Gerald's Game - Stephen King [76]
Yes, Daddy?
For a long moment he said nothing, only went on looking up at her with sweat running slowly down his cheeks and forehead and chest and belly, and Jessie was suddenly frightened. Then he smiled again and all was well.
You look very pretty today, Punkin. In fact, if it doesn't sound too yucky, you look beautiful.
Thank you — it doesn't sound yucky at all.
His comment pleased her so much (especially after her mother's angry editorial comments of the night before, or perhaps because of them) that a lump rose in her throat and she felt like crying for a moment. She smiled instead, and sketched a curtsey in his direction, and then hurried back to the barbecue with her heart pounding a steady drumroll in her chest. One of the things her mother had said, the most awful thing, tried to rise into her mind.
(you behave as if she were your)
and Jessie squashed it as ruthlessly as she would have squashed a bad-tempered wasp. Still, she felt gripped by one of those crazy adult mixes of emotion — ice cream and gravy, roast chicken stuffed with sourballs — and could not seem to entirely escape it. Nor was she sure she even wanted to. In her mind she kept seeing that single drop of sweat tracking lazily down his stomach, being absorbed by the soft cotton of his shorts, leaving that tiny dark place. It was from that image that the emotional turmoil seemed chiefly to arise. She kept seeing it and seeing it and seeing it. It was crazy.
Well, so what? It was a crazy day, that was all. Even the sun was going to do something crazy. Why not leave it at that?
Yes, the voice that would one day masquerade as Ruth Neary agreed. Why not?
The Eclipse Burgers, garnished with sautéd mushrooms and mild red onion, were nothing short of fabulous. They certainly eclipse the last batch your mother made, her father told her, and Jessie giggled wildly. They ate on the deck outside Tom Mahout's den, balancing metal trays on their laps. A round deck-table, littered with condiments, paper plates, and eclipse-watching paraphernalia, stood between them. The observation gear included Polaroid sunglasses, two home-made cardboard reflector-boxes of the sort which the rest of the family had taken with them to Mount Washington, panes of smoked glass and a stack of hotpads from the drawer beside the kitchen stove. The panes of smoked glass weren't hot anymore, Tom told his daughter, but he wasn't terribly competent with the glass-cutter, and he was afraid there still might be nicks and jagged spots along the edges of some of the panes.
The last thing I need, he told her, is for your mother to come home and find a note saying I've taken you to the Emergency Room at Oxford Hills Hospital so they can try to sew a couple of your fingers back on.
Mom really wasn't exactly crazy about this idea, was she? Jessie asked.
Her Daddy gave her a brief hug. No, he said, but I was. I was crazy enough about it for both of us. And he gave her a smile so bright she just had to smile back.
It was the reflector-boxes they used first as the onset of the eclipse — 4:29 P.M., EDT — neared. The sun lying in the center of Jessie's reflector-box was no bigger than a bottlecap, but it was so fiercely bright