FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

Greetings and salutations

to the CHESTER’S MILL BOARD OF SELECTMEN:

Andrew Sanders

James P. Rennie

Andrea Grinnell

Dear Sirs and Madam:

First and foremost, I send you greetings, and want to express our nation’s deep concern and good wishes. I have designated tomorrow as a national Day of Prayer; across America, churches will be open as people of all faiths pray for you and for those working to understand and reverse what has happened at the borders of your town. Let me assure you that we will not rest until the people of Chester’s Mill are freed and those responsible for your imprisonment are punished. That this situation will be resolved—and soon—is my promise to you and to the people of Chester’s Mill. I speak with all the solemn weight of my office, as your Commander in Chief.

Second, this letter will introduce Colonel Dale Barbara, of the U.S. Army. Col. Barbara served in Iraq, where he was awarded the Bronze Star, a Merit Service Medal, and two Purple Hearts. He has been recalled to duty and promoted so that he may serve as your conduit to us, and ours to you. I know that, as loyal Americans, you will afford him every assistance. As you aid him, so will we aid you.

My original intent, in accordance with the advice given me by the Joint Chiefs and the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, was to invoke martial law in Chester’s Mill and appoint Col. Barbara as interim military governor. Col. Barbara has assured me, however, that this will not be necessary. He tells me he expects full cooperation from Selectmen and local police. He believes his position should be one of “advise and consent.” I have agreed to his judgment, subject to review.

Third, I know you are worried about your inability to call friends and loved ones. We understand your concern, but it is imperative that we maintain this “telephonic blackout” to lower the risk of classified information passing into and out of Chester’s Mill. You may think this a specious concern; I assure you it is not. It may very well be that someone in Chester’s Mill has information regarding the barrier surrounding your town. “In-town” calls should go through.

Fourth, we will continue to maintain a press blackout for the time being, although this matter will remain subject to review. There may come a time when it would be beneficial for town officials and Col. Barbara to hold a press conference, but at present our belief is that a speedy end to this crisis will render such a meeting with the press moot.

My fifth point concerns Internet communications. The Joint Chiefs are strongly in favor of a temporary blackout on e-mail communications, and I was inclined to agree. Col. Barbara, however, has argued strongly in favor of allowing the citizens of Chester’s Mill continued Internet access. He points out that e-mail traffic can be legally monitored by the NSA, and as a practical matter such communications can be vetted more easily than cell transmissions. Since he is our “man on the spot,” I have agreed to this point, partly on humanitarian grounds. This decision, however, will also be subject to review; changes in policy may occur. Col. Barbara will be a full participant in such reviews, and we look forward to a smooth working relationship between him and all town officials.

Sixth, I offer you the strong possibility that your ordeal may end as early as tomorrow, at 1 PM, EDT. Col. Barbara will explain the military operation that will occur at that time, and he assures me that between the good offices of yourselves and Ms. Julia Shumway, who owns and operates the local newspaper, you will be able to inform the citizens of Chester’s Mill what to expect.

And last: you are citizens of the United States of America, and we will never abandon you. Our firmest promise, based on our finest ideals, is simple: No man, woman, or child left behind. Every resource we need to employ in order to end your confinement will be employed. Every dollar we need to spend will be spent. What we expect from you in return is faith and cooperation. Please give us both.

With every prayer and every good wish, I remain most sincerely yours,

Whatever scribble-dee-dee dogsbody might have written it, the bastard had signed it himself, and using all three of his names, including the terrorist one in the middle. Big Jim hadn’t voted for him, and at this moment, had he teleported into existence in front of him, Rennie felt he could cheerfully have strangled him.

And Barbara.

Big Jim’s fondest wish was that he could whistle up Pete Randolph and have Colonel Fry Cook slammed into a cell. Tell him he could run his gosh-darned martial law command from the basement of the cop-shop with Sam Verdreaux serving as his aide-de-camp. Maybe Sloppy Sam could even hold the DTs at bay long enough to salute without sticking his thumb in his eye.

But not now. Not yet. Certain phrases from the Blackguard in Chief’s letter stood out:

As you aid him, so will we aid you.

A smooth working relationship with all town officials.

This decision will be subject to review.

What we expect is faith and cooperation.

That last one was the most telling. Big Jim was sure the pro-abortion son-of-a-buck knew nothing about faith—to him it was just a buzzword—but when he spoke of cooperation, he knew exactly what he was saying, and so did Jim Rennie: It’s a velvet glove, but don’t forget the iron fist inside it.

The President offered sympathy and support (he saw the drug-addled Grinnell woman actually tear up as she read the letter), but if you looked between the lines, you saw the truth. It was a threat letter, pure and simple. Cooperate or you lose your Internet. Cooperate because we’ll be making a list of who’s naughty and who’s nice, and you don’t want to be on the naughty side of the ledger when we break through. Because we will remember.

