The man in the black suit (26)
My father looked at the old Bible, swelled with family documents and pictures, and I thought he’d tell me to put it back, but he didn’t.
A look of mixed grief and sympathy crossed his face, and he nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Does your mother know you took that?”
“No, sir.”
He nodded again. “Then we’ll hope she doesn’t spot it gonebefore we get back. Come on. And don’t drop it.”
Half an hour or so later, the two of us stood on the bank looking down at the place where Castle Stream forked, and at the flat place
where I’d had my encounter with the man with the red-orange eyes.
I had my bamboo rod in my hand—I’d picked it up below the bridge—and my creel lay down below, on the flat place. Its wicker top was flipped back. We stood looking down, my father and I, for a long time, and neither of us said anything.
Opal! Diamond! Sapphire! Jade! I smell Gary’s lemonade! That had
been his unpleasant little poem, and once he had recited it, he had
thrown himself on his back, laughing like a child who has just discovered he has enough courage to say bathroom words like shit or
piss. The flat place down there was as green and lush as any place in
Maine that the sun can get to in early July . . . except where the
stranger had lain. There the grass was dead and yellow in the shape
of a man.
Taken From:Stephen king everything’s eventual
