Read Online Duma Key by Stephen King - Free Book Online

cavorting Cockers I’d wanted on the floor), I laid her beside me.
    â€œI forgot his name,” I said. “I remembered it the whole way out here, then forgot it.” Reba looked upat the ceiling, where the blades of the overhead fan were still and unmoving. I’d forgotten to turn it on. Reba didn’t care if my new part-time hired man was Ike, Mike, or Andy Van Slyke. It was all the same to her, she was just rags stuffed into a pink body, probably by some unhappy child laborer in Cambodia or fucking Uruguay.
    â€œWhat is it?” I asked her. Tired as I was, I could feel the old dismal panic setting in. The old dismal anger. The fear that this would go on for the rest of my life. Or get worse! Yes, possible! They’d take me back into the convalescent home, which was really just hell with a fresh coat of paint.
    Reba didn’t answer, that boneless bitch.
    â€œI can do this,” I said, although I didn’t believe it. And I thought: Jerry. No, Jeff. Then You’re thinking about Jerry Jeff Walker, asshole. Johnson? Gerald? Great Jumping Jehosaphat?
    Starting to drift away. Starting to drift into sleep in spite of the anger and panic. Tuning in to the mild respiration of the Gulf.
    I can do this, I thought. Crosspatch. Like when you remembered what B-and-C stood for.
    I thought of the kid saying They condemned a couple beach houses at the north end of Casey Key and there was something there. My stump was itching like a mad bastard. But pretend that’s some other guy’s stump in some other universe, meantime chase that thing, that rag, that bone, that connection—
    â€” drifting away —
    Although if a big storm like Charley ever hits this part of the coast dead-on —
    And bingo.
    Charley was a hurricane, and when hurricanesstruck, I peeked at The Weather Channel, like the rest of America, and their hurricane guy was . . .
    I picked up Reba. She seemed to weigh at least twenty pounds in my soupy, half-asleep state. “The hurricane guy is Jim Cantore,” I said. “My help-out guy is Jack Cantori. Case fuckin closed.” I flopped her back down and closed my eyes. I might have heard that faint sigh from the Gulf for another ten or fifteen seconds. Then I was asleep.
    I slept until sundown. It was the deepest, most satisfying sleep I’d had in eight months.
    v
    I had done no more than nibble on the plane, and consequently woke up ravenous. I did a dozen heel-slides instead of the usual twenty-five to loosen my hip, made a quick trip to the bathroom, then lurched toward the kitchen. I was leaning on my crutch, but not as heavily as I might have expected, given the length of my nap. My plan was to make myself a sandwich, maybe two. I hoped for sliced bologna, but reckoned any lunchmeat I found in the fridge would be okay. I’d call Ilse after I ate and tell her I’d arrived safely. Ilse could be depended upon to e-mail everyone else with an interest in the welfare of Edgar Freemantle. Then I could take tonight’s dose of pain medication and explore the rest of my new environment. The whole second floor awaited.
    What my plan hadn’t taken into account was how the westward view had changed.
    The sun was gone, but there was still a brilliant orange band above the flat line of the Gulf. It was brokenin only one place, by the silhouette of some large ship. Its shape was as simple as a first-grader’s drawing. A cable stretched taut from the bow to what I assumed was the radio tower, creating a triangle of light. As that light skied upward, orange faded to a breathless Maxfield Parrish blue-green that I had never seen before with my own eyes . . . and yet I had a sense of déjà vu, as if maybe I had seen it, in my dreams. Maybe we all see skies like that in our dreams, and our waking minds can never quite translate them into colors that have names.
    Above, in the deepening black, the first stars.
    I was no longer