Bag of Bones Part 34

I was walking north along The Street. j.a.panese lanterns lined it, but they were all dark because it was daylight - bright bright daylight. The muggy, s.m.u.tchy look of mid-July was gone; the sky was that deep sapphire shade which is the sole property of October. The lake was deepest indigo beneath it, sparkling with sunpoints. The trees were just past the peak of their autumn colors, burning like torches. A wind out of the south blew the fallen leaves past me and between my legs in rattly, fragrant gusts. The j.a.panese lanterns nodded as if in approval of the season. Up ahead, faintly, I could hear music. Sara and the Red-Tops. Sara was belting it out, laughing her way through the lyric as she always had . . . only, how could laughter sound so much like a snarl? daylight. The muggy, s.m.u.tchy look of mid-July was gone; the sky was that deep sapphire shade which is the sole property of October. The lake was deepest indigo beneath it, sparkling with sunpoints. The trees were just past the peak of their autumn colors, burning like torches. A wind out of the south blew the fallen leaves past me and between my legs in rattly, fragrant gusts. The j.a.panese lanterns nodded as if in approval of the season. Up ahead, faintly, I could hear music. Sara and the Red-Tops. Sara was belting it out, laughing her way through the lyric as she always had . . . only, how could laughter sound so much like a snarl?

'White boy, I'd never kill a child of mine. That you'd even think it!'

I whirled, expecting to see her right behind me, but there was no one there. Well . . .

The Green Lady was there, only she had changed her dress of leaves for autumn and become the Yellow Lady. The bare pine-branch behind her still pointed the way: go north, young man, go north. Not much farther down the path was another birch, the one I'd held onto when that terrible drowning sensation had come over me again.

I waited for it to come again now - for my mouth and throat to fill up with the iron taste of the lake - but it didn't happen. I looked back at the Yellow Lady, then beyond her to Sara Laughs. The house was there, but much reduced: no north wing, no south wing, no second story. No sign of Jo's studio off to the side, either. None of those things had been built yet. The ladybirch had travelled back with me from 1998; so had the one hanging over the lake. Otherwise - 'Where am I?' I asked the Yellow Lady and the nodding j.a.panese lanterns. Then a better question occurred to me. 'When am I?' No answer. 'It's a dream, isn't it? I'm in bed and dreaming.' am I?' No answer. 'It's a dream, isn't it? I'm in bed and dreaming.'

Somewhere out in the brilliant, gold-sparkling net of the lake, a loon called. Twice. Hoot once for yes, twice for no Hoot once for yes, twice for no, I thought. Not a dream, Michael. I don't know exactly what it is - spiritual time-travel, maybe - but it's not a dream. Not a dream, Michael. I don't know exactly what it is - spiritual time-travel, maybe - but it's not a dream.

'Is this really happening?' I asked the day, and from somewhere back in the trees, where a track which would eventually come to be known as Lane Forty-two ran toward a dirt road which would eventually come to be known as Route 68, a crow cawed. Just once.

I went to the birch hanging over the lake, slipped an arm around it (doing it lit a trace memory of slipping my hands around Mattie's waist, feeling her dress slide over her skin), and peered into the water, half-wanting to see the drowned boy, half-fearing to see him. There was no boy there, but something lay on the bottom where he had been, among the rocks and roots and waterweed. I squinted and just then the wind died a little, stilling the glints on the water. It was a cane, one with a gold head. A Boston Post Boston Post cane. Wrapped around it in a rising spiral, their ends waving lazily, were what appeared to be a pair of ribbons - white ones with bright red edges. Seeing Royce's cane wrapped that way made me think of high-school graduations, and the baton the cla.s.s marshal waves as he or she leads the gowned seniors to their seats. Now I understood why the old crock hadn't answered the phone. Royce Merrill's phone-answering days were all done. I knew that; I also knew I had come to a time before Royce had even been born. Sara Tidwell was here, I could hear her singing, and when Royce had been born in 1903, Sara had already been gone for two years, she and her whole Red-Top family. cane. Wrapped around it in a rising spiral, their ends waving lazily, were what appeared to be a pair of ribbons - white ones with bright red edges. Seeing Royce's cane wrapped that way made me think of high-school graduations, and the baton the cla.s.s marshal waves as he or she leads the gowned seniors to their seats. Now I understood why the old crock hadn't answered the phone. Royce Merrill's phone-answering days were all done. I knew that; I also knew I had come to a time before Royce had even been born. Sara Tidwell was here, I could hear her singing, and when Royce had been born in 1903, Sara had already been gone for two years, she and her whole Red-Top family.

