I understand your grief, little fisherboy, but that particular argument just doesn't hold water, l'm afraid." He spoke in a tone of bogus comfort that was horrible, maddening, without remorse or pit "A man can go his whole life with out seeing a mockingbird you know, but does that mean mockingbirds don't exist? Your mother as A fish jumped bel ow us. The man in the black suit frowncd, then pointed a at finger at it. The trout convulsed in the air, its body bending so strenuously that for a split second it appeared to be snapping at its own tail, and when it fell back nto Castle Stream it was floating lifelessly. It struck the big gray rock where the waters divided, spun around twice in the whirlpool eddy that formed there, and then floated away in the direction of Castle Rock. Meanwhile, the terrible to stranger turned his burning eyes on me again, his thin lips pulled back from tiny rows of sharp teeth in a cannibal smile Your mother simply went through her entire life without being stung by bee," he said. "But then-less than an hour ago, actually one flew in through the kitchen window while she was taking the bread out of the oven and putting t on the counter to coo ne I raised my hands and clapped them over my ears. He pursed his lips as if to whistle and blew at me gently. It was only a little breath, but the stench was my foul beyond belief clogged sewers, outhouses that have never known a single sprinkle of lime, dead chickens after a flood ut My hands fell away from the sides of my face Good," he said. "You need to hear this, Gary; you need to hear t my lit nd tle fisherboy. It was your mother who passed that fatal weakness on to your brother. You got some of it, but you also got a protection from your father that ow poor Dan somehow missed." He pursed his lips again, only this time he made a cruelly comic little tsk-tsk sound instead of b owing his nasty breath at me. "So although I don't like to speak ill of the dead, it's almost a case of poetic justice isn't it? After all, she killed your brother Dan as surely as if she had put a gun to te his head and pulled the trigger "No," I whispered. "No, it isn't true." "I assure you it is," he said. "The bee flew in the window and lit on her neck She slapped at it before she even knew what she was doing you were wiser than ng that, weren't you, Gary and the bee stung her. She felt her throat start to en close up at once. That's what happens, you know, to people who can't tolerate bee venom. Their throats close and they drown in the open air. That's why Dan's to face was so swollen and purple. That's why your father covered it with his shirt." ut l stared at him, now incapable of speech. ears streamed down my cheeks didn't want to believe him, an d knew from my church schooling that the Devil ed is the father oflies, but I did believe him just the same ur She made the most wonderfully awful noises," the man in the black suit said reflectively, "and she scratched her face quite badly, I'm afraid. Her eyes e S bulged out like a frog's eyes. She wept." He paused, then added: "She wept as she ve died, isn't that sweet? And here's the most beautiful thing of all. After she was dead, after she had been lying on the floor for fifteen minutes or so with no nt ad? sound but the stove ticking and with that little thread of bee stinger still poking t I out of the side of her neck so small, so small do you know what Candy Bill did? hat little rascal licked away her tears. First on one side, and then on on the other