Characters in Bag of Bones

Here were the T's of southern Castle County, along with a few U's like Alton Ubeck and Catherine Udell just to round things out. I didn't bother checking the ninety-second entry on the page; the phone book wasn't the key to the magnetic crosspatches after all.

I began to leaf through the manuscript, my skin crawling. Andy Drake rarely frowned in Michael Noonan's My Childhood Friend. He scowled instead, because there's an owl in every scowl.

It's all on the inside but you've got to hurr-ay, next show starts in ten minutes! See Angelina the Snake-Woman, she shimmies, she shakes, she'll bewitch your eye and steal your heart, but don't get too close for her bite ispoy-son!

"No!" she said, sounding shocked. Then: "But they'll know. Bill and Yvette... Dickie Brooks at the garage.., old Anthony Weyland and Buddy Jellison and all the others.., they'll know. Goodbye, Mr. Noo-nan. I'm so sorry. For you and your wife. Your poor wife. I'm so sorry." Then she was gone.

Right now Ki gets her lunch at Vacation Bible School and her dinner from Arlene Cullum. I see her in the mornings. The rest of the time..." I knew what she was going to say before she said it; the expression was an old one. "... she's on the TR."

"Villageburger, Audrey," he said. "Drag it through the garden." I'm ordinarily a sit-at-the-counter kind of guy, but that day I took a booth near the cooler and waited for Buddy to yell that it was ready--Audrey short-orders, but she doesn't waitress.

Then, between my junior and senior years, I got a summer job at Warrington's and met Lance. When he asked me to marry him, Aunt Flo refused to give permission. When I told her I was pregnant, she emancipated me so I didn't need it." "You dropped out of school?"

Later on I talked to my brother, Sid, told him we had to do something about our mother and Aunt Francine before the two of them disappeared completely into the Twilight Zone. They were too young for a nursing home; what did Sid advise?

We all were. We women--shit, really just us girls, Barney Therriault's wife, Cindy, was only sixteen--we'd stand behind the backstop on the first-base side, smoking cigarettes or waving punks to keep the bugs away, cheering our guys when they did something good, laughing when they did something stupid.

Ben Merrill, Royce's father-to-be, says Ayuh, but we won't go easy on ya just cause you're from N'Yawk. The young men laugh; so do the tennis girls. A little farther on, two boys areplaying catch with the sort of raw homemade baseball that is known as a horsey.

I have no idea how she met Benton Auster. Let's say he was down in the Prout's Neck part of the world visiting friends and started flirting with her at a clambake. That's as likely as anything else. This was in 1884. She was eighteen, he was twenty-three.

I paid him quariterly, as is the custom with caretakers in that part of the world; Bill Dean, old Yankee from a long line of them, cashed my checks and didn't ask why I never used my place anymore.

… a hot job on a hot day, and Bill Fraker said yeah, he might have been going a little too fast--maybe forty in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone. He was eager to get back to the garage, sign off on the truck, and get behind the wheel of his own F-150, which …

came. Ki wants to know if you'll come to Final Exercises on Friday afternoon, by the way. She and her friend Billy Turgeon are going to flannelboard the story of baby Moses." "I wouldn't miss it," I said.., but of course I did. We all did.

I even missed Blueberry, the Irish wolfhound, who trotted everywhere with his head up just as if he had half a brain in it and long strands of saliva depending from his jaws. "I've also got to get down there and clean up the winter blowdown," Bill said.

What excuses to be out of Derry? And once I had finished with Ward, I could tackle Jo's friend Bonnie Amudson, ask her if anything had been going on with Jo in the last summer of her life. Let her rest in peace, why don't you?

Security is provided by Lassie, Breck Pellerin's ancient collie, who spends her days crashed out on the linoleum floor, cocking an ear at the ceiling whenever a plane lands or takes off. I popped my head into Pelterin's office and asked him if the ten from Boston was on time.