'Go down, Moses,' I told the ribbon-wrapped cane in the water. 'You bound for the Promised Land.'

I walked on toward the sound of the music, invigorated by the cool air and rus.h.i.+ng wind. Now I could hear voices as well, lots of them, talking and shouting and laughing. Rising above them and pumping like a piston was the hoa.r.s.e cry of a sideshow barker: 'Come on in, folks, hurr hurr-ay, hurr hurr-ay, hurr hurr-ay! It's all on the inside but you've got to hurr hurr-ay, next show starts in ten minutes! See Angelina the Snake-Woman, she s.h.i.+mmies, she shakes, she'll bewitch your eye and steal your heart, but don't get too close for her bite is poy poy-son! See Hando the Dog-Faced Boy, terror of the South Seas! See the Human Skeleton! See the Human Gila Monster, relic of a time G.o.d forgot! See the Bearded Lady and all the Killer Martians! It's on the inside, yessirree, so hurr hurr-ay, hurr hurr-ay, hurr hurr-ay!'

I could hear the steam-driven calliope of a merry-go-round and the bang of the bell at the top of the post as some lumberjack won a stuffed toy for his sweetie. You could tell from the delighted feminine screams that he'd hit it almost hard enough to pop it off the post. There was the snap of. 22s from the shooting gallery, the snoring moo of someone's prize cow . . . and now I began to smell the aromas I have a.s.sociated with county fairs since I was a boy: sweet fried dough, grilled onions and peppers, cotton candy, manure, hay. I began to walk faster as the strum of guitars and thud of double ba.s.ses grew louder. My heart kicked into a higher gear. I was going to see them perform, actually see Sara Laughs and the Red-Tops live and on stage. This was no crazy three-part fever-dream, either. This was happening right now, so hurr-ay, hurr-ay, hurr-ay.

The Washburn place (the one that would always be the Bricker place to Mrs. M.) was gone. Beyond where it would eventually be, rising up the steep slope on the eastern side of The Street, was a flight of broad wooden stairs. They reminded me of the ones which lead down from the amus.e.m.e.nt park to the beach at Old Orchard. Here the j.a.panese lanterns were lit in spite of the brightness of the day, and the music was louder than ever. Sara was singing 'Jimmy Crack Corn.'

I climbed the stairs toward the laughter and shouts, the sounds of the Red-Tops and the calliope, the smells of fried food and farm animals. Above the stairhead was a wooden arch with

WELCOME TO FRYEBURG FAIR WELCOME TO THE 20TH CENTURY

printed on it. As I watched, a little boy in short pants and a woman wearing a s.h.i.+rtwaist and an ankle-length linen skirt walked under the arch and toward me. They s.h.i.+mmered, grew gauzy. For a moment I could see their skeletons and the bone grins which lurked beneath their laughing faces. A moment later and they were gone.

Two farmers - one wearing a straw hat, the other gesturing expansively with a corncob pipe - appeared on the Fair side of the arch in exactly the same fas.h.i.+on. In this way I understood that there was a barrier between The Street and the Fair. Yet I did not think it was a barrier which would affect me. I was an exception.

'Is that right?' I asked. 'Can I go in?'

The bell at the top of the Test Your Strength pole banged loud and clear. Bong once for yes, twice for no. I continued on up the stairs.

Now I could see the Ferris wheel turning against the brilliant sky, the wheel that had been in the background of the band photo in Osteen's Dark Score Days Dark Score Days. The framework was metal, but the brightly painted gondolas were made of wood. Leading up to it like an aisle leading up to an altar was a broad, sawdust-strewn midway. The sawdust was there for a purpose; almost every man I saw was chewing tobacco.

