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 you hear?' hear?'

'Mostly what Royce Merrill and d.i.c.kie 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.

'Let's get you a cup of coffee,' I said. 'I need you to tell me what I'm stepping in here.'

When we were seated on the deck, me with fresh coffee and Bill with a cup of tea ('Coffee burns me at both ends these days,' he said), I asked him first to tell me the Royce Merrill-d.i.c.kie Brooks version of my encounter with Mattie and Kyra.

It turned out to be better than I had expected. Both old men had seen me standing at the side of the road with the little girl in my arms, and they had observed my Chevy parked halfway into the ditch with the driver's-side door open, but apparently neither of them had seen Kyra using the white line of Route 68 as a tightrope. As if to compensate for this, however, Royce claimed that Mattie had given me a big my hero my hero hug and a kiss on the mouth. hug and a kiss on the mouth.

'Did he get the part about how I grabbed her by the a.s.s and slipped her some tongue?' I asked.

Bill grinned. 'Royce's imagination ain't stretched that far since he was fifty or so, and that was forty or more year ago.'

'I never touched her.' Well . . . there had been that moment when the back of my hand went sliding along the curve of her breast, but that had been inadvertent, whatever the young lady herself might think about it.

's.h.i.te, you don't need to tell me that,' he said. 'But . . . ' '

He said that but but the way my mother always had, letting it trail off on its own, like the tail of some ill-omened kite. the way my mother always had, letting it trail off on its own, like the tail of some ill-omened kite.

'But what?'

'You'd do well to keep your distance from her,' he said. 'She's nice enough - almost a town girl, don't you know - but she's trouble.' He paused. 'No, that ain't quite fair to her. She's in in trouble.' trouble.'

'The old man wants custody of the baby, doesn't he?'

Bill set his teacup down on the deck rail and looked at me with his eyebrows raised. Reflections from the lake ran up his cheek in ripples, giving him an exotic look. 'How'd you know?'

'Guesswork, but of the educated variety. Her father-in-law called me Sat.u.r.day night during the fireworks. And while he never came right out and stated his purpose, I doubt if Max Devore came all the way back to TR-90 in western Maine to repo his daughter-in-law's Jeep and trailer. So what's the story, Bill?'

For several moments he only looked at me. It was almost the look of a man who knows you have contracted a serious disease and isn't sure how much he ought to tell you. Being looked at that way made me profoundly uneasy. It also made me feel that I might be putting Bill Dean on the spot. Devore had roots here, after all. And, as much as Bill might like me, I didn't. Jo and I were from away. It could have been worse - it could have been Ma.s.sachusetts or New York - but Derry, although in Maine, was still away.

'Bill? I could use a little navigational help if you - '

'You want to stay out of his way,' he said. His easy smile was gone. 'The man's mad.'

For a moment I thought Bill only meant Devore was p.i.s.sed off at me, and then I took another look at his face. No, I decided, he didn't mean p.i.s.sed off; he had used the word 'mad' in the most literal way.

'Mad how?' I asked. 'Mad like Charles Manson? Like Hannibal Lecter? How?'

'Say like Howard Hughes,' he said. 'Ever read any of the stories about him? The lengths he'd go to to get the things he wanted? It didn't matter if it was a special kind of hot dog they only sold in L.A. or an airplane designer he wanted to steal from Lockheed or Mcdonnell-Douglas, he had to have what he wanted, and he wouldn't rest until it was under his hand. Devore is the same way. He always was - even as a boy he was willful, according to the stories you hear in town.

'My own dad had one he used to tell. He said little Max Devore broke into Scant Larribee's tack-shed one winter because he wanted the Flexible Flyer Scant give his boy Scooter for Christmas. Back around 1923, this would have been. Devore cut both his hands on broken gla.s.s, Dad said, but he got the sled. They found him near midnight, sliding down Sugar Maple Hill, holding his hands up to his chest when he went down. He'd bled all over his mittens and his snowsuit. There's other stories you'll hear about Maxie Devore as a kid - if you ask you'll hear fifty different ones - and some may even be true. That one about the sled is true, though. I'd bet the farm on it. Because my father didn't lie. It was against his religion.'