"I know." "TII get Brenda Meserve to clean the whole shebang from top to bottom. Same gal you always had, don't you know." "Brenda's a little old for comprehensive spring cleaning, isn't she?" The lady in question was about sixty-five, stout, kind, and gleefully vulgar.

And Bridget had married--Benton Auster. My finger dropped down a line, to Harry Auster. Born of Benton and Bridget Noonan Auster in the year 1885. "Christ Jesus," I whispered. "Kenny Auster's grandfather was my granduncle. And he was one of them. Whatever they did, Harry Auster was one of them.

But I called her at the inn where she and her friend Bryn were staying; I told her I had finished, and listened as she said the words I'd called to hear--words that slipped into an Irish telephone …

I suddenly realized that I missed these people--Bill and Brenda and Buddy Jellison and Kenny Auster and all the others who lived year-round at the lake.

There was a whole world out there; Cam Delancey's wine-tasting was as good a place to start as any. I stopped, looking at the little flashing cursor.

I also saw Kimberly, Kim, and Kym. There were Cammie, Kia (yes, and we had thought ourselves so original), Kiah, Kendra, Kaela, Keil, and Kyle. Kirby and Kirk.

But who was the other one? Why had it scattered the letters? Carla Dean. Not Bill's wife; that was Yvette. His mother? His grandmother? I walked slowly through the kitchen, collecting fridge-magnets like prizes in a scavenger hunt and sticking them back on the Kenmore by the handful.

He's got a manila envelope he wants to send, but first he needs to show Carla Decinces what's inside. She said he was all fluffed out, like daddies sometimes get over their kids when they're small." I nodded, amused at the idea of skinny, stuttery Lance Devore all fluffed out.

There were four Catherines and two Katherines. There were a Casey, a Kiana, and a Kiefer. "Holy Christ, it's like fallout," I whispered.

Here were the T's of southern Castle County, along with a few U's like Alton Ubeck and Catherine Udell just to round things out. I didn't bother checking the ninety-second entry on the page; the phone book wasn't the key to the magnetic crosspatches after all.

"Well go as fast as you can." "Okay." I turned the page. Here was Cinderella, trying to be a good sport, waving goodbye to her asshole sisters as they went off to the ball dressed like starlets at a disco."

We all were. We women--shit, really just us girls, Barney Therriault's wife, Cindy, was only sixteen--we'd stand behind the backstop on the first-base side, smoking cigarettes or waving punks to keep the bugs away, cheering our guys when they did something good, laughing when they did something stupid.

… These were lease or rental deals; the owners from the late forties until 1984 were the Hingermans, Darren and Marie... then Marie alone when Darren died in 1971. The only visible addition from our period of ownership is the tiny DSS dish mounted …

My publisher didn't know, my editor Debra Weinstock didn't know, my agent Harold Oblowski didn't know. Frank Arlen didn't know, either, although on more than one occasion I had been tempted to tell him. Let me be your brother.

Denise Breedlove, Pete's mother, called and asked if I wouldn't like her to bring a couple of her friends over one day the following week and give the big old Edwardian pile I now lived in alone--rolling around in it like the last pea in a restaurant-sized can--a good …

More and more often during those late-summer days I thought of Dennison Carville, the creative-writing teacher who'd helped me connect with Harold and who had damned Being Two with such faint praise. Camille once said something I never forgot, attributing it to Thomas Hardy, the Victorian novelist and poet.

I was walking in the woods when it happened, thinking of some story I was going to write, perhaps, or how great it would be if Doreen Fournier weakened some Friday night and let me take off her panties while we were parked at the end of Cushman Road.

They had bought the meadow and a good-sized tract of lakeside land from a man named Douglas Day. The money had been saved up over a period of ten years, according to Sonny Tidwell, who did the dickering (as a Red-Top, Son Tidwell had played what was then known as …

"Pat was in the hospital, sure. Dr. Alpert said he was doing fine, but when the phone rang I jumped for it--I half-expected it to be him, Alpert, saying Pat had had a relapse or something." "Where in God's name did you get this sense of impending doom, Sid?"

