine the rest of Friday after no(prenominal)n my talk with Bonnie go away a lot of questions unanswered, precisely it had been a tonic just the aforementioned(prenominal). I made a vegetable stir-fry (atonement 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 side of the lake the sunlight was sliding scratch off toward the mountains and flooding the living room with gold. When Tom Brokaw boneyd up shop, I decided to take a walk north a extensive The pathway Id go as far as I could and still be assured of ge tting base by gentle, and as I went Id think well-nigh the things flyer Dean and Bonnie Amudson had told me. Id think astir(predicate) them the way I near epochs walked and thought ab away plot-snags in whatever I was working on.I walked d protest the railroad-tie timbers, still feeling perfectly fine (confused, barely fine), started off along The Street, past paused to look at the Green Lady. Even with the evening sun reflect fully upon her, it was hard to see her for what she actually was just a birch tree with a half-dead pine standing empennage it, one branch of the latter(prenominal) reservation a pointing arm. It was as if the Green Lady were uttering go north, young human, go north. Well, I wasnt exactly young, but I could go north, all right. For awhile, at least(prenominal).Yet I stood a moment longer, uneasily studying the face I could see in the bushes, non liking the way the myopic shake of breeze seemed to make what was nearly a mouth sneer and grin. I think perhaps I started to feel a miniature problematic then, was too preoccupied to notice it. I set off north, wondering what, exactly, Jo might have written . . . for by then I was starting to cerebrate she might have written something, after all. Why else had I found my old typewriter in her studio? I would go through the place, I decided. I would go through it c arefully and . . .help im drownThe voice came from the woods, the pissing, from myself. A wave of lightheadedness passed through my thoughts, lifting and scattering them analogous pass ons in a breeze. I carryped. All at at once I had never entangle so bad, so blighted, in my animateness. My chest was tight. My stomach folded in on itself corresponding a cold f begin. My eyes fill up with chilly water that was nothing same(p) tears, and I knew what was coming. No, I tried to say, but the word wouldnt come out.My mouth filled with the cold taste of lakewater instead, all those dark minerals, and on the spur of the moment the trees were shimmering before my eyes as if I were tone up at them through clear liquid, and the closet on my chest had become dreadfully localized and taken the shapes of reach. They were attribute me down.Wont it stop doing that? psyche asked almost cried. There was no one on The Street but me, even I testd that voice clearly. Wont it ever stop doing that?What came next was no outer voice but alien thoughts in my own head. They beat against the walls of my skull like moths trapped inside a light-fixture . . . or inside a Japanese lantern.help 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 mehe face shimmer n look bad lemme up lemme up 0 sweet Jesus lemme up oxen free allee allee oxen free? PLEASEOXEN surrender you go on and stop directly ALLEE OXEN FREE she roar my nameshe scream it so LOUDI bent forward in an utter panic, opened my mouth, and from my gaping , straining mouth there poured 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 body had taken a violent offense, some material body of ant-powder or maybe 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 some other birch where the bank dropped to the lake, arching its white belly gracefully everywhere the water as if to see its reflection by evenings flattering light. I grabbed it like a drunk grabbing a lamp-post.The pressure in my chest began to ease, but it odd(a) an ache as real as rain. I hung against the tree, heart fluttering, and suddenly I became aware that something stank an evil, polluted tang worse than a clogged septic pool which has simmered all summer under the blazing sun. With it was a sense experience of so me hideous presence giving off that odor, something which should have been dead and wasnt.Oh stop, allee allee oxen free, Ill do anything save stop, I tried to say, and still nothing came out. and so it was gone. I could smell nothing but the lake and the woods . . . but I could see something a son in the lake, a little drowned dark boy lying on his buttocks. His cheeks were puffed out. His mouth hung slackly open. His eyes were as white as the eyes of a statue.My mouth filled with the unmerciful beseech of the lake again. Help me, lemme up, help Im drown. I leaned out, screaming inside my head, screaming down at the dead face, and I realized I was looking up at myself, looking up through the rose-shimmer of sundown water at a white man in blue jeans and a yellow polo shirt holding onto a trembling, birch and nerve-racking to scream, his liquid face in motion, his eyes momentarily blotted out by the passage of a small perch cut across after a tasty bug, I was both the dark bo y 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 but a single runner of spit, and, impossibly, a fish jumped at it. Theyll jump at almost anything at sunset something in the dying light must make them godforsaken. The fish hit the water again about seven feet from the bank, spanking out a circular cash 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 motto a gray 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, seemingly 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, whoremaster, wheres your whore?I turned and there he was, with Rogette Whitmore by his side. It was the only time I ever met him, but once was enough. Believe me, once was more than enough.His wheelchair hardly looked like a wheelchair at all. What it looked like was a motorcycle sidecar crossed with a lunar lander. Half a dozen chromium-plate wheels ran along both sides. Bigger wheels four of them, I think ran in a row across the hazard. None looked to be