'Baptist?'

'Nosir, Yankee.'

'1923 was many moons ago, Bill. Sometimes people change.'

'Ayuh, but mostly they don't. I haven't seen Devore since he come back and moved into Warrington's, so I can't say for sure, but I've heard things that make me think that if he has has changed, it's for the worse. He didn't come all the way across the country 'cause he wanted a vacation. He wants the changed, it's for the worse. He didn't come all the way across the country 'cause he wanted a vacation. He wants the kid kid. To him she's just another version of Scooter Larribee's Flexible Flyer. And my strong advice to you is that you don't want to be the window-gla.s.s between him and her.'

I sipped my coffee and looked out at the lake. Bill gave me time to think, sc.r.a.ping one of his workboots across a splatter of birds.h.i.t on the boards while I did it. Crows.h.i.t, I reckoned; only crows c.r.a.p in such long and exuberant splatters.

One thing seemed absolutely sure: Mattie Devore was roughly nine miles up s.h.i.t Creek with no paddle. I'm not the cynic I was at twenty - is anyone? - but I wasn't naive enough or idealistic enough to believe the law would protect Ms. Doublewide against Mr. Computer . . . not if Mr. Computer decided to play dirty. As a boy he'd taken the sled he wanted and gone sliding by himself at midnight, bleeding hands not a concern. And as a man? An old man who had been getting every sled he wanted for the last forty years or so?

'What's the story with Mattie, Bill? Tell me.'

It didn't take him long. Country stories are, by and large, simple stories. Which isn't to say they're not often interesting.

Mattie Devore had started life as Mattie Stanchfield, not quite from the TR but from just over the line in Motton. Her father had been a logger, her mother a home beautician (which made it, in a ghastly way, the perfect country marriage). There were three kids. When Dave Stanch-field missed a curve over in Lovell and drove a fully loaded pulptruck into Kewadin Pond, his widow 'kinda lost heart,' as they say. 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? Subtract the Fisher-Price toys behind the house, the two pole hairdryers in the bas.e.m.e.nt beauty salon, the old rustbucket Toyota in the driveway, and you were right there: Once upon a time there lived a poor widow and her three children. Once upon a time there lived a poor widow and her three children.

Mattie is the princess of the piece - poor but beautiful (that she was was beautiful I could personally testify). Now enter the prince. In this case he's a gangly stuttering redhead named Lance Devore. The child of Max Devore's sunset years. When Lance met Mattie, he was twenty-one. She had just turned seventeen. The meeting took place at Warrington's, where Mattie had landed a summer job as a waitress. beautiful I could personally testify). Now enter the prince. In this case he's a gangly stuttering redhead named Lance Devore. The child of Max Devore's sunset years. When Lance met Mattie, he was twenty-one. She had just turned seventeen. The meeting took place at Warrington's, where Mattie had landed a summer job as a waitress.

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. Softball is a great thing for the Lance Devores of the world; when you're standing at the plate with a bat in your hands, it doesn't matter if you're gangly. And it sure doesn't matter if you stutter.

'He confused em quite considerable over to Warrington's,' Bill said. 'They didn't know which team he belonged on - the Locals or the Aways. Lance didn't care; either side was fine with him. Some weeks he'd play for one, some weeks t'other. Either one was more than happy to have him, too, as he could hit a ton and field like an angel. They'd put him at first base a lot because he was tall, but he was really wasted there. At second or shortstop . . . my! He'd jump and twirl around like that guy Noriega.'

'You might mean Nureyev,' I said.

He shrugged. 'Point is, he was somethin to see. And folks liked him. He fit in. It's mostly young folks that play, you know, and to them it's how you do, not who you are. Besides, a lot of em don't know Max Devore from a hole in the ground.'

'Unless they read The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal and the computer magazines,'' I said. 'In those, you run across the name Devore about as often as you run across the name of G.o.d in the Bible.' and the computer magazines,'' I said. 'In those, you run across the name Devore about as often as you run across the name of G.o.d in the Bible.'