They were more than his crew, they were his boys: Fred and Harry and Ben and Oren and George Armbruster and Draper Finney, who would break his neck and drown the next summer trying to dive into Eades Quarry while he was drunk.

In a confidential voice she added, "Neither is much good." "Which one is better?" I asked, matching her tone. "Probably the one by Edward Osteen. He was a summer resident until the mid-fifties and lived here full-time when he retired. He wrote Dark Score Days in 1965 or '66.

Said Elmer Durgin had been appointed guardian ad litem of Kyra Elizabeth Devore, a minor child. He would take a deposition from me concerning any knowledge I might have of Kyra Elizabeth Devore in regard to her well-being.

Give him that. And he was convincing enough to get both paramedics moving away from the tangle of truck and Toyota, in spite of Esther Easterling's cries of pain and the rumbles of protest from the Greek chorus.

It was Frank Arlen--fifty, red-cheeked, portly, and with a head of lush dark hair--who organized the arrangements.., who wound up actually dickering with the funeral director. "I can't believe you did that," I said later, as we sat in a booth at Jack's Pub, drinking beers.

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?

That was also true. I opened the book, looked approvingly at a smear of long-dried chocolate on the flyleaf, and then wrote: For Frieda Kennedy, whose husband was there to lend a hand. Thanks jr sharing him, and thanks For reading, Mike Noonan.

They were more than his crew, they were his boys: Fred and Harry and Ben and Oren and George Armbruster and Draper Finney, who would break his neck and drown the next summer trying to dive into Eades Quarry while he was drunk.

"The papers were served by a deputy named George Footman." "Just one more of the usual suspects," Mattie said in a thin voice. "Dickie Osgood's a snake, but George Footman's a junkyard dog. He's been suspended off the cops twice. Once more and he can work for Max Devore full-time."

"Sure. i've already called Romeo Bissonette, and he's going to bring George Kennedy, the private detective who got all that hilarious shit on Durgin. Bissonette says Kennedy's a scream when he gets a drink or two in him.

Mike kept looking at him--" "It freaked me out," I said. "Old guy sitting in the corner and mumbling into the Mask of Zorro." "Gerry Bliss freaks a lot of people out," Kennedy said. He spoke in a low rumble. "He's the last one around here who wears em.

… about what Osgood might've done to keep it from comin off I heard he even tried to bribe Reverend Gooch into refusin to hitch em, but I think that's stupid, they just would have gone someplace else. "Sides, I don't see much sense in repeating …

She nodded and waved a hand for me to go on, so I finished the story. Depravia went into the oven and Gretel found her secret stash of winning lottery tickets. The kids bought a Jet Ski and lived happily ever after on the eastern side of Dark Score Lake.

See Hando the Dog-Faced Boy, terror of the South Seas! See the Human Skeleton! See the Human Gila Monster, relic of a time God forgot!

In the end he'd probably thank me. "I believe Ki might be ready to move on to "Hansel and Gretel.' How are you, Mattie? All right?" "Much better than I was before you called." "Good. Things are going to be all right."

My publisher didn't know, my editor Debra Weinstock didn't know, my agent Harold Oblowski didn't know. Frank Arlen didn't know, either, although on more than one occasion I had been tempted to tell him. Let me be your brother.

And Bridget had married--Benton Auster. My finger dropped down a line, to Harry Auster. Born of Benton and Bridget Noonan Auster in the year 1885. "Christ Jesus," I whispered. "Kenny Auster's grandfather was my granduncle. And he was one of them. Whatever they did, Harry Auster was one of them.

One of them was Helen Auster, Kenny's wife. I pulled in there at around ten o'clock that Sunday morning (it was open, of course; during tourist season almost every Maine shopkeeper turns heathen) and parked next to a Beamer with New York plates.

