CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

1.

The notebooks in Johnny's bureau drawer grew from four to five, and by the fall of 1978 to seven. In the fall of 1978, between the deaths of two popes in rapid succession, Greg Stillson had become national news.

He was reelected to the House of Representatives in a landslide, and with the country tending toward Proposition 13 conservativism, he had formed the America Now party. Most startling, several members of the House had reneged on their original party standing and had “joined up”, as Greg liked to put it. Most of them held very similar beliefs, which Johnny had defined as superficially liberal on domestic issues and moderate to very conservative on issues of foreign policy. There was not a one of them who had voted on the Carter side of the Panama Canal treaties. And when you peeled back the liberal veneer on domestic positions, they turned out to be pretty conservative, too. The America Now party wanted bad trouble for big-time dopers, they wanted the cities to have to sink or swim on their own ('There is no need for a struggling dairy farmer to have to subsidize New York City's methadone programs with his taxes,” Greg proclaimed), they wanted a crackdown on welfare benefits to whores, pimps, bums, and people with a felony bust on their records, they wanted sweeping tax reforms to be paid for by sweeping social services cutbacks. All of it was an old song, but Greg's America Now party had set it to a pleasing new tune.

Seven congressmen swung over before the off-year elections, and two senators. Six of the Congressmen were reelected, and both of the senators. Of the nine, eight had been Republicans whose base had been whittled away to a pinhead. Their switch of party and subsequent reelections, one wag had quipped, was a better trick than the one that had followed “Lazarus, come forth!”

Some were already saying that Greg Stillson might be a power to be reckoned with, and not that many years down the road, either. He had not been able to send all the world's pollution out to Jupiter and the rings of Saturn, but he had succeeded in running at least two of the rascals out-one of them a congressman who had been feathering his nest as the silent partner in a parking-lot kickback scheme, and one of them a presidential aide with a penchant for gay bars. His oil-ceiling bill had shown vision and boldness, and his careful guidance of its passage from committee to final vote had shown a down-home country-boy shrewdness. Nineteen-hundred eighty would be too early for Greg, and 1984 might be too tempting to resist, but if he managed to stay cool until 1988, if he continued to build his base and the winds of change did not shift radically enough to blow his fledgling party away, why, anything might happen. The Republicans had fallen to squabbling splinters, and assuming that Mondale or Jerry Brown or even Howard Baker might follow Carter as president, who was to follow then? Even 1992 might not be too late for him. He was a relatively young man. Yes, 1992 sounded about right…

There were several political cartoons in Johnny's notebooks. All of them showed Stillson's infectious slantwise grin, and in all of them he was wearing his construction helmet. One by Oliphant showed Greg rolling a barrel of oil marked PRICE CEILINGS straight down the middle aisle of the House, the helmet cocked back on his head. Up front was Jimmy Carter, scratching his head and looking puzzled; he was not looking Greg's way at all and the implication seemed to be that he was going to get run down. The caption read: OUTTA MY WAY, JIMMY!

The helmet. The helmet somehow bothered Johnny more than anything else. The Republicans had their elephant, the democrats their donkey, and Greg Stillson had his construction helmet. In Johnny's dreams it sometimes seemed that Stillson was wearing a motorcycle helmet. And sometimes it was a coal-scuttle helmet.

2.

In a separate notebook he kept the clippings his father had sent him concerning the fire at Cathy's. He had gone over them again and again, although for reasons that Sam, Roger, or even his father could not have suspected.

PSYCHIC PREDICTS FIRE. “MY DAUGHTER WOULD HAVE DIED TOO,” TEARFUL, THANKFUL MOM PROCLAIMS (the tearful, thankful mom in question had been Patty Strachan's). Psychic Who Cracked Castle Rock Murders Predicts Flash Fire. ROADHOUSE DEATH-TOLL REACHES 90. FATHER SAYS JOHNNY SMITH HAS LEFT NEW ENGLAND, REFUSES TO SAY WHERE. Pictures of him. Pictures of his father. Pictures of that long-ago wreck on Route 6 in Cleaves Mills, back in the days when Sarah Bracknell had been his girl. Now Sarah was a woman, the mother of two, and in his last letter Herb had said Sarah was showing a few gray hairs. It seemed impossible to believe that he himself was thirty-one. Impossible, but true.

Around all these clippings were his own jottings, his painful efforts to get it straight in his mind once and for all. None of them understood the true importance of the fire, its implication on the much larger matter of what to do about Greg Stillson.

He had written: “I have to do something about Stillson. I have to. I was right about Cathy's, and I'm going to be right about this. There is absolutely no question in my mind. He is going to become president and he is going to start a war-or cause one through simple mismanagement of the office, which amounts to the same thing.

“The question is: How drastic are the measures that need to be taken?