'No foolin?'

'Well, I guess that in the computer magazines G.o.d is more often spelled Gates, but you know what I mean.'

'I s'pose. But even so, it's been sixty-five years since Max Devore spent any real time on the TR. You know what happened when he left, don't you?'

'No, why would I?'

He looked at me, surprised. Then a kind of veil seemed to fall over his eyes. He blinked and it cleared. 'Tell you another time - it ain't no secret - but I need to be over to the Harrimans' by eleven to check their sump-pump. Don't want to get sidetracked. Point I was tryin to make is just this: Lance Devore was accepted as a nice young fella who could hit a softball three hundred and fifty feet into the trees if he struck it just right. There was no one old enough to hold his old man against him - not at Warrington's on Tuesday nights, there wasn't - and no one held it against him that his family had dough, either. h.e.l.l, there are lots of wealthy people here in the summer. You know that. None worth as much as Max Devore, but being rich is only a matter of degree.'

That wasn't true, and I had just enough money to know it. Wealth is like the Richter scale-once you pa.s.s a certain point, the jumps from one level to the next aren't double or triple but some amazing and ruinous multiple you don't even want to think about. Fitzgerald had it straight, although I guess he didn't believe his own insight: the very rich are different from you and me. I thought of telling Bill that, and decided to keep my mouth shut. He had a sump-pump to fix.

Kyra's parents met over a keg of beer stuck in a mudhole. Mattie was running the usual Tuesday-night keg out to the softball field from the main building on a handcart. She'd gotten it most of the way from the restaurant wing with no trouble, but there had been heavy rain earlier in the week, and the cart finally bogged down in a soft spot. Lance's team was up, and Lance was sitting at the end of the bench, waiting his turn to hit. He saw the girl in the white shorts and blue Warrington's polo shirt struggling with the bogged handcart, and got up to help her. Three weeks later they were inseparable and Mattie was pregnant; ten weeks later they were married; thirty-seven months later, Lance Devore was in a coffin, done with softball and cold beer on a summer evening, done with what he called 'woodsing,' done with fatherhood, done with love for the beautiful princess. Just another early finish, hold the happily-ever-after.

Bill Dean didn't describe their meeting in any detail; he only said, 'They met at the field - she was runnin out the beer and he helped her out of a boghole when she got her handcart stuck.'

Mattie never said much about that part of it, so I don't know much. Except I do . . . and although some of the details might be wrong, I'd bet you a dollar to a hundred 1 got most of them right. That was my summer for knowing things I had no business knowing.

It's hot, for one thing - '94 is the hottest summer of the decade and July is the hottest month of the summer. President Clinton is being upstaged by Newt and the Republicans. Folks are saying old Slick Willie may not even run for a second term. Boris Yeltsin is reputed to be either dying of heart disease or in a dry-out clinic. The Red Sox are looking better than they have any right to. In Derry, Johanna Arlen Noonan is maybe starting to feel a little whoopsy in the morning. If so, she does not speak of it to her husband.

I see Mattie in her blue polo shirt with her name sewn in white script above her left breast. Her white shorts make a pleasing contrast to her tanned legs. I also see her wearing a blue gimme cap with the red W W for Warrington's above the long bill. Her pretty dark-blonde hair is pulled through the hole at the back of the cap and falls to the collar of her shirt. I see her trying to yank the handcart out of the mud without upsetting the keg of beer. Her head is down; the shadow thrown by the bill of the cap obscures all of her face but her mouth and small set chin. for Warrington's above the long bill. Her pretty dark-blonde hair is pulled through the hole at the back of the cap and falls to the collar of her shirt. I see her trying to yank the handcart out of the mud without upsetting the keg of beer. Her head is down; the shadow thrown by the bill of the cap obscures all of her face but her mouth and small set chin.

'Luh-let m-me h-h-help,' Lance says, and she looks up. The shadow cast by the cap's bill falls away, he sees her big blue eyes - the ones she'll pa.s.s on to their daughter. One look into those eyes and the war is over without a single shot fired; he belongs to her as surely as any young man ever belonged to any young woman.