We'd swap sodas or share a can of beer. I'd admire Helen Geary's twins and she'd kiss Ki under the chin until Ki giggled. Sometimes we'd go down to the Village Cafe afterward and Buddy'd make us pizzas, losers pay. All friends again, you know, a ter the game.

"Huh?" "I'm just blabbing, Harold. Go on." "Well... Helen Nearing's a great lead character, and Skate is your villain ever." I said nothing.

If Henry Goldacre said Storrow was good, he probably was. And his specialty was custody law. "Now tell me what's happening up there," he said when the introductions were over and the background had been sketched in.

Billy lay on the floor in the back of the car, fast asleep, but Carla was missing. Hilda had gotten them both in, all right--they had been on the back seat, holding hands just as they always did.

"After Mom's funeral my brother, Hugh, offered to take me back to Rhode Island, but I could tell his wife wasn't exactly nuts about having a fifteen-year-old join the family, …

"I thought you must know," Bill said, dropping his gearshift into DVAV. "When old Hugh Emerson told Devore they closed the lodge after Thanksgiving, Devore told him he had no intention of moving. Said he was comfortable right where he was and meant to stay put." "He bought the place."

The funeral would be Tuesday afternoon at Grace Baptist, she said. Most of the town would be there, many folks just to see Ila Meserve awarded the Boston Post cane. Did I think I'd get over? No, I said, probably not.

Behind the wheel was Mrs. Esther Easterling of Barrett's Orchards. She was accompanied by her friend Mrs. Irene Deorsey, also of Barrett's Orchards, who had shopped the video store without finding anything she wanted to rent. Too much violence, Irene said. Both women were cigarette widows.

"That's the story," Sid agreed. "Jack Noonan's Lazy Betty, original owner Paul Noonan. Also of Prout's. Boat took a hell of a pasting in Hurricane Donna, back in 1960. I think it was Donna." Two years after I was born. "And Daddy put it up for sale in '63." "Yep.

My father's people had come from The Neck, I had been right about that much; my great-grandfather according to this was James Noonan, and he had never shit in the same pit as Jared Devore.

Holding Kyra in my arms, I ran for the Ghost House. "Get him!" Jared Devore yelled, startled. "Get him, boys! Get that punk! Goddamnit!" I sprinted up the wooden steps, vaguely aware of something soft rubbing against my cheek--Ki's little stuffed dog, still clutched in one of her hands.

"I was standing with Jenna McCoy and Helen Geary--this was after Lance helped me with a keg of beer I got stuck in the mud and then asked if I was going for pizza with the rest of them after the game--and Jenna said, "Look, it's Mrs. Noonan,' and Helen …

Others were doing the same all around her. One of them, Miss Jill Dun-barry, had been window-shopping at Radio Shack when the accident occurred. She said she thought she remembered running past Johanna--at least she was pretty sure she remembered someone in yellow slacks--but she couldn't be sure.

I looked at this other item for a long time, seeing it but not understanding it. I was surprised, maybe even stunned, but the idea that Johanna Arlen Noonan might have been leading another life, one I knew nothing about, never crossed my mind. Not then.

He scowled instead, because there's an owl in every scowl. Before coming to Florida, John Shackleford had been living in Studio City, California. Drake's first meeting with Regina Whiting occurred in her studio.

I grabbed it, expecting Max Devore or perhaps Footman, his overgolded minion. It turned out to be a lawyer named John Storrow, who sounded as if he might have graduated from law school fairly recently--like last week.

I emphasized what Storrow had said about sexual equality--that it was apt to be a negative force in her case, making it easier for Judge Rancourt to take Kyra away.

There were Cammie, Kia (yes, and we had thought ourselves so original), Kiah, Kendra, Kaela, Keil, and Kyle. Kirby and Kirk.

