The pickax was still stick out his head.
I crep away into the corn of the room and curl up and I cried. I cried and cried. I guess maybe I slep some too, I don't kno, but there came a time when it was brighter and the sun was almost out and I think it might have been noonish. If so, I guess 7 hours or so wen by. That was when I first tried to take my Daddy to Boo'ya Moon and couldn't. I thought if I got something to eat, so I did but still I couldn't. Then I thought if I took a bath and got the blut off me, his blood, and clean up some of the mess around wehre he was but still I coulnt. I tried and tried. Off and on quite a bit. Two days, I guess. Sometime I'd look at his wrap in the blanket and make believe he was say You keep on pluggin Scoot you old sumbitch, you'll make it like in a story. I'd try, then I'd clean, try and clean, eet somethig and try summore. I cleen that hole house! Top to bottom! Once I went to Boo'ya by myself prove I still had the nack and I dit but I coulnt take my daddy. I trite so hard Lisey.
23
Several blank lines here. At the bottom of the last page he had written: Some things are like an ANCHOR Lisey do you remember?
"I do, Scott," she murmured. "I do. And your father was one of them, wasn't he?" Wondering how many days and nights in all.
How many days and nights alone with the corpse of Andrew "Sparky" Landon before Scott finally gave up plugging and invited the world in. Wondering how in God's name he had stood up to it without going completely insane.
There was a little more on the other side of the sheet. She flipped it over and saw that he had answered one of her questions.
Five days I tride. Finaly gave up and warped him in that blanket and put him down the dry well. The next time the sleet stoped I went to Mulie's and said "My Daddy's took my big brother and I guess they up and left me." They took me to the County Sheriff, a fat old man named Gosling and he took me to the Child Welfare and I was "on the County" as they say. So far as I know Gosling was the only cop who ever went up there to the home place, and big deal. My own Daddy once said "Sheriff Gosling couldn't find his own ass after he took a shit."
Below this was another space of three lines, and when the printing resumed - the last four lines of communication from her husband - she could see the effort he had made to get hold of himself, to find his adult self. He had made the effort for her, she thought. No, knew.
Babyluv: If you need an anchor to hold your place in the world - not Boo'ya Moon but the one we shared, use the african. You know how to get it back. Kisses - at least a thousand, Scott
P.S. Everything the same. I love you.
24
Lisey could have sat there with his letter for a long time, but the afternoon was fleeting. The sun was still yellow, but it was now approaching the horizon and would soon begin to take on that thundering orange cast she remembered so well. She didn't want to be on the path even close to sunset, and that meant she had better get moving now. She decided to leave Scott's final manuscript here, but not under the Story Tree. She would leave it at the head of the faint hollow that marked Paul Landon's final resting-place, instead.
She walked back to the sweetheart tree with the moss-shaggy trunk, the one that looked weirdly like a palm tree, carrying the remains of the yellow afghan and the damp and mushy manuscript box. She put them down, then picked up the marker with PAUL printed on the horizontal arm. It was splintered and bloody and all askew, but not really broken. Lisey was able to straighten the horizontal arm and slip the marker back into its former place. When she did, she spied something lying nearby, something almost hidden in the high grass. She knew what it was even before she picked it up: the hypodermic that had never been used, now rustier than ever, its cap still on. Playin with fire there, Scoot, his father had said when Scott had suggested that maybe they could drug Paul...and his father had been right.
Damn if I didn't think I pricked myself on it! Scott had said to Lisey when he had taken her to Boo'ya Moon from their bedroom at The Antlers. That'd be a joke on me, all right - after all those years! - but the cap's still on!