I paused for a few seconds at the top of the stairs, still on the lake side of the arch. I was afraid of what might happen to me if I pa.s.sed under. Afraid of dying or disappearing, yes, but mostly of never being able to return the way I had come, of being condemned to spend eternity as a visitor to the turn-of-the-century Fryeburg Fair. That was also like a Ray Bradbury story, now that I thought of it.

In the end what drew me into that other world was Sara Tidwell. I had to see her with my own eyes. I had to watch her sing. Had Had to. to.

I felt a tingling as I stepped beneath the arch, and there was a sighing in my ears, as of a million voices, very far away. Sighing in relief? Dismay? I couldn't tell. All I knew for sure was that being on the other side was different - the difference between looking at a thing through a window and actually being there; the difference between observing and partic.i.p.ating.

Colors jumped out like ambushers at the moment of attack. The smells which had been sweet and evocative and nostalgic on the lake side of the arch were now rough and s.e.xy, prose instead of poetry. I could smell dense sausages and frying beef and the vast shadowy aroma of boiling chocolate. Two kids walked past me sharing a paper cone of cotton candy. Both of them were clutching knotted hankies with their little bits of change in them. 'Hey kids!' a barker in a dark blue s.h.i.+rt called to them. He was wearing sleeve-garters and his smile revealed one splendid gold tooth. 'Knock over the milk-bottles and win a prize! I en't had a loser all day!'

Up ahead, the Red-Tops swung into 'Fis.h.i.+n Blues.' I'd thought the kid on the common in Castle Rock was pretty good, but this version made the kid's sound old and slow and clueless. It wasn't cute, like an antique picture of ladies with their skirts held up to their knees, dancing a decorous version of the black bottom with the edges of their bloomers showing. It wasn't something Alan Lomax had collected with his other folk songs, just one more dusty American b.u.t.terfly in a gla.s.s case full of them; this was s.m.u.t with just enough s.h.i.+ne on it to keep the whole struttin bunch of them out of jail. Sara Tidwell was singing about the dirty boogie, and I guessed that every overalled, straw-hatted, plug-chewing, callus-handed, clod-hopper-wearing farmer standing in front of the stage was dreaming about doing it with her, getting right down to where the sweat forms in the crease and the heat gets hot and the pink comes glimmering through.

I started walking in that direction, aware of cows mooing and sheep blatting from the exhibition barns - the Fair's version of my childhood Hi-Ho Dairy-O. I walked past the shooting gallery and the ringtoss and the penny-pitch; I walked past a stage where The Handmaidens of Angelina were weaving in a slow, snakelike dance with their hands pressed together as a guy with a turban on his head and shoepolish on his face tooted a flute. The picture painted on stretched canvas suggested that Angelina - on view inside for just one tenth of a dollar, neighbor - would make these two look like old boots. I walked past the entrance to Freak Alley, the corn-roasting pit, the Ghost House, where more stretched canvas depicted spooks coming out of broken windows and crumbling chimneys. Everything in there is death Everything in there is death, I thought . . . but from inside I could hear children who were very much alive laughing and squealing as they b.u.mped into things in the dark. The older among them were likely stealing kisses. I pa.s.sed the Test Your Strength pole, where the gradations leading to the bra.s.s bell at the top were marked BABY NEEDS HIS BOTTLE, SISSY, TRY AGAIN, BIG BOY, HE-MAN, and, just below the bell itself, in red: HERCULES! Standing at the center of a little crowd a young man with red hair was removing his s.h.i.+rt, revealing a heavily muscled upper torso. A cigar-smoking carny held a hammer out to him. I pa.s.sed the quilting booth, a tent where people were sitting on benches and playing Bingo, the baseball pitch. I pa.s.sed them all and hardly noticed. I was in the zone, tranced out. 'You'll have to call him back,' Jo had sometimes told Harold when he phoned, 'Michael is currently in the Land of Big Make-Believe.' Only now nothing felt like pretend and the only thing that interested me was the stage at the base of the Ferris wheel. There were eight black folks up there on it, maybe ten. Standing at the front, wearing a guitar and whaling on it as she sang, was Sara Tidwell. She was alive. She was in her prime. She threw back her head and laughed at the October sky.