… next several weeks, assuming that my marvellously recovered ability to work held up: One day when Karen Whiting was three, the phone had rung while she and her mother were sitting in the patio hot tub. Regina thought of asking the yard-guy to answer …

There were Cammie, Kia (yes, and we had thought ourselves so original), Kiah, Kendra, Kaela, Keil, and Kyle. Kirby and Kirk.

Yet what I did in Kelli's case was to find a different restaurant to eat my lunch at, and when the YMCA sent me a free exercise-tryout offer, I took them up on it …

There were Cammie, Kia (yes, and we had thought ourselves so original), Kiah, Kendra, Kaela, Keil, and Kyle. Kirby and Kirk.

"I can eat a lot of carrot-cake," I said, "and if folks overdo it, well, hasn't Kenny Auster still got that big Irish wolfhound?" "Yuh, that thing'd eat cake til he busted!" Bill cried in high good humor. He cackled until he was coughing. I waited, smiling a little myself.

He looked both earnest and--I could have sworn it--a little scared. "She ast about little Kerry Auster, and that's a good example of what I mean about steppin on sore toes. That's not the stuff for a newspaper story or a magazine article. Normal just snapped. No one knows why.

… It occurred to me that at least two of these soundalikes had drowned--Kerry Auster under a pump, Kia Noonan in her mother's dying body when she wasn't much bigger than a sunflower seed. And I had seen the ghost of a third drowned child in the lake …

There were Cammie, Kia (yes, and we had thought ourselves so original), Kiah, Kendra, Kaela, Keil, and Kyle. Kirby and Kirk.

Kenneths, Katherines, and Keiths were everywhere. I also saw Kimberly, Kim, and Kym. There were Cammie, Kia (yes, and we had thought ourselves so original), Kiah, Kendra, Kaela, Keil, and Kyle. Kirby and Kirk.

Kenneths, Katherines, and Keiths were everywhere. I also saw Kimberly, Kim, and Kym. There were Cammie, Kia (yes, and we had thought ourselves so original), Kiah, Kendra, Kaela, Keil, and Kyle. Kirby and Kirk.

Kirby and Kirk. There was a woman named Kissy Bowden, and a man named Kito Rennie--Kito, the same name as one of Kyra's fridgeafator people.

Kirby and Kirk. There was a woman named Kissy Bowden, and a man named Kito Rennie--Kito, the same name as one of Kyra's fridgeafator people. And everywhere, outnumbering such usually common initials as S and T and E, were those K's. My eyes danced with them.

Kirby and Kirk. There was a woman named Kissy Bowden, and a man named Kito Rennie--Kito, the same name as one of Kyra's fridgeafator people. And everywhere, outnumbering such usually common initials as S and T and E, were those K's. My eyes danced with them.

Or do you want to spend jrty years rotting in Shawshank because of a nigger boy's tattle?" Ben seizes one of Kito Tidwell's arms, Oren Peebles the other, but by the time they have dragged him as far as the embankment they have lost their heart.

… were Cammie, Kia (yes, and we had thought ourselves so original), Kiah, Kendra, Kaela, Keil, and Kyle. Kirby and Kirk. There was a woman named Kissy Bowden, and a man named Kito Rennie--Kito, the same name as one of Kyra's fridgeafator …

Said Elmer Durgin had been appointed guardian ad litem of Kyra Elizabeth Devore, a minor child. He would take a deposition from me concerning any knowledge I might have of Kyra Elizabeth Devore in regard to her well-being.

Lance Devore was staying across the lake on the Upper Bay, but on Tuesday nights there were pickup softball games at Warrington's, the townies against the summer folks, and he usually canoed across to play.

Jo and I had had one neighbor at this end of the road, old Lars Washburn, but now Lars's driveway was overgrown with juniper bushes and blocked by a rusty length of chain. Nailed to a tree on the left of the chain was NO Trespassing.

Security is provided by Lassie, Breck Pellerin's ancient collie, who spends her days crashed out on the linoleum floor, cocking an ear at the ceiling whenever a plane lands or takes off. I popped my head into Pelterin's office and asked him if the ten from Boston was on time.

