“What’s happening? Help me, for Christ’s sake.”

“I’ll help you with the toe of my shoe if you don’t get going on your own.

I looked at him a moment longer, taking in the wet eyes and the set jaw, his divided nature written on his face.

“I lost my wife, you old bastard,” I said. “A woman you claimed to Now his jaw moved at last. He looked at me with surprise and injury.

“That didn’t happen here,” he said. “That didn’t have anything to do with here. She might’ve been off the TR because… well, she might’ve had her reasons to be off the TR… but she just had a stroke. Would have happened anywhere. Anywhere.”

“I don’t believe that. I don’t think you do, either. Somethingjllowed her to Derry, maybe because she was pregnant…” Bill’s eyes widened. I gave him a chance to say something, but he didn’t take it.”… or maybe just because she knew too much.”

“She had a stroke.” Bill’s voice wasn’t quite even. “I read the obituary myself. She had a damn stroke.”

“What did she find out? Talk to me, Bill. Please.” There was a long pause. Until it was over I allowed myself the luxury of thinking I might actually be getting through to him. “I’ve only got one more thing to say to you, Mike—stand back. For the sake of your immortal soul, stand back and let things run their course. They will whether you do or don’t. This river has almost come to the sea; it won’t be dammed by the likes of you. Stand back. For the love of Christ.” Do you care about your soul, Mr. Noonan? God’s butterfly caught in a cocoon of flesh that will soon stink like mine?

Bill turned and walked to his door, the heels of his workboots clod-ding on the painted boards. “Stay away from Mattie and Ki,” I said. “If you so much as go near that trailer—” He turned back, and the hazy sunshine glinted on the tracks below his eyes. He took a bandanna from his back pocket and wiped his cheeks. “I ain’t stirrin from this house. I wish to God I’d never come back from my vacation in the first place, but I did mostly on your account, Mike. Those two down on Wasp Hill have nothing to fear from me. No, not from me.” He went inside and closed the door. I stood there looking at it, feeling unreal—surely I could not have had such a deadly conversation with Bill Dean, could I? Bill who had reproached me for not letting folks down here share—and perhaps ease—my grief for Jo, Bill who had welcomed me back so warmly? Then I heard a clack sound. He might not have locked his door while he was at home in his entire life, but he had locked it now. The clack was very clear in the breathless July air. It told me everything I had to know about my long friendship with Bill Dean. I turned and walked back to my car, my head down. 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. “Don’t ask me any more questions, Mike. I can’t afford to get in Bill Dean’s bad books, any more’n my ma could afford to get into Normal Auster’s or Fred Dean’s.” I shifted the phone to my other ear. ’11 1 want to know is—”

“In this part of the world caretakers pretty well run the whole show. If they say to a summer fella that he should hire this carpenter or that ’lectrician, why, that’s who the summer fella hires. Or if a caretaker says this one should be fired because he ain’t proving reliable, he is fired. Or she. Because what goes once for plumbers and landscapers and ’lectri-cians has always gone twice for housekeepers. If you want to be recom-mended-and stay recommended—you have to keep on the sunny side of people like Fred and Bill Dean, or Normal and Kenny Auster. Don’t you see?” She was almost pleading. “When Bill found out I told you about what Normal Auster did to Kerry, oooo he was so mad at me.”

“Kenny Auster’s brother—the one Normal drowned under the pump—his name was Kerry?”

“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?” I waited, my breath held, for the click that would come when she put her telephone back in its cradle. Instead, she spoke three words in a soft, almost regretful voice. “What is it?”

“Who was Carla Dean?” I waited through another long pause, my hand playing with the ribbon that had come off Ki’s turn-of-the-century straw hat. “You dassn’t tell anyone I told you anything,” she said at last. “I won’t.”

“Carla was Bill’s twin sister.

She died sixty-five years ago, during the time of the fires.” The fires Bill claimed had been set by Ki’s grand-father—his going-away present to the TR. “I don’t know just how it happened. Bill never talks about it. If you tell him I told you, I’ll never make another bed in the TR.

He’ll see to it.” Then, in a hopeless voice, she said: “He may know anyway.”

Based on my own experiences and surmises, I guessed she might be right about that. But even if she was, she’d have a check from me every month for the rest of her working life. I had no intention of telling her that over the telephone, though—it would scald her Yankee soul. Instead I thanked her, assured her again of my discretion, and hung up. I sat at the table for a moment, staring blankly at Bunter, then said: “Who’s here?” No answer. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t be shy. Let’s go nineteen or ninety-two down. Barring that, let’s talk.” Still no answer. Not so much as a shiver of the bell around the stuffed moose’s neck. I spied the scribble of notes I’d made while talking to Jo’s brother and drew them toward me. I had put Kia, Kyra, Kito, and Carla in a box. Now I scribbled out the bottom line of that box and added the name Kerry to the list. I’ve known a lot ofsolks name their kids alike, Mrs. M. had said. They think it’s cute. I didn’t think it was cute; I thought it was creepy. 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. Kito? Was that one Kito?

Or was Kito the one who had died of blood-poisoning? They name their kids alike, they think it’s cute. How many soundalike kids had there been to start with? How many were left? I thought the answer to the first question didn’t matter, and that I knew the answer to the second one already. This river has almost come to the sea, Bill had said.

Carla, Kerry, Kito, Kia… all gone. Only Kyra Devote was left. I got up so fast and hard that I knocked over my chair. The clatter in the silence made me cry out. I was leaving, and right now. No more telephone calls, no more playing Andy Drake, Private Detective, no more depositions or half-assed wooings of the lady fair. I should have followed my instincts and gotten the fuck out of Dodge that first night.

Well, I’d go now, just get in the Chevy and haul ass for Der-Bunter’s bell jangled furiously. I turned and saw it bouncing around his neck as if batted to and fro by a hand I couldn’t see. The sliding door giving on the deck began to fly open and clap shut like something hooked to a pulley. The book of ugh Stuff crossword puzzles on the end-table and the DSS program guide blew open, their pages riffling.

There was a series of rattling thuds across the floor, as if something enormous were crawling rapidly toward me, pounding its fists as it came.

A draft—not cold but warm, like the rush of air produced by a subway train on a summer night—buffeted past me. In it I heard a strange voice which seemed to be saying Bye-BY, bye-BY, bye-BY, as if wishing me a good trip home. Then, as it dawned on me that the voice was actually saying Ki-Ki, Ki-Ki, Ki-Ki, something struck me and knocked me violently forward. It felt like a large soft fist. I buckled over the table, clawing at it to stay up, overturning the lazy susan with the salt and pepper shakers on it, the napkin holder, the little vase Mrs. M. had filled with daisies. The vase rolled off the table and shattered. The kitchen TV blared on, some politician talking about how inflation was on the march again. The CD player started up, drowning out the politician; it was the Rolling Stones doing a cover of Sara Tidwell’s “I Regret You, Baby.” Upstairs, one smoke alarm went off, then another, then a third.