“Actually two new friends,” I replied, trying to dredge up his name. I couldn’t, but I remembered him from when Jo had been alive, holding down one of the overstuffed chairs in Dickie’s waiting room, discussing weather and politics, politics and weather, as the hammers whanged and the air-compressor chugged. A regular. And if something happened out there on Highway 68, eye-God, he was there to see it.
“I hear Mattie Devore can be quite a dear,” he said heah, Devoah, deah—and one of his crusty eyelids drooped. I have seen a fair number of salacious winks in my time, but none that was a patch on the one tipped me by that old man with the gold-headed cane. I felt a strong urge to knock his waxy beak of a nose off. The sound of it parting company from his face would be like the crack of a dead branch broken over a bent knee.
“Do you hear a lot, old-timer?” I asked.
“Oh, ayuh!” he said. His lips—dark as strips of liver—parted in a grin. His gums swarmed with white patches. He had a couple of yellow teeth still planted in the top one, and a couple more on the bottom.
“And she gut that little one—cunnin, she is! Ayuh!”
“Cunnin as a cat a-runnin,” I agreed.
He blinked at me, a little surprised to hear such an old one out of my presumably newfangled mouth, and then that reprehensible grin widened.
“Her don’t mind her, though,” he said. “Baby gut the run of the place, don’tcha know.”
I became aware—better belated than never—that half a dozen people were watching and listening to us. “That wasn’t my impression,” I said, raising my voice a bit. “No, that wasn’t my impression at all.”
He only grinned. . that old man’s grin that says Oh, ayuh, deah; I know one worth two of that.
I left the store feeling worried for Mattie Devore. Too many people were minding her business, it seemed to me.
When I got home, I took my bottle of wine into the kitchen—it could chill while I got the barbecue going out on the deck. I reached for the fridge door, then paused. Perhaps as many as four dozen little magnets had been scattered randomly across the front—vegetables, fruits, plastic letters and numbers, even a good selection of the California Raisins—but they weren’t random anymore. Now they formed a circle on the front of the refrigerator. Someone had been in here. Someone had come in and…
Rearranged the magnets on the fridge? If so, that was a burglar who needed to do some heavy remedial work. I touched one of them—gingerly, with just the tip of my finger. Then, suddenly angry with myself, I reached out and spread them again, doing it with enough force to knock a couple to the floor. I didn’t pick them up.
That night, before going to bed, I placed the Memo-Scriber on the table beneath Bunter the Great Stuffed Moose, turning it on and putting it in the DCTATE mode. Then I slipped in one of my old home-dubbed cassettes, zeroed the counter, and went to bed, where I slept without dreams or other interruption for eight hours.
The next morning, Monday, was the sort of day the tourists come to Maine for—the air so sunny-clean that the hills across the lake seemed to be under subtle magnification. Mount Washington, New England’s highest, floated in the farthest distance.
I put on the coffee, then went into the living room, whistling. All my imaginings of the last few days seemed silly this morning. Then the whistle died away. The Memo-Scriber’s counter, set to 000 when I went to bed, was now at 012.
I rewound it, hesitated with my finger over the PLAY button, told myself(in Jo’s voice) not to be a fool, and pushed it.
“Oh Mike,” a voice whispered—mourned, almost-on the tape, and I found myself having to press the heel of one hand to my mouth to hold back a scream. It was what I had heard in Jo’s office when the draft rushed past the sides of my face. . only now the words were slowed down just enough for me to understand them. “Oh Mike,” it said again. There was a faint click. The machine had shut down for some length of time. And then, once more, spoken in the living room as I had slept in the north wing: “Oh Mike.”
Then it was gone.
Around nine o’clock, a pickup came down the driveway and parked behind my Chevrolet. The truck was new—a Dodge Ram so clean and chrome-shiny it looked as if the ten-day plates had just come off that morning—but it was the same shade of off-white as the last one and the sign on the driver’s door was the one I remembered: WILLIAM “BILI’ DEAN CAMP CHECKING CARETAKING LIGHT CARPENTRYPLUS his telephone number. I went out on the back stoop to meet him, coffee cup in my hand.
“Mike!” Bill cried, climbing down from behind the wheel. Yankee men don’t hug—that’s a truism you can put right up there with tough guys don’t dance and real men don’t eat quiche—but Bill pumped my hand almost hard enough to slop coffee from a cup that was three-quarters empty, and gave me a hearty clap on the back. His grin revealed a splendidly blatant set of false teeth—the kind which used to be called Roebuckers, because you got them from the catalogue. It occurred to me in passing that my ancient interlocutor from the Lakeview General Store could have used a pair. It certainly would have improved mealtimes for the nosy old fuck. “Mike, you’re a sight for sore eyes!”
“Good to see you, too,” I said, grinning. Nor was it a false grin; I felt all right. Things with the power to scare the living shit out of you on a thundery midnight in most cases seem only interesting in the bright light of a summer morning. “You’re looking well, my friend.” It was true. Bill was four years older and a little grayer around the edges, but otherwise the same. Sixty-five? Seventy? It didn’t matter.
There was no waxy look of ill health about him, and none of the falling-away in the face, principally around the eyes and in the cheeks, that I associate with encroaching infirmity. “So’re you,” he said, letting go of my hand. “We was all so sorry about Jo, Mike. Folks in town thought the world of her. It was a shock, with her so young. My wife asked if I’d give you her condolences special. Jo made her an afghan the year she had the pneumonia, and Yvette ain’t never forgot it.”
“Thanks,” I said, and my voice wasn’t quite my own for a moment or two. It seemed that on the TR my wife was hardly dead at all. “And thank Yvette, too.”
“Yuh. Everythin okay with the house? Other’n the air conditioner, I mean. Buggardly thing! Them at the Western Auto promised me that part last week, and now they’re saying maybe not until August first.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got my Powerbook. If I want to use it, the kitchen table will do fine for a desk.” And I would want to use it—so many crosswords, so little time. “Got your hot water okay?”
“All that’s fine, but there is one problem.” I stopped. How did you tell your caretaker you thought your house was haunted? Probably there was no good way; probably the best thing to do was to go at it head-on. I had questions, but I didn’t want just to nibble around the edges of the subject and be coy. For one thing, Bill would sense it. He might have bought his false teeth out of a catalogue, but he wasn’t stupid. “What’s on your mind, Mike? Shoot.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but—” He smiled in the way of a man who suddenly understands and held up his hand. “Guess maybe I know already.”
“You do?” I felt an enormous sense of relief and I could hardly wait to find out what he had experienced in Sara, perhaps while checking for dead lightbulbs or making sure the roof was holding the snow all right.
“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.” For a moment I remained so fixed on Sara Laughs that I had no idea what he was talking about. All I could think was that folks were gossiping about the strange noises in my house. Then the name Royce Merrill clicked and everything else clicked with it. Merrill was the elderly possum with the gold-headed cane and the salacious wink. Old Four-Teeth. My caretaker wasn’t talking about ghostly noises; he was talking about Mattie Devore.