Behind A1 Leroux's, the washing Marguerite hung out that morning is in flames, pants and dresses and underwear burning on lines which are themselves strings …

The shop was even hotter and' damper than the white morning outside. Lila Proulx, the co-owner, was on the phone. There was a little fan beside the cash register and she was standing directly in front of it, flapping the front of her sleeveless blouse.

She's the head librarian at Four Lakes, you know." "I do. Lindy Briggs is my caretaker's sister-in-law." Mattie smiled. "Small world, isn't it?" "No, it's a big world but a small town." She started to lean back against the counter with her glass of Kool-Aid, then thought better of it.

Behind A1 Leroux's, the washing Marguerite hung out that morning is in flames, pants and dresses and underwear burning on lines which are themselves strings of fire.

Dark Score is one of the cleanest, deepest in Maine. It was bigger until the late thirties, Marie Hingerman us; that was when Western Maine Electric, working hand in hand the mills and paper operations around Rumford, had gotten state to dam the Gessa River.

They may love Dickie Brooks at Western Savings, but they don't give a rat's ass for Mattie Stanchfield Devore. After taxes I make about a hundred a week at the library. So you're offering to pay. Right?" "Right." "Why? You don't even know us." "Because..." I trailed off.

My hand was holding the phone far too tightly, and I made it relax. Maxwell Devore. Half a billion dollars. Not in Palm Springs, as I had supposed, but close--right here on the TR, if the characteristic under-hum on the line could be trusted. "I'm concerned for my granddaughter."

Oh, there were Stevens and Johns and Marthas; there was Meserve, G., and Messier, V., and Jayhouse, T. And yet, again and again, I saw the initial K where people had exercised their right not to list their first name in …

"He and a software designer named Morris Ridding tied the knot in 1996," John said. "I found that on the first computer sweep. And if this does wind up in court, I intend to make as much of it as I possibly can.

"You do that," I said. "You just do that, Mr. Quinlan." "Mark," he said. "Please." He'd said this before, too. I had composed two letters, which I slipped into the manuscript box before setting out for Federal Express.

… of lightning, feeling my unseen guests swirl around me in the unsteady air, I remembered Mrs. Moran, my first-grade teacher. When your efforts to replicate the smooth curves of the Palmer Method alphabet on the blackboard began to flag and …

"Reg Tidwell spent a lot of that August hounding the County Sheriff, Nehemiah Bannerman. At first it was to find them alive Tidwell wanted a search mounted--and then it was to find their bodies, and then it was to find their killers.., because once he accepted that they were dead, …

Two babies spit up on me, one dog got into bed with me in the middle of the night, and Nicky Arlen's sister-in-law made a bleary pass at me on the night after Christmas, when she caught me alone in the kitchen making a turkey sandwich.

I decided I would at least try. "Harold Oblowski Literary Agency." "Come to Belize with me, Nola," I said. "I need you. We'll make beautiful love at midnight, when the full moon turns the beach to a bone." "Hello, Mr. Noonan," she said. No sense of humor had Nola.

His dad caretook many of these places, you know, and back just after the Second World War was over, Normal Auster drownded Kenny's little brother in his back yard.

… (none of the young men are married, although Oren Peebles is engaged). It it isn't her growing renown that upsetsjared Devore. It isn't the fact that she has been to Warrington's; it don't cross his eyes none that she and that brother of hers have actually sat down and eaten …

"Pat was in the hospital, sure. Dr. Alpert said he was doing fine, but when the phone rang I jumped for it--I half-expected it to be him, Alpert, saying Pat had had a relapse or something." "Where in God's name did you get this sense of impending doom, Sid?"

As far as what they're calling you... Mike, when I was in third grade, Patty Banning used to call me a booger-hooker. But I wasn't." "Perception is everything." "Bullshit."