What brought me out of this daze was a cry from behind me: 'Wait up, Mike! Wait up!'

I turned and saw Kyra running toward me, dodging around the strollers and gamesters and midway gawkers with her pudgy knees pumping. She was wearing a little white sailor dress with red piping and a straw hat with a navy-blue ribbon on it. In one hand she clutched Strickland, and when she got to me she threw herself confidently forward, knowing I would catch her and swing her up. I did, and when her hat started to fall offi caught it and jammed it back on her head.

'I taggled my own quartermack,' she said, and laughed. 'Again.'

'That's right,' I said. 'You're a regular Mean Joe Green.' I was wearing overalls (the tail of a wash-faded blue bandanna stuck out of the bib pocket) and manure-stained workboots. I looked at Kyra's white socks and saw they were homemade. I would find no discreet little label reading Made in Mexico or Made in China if I took off her straw hat and looked inside, either. This hat had been most likely Made in Motton, by some farmer's wife with red hands and achy joints.

'Ki, where's Mattie?'

'Home, I guess. She couldn't come.'

'How did you get here?'

'Up the stairs. It was a lot of stairs. You should have waited for me. You could have carrot me, like before. I want to hear the music.'

'Me too. Do you know who that is, Kyra?'

'Yes,' she said, 'Kito's mom. Hurry up, slowpoke!'

I walked toward the stage, thinking we'd have to stand at the back of the crowd, but they parted for us as we came forward, me carrying Kyra in my arms - the lovely sweet weight of her, a little Gibson Girl in her sailor dress and ribbon-accented straw hat. Her arm was curled around my neck and they parted for us like the Red Sea had parted for Moses.

They didn't turn to look at us, either. They were clapping and stomping and bellowing along with the music, totally involved. They stepped aside unconsciously, as if some kind of magnetism were at work here - ours positive, theirs negative. The few women in the crowd were blus.h.i.+ng but clearly enjoying themselves, one of them laughing so hard tears were streaming down her face. She looked no more than twenty-two or -three. Kyra pointed to her and said matter-of-factly: 'You know Mattie's boss at the liberry? That's her nana.'

Lindy Briggs's grandmother, and fresh as a daisy Lindy Briggs's grandmother, and fresh as a daisy, I thought. Good Christ Good Christ.

The Red-Tops were spread across the stage and under swags of red, white, and blue bunting like some time-travelling rock band. I recognized all of them from the picture in Edward Osteen's book. The men wore white s.h.i.+rts, arm-garters, dark vests, dark pants. Son Tidwell, at the far end of the stage, was wearing the derby he'd had on in the photo. Sara, though . . .

'Why is the lady wearing Mattie's dress?' Kyra asked me, and she began to tremble.

'I don't know, honey. I can't say.' Nor could I argue - it was the white sleeveless dress Mattie had been wearing on the common, all right.

On stage, the band was smoking through an instrumental break. Reginald 'Son' Tidwell strolled over to Sara, feet ambling, hands a brown blur on the strings and frets of his guitar, and she turned to face him. They put their foreheads together, she laughing and he solemn; they looked into each other's eyes and tried to play each other down, the crowd cheering and clapping, the rest of the Red-Tops laughing as they played. Seeing them together like that, I realized that I had been right: they were brother and sister. The resemblance was too strong to be missed or mistaken. But mostly what I looked at was the way her hips and b.u.t.t switched in that white dress. Kyra and I might be dressed in turn-of-the-century country clothes, but Sara was thoroughly modern Millie. No bloomers for her, no petticoats, no cotton stockings. No one seemed to notice that she was wearing a dress that stopped above her knees - that she was all but naked by the standards of this time. And under Mattie's dress she'd be wearing garments the like of which these people had never seen: a Lycra bra and hip-hugger nylon panties. If I put my hands on her waist, the dress would slip not against an unwet-coming corset but against soft bare skin. Brown skin, not white. What do you want, sugar? What do you want, sugar?