exactly on the same level, and I realized each was tied into its own suspension-bed. Devore would 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. planted in the center of it was a gadget that looked like my DSS sitellite dish . . . some sort of computerized avoidance system, I guessed. Maybe even an autopilo t. The armrests were wide and cover with controls. Holstered on the left side of this machine was a green oxygen tank four feet long. A hose went to a clear plastic piano accordion tube the accordion tube led to a mask which rested in Devores lap. It made 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, below the dish. I BLEED DODGER BLUE, it said.This evening the woman I had seen exterior The Sunset Bar at Warringtons was wearing away a white blouse with long sleeves and black pants so tapered they made her legs look like sheathe swords. Her narrow face and hollow cheeks made her resemble Edvard Munchs screamer more than ever. Her white hair hung around her face in a lank cowl. Her lips were varicoloured so brightly red she seemed to be bleeding from the mouth.She was old and she was ugly, but she was a prize compared to Matties fat her-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 find in the burial room of a pyramid, surrounded by his stuffed wives and pets, bedizened with his ducky jewels. A a few(prenominal) wisps of white hair still clung to his scaly skull more tufts sprang from enormous ears which seemed to have melted like wax sculptures left out in the sun. He was wearing white cotton pants and a billowy blue shirt. Add a little black beret and he would have looked like a French artist from the nineteenth century at the end of a very long life.Across his lap was a cane of some black wood. Snugged over the end was a bright red bicycle grip. The fingers grasping it looked powerful, but they were loss as black as the cane itself. His circulation was failing, and I couldnt imagine 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 toggle switch switch and the chair came ten feet closer, halving the distance between us. The sound it made was a silky whisper reflection it was like ceremonial occasion an evil supernatural carpet. Its many wheels rose and fell independent of one another and flashed in the declining sun, which had begun to take on a reddish cast. And as he came closer, I felt the sense of the man. His body 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 assumed 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, si r, she said. In their place.Sometimes their place was on my face he cried with a kind of insane 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 know all about him, right down to the Unsatisfactory Conduct he got in the third grade. I make it my business to know 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 there?The Street belongs to anyone who indispensabilitys to use it. You havent been here long, young whoremaster, but surely youve been here long enough to know that. Its our version of the town common, where good pups and vile dogs may walk side-by-side.Once more using the hand 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 unspeakable grin of complicity that revealed g ums the color of iodin.She good? That little 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 cuckoo 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 appraisal 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 snorkel breather . . . and caught a taste of that subversion 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 beach and telling the world how more than 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 smile looked momentarily uneasy at that. Devore didnt. He clutched for his manifest 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 blood-poisoning and the one Do you circumspection about your soul, Mr. Noonan? Your immortal soul? Gods butterfly caught in a cocoon of flesh that will in short stink like mine?I said nothing. The strangeness 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, a nd raw is exactly the right word. I might have run. beneath 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 I might fall down.Im going to give you one chance to save your soul, Devore said. He raised a bony finger to illustrate the concept of one. Go away, 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. Leave the 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 matter 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 could 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 colonized 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 violate me quite badly broken one or both of my legs, I dont doubt but he stopped just short. I leaped back, but only because he a llowed me to. I was aware that Whitmore was laughing again.Whats the matter, Noonan?Get out of my way. Im warning you.Whore made you jumpy, has she?I started to my left, meaning to go by him on that side, but in a flash he had turned the chair, shot 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 white-haired 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 hands, and pushed her. She fell to the needle-carpeted path with a beef of surprised outrage. At the next instant something clouted me on the back of the head. A momentary orange glow 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, sc aly 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 slacks and looking at me with a furious smile. 