Cooperate, pal. Or else.

Rennie thought: I will never turn my town over to a short-order cook who dared to lay a hand on my son and then dared to challenge my authority. That will never happen, you monkey. Never.

He also thought: Softly, calmly.

Let Colonel Fry Cook explain the military’s big plan. If it worked, fine. If it didn’t, the U.S. Army’s newest colonel was going to discover whole new meanings to the phrase deep in enemy territory.

Big Jim smiled and said, “Let’s go inside, shall we? Seems we have a lot to talk about.”

Junior sat in the dark with his girlfriends.

It was strange, even he thought so, but it was also soothing.

When he and the other new deputies had gotten back to the police station after the colossal fuckup in Dinsmore’s field, Stacey Moggin (still in uniform herself, and looking tired) had told them they could have another four duty-hours if they wanted. There was going to be plenty of overtime on offer, at least for a while, and when it came time for the town to pay, Stacey said, she was sure there’d be bonuses, as well … probably provided by a grateful United States government.

Carter, Mel, Georgia Roux, and Frank DeLesseps had all agreed to work the extra hours. It wasn’t really the money; they were getting off on the job. Junior was too, but he’d also been hatching another of his headaches. This was depressing after feeling absolutely tip-top all day.

He told Stacey he’d pass, if that was all right. She assured him it was, but reminded him he was scheduled back on duty tomorrow at seven o’clock. “There’ll be plenty to do,” she said.

On the steps, Frankie hitched up his belt and said, “I think I’ll swing by Angie’s house. She probably went someplace with Dodee, but I’d hate to think she slipped in the shower—that she’s lying there all paralyzed, or something.”

Junior felt a throb go through his head. A small white spot began to dance in front of his left eye. It seemed to be jigging and jagging with his heartbeat, which had just speeded up.

“I’ll go by, if you want,” he told Frankie. “It’s on my way.”

“Really? You don’t mind?”

Junior shook his head. The white spot in front of his eye darted crazily, sickeningly, when he did. Then it settled again.

Frankie lowered his voice. “Sammy Bushey gave me some lip out at the field day.”

“That hole,” Junior said.

“No doubt. She goes, ‘What are you going to do, arrest me?’ ” Frankie raised his voice to a snarky falsetto that scraped Junior’s nerves. The dancing white spot actually seemed to turn red, and for a moment he considered putting his hands around his old friend’s neck and choking the life out of him so that he, Junior, would never have to be subjected to that falsetto again.

“What I’m thinking,” Frankie continued, “is I might go out there after I’m off. Teach her a lesson. You know, Respect Your Local Police.”

“She’s a skank. Also a lesboreenie.”

“That might make it even better.” Frankie had paused, looking toward the weird sunset. “This Dome thing could have an upside. We can do pretty much whatever we want. For the time being, anyway. Consider it, chum.” Frankie squeezed his crotch.

“Sure,” Junior had replied, “but I’m not particularly horny.”

Except now he was. Well, sort of. It wasn’t like he was going to fuck them, or anything but—

“But you’re still my girlfriends,” Junior said in the darkness of the pantry. He’d used a flashlight at first, but then had turned it off. The dark was better. “Aren’t you?”

They didn’t reply. If they did, Junior thought, I’d have a major miracle to report to my dad and Reverend Coggins.

He was sitting against a wall lined with shelves of canned goods. He had propped Angie on his right and Dodee on his left. Menagerie a trios, as they said in the Penthouse Forum. His girls hadn’t looked too good with the flashlight on, their swollen faces and bulging eyes only partially obscured by their hanging hair, but once he turned it off … hey! They could have been a couple of live chicks!

Except for the smell, that was. A mixture of old shit and decay just starting to happen. But it wasn’t too bad, because there were other, more pleasant smells in here: coffee, chocolate, molasses, dried fruit, and— maybe—brown sugar.

Also a faint aroma of perfume. Dodee’s? Angie’s? He didn’t know. What he knew was that his headache was better again and that disturbing white spot had gone away. He slid his hand down and cupped Angie’s breast.

“You don’t mind me doing that, do you, Ange? I mean, I know you’re Frankie’s girlfriend, but you guys sort of broke up and hey, it’s only copping a feel. Also—I hate to tell you this, but I think he’s got cheating on his mind tonight.”

He groped with his free hand, found one of Dodee’s. It was chilly, but he put it on his crotch anyway. “Oh my, Dodes,” he said. “That’s pretty bold. But you do what you feel, girl; get down with your bad self.”

He’d have to bury them, of course. Soon. The Dome was apt to pop like a soap bubble, or the scientists would find a way to dissolve it. When that happened, the town would be flooded with investigators. And if the Dome stayed in place, there would likely be some sort of food-finding committee going house to house, looking for supplies.