Sara backed away from Son, shaking her ungirdled, unbustled f.a.n.n.y and laughing. He strolled back to his spot and she turned to the crowd as the band played the turnaround. She sang the next verse looking directly at me.

'Before you start in fis.h.i.+nyou better check your line.Said before you start in fis.h.i.+n, honey,you better check on your line.I'll pull on yours, darling,and you best tug on mine.'

The crowd roared happily. In my arms, Kyra was shaking harder than ever. 'I'm scared, Mike,' she said. 'I don't like that lady. She's a scary lady. She stole Mattie's dress. I want to go home.'

It was as if Sara heard her, even over the rip and ram of the music. Her head c.o.c.ked back on her neck, her lips peeled open, and she laughed at the sky. Her teeth were big and yellow. They looked like the teeth of a hungry animal, and I decided I agreed with Kyra: she was a scary lady.

'Okay, hon,' I murmured in Ki's ear. 'We're out of here.'

But before I could move, the sense of the woman - I don't know how else to say it - fell upon me and held me. Now I understood what had shot past me in the kitchen to knock away the CARLADEAN letters; the chill was the same. It was almost like identifying a person by the sound of their walk.

She led the band to the turnaround once more, then into another verse. Not one you'd find in any written version of the song, though:

'I ain't gonna hurt her, honey,not for all the treasure in the world'.Said I wouldn't hurt your baby,not for diamonds or for pearlsOnly one black-hearted b.a.s.t.a.r.ddare to touch that little girl.'

The crowd roared as if it were the funniest thing they'd ever heard, but Kyra began to cry. Sara saw this and stuck out her b.r.e.a.s.t.s - much bigger b.r.e.a.s.t.s than Mattie's - and shook them at her, laughing her trademark laugh as she did. There was a parodic coldness about this gesture . . . and an emptiness, too. A sadness. Yet I could feel no compa.s.sion for her. It was as if the heart had been burned out of her and the sadness which remained was just another ghost, the memory of love haunting the bones of hate.

And how her laughing teeth leered.

Sara raised her arms over her head and this time shook it all the way down, as if reading my thoughts and mocking them. Just like jelly on a plate, as some other old song of the time has it. Her shadow wavered on the canvas backdrop, which was a painting of Fryeburg, and as I looked at it I realized I had found the Shape from my Manderley dreams. It was Sara. Sara was the Shape and always had been.

No, Mike. That's close, but it's not right. No, Mike. That's close, but it's not right.

Right or wrong, I'd had enough. I turned, putting my hand on the back of Ki's head and urging her face down against my chest. Both her arms were around my neck now, clutching with panicky tightness.

I thought I'd have to bull my way back through the crowd - they had let me in easily enough, but they might be a lot less amenable to letting me back out. Don't f.u.c.k with me, boys Don't f.u.c.k with me, boys, I thought. You don't want to do that. You don't want to do that.

And they didn't. On stage Son Tidwell had taken the band from E to G, someone began to bang a tambourine, and Sara went from 'Fis.h.i.+n Blues' to 'Dog My Cats' without a single pause. Out here, in front of the stage and below it, the crowd once more drew back from me and my little girl without looking at us or missing a beat as they clapped their work-swollen hands together. One young man with a port-wine stain swimming across the side of his face opened his mouth - at twenty he was already missing half his teeth - and hollered 'Yee-HAW!' 'Yee-HAW!' around a melting glob of tobacco. It was Buddy Jellison from the Village Cafe, I realized . . . Buddy Jellison magically rolled back in age from sixty-eight to eighteen. Then I realized the hair was the wrong shade - light brown instead of black (although he was pus.h.i.+ng seventy and looking it in every other way, Bud hadn't a single white hair in his head). This was Buddy's grandfather, maybe even his great-grandfather. I didn't give a s.h.i.+t either way. I only wanted to get out of here. around a melting glob of tobacco. It was Buddy Jellison from the Village Cafe, I realized . . . Buddy Jellison magically rolled back in age from sixty-eight to eighteen. Then I realized the hair was the wrong shade - light brown instead of black (although he was pus.h.i.+ng seventy and looking it in every other way, Bud hadn't a single white hair in his head). This was Buddy's grandfather, maybe even his great-grandfather. I didn't give a s.h.i.+t either way. I only wanted to get out of here.