“Take Cathy's as a test-tube case. It almost could have been sent to me as a sign, God I'm starting to sound like my mother, but there it is. Okay, I knew there was going to be a fire and that people were going to die. Was that sufficient to save them? Answer: it was not sufficient to save all of them, because people only truly believe after the fact. The ones who came to the Chatsworth house instead of going to Cathy's were saved, but it's important to remember that R. C. didn't have the party because he believed my prediction. He was very upfront about that. He had the party because he thought it would help me have peace of mind. He was… humoring me. He believed after. Patty Strachan's mother believed after. After-after-after. By then it was too late for the dead and the burned.

“So, Question-Could I have changed the outcome?

“Yes. I could have driven a car right through the front of the place. Or, I could have burned it down myself that afternoon.

“Question 3: What would the results of either action have been to me?

“Imprisonment, probably. If I took the car option and then lightning struck it later that night, I suppose I could have argued… no, it doesn't wash. Common experience may recognize some sort of psychic ability in the human mind, but the law sure as hell doesn't. I think now, if I had it to do over again, I would do one of those things and never mind the consequences to me. Is it p0sssible that I didn't completely believe my own prediction?

“The matter of Stillson is horribly similar in all respects, except, thank God, that I have a lot more lead time.

“So, back to square one. I don't want Greg Stillson to become President. How can I change that outcome?

“1. Go back to New Hampshire and “line up”, as he puts it. Try to throw a few monkey wrenches into the America Now party. Try to sabotage him. There's dirt enough under the rug. Maybe I could sweep some of it out.

“2. Hire someone else to get the dirt on him. There's enough of Roger's money left over to hire someone good. On the other hand, I got the feeling that Lancte was pretty good. And Lancte's dead.

“3. Wound or cripple him. The way Arthur Bremmer crippled Wallace, the way whoever-it-was crippled Larry Flynt.

“4. Kill him. Assassinate him.

“Now, some of the drawbacks. The first option isn't sure enough. I could end up doing nothing more constructive than getting myself trounced, the way Hunter Thompson did when he was researching his first book, that one on the Hell's Angels. Even worse, this fellow Elliman may be familiar with what I look like, as a result of what happened at the Trimbull rally. Isn't it more or less S. O. P. to keep a file on people who may be dangerous to your guys? I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Stillson had one guy on his payroll whose only job was to keep updated files on weird people and kooks. Which definitely includes me.

“Then there's the second option. Suppose all the dirt has already come out? If Stillson has already formed his higher political aspirations-and all his actions seem to point that way-he may already have cleaned up his act. And another thing: dirt under the rug is only as dirty as the press wants to make it, and the press likes Stillson. He cultivates them. In a novel I suppose I would turn private detective myself and “get the goods on him”, but the sad fact is that I wouldn't know where to begin. You could argue that my ability to “read” people, to find things out that have been lost (to quote Sam) would give me a boost. If I could find out something about Lancte, that would turn the trick. But isn't it likely that Stillson delegates all that to Sonny Elliman? And I cannot even be sure, despite my suspicions, that Edgar Lancte was still on Stillson's trail when he was murdered. It is possible that I might hang Sonny Elliman and still not finish Stillson.

“Overall, the second alternative is lust not sure enough. The stakes are enormous, so much so that I don't even dare let myself think about “the big picture” very often. It brings on a very bitch-kitty of a headache every time.

“I have even considered, in my wilder moments, trying to hook him on drugs the way the character Gene Hack-man played in The French Connection II was, or driving him batty with LSD slipped into his Dr Pepper or whatever it is he drinks. But all of that is cop-show make-believe. Gordon Liddy shit. The problems are so great that this “option” doesn't even bear much talking about, Maybe I could kidnap him. After all, the guy is only a U. S. representative. I wouldn't know where to get heroin or morphine, but I could get plenty of LSD from Larry McNaughton right here in the good old Phoenix Public Works Department. He has pills for every purpose. But suppose (if we're willing to suppose the foreging) that he just enjoyed his trip(s)?

“Shooting and crippling him? Maybe I could and maybe I couldn't. I guess under the right circumstances, I could-like the rally in Trimbull. Suppose I did. After what happened in Laurel, George Wallace was never really a potent political force again. On the other hand, FDR campaigned from his wheelchair and even turned it into an asset.

“That leaves assassination, the Big Casino. This is the one unarguable alternative. You can't run for president if you're a corpse.

“If I could pull the trigger.

“And if I could, what would the results be to me?

“As Bob Dylan says, “Honey, do you have to ask me that?"”

There were a great many other notes and jottings, but the only other really important one was written out and neatly boxed: “Suppose outright murder does turnout to be the only alternative? And suppose it turned out that I could pull the trigger? Murder is still wrong. Murder is wrong. Murder is wrong. There may yet be an answer. Thank God there's years of time.”

3.

But for Johnny, there wasn't.

In early December of 1978, shortly after another congressman, Leo Ryan of California, had been shot to death on a jungle airstrip in the South American country of Guayana, Johnny Smith discovered he had almost run out of time.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 747