"That's the story," Sid agreed. "Jack Noonan's Lazy Betty, original owner Paul Noonan. Also of Prout's. Boat took a hell of a pasting in Hurricane Donna, back in 1960. I think it was Donna." Two years after I was born. "And Daddy put it up for sale in '63." "Yep.

Jo's dad offered a prayer for his daughter's soul. And at the end, Pete Breedlove, the boy who cut our grass in the summer and raked our yard in the fall, brought everyone to tears by singing "Blessed Assurance," which Frank said had been Jo's favorite hymn as a girl.

What went through my mind right then was a story Frank Arlen had told over a meal at Christmas--it had been about Petie, the youngest brother, and Frank had had the whole table in stitches.

John Shackleford had begun to remember his past, and the child whose only friend he, John, had been. Little neglected Ray Garraty. I wrote until midnight came. By then the thunder had faded away but the heat held on, as oppressive as a blanket.

"Reg Tidwell spent a lot of that August hounding the County Sheriff, Nehemiah Bannerman. At first it was to find them alive Tidwell wanted a search mounted--and then it was to find their bodies, and then it was to find their killers.., because once he accepted that they were …

Regina thought of asking the yard-guy to answer it, then decided to get it herself-their regular man was out with the flu, and she didn't feel …

He picked up the paper again. "Mr. Noonan, would it surprise you to know that two witnesses--Richard Brooks, Junior, the owner of Dick's All-Purpose Garage, and Royce Merrill, a retired carpenter--claim that Mrs. Devore was doing well over thirty-five when she passed your location?" "I don't know," I said.

A lawyer?" Not a lawyer; a real-estate broker named Richard Osgood ("a greasy kind of fella" was Bill Dean's judgment of him) who denned and did business in Motton. Eventually Osgood had hired a lawyer from Castle Rock.

And you know what? None of them come to see me. Not Helen Geary, who was my best friend. Not Richie Lattimore, who was Lance's best riend--the two of them would talk about rocks and birds and the kinds of trees there were across the lake for hours on end.

"Roger Devore is married?" Okay. I admit it. I now felt a certain horrified glee myself. I was ashamed of it--Roger Devore was just a guy living his life, and he might not have had much or anything to do with his elderly dad's current enterprise--but I felt it just …

"She ain't his wife, she's his whatdoyoucallit, personal assistant. Rogette Whitmore is her name." He pronounced it roGET, with a hard G. "Devore's wives're all dead. The last one twenty years." "What kind of name is Rogette? French?" "California," he said, and shrugged as if that one word explained everything.

"Txyuh. I've known a lot of folks name their kids alike, think it's cute. Why, I went to school with a brother and sister named Roland and Rolanda Therriault, I think Roland's in Manchester now, and Rolanda married that boy from--" "Brenda, just answer one question. I'll never tell. Please?"

"Txyuh. I've known a lot of folks name their kids alike, think it's cute. Why, I went to school with a brother and sister named Roland and Rolanda Therriault, I think Roland's in Manchester now, and Rolanda married that boy from--" "Brenda, just answer one question. I'll never tell. Please?"

George was telling Ki how he had shot it out with Rolfe Nedeau and the Real Bad Gang on Lisbon Street in 1993. "George, what's happening to your nose?" John asked. "It's getting so long." "Do you mind?"

Perhaps in the evening... "The lawyer I got for you is named Romeo Bissonette." He paused. "Can that be a real name?" "Is he from Lewiston?" "Yes, how did you know?" "Because in Maine, especially around Lewiston, that can be a real name. Am I supposed to go see him?"

"What did you hear?" "Mostly what Royce Merrill and Dickie Brooks have been telling," he said. "Beyond that, I don't know much. Me and mother's been in Virginia, remember. Only got back last night around eight o'clock. Still, it's the big topic down to the store."