The rest, as they say around here, was just courtin.

The old man had three children, but Lance was the only one he seemed to care about. ('Daughter's crazier'n a s.h.i.thouse mouse,' Bill said matter-of-factly. 'In some laughin academy in California. Think I heard she caught her a cancer, too.') The fact that Lance had no interest in computers and software actually seemed to please his father. He had another son who was capable of running the business. In another way, however, Lance Devore's older half-brother wasn't capable at all: there would be no grandchildren from that one.

'Rump-wrangler,' Bill said. 'Understand there's a lot of that going around out there in California.'

There was a fair amount of it going around on the TR, too, I imagined, but thought it not my place to offer s.e.xual instruction to my caretaker.

Lance Devore had been attending Reed College in Oregon, majoring in forestry - the kind of guy who falls in love with green flannel pants, red suspenders, and the sight of condors at dawn. A Brothers Grimm woodcutter, in fact, once you got past the academic jargon. In the summer between his junior and senior years, his father had summoned him to the family compound in Palm Springs, and had presented him with a boxy lawyer's suitcase crammed with maps, aerial photos, and legal papers. These had little order that Lance could see, but I doubt that he cared. Imagine a comic-book collector given a crate crammed with rare old copies of Donald Duck Donald Duck. Imagine a movie collector given the rough cut of a never-released film starring Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe. Then imagine this avid young forester realizing that his father owned not just acres or square miles in the vast unincorporated forests of western Maine, but entire realms realms.

Although Max Devore had left the TR in 1933, he'd kept a lively interest in the area where he'd grown up, subscribing to area newspapers and getting magazines such as Down East Down East and the and the Maine Times Maine Times. In the early eighties, he had begun to buy long columns of land just east of the Maine-New Hampshire border. G.o.d knew there had been plenty for sale; the paper companies which owned most of it had fallen into a recessionary pit, and many had become convinced that their New England holdings and operations would be the best place to begin retrenching. So this land, stolen from the Indians and clear-cut ruthlessly in the twenties and fifties, came into Max Devore's hands. He might have bought it just because it was there, a good bargain he could afford to take advantage of. He might have bought it as a way of demonstrating to himself that he had really survived his childhood; had, in point of fact, triumphed over it.

Or he might have bought it as a toy for his beloved younger son. In the years when Devore was making his major land purchases in western Maine, Lance would have been just a kid . . . but old enough for a perceptive father to see where his interests were tending.

Devore asked Lance to spend the summer of 1994 surveying purchases which were, for the most part, already ten years old. He wanted the boy to put the paperwork in order, but he wanted more than that - he wanted Lance to make sense of it. It wasn't a land-use recommendation he was looking for, exactly, although I guess he would have listened if Lance had wanted to make one; he simply wanted a sense of what he had purchased. Would Lance take a summer in western Maine trying to find out what his his sense of it was? At a salary of two or three thousand dollars a month? 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 s.h.i.t 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 d.a.m.ned 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 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 had hired a lawyer from Castle Rock. The greasy fella's initial job, when the summer of '94 ended and Lance Devore remained on the TR, was to find out what the h.e.l.l was going on and put a stop to it. hired a lawyer from Castle Rock. The greasy fella's initial job, when the summer of '94 ended and Lance Devore remained on the TR, was to find out what the h.e.l.l 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. 'Mattie 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 d.i.c.kie'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.'

'Ayuh, 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 awful cunnin, she did.' cunnin, she did.'

'Cunnin as a cat a-runnin,' I murmured.

'And 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 might thaw him.' 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 lakesh.o.r.e, lots of lightnin. 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 d.a.m.ned p.r.i.c.k p.r.i.c.k 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.' 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 Don't talk about this, Mattie had asked me on the morning of the Fourth. It's not a good time for Ki and me. It's not a good time for Ki and me. 'How far along in the process has he gotten?' 'How far along in the process has he gotten?'