JUST SAYING, MR. HOLMES. YOU FIND ME ONE OF THOSE BADGES
AND THERE’S NEVER ANY HORROR PRANK EVER AGAIN AT
HENDERSON HIGH.
“But Jefferson Stoakes. None of us knew what to make of… what can you even think, when a kid you know turns up dead with a wasp nest not just crammed into his mouth, but kind of in PLACE of his mouth? And one detail Alison Chambers might still know from her dad was that Jefferson was floating on his BACK. In the WATER. And yellow jackets, they’ll avoid water. It gums their wings up or something. Or maybe it’s like those baggies of water Dorothy puts up in the patio?
You know Dorothy? Dot’s? You too young for coffee yet? Give it a year. But we were all just stupid [bleeping] kids back then too — no insult. Now, after Jefferson, it was… let’s see. Howarth, yeah. Crane Howarth. He had the prettiest goddamn jump shot I’ve ever seen in real life. He just would have sold insurance or drove a truck after high school, I know. But watching him play, it was — I guess that’s what people mean when they talk about grace. He could rise up and have that ball launched and perfect before you’d even realized he’d stopped.”
DOES THAT COUNT AS “LOCAL COLOR,” SIR? SPORTSBALL STUFF?
IF NOT, THEN HOW ABOUT SOME ARCHERY.
“No, no, not arrows. It say that in that article? No, Crane turned up at the bottom of the bluff, must have been trying to climb it. It was a… maybe don’t print this next part? Used to you’d climb the bluff, and one of your friends would point out to everybody else that the moon’s just cresting, look how big it is, and when everybody looked up you’d already have your pants pulled down to show them the REAL moon — I never did that, though. And, after Crane, the bluff was strictly off limits. Still should be, you ask me. The whole place, I mean. Somebody’s gonna get hurt over there.”
OR, YOU KNOW, CONCEIVED OVER THERE, MR. HOLMES. BUT THE
INTERVIEWER’S PERSONAL DETAILS AREN’T SUPPOSED TO MATTER. I DON’T KNOW WHICH CABIN IT WAS ANYWAY, SO CAN’T SAY THAT
DETAIL. BUT I DID KNOW THE NEXT NAME TO ASK THE SHERIFF
ABOUT.
“No, it’s Brockmeir, like ‘brock’ plus ‘mayor,’ just you don’t say the y-part as hard. But she was… as far as we knew back then she was just Remar Lundy’s weird little niece. But I guess, living back in the trees at their place, one of her older cousins had maybe told her about the Lake Witch, I don’t know. And she took it to heart, maybe. She wasn’t right in the head, I’m saying. It probably didn’t help that all us junior detectives around the campfire — to us it was even money that it was Stacey Graves who’d got Jefferson and Crane. This was right after the big fire of 65, Bear teach you about that? Good, good. Know your history, don’t [bleeping]
play with matches. What I’m saying though is that we were all kind of spooky already. And it was kind of a thrill too, you know how it is at camp. But yeah, before you ask, it was me who ID’d her for Don Chambers when it was all said and done. But that was after. I mean, that was 2 tragedies later, that’s how I should say it. The 1st of those would be Anthea, Anthea Walker. She was the 16 year old. But she was short, that’s the thing. Guess she had to be to fall into the big cook pot.
Except she didn’t fall, we all knew that. How do you fall into something you hardly even fit in? We heard it was a dare — that won’t be in your article there either. The story Midge and Gun Saddleback — they were the ones trying to make a go of Winnemucca that summer — the story they were trying to get us to all buy into was that Anthea pulled the short straw in cabin 2, so had to be the 1 to make the run down to the canteen, investigate just what mystery meat was for lunch the next day.
But, Anthea — we all called her Thea, kind of like your old man’s Tab — she was friendly with the Brockmeir girl, see? That’s probably how Amy Brockmeir was able to get behind her so close, push her in.”
BECAUSE WE HAVE TO PROVIDE CONTEXT FOR NON-LOCALS, WHEN THE SHERIFF ABOVE SAYS THEY WERE ALL SCARED OF THE
“LAKE WITCH,” THE STORY HE’S REFERRING TO THAT YOU AND ME
KNOW BUT NOBODY NOT IN PROOFROCK KNOWS IS THAT A 100
YEARS AGO SOME BOYS AND STACEY GRAVES THE 8 YEAR OLD WERE
PLAYING “WITCH” IN THE SHALLOWS OF THE RISING LAKE AND THEY
SWUNG HER AND THEN THREW HER OUT AS FAR AS SHE COULD TO
PROVE SHE WASN’T A WITCH, BECAUSE WITCHES FLOAT, EVERYBODY
KNOWS THAT, BUT SURPRISE, THE WATER WOULDN’T LET HER IN, SO