Would Lance take a summer in western Maine trying to find out what his sense of it was? At a salary of two or three thousand dollars a month?

I imagine Lance’s reply was a more polite version of Buddy Jellison’s “Does a crow shit in the pine tops?”

The kid arrived in June of 1994 and set up shop in a tent on the far side of Dark Score Lake. He was due back at Reed in late August.

Instead, though, he decided to take a year’s leave of absence. His father wasn’t pleased. His father smelled what he called “girl trouble.”

“Yeah, but it’s a damned long sniff from California to Maine,” Bill Dean said, leaning against the driver’s door of his truck with his sunburned arms folded. “He had someone a lot closer than Palm Springs doin his sniffin for him.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“"Bout talk. People do it for free, and most are willing to do even more if they’re paid.”

“People like Royce Merrill?”

“Royce might be one,” he agreed, “but he wouldn’t be the only one. Times around here don’t go between bad and good; if you’re a local, they mostly go between bad and worse. So when a guy like Max Devore sends a guy out with a supply of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills…”

“Was it someone local? 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. The greasy fella’s initial job, when the summer of ’94 ended and Lance Devote remained on the TR, was to find out what the hell was going on and put a stop to it.

“And then?” I asked.

Bill glanced at his watch, glanced at the sky, then centered his gaze on me. He gave a funny little shrug, as if to say, “We’re both men of the world, in a quiet and settled sort of way—you don’t need to ask a silly question like that.”

“Then Lance Devore and Mattie Stanchfield got married in the Grace Baptist Church right up there on Highway 68. There were tales made the rounds 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 what I don’t know for sure.”

Bill unfolded an arm and began to tick items off on the leathery fingers of his right hand.

“They got married in the middle of September, 1994, I know that.” Out popped the thumb. “People looked around with some curiosity to see if the groom’s father would put in an appearance, but he never did.”

Out popped the forefinger. Added to the thumb, it made a pistol.

“Mat-tie had a baby in April of ’95, making the kiddie a dight premature… but not enough to matter. I seen it in the store with my own eyes when it wasn’t a week old, and it was just the right size.” Out with the second finger. “I don’t know that Lance Devore’s old man absolutely refused to help em financially, but I do know they were living in that trailer down below Dickie’s Garage, and that makes me think they were havin a pretty hard skate.”

“Devore put on the choke-chain,” I said. “It’s what a guy used to getting his own way would do… but if he loved the boy the way you seem to think, he might have come around.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He glanced at his watch again. “Let me finish up quick and get out of your sunshine… but you ought to hear one more little story, because it really shows how the land lies.

“In July of last year, less’n a month before he died, Lance Devore shows up at the post-office counter in the Lakeview General. 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. But I could see it in my mind’s eye, and the image was also sort of sweet.

“It was a studio pitcher they’d gotten taken over in the Rock. Showed the kid… what’s her name? Kayla?”

“Kyra.”

’55yuh, they call em anything these days, don’t they? It showed Kyra sittin in a big leather chair, with a pair of joke spectacles on her little snub of a nose, lookin at one of the aerial photos of the woods over across the lake in TR-100 or TR-110—part of what the old man had picked up, anyway. Carla said the baby had a surprised look on her face, as if she hadn’t suspected there could be so much woods in the whole world. Said it was awful cunnin, she did.”

“Cunnin as a cat a-runnin,” I murmured.

“Sknd the envelope—Registered, Express Mail was addressed to Maxwell Devore, in Palm Springs, California.”

“Leading you to deduce that the old man either thawed enough to ask for a picture of his only grandchild, or that Lance Devore thought a picture might thaw him.”

Bill nodded, looking as pleased as a parent whose child has managed a difficult sum. “Don’t know if it did,” he said. “Wasn’t enough time to tell, one way or the other. Lance had bought one of those little satellite dishes, like what you’ve got here. There was a bad storm the day he put it up—hail, high wind, blowdowns along the lakeshore, lots oflightnin. That was along toward evening. Lance put his dish up in the afternoon, all done and safe, except around the time the storm commenced he remembered he’d left his socket wrench on the trailer roof. He went up to get it so it wouldn’t get all wet n rusty—”

“He was struck by lightning? Jesus, Bill!”

“Lightnin struck, all right, but it hit across the way. You go past the place where Wasp Hill Road runs into 68 and you’ll see the stump of the tree that stroke knocked over. Lance was comin down the ladder with his socket wrench when it hit. If you’ve never had a lightnin bolt tear right over your head, you don’t know how scary it is—it’s like havin a drunk driver veer across into your lane, headed right for you, and then swing back onto his own side just in time. Close lightnin makes your hair stand up—makes your damned prick stand up. It’s apt to play the radio on your steel fillins, it makes your ears hum, and it makes the air taste roasted. Lance fell off the ladder. If he had time to think anything before he hit the ground, I bet he thought he was electrocuted.

Poor boy.

He loved the TR, but it wasn’t lucky for him.”

“Broke his neck?”

“Ayuh. With all the thunder, Mattie never heard him fall or yell or anything. She looked out a minute or two later when it started to hail and he still wasn’t in. And there he was, layin on the ground and lookin up into the friggin hail with his eyes open.”

Bill looked at his watch one final time, then swung open the door to his truck. “The old man wouldn’t come for their weddin, but he came for his son’s funeral and he’s been here ever since. He didn’t want nawthin to do with the young woman—”

“But he wants the kid,” I said. It was no more than what I already knew, but I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach just the same. Don’t talk about this, Mattie had asked me on the morning of the Fourth. It’s not a good time Jar Ki and me. “How far along in the process has he gotten?”

“On the third turn and headin into the home stretch, I sh’d say. There’ll be a hearin in Castle County Superior Court, maybe later this month, maybe next. The judge could rule then to hand the girl over, or put it off until fall. I don’t think it matters which, because the one thing that’s never going to happen on God’s green earth is a rulin in favor of the mother. One way or another, that little girl is going to grow up in California.’’ Put that way, it gave me a very nasty little chill. Bill slid behind the wheel of his truck. “Stay out of it, Mike,” he said. “Stay away from Mattie Devore and her daughter. And if you get called to court on account of seem the two of em on Saturday, smile a lot and say as little as you can.”