It was here that Sara Tidwell and her curious tribe built their cabins, at least according to Marie Hingerman (and once, when I asked Bill Dean, he agreed this was the place. .. although he didn't seem interested in continuing the conversation, which struck me at the time as a …

The only problem was that he wasn't dealing with a reasonable man; he was dealing with the fellow who, as a child, had stolen Scooter Larribee's new sled. "These offers were made by Devore himself, over the telephone. Both when Lance wasn't around.

Paul Noonan begat Jack Noonan, Jack Noonan begat Mike and Sid Noonan, and that was really all I knew, except the Noonans had all grown up a long way from where I now stood sweating my brains out. They shit in the same pit.

He also said that the boy was Son Tidwell's only child, and that the guitar-player's real name was Reginald. The Tidwells had supposedly drifted north from the whorehouse district of New Orleans--the fabled crib-and-club streets which had been known around the turn of the century as Storyville.

The blue car (it turned out to be a 1987 Ford registered to Mrs. Sonia Belliveau of Auburn and reported stolen the day before) had pulled over onto the shoulder and had never really stopped rolling.

There was a guy named Stan Proulx who came down to yank the trash twice a week (or there was four years ago, I reminded myself), one of Bill Dean's farflung network of part-timers working for cash off the books, but I didn't think Stan would have been down to …

She died soon after. There had been no insurance, other than what Stanchfield had been obliged to carry on his Jimmy and his skidder. Talk about your Brothers Grimm, huh?

Regina Whiting's best friend was Steffie Underwood. Steffi's husband was Towle Underwood--there was a good one, two for the price of one. Owls under studio.

Will Stevenson'll be the point man in the estate phase, if Mattie agrees." He was all but babbling.

It went no further--in a houseful of Arlens and with Susy Donahue not quite officially divorced yet (like me, she was an honorary Arlen that Christmas), it hardly could have done--but I decided it was time to leave.., unless, that was, I wanted to go driving at high speed down …

I turned the page. Here was Cinderella, trying to be a good sport, waving goodbye to her asshole sisters as they went off to the ball dressed like starlets at a disco." "No sooner had Cinderella said goodbye to Tammy Faye and Vanna--'" "Those are the sisters' names?"

] I turned the roller until the IBM spat this page out, stuck it on top of the manuscript, and jotted a final note to myself: "Call Ted Rosencrief about Raiford." Rosencriefwas a retired Navy man who lived in Derry.

Bill hired out Kenny Auster to shingle the roof, and got Kenny's cousin, Timmy Larribee, to "scrape the old girl down," a cleansing process akin to pot-scrubbing that is sometimes employed with log homes.

""No sooner had Cinderella said goodbye to Tammy Faye and Vanna than a bright light suddenly appeared in the corner of the kitchen. Stepping out of it was a beautiful lady in a silver gown.

Frank and Victor, the second-youngest brother, spoke brief tributes. Jo's dad offered a prayer for his daughter's soul. And at the end, Pete Breedlove, the boy who cut our grass in the summer and raked our yard in the fall, brought everyone to tears by singing "Blessed Assurance," which Frank …

I thought first about calling Ward Hankins for a recommendation, but then I decided I wanted somebody a little more high-powered than Ward was likely to know. Someone with filed teeth and a taste for human flesh would be nice." This time Harold didn't bother with the long-pause routine.

… or run into problems... He had jotted his sister-in-law's phone number in Virginia as well as Butch Wiggins's number in town, which locals just call "the TR," as in "Me and mother got tired of Bethel and moved our trailer over to the TR." There …

We had to get out of here. On our left was the baseball pitch and some little boy shouting "Willy hit it over the fence, Ma! Willy hit it over the fence!" with monotonous, brain-croggling regularity.

Nor did I turn when I heard a window run up behind me. "Don't you ever come back here, you town bastard!" Yvette Dean cried across the sweltering dooryard. "You've broken his heart! Don't you ever come back! Don't you ever! Don't you ever!" "Please," Mrs. M. said.