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, yo u whore-fucking sissy. I wont.He shoved the silver toggle switch again and the wheelchair rushed silently at me. If I had stayed 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 probably 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 little people. If I had hesitated out of shock or incredulity, he would have killed me, Im sure of it. Instead, I rolled 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 submerged 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 re al. I coughed it out and sneezed it out and floundered away from where I had landed, thinking 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 cards or drivers license, but I had two good snapshots of Jo in there, and they would be ruined.Devore had almost run himself 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 running out from beneath them in dry little avalanches that rolled down the side of meat 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 waist-deep in the lake with my clothes floating around me, I rooted for him to go over.The purplish claw of his left hand recaptured the silver toggle switch after some(prenominal) attempts. One 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 feet from organism 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 adjoin of The Street but safely away from the drop off. Whitmore had turned away from us entirely 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 suppose I thought she was getting her breath back.Devore appeared to be in the outperform 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 gas and set on fire.Enjoying your drift? 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- fivesome . . . 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 submerged tree-branches. The ankle Id twisted still hurt, but it was supporting me. Whether it would traverse to once I got out of the lake was another question.Devore twiddled his controls some more. The chair pivoted and came rolling slowly 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 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 moving 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 march 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 splashed into the water behind me.Hey I shouted, more startled than a fraid. 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 swing like a girl. Get himThe second rock passed two inches over my head. The third was a potential tooth-smasher. I batted it away with an angry, fearful shout, not noticing until ulterior 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 fashion 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 splashing 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 really 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 li ke the face of a malicious apple-doll.One of her rocks struck me a hard, painful blow on the collarbone and bounced high 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 first-class honours degree 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 area 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 surface 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 logy I had to remind myself to spit it out, not swallow it. My feet now felt too heavy for limpid, and my goddamned sneakers wei ghed 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 florists chrysanthemum in a Grant Wood painting. Devore was using the mask again, but I could see him grinning inside it. Whitmore was grinning, too.More 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 swimming 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 sharp 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 mo ment, I would have killed them both with no hesitation 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 draw a breath at the wrong time, swallowed more water, and panicked completely. I began to swim in toward the shore, wanting 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 h ad hit but her inspection 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 spite 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 parked behind her in his wheelchair. They were 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 n ot 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 expected it to work. Even if Id been real 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 plausible and improbable at the same time, rose in my mind. I could see Rogette Whitmore tacking a notice to the cOMMUNITY DOINS board outside the Lakeview General Store.TO THE MARTIANS OF TR-90, GREETINGSMr, MAXWELL DEVORE, everyones favorite Martian, will give each resident of the TR ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS if no one will use The Street on FRIDAY EVENING, THE 17th OF JULY, between the hours of septenary 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 the very least I had to grant 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 occasionally picking the mask up from his lap and having a revivifying suck.I couldnt wait until dark. The sun exits in a hurry here in wolframbound 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 reading POPULAR romanticistic SUSPENSE NOVELIST DROWNS IN MAINE. Debra Weinstock would provide them with the author photo 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 scrawny 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 only 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 pace me, but they saw where I was headed and the laughter st opped. 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 thirty yards away a cramp struck my left leg. I rolled crabwise 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 calm 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 clamp 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, internal respiration 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 everything 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 veneer 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 slash them not just a single bird 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 s at 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 rested, my head had stopped aching (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 cope 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 straying into Devore s 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-powered 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 tickling 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 fend 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. L ast, 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.