You have a blood-bool coming, the thing in bed with her had said, and along had come the Black Prince of the Incunks with her own Oxo can opener in his nasty bag of tricks.
It goes behind the purple. You've already found the first three stations. A few more and you'll get your prize.
And what prize had the thing in bed with her promised? A drink. She had guessed a Coke or an RC Cola because those had been Paul's prizes, but now she knew better.
Lisey lowered her head, buried her battered face in the pool, and then, without allowing herself to think about what she was doing, took two quick swallows. The water in which she stood was almost hot, but what she took in her mouth was cool and sweet and refreshing. She could have drunk a good deal more, but some intuition told her to stop at two sips. Two was just the right number. She touched her lips and found that the swelling there was almost gone. She wasn't surprised.
Not trying to be quiet (and not bothering to be grateful, at least not yet), Lisey floundered back to the beach. It seemed to take forever. No one was wading near shore now, and the beach was empty. Lisey thought she saw the woman she'd spoken to sitting on one of the stone benches with her companion, but couldn't be sure because the moon hadn't risen quite enough. She looked a bit higher, and her gaze fixed on one of the wrapped figures a dozen or so benches up from the water. Moonlight had coated one side of this creature's gauzy head with thin silver gilt, and a queer certainty came to her: that was Scott, and he was watching her. Didn't the idea make a kind of crazy sense? Didn't it, if he had held onto enough consciousness and will to come to her in the moments before dawn, as she lay in bed with her catatonic sister? Didn't it, if he was determined to have his say just one more time?
She felt the urge to call his name, even though to do so would surely be dangerous madness. She opened her mouth and water from her wet hair ran into her eyes, stinging them. Faintly, she heard the wind tinkling Chuckie G.'s bell.
It was then that Scott spoke to her, and for the last time.
—Lisey.
Infinitely tender, that voice. Calling her name, calling her home.
—Little
15
'Lisey,' he says. 'Babyluv.'
He's in the rocking chair and she's sitting on the cold floor, but he's the one doing the shivering. Lisey has a sudden brilliant memory of Granny D saying Afeard and shidderin in the dark and it hits her that he's cold because now all of the african is in Boo'ya Moon. But that's not all—the whole frigging room is cold. It was chilly before but now it's cold, and the lights are out, as well.
The constant whooshy whisper of the furnace has ceased, and when she looks out the frosty window she can see only the extravagant colors of the northern lights. The Galloways' pole-light next door has gone dark. Power outage, she thinks, but no—the television is still on and that damned movie is still playing. The boys from Anarene, Texas, are hanging out in the pool-hall, soon they'll go to Mexico and when they come back Sam the Lion will be dead, he'll be wrapped in gauze and sitting on one of those stone benches overlooking the p—
'That's not right,' Scott says. His teeth are chattering slightly, but she can still hear the perplexity in his voice. 'I never turned the goddam movie on because I thought it would wake you up, Lisey. Also—'
She knows that's true, when she came in here this time and found him the TV was off, but right now she's got something far more important on her mind. 'Scott, will it follow us?'
'No, baby,' he says. 'It can't do that unless it gets a real good whiff of your scent or a fix on your…' He trails off. It's the movie he's still most concerned with, it seems. 'Also, it's never 'Jambalaya' in this scene. I've watched The Last Picture Show fifty times, except for Citizen Kane it may be the greatest movie ever made, and it's never 'Jambalaya' in the pool-hall scene. It's Hank Williams, sure, but it's 'KawLiga,' the song about the Indian chief. And if the TV and the VCR are working, where's the damn lights?'
He gets up and flicks the wall-switch. There's nothing. That big cold wind from Yellowknife has finally killed their power, and power all over Castle Rock, Castle View, Harlow, Motton, Tashmore Pond, and most of western Maine. At the same instant Scott flicks the useless light-switch on, the TV goes off. The picture dwindles to a bright white point that glows for a moment, then disappears. The next time he tries his tape of The Last Picture Show, he'll discover a ten-minute stretch in the middle of it is blank, as if wiped clean by a powerful magnetic field. Neither of them will ever speak of it, but Scott and Lisey will understand that although both of them were visualizing the guest room, it was probably Lisey who hollered them home with the greatest force…and it was certainly Lisey who visualized ole Hank singing 'Jambalaya' instead of 'Kaw-Liga.' As it was Lisey who so fiercely visualized both the VCR and the TV running when they returned that those appliances did run for almost a minute and a half, even though the electricity was out from one end of Castle County to the other.
He stokes up the woodstove in the kitchen with oak chunks from the woodbox and she makes them a jackleg bed—blankets and an air-mattress—on the linoleum. When they lie down, he takes her in his arms.
'I'm afraid to go to sleep,' she confesses. 'I'm afraid that when I wake up in the morning, the stove will be out and you'll be gone again.'
He shakes his head. 'I'm all right—it's past for awhile.'
She looks at him with hope and doubt. 'Is that something you know, or just something you're saying to soothe the little wife?'
'Which do you think?'
She thinks this isn't the ghost-Scott she's been living with since November, but it's still hard for her to believe in such miraculous changes. 'You seem better, but I'm leery of my own wishful thinking.'
In the stove, a knot of wood explodes and she jumps. He holds her closer. She snuggles against him almost fiercely. It's warm under the covers; warm in his arms. He is all she has ever wanted in the dark.
He says, 'This…this thing that has troubled my family…it comes and goes. When it passes, it's like a cramp letting go.'
'But it will come back?'
'Lisey, it might not.' The strength and surety in his voice so surprises her that she looks up to check his face. She sees no duplicity there, even of the kindly sort meant to ease a troubled wife's heart. 'And if it does, it might never come back as strongly as it did this time.'
'Did your father tell you that?'
'My father didn't know much about the gone part. I've felt this tug toward…the place where you found me…twice before. Once the year before I met you. That time booze and rock music got me through. The second time —'
'Germany,' she says flatly.
'Yes,' he says. 'Germany. That time you pulled me through, Lisey.'
'How close, Scott? How close was it in Bremen?'
'Close,' he says simply, and it makes her cold. If she had lost him in Germany, she would have lost him for good. Mein gott. 'But that was a breeze compared to this. This was a hurricane.'
There are other things she wants to ask him, but mostly she only wants to hold him and believe him when he says that maybe things will be okay. The way you want to believe the doctor, she supposes, when he says the cancer is in remission and may never come back.
'And you're okay.' She needs to hear him say it one more time. Needs to.
'Yes. Good to go, as the saying is.'
'And…it?' She doesn't need to be more specific. Scott knows what she's talking about.