'Excuse me,' I said, brus.h.i.+ng by him.

'There's no town drunk here, you meddling son of a b.i.t.c.h,' he said, never looking at me and never missing a beat as he clapped. 'We all just take turns.'

It's a dream after all It's a dream after all, I thought. It's a dream and that proves it. It's a dream and that proves it.

But the smell of tobacco on his breath wasn't a dream, the smell of the crowd wasn't a dream, and the weight of the frightened child in my arms wasn't a dream, either. My s.h.i.+rt was hot and wet where her face was pressed. She was crying.

'Hey, Iris.h.!.+' Sara called from the stage, and her voice was so like Jo's that I could have screamed. She wanted me to turn back - I could feel her will working on the sides of my face like fingers - but I wouldn't do it.

I dodged around three farmers who were pa.s.sing a ceramic bottle from hand to hand and then I was free of the crowd. The midway lay ahead, wide as Fifth Avenue, and at the end of it was the arch, the steps, The Street, the lake. Home. If I could get to The Street we'd be safe. I was sure of it.

'Almost done, Iris.h.!.+' Sara shrieked after me. She sounded angry, but not too angry to laugh. 'You gonna get what you want, sugar, all the comfort you need, but you want to let me finish my bi'ness. Do you hear me, boy? Just stand clear! Mind me, now!'

I began to hurry back the way I had come, stroking Ki's head, still holding her face against my s.h.i.+rt. Her straw hat fell off and when I grabbed for it, I got nothing but the ribbon, which pulled free of the brim. No matter. We had to get out of here.

On our left was the baseball pitch and some little boy shouting 'w.i.l.l.y hit it over the fence, Ma! w.i.l.l.y hit it over the fence!' with monotonous, brain-croggling regularity. We pa.s.sed the Bingo, where some woman howled that she had won the turkey, by glory, every number was covered with a b.u.t.ton and she had won the turkey. Overhead, the sun dove behind a cloud and the day went dull. Our shadows disappeared. The arch at the end of the midway drew closer with maddening slowness.

'Are we home yet?' Ki almost moaned. 'I want to go home, Mike, please take me home to my mommy.'

'I will,' I said. 'Everything's going to be all right.'

We were pa.s.sing the Test Your Strength pole, where the young man with the red hair was putting his s.h.i.+rt back on. He looked at me with stolid dislike - the instinctive mistrust of a native for an interloper, per-haps - and I realized I knew him, too. He'd have a grandson named d.i.c.kie who would, toward the end of the century to which this fair had been dedicated, own the All-Purpose Garage on Route 68.

A woman coming out of the quilting booth stopped and pointed at me. At the same moment her upper lip lifted in a dog's snarl. I knew that face, too. From where? Somewhere around town. It didn't matter, and I didn't want to know even if it did.

'We never should have come here,' Ki moaned.

'I know how you feel,' I said. 'But I don't think we had any choice, hon. We - '

They came out of Freak Alley, perhaps twenty yards ahead. I saw them and stopped. There were seven in all, long-striding men dressed in cutters' clothes, but four didn't matter - those four looked faded and white and ghostly. They were sick fellows, maybe dead fellows, and no more dangerous than daguerreotypes. The other three, though, were real. As real as the rest of this place, anyway. The leader was an old man wearing a faded blue Union Army cap. He looked at me with eyes I knew. Eyes I had seen measuring me over the top of an oxygen mask.

'Mike? Why we stoppin?'

'It's all right, Ki. Just keep your head down. This is all a dream. You'll wake up tomorrow morning in your own bed.'

''Kay.'

The jacks spread across the midway hand to hand and boot to boot, blocking our way back to the arch and The Street. Old Blue-Cap was in the middle. The ones on either side of him were much younger, some by maybe as much as half a century. Two of the pale ones, the almost-not-there ones, were standing side-by-side to the old man's right, and I wondered if I could burst through that part of their line. I thought they were no more flesh than the thing which had thumped the insulation of the cellar wall . . . but what if I was wrong?

