Rosalie Drake came over and said, “I know someone who’s feeling better today. A lot better, by the sound.”
Polly looked up and offered Rosalie a smile which was strangely complex. “I do and don’t,” she said.
“What you mean is that you do and can’t help it.”
Polly considered this for a few moments and then nodded her head.
It wasn’t exactly right, but it would do. The two women who had died together yesterday were together again today, at the Samuels Funeral Home. They would be buried out of different churches tomorrow morning, but by tomorrow afternoon Nettle and Wilma would be neighbors again… in Homeland Cemetery, this time.
Polly counted herself partially responsible for their deaths-after all, Nettle would never have come back to Castle Rock if not for her.
She had written the necessary letters, attended the necessary hearings, had even found Netitia Cobb a place to live. And why?
The hell of it was, Polly couldn’t really remember now, except it had seemed an act of Christian charity and the last responsibility of an old family friendship.
She would not duck this culpability, nor let anyone try to talk her out of it (Alan had wisely not even tried), but she was not sure she would have changed what she had done. The core of Nettle’s madness had been beyond Polly’s power to control or alter, apparently, but she had nevertheless spent three happy, productive years in Castle Rock.
Perhaps three such years were better than the long gray time she would have spent in the institution, before old age or simple boredom cashed her in. And if Polly had, by her actions, signed her name to
Wilma jerzyck’s death-warrant, hadn’t Wilma written the particulars of that document herself? After all, it had been Wilma, not Polly, who had stabbed Nettle Cobb’s cheery and inoffensive little dog to death with a corkscrew.
There was another part of her, a simpler part, which simply grieved for the passing of her friend, and puzzled over the fact that Nettle could have done such a thing when it really had seemed to Polly that she was getting better.
She had spent a good part of the morning making funeral arrangements and calling Nettle’s few relatives (all of them had indicated that they wouldn’t be at the funeral, which was only what Polly had expected), and this job, the clerical processes of death, had helped to focus her own grief… as the rituals of burying the dead are undoubtedly supposed to do.
There were some things, however, which would not yet leave her mind.
The lasagna, for instance-it was still sitting in the refrigerator with the foil over the top to keep it from drying out. She supposed she and Alan would eat it for dinner tonight-if he could come over, that was. She wouldn’t eat it by herself. She couldn’t stand that.
She kept remembering how quickly Nettle had seen she was in pain, how exactly she had gauged that pain, and how she had brought her the thermal gloves, insisting that this time they really might help. And, of course, the last thing Nettle had said to her: “I love you, Polly.”
“Earth to Polly, Earth to Polly, come in, Polly, do you read?”
Rosalie chanted. She and Polly had remembered Nettle together that morning, trading these and other reminiscences, and had cried together in the back room, holding each other amid the bolts of cloth. Now Rosalie also seemed happy-perhaps just because she had heard Polly singing.
Or because she wasn’t entirely real to either of us, Polly mused.
There was a shadow over her-not one that was completely black, mind you; it was just thick enough to make her hard to see. That’s what makes our grief so fragile.
“I hear you,” Polly said. “I do feel better, I can’t help it, and I’m very grateful for it. Does that about cover the waterfront?”
“Just about,” Rosalie agreed. “I don’t know what surprised me more when I came back in-hearing you singing, or hearing you running a sewing machine again. Hold up your hands.”
Polly did. They would never be mistaken for the hands of a beauty queen, with their crooked fingers and the Heberden’s nodes, which grotesquely enlarged the knuckles, but Rosalie could see that the swelling had gone down dramatically since last Friday, when the constant pain had caused Polly to leave early.
“Wow!” Rosalie said. “Do they hurt at all?”
“Sure-but they’re still better than they’ve been in a month.
Look.”
She slowly rolled her fingers into loose fists. Then she opened them again, using the same care. “It’s been at least a month since I’ve been able to do that.” The truth, Polly knew, was a little more extreme; she hadn’t been able to make fists without suffering serious pain since April or May.
“Wow!yl “So I feel better,” Polly said. “Now if Nettle were here to share it, that would make things just about perfect.”
The door at the front of the shop opened.
“Will you see who that is?” Polly asked. “I want to finish sewing this sleeve.”
“You bet.” Rosalie started off, then stopped for a moment and looked back. “Nettle wouldn’t mind you feeling good, you know.”
Polly nodded. “I do know,” she said gravely.
Rosalie went out front to wait on the customer. When she was gone, Polly’s left hand went to her chest and touched the small bulge, not much bigger than an acorn, that rested under her pink sweater and between her breasts.
Azka-what a wonderful word, she thought, and began to run the sewing machine again, turning the fabric of the dress-her first original since last summer-back and forth under the jittery silver blur of the needle.
She wondered idly how much Mr. Gaunt would want for the amulet.
Whatever he wants, she told herself, it won’t be enough. I won’t-I can’t-think that way when it comes time to dicker, but it’s the simple truth. Whatever he wants for it will be a bargain.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1
The Castle Rock selectmen (and selectwoman) shared a single fulltime secretary, a young woman with the exotic name of Ariadne St.
Claire. She was a happy young woman, not overburdened with intelligence but tireless and pleasing to look at. She had large breasts which rose in soft, steep hills beneath an apparently endless supply of angora sweaters, and lovely skin. She also had very bad eyes.
They swam, brown and enlarged, behind the thick lenses of her horn-rimmed spectacles. Buster liked her. He considered her too dumb to be one of Them.
Ariadne poked her head into his office at quarter to four. “Deke Bradford came by, Mr. Keeton. He needs a signature on a fundrelease form. Can you do it?”
“Well, let’s see what it is,” Buster said, slipping that day’s sports section of the Lewiston Daily Sun, folded to the racing card, deftly into his desk drawer.
He felt better today; purposeful and alert. Those wretched pink slips had been burned in the kitchen stove, Myrtle had stopped sidling away like a singed cat when he approached (he no longer cared much for Myrtle, but it was still annoying to live with a woman who thought you were the Boston Strangler), and he expected to clear another large bundle of cash at the Raceway that night. Because of the holiday, the crowds (not to mention the payoffs) would be bigger.
He had, in fact, started to think in terms of quinellas and trifectas.
As for Deputy Dickface and Sheriff Shithead and all the rest of their merry crew… well, he and Mr. Gaunt knew about Them, and Buster believed the two of them were going to make one hell of a team.
For all these reasons he was able to welcome Ariadne into his office with equanimity-he was even able to take some of his old pleasure in observing the gentle way her bosom swayed within its no doubt formidable harness.
She put a fund-release form on his desk. Buster picked it up and leaned back in his swivel chair to look it over. The amount requested was noted in a box at the top-nine hundred and forty dollars. The payee was to be Case Construction and Supply in Lewiston. In the space reserved for Goods and/or Services to Be Supplied, Deke had printed 16 CASES OF DYNAMITE. Below, in the CommentslExplanations section, he had written: We’ve finally come up against that granite ridge at the gravel pi’t out on Town Road #5, the one the state geologist warned us about back i’n ’87 (see my report for details). Anyway, there is plenty more gravel beyond it, but we’ll have to blow out the rock to get at i’t.