'Give her over, son,' the old man said. His voice was reedy and implacable. He held out his hands. It was Max Devore, he had come back, even in death he was seeking custody. Yet it wasn't wasn't him. I knew it wasn't. The planes of this man's face were subtly different, the cheeks gaunter, the eyes a brighter blue. him. I knew it wasn't. The planes of this man's face were subtly different, the cheeks gaunter, the eyes a brighter blue.

'Where am I I?' I called to him, accenting the last word heavily, and in front of Angelina's booth, the man in the turban (a Hindu who perhaps hailed from Sandusky, Ohio) put down his flute and simply watched. The snake-girls stopped dancing and watched, too, slipping their arms around each other and drawing together for comfort. 'Where am I I, Devore? If our great-grandfathers s.h.i.+t in the same pit, then where am I I?'

'Ain't here to answer your questions. Give her over.'

'I'll take her, Jared,' one of the younger men-one of those who were really there there - said. He looked at Devore with a kind of fawning eagerness that sickened me, mostly because I knew who he was: Bill Dean's father. A man who had grown up to be one of the most respected elders in Castle County was all but licking Devore's boots. - said. He looked at Devore with a kind of fawning eagerness that sickened me, mostly because I knew who he was: Bill Dean's father. A man who had grown up to be one of the most respected elders in Castle County was all but licking Devore's boots.

Don't think too badly of him Don't think too badly of him, Jo whispered. Don't think too badly of any of them. They were very young. Don't think too badly of any of them. They were very young.

'You don't need to do nothing,' Devore said. His reedy voice was irritated; Fred Dean looked abashed. 'He's going to hand her over on his own. And if he don't, we'll take her together.' 'You don't need to do nothing,' Devore said. His reedy voice was irritated; Fred Dean looked abashed. 'He's going to hand her over on his own. And if he don't, we'll take her together.'

I looked at the man on the far left, the third of those that seemed totally real, totally there. Was this me? It didn't look like me. There was something in the face that seemed familiar but - 'Hand her over, Irish,' Devore said. 'Last chance.'

'No.'

Devore nodded as if this was exactly what he had expected. 'Then we'll take her. This has got to end. Come on, boys.'

They started toward me and as they did I realized who the one on the end - the one in the caulked treewalker boots and flannel loggers' pants - reminded me of: Kenny Auster, whose wolfhound would eat cake 'til it busted. Kenny Auster, whose baby brother had been drowned under the pump by Kenny's father.

I looked behind me. The Red-Tops were still playing, Sara was still laughing, shaking her hips with her hands in the sky, and the crowd was still plugging the east end of the midway. That way was no good, anyway. if I went that way, I'd end up raising a little girl in the early years of the twentieth century, trying to make a living by writing penny dreadfuls and dime novels. That might not be so bad . . . but there was a lonely young woman miles and years from here who would miss her. Who might even miss us both.

I turned back and saw the jackboys were almost on me. Some of them more here than others, more vital, but all of them dead. All of them d.a.m.ned. I looked at the towhead whose descendants would include Kenny Auster and asked him, 'What did you do? What in Christ's name did you men do?'

He held out his hands. 'Give her over, Irish. That's all you you have to do. You and the woman can have more. All the more you want. She's young, she'll pop em out like watermelon seeds.' have to do. You and the woman can have more. All the more you want. She's young, she'll pop em out like watermelon seeds.'

I was hypnotized, and they would have taken us if not for Kyra. 'What's happening?' she screamed against my s.h.i.+rt. 'Something smells! Something smells so bad! so bad! Oh Mike, make it stop! Oh Mike, make it stop!'

And I realized I could smell it, too. Spoiled meat and swampgas. Burst tissue and simmering guts. Devore was the most alive of all of them, generating the same crude but powerful magnetism I had felt around his great-grandson, but he was as dead as the rest of them, too: as he neared I could see the tiny bugs which were feeding in his nostrils and the pink corners of his eyes. Everything down here is death Everything down here is death, I thought. Didn't my own wife tell me so? Didn't my own wife tell me so?