Soon. But not right now. Because this was soothing.

Also sort of exciting. People wouldn’t understand, of course, but they wouldn’t have to understand. Because—

“This is our secret,” Junior whispered in the dark. “Isn’t it, girls?”

They did not reply (although they would, in time).

Junior sat with his arms around the girls he had murdered, and at some point he drifted off to sleep.

When Barbie and Brenda Perkins left the Town Hall at eleven, the meeting was still going on. The two of them walked down Main to Morin without speaking much at first. There was still a small stack of the Democrat one-page extras on the corner of Main and Maple. Barbie slid one out from beneath the rock anchoring the pile. Brenda had a Penlite in her purse and shone the beam on the headline.

“Seeing it in print should make it easier to believe, but it doesn’t,” she said.

“No,” he agreed.

“You and Julia collaborated on this to make sure James couldn’t cover it up,” she said. “Isn’t that so?”

Barbie shook his head. “He wouldn’t try, because it can’t be done. When that missile hits, it’s going to make one hell of a bang. Julia just wanted to make sure Rennie doesn’t get to spin the news his way, whatever way that might be.” He tapped the one-sheet. “To be perfectly blunt, I see this as insurance. Selectman Rennie’s got to be thinking, ‘If he was ahead of me on this, what other information is he ahead of me on?’”

“James Rennie can be a very dangerous adversary, my friend.” They began walking again. Brenda folded the paper and tucked it under her arm. “My husband was investigating him.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know how much to tell you,” she said. “The choices seem to come down to all or nothing. And Howie had no absolute proof—that’s one thing I do know. Although he was close.”

“This isn’t about proof,” Barbie said. “It’s about me staying out of jail if tomorrow doesn’t go well. If what you know might help me with that—”

“If staying out of jail is the only thing you’re worried about, I’m disappointed in you.”

It wasn’t all, and Barbie guessed the widow Perkins knew it. He had listened carefully at the meeting, and although Rennie had taken pains to be at his most ingratiating and sweetly reasonable, Barbie had still been appalled. He thought that, beneath the goshes and gollies and doggone-its, the man was a raptor. He would exert control until it was wrested from him; he would take what he needed until he was stopped. That made him dangerous for everybody, not just for Dale Barbara.

“Mrs. Perkins—”

“Brenda, remember?”

“Brenda, right. Put it this way, Brenda: if the Dome stays in place, this town is going to need help from someone other than a used-car salesman with delusions of grandeur. I can’t help anybody if I’m in the calabozo.”

“What my husband believed is that Big Jim was helping himself.”

“How? To what? And how much?”

She said, “Let’s see what happens with the missile. If it doesn’t work, I’ll tell you everything. If it does, I’ll sit down with the County Attorney when the dust settles … and, in the words of Ricky Ricardo, James Rennie will have some ’splainin to do.”

“You’re not the only one waiting to see what happens with the missile. Tonight, butter wouldn’t melt in Rennie’s mouth. If the Cruise bounces off instead of punching through, I think we may see his other side.”

She snapped off the Penlite and looked up. “See the stars,” she said. “So bright. There’s the Dipper … Cassiopeia … the Great Bear. All just the same. I find that comforting. Do you?”

“Yes.”

They said nothing for a little while, only looked up at the glimmering sprawl of the Milky Way. “But they always make me feel very small and very … very brief.” She laughed, then said—rather timidly: “Would you mind if I took your arm, Barbie?”

“Not at all.”

She grasped his elbow. He put his hand over hers. Then he walked her home.

Big Jim adjourned the meeting at eleven twenty. Peter Randolph bade them all good night and left. He planned to start the evacuation on the west side of town at seven AM sharp, and hoped to have the entire area around Little Bitch Road clear by noon. Andrea followed, walking slowly, with her hands planted in the small of her back. It was a posture with which they had all become familiar.

Although his meeting with Lester Coggins was very much on his mind (and sleep; he wouldn’t mind getting a little damned sleep), Big Jim asked her if she could stay behind a moment or two.

She looked at him questioningly. Behind him, Andy Sanders was ostentatiously stacking files and putting them back in the gray steel cabinet.

“And close the door,” Big Jim said pleasantly.

Now looking worried, she did as he asked. Andy went on doing the end-of-meeting housework, but his shoulders were hunched, as if against a blow. Whatever it was Jim wanted to talk to her about, Andy knew already. And judging by his posture, it wasn’t good.

“What’s on your mind, Jim?” she asked.

“Nothing serious.” Which meant it was. “But it did seem to me, Andrea, that you were getting pretty chummy with that Barbara fellow before the meeting. With Brenda, too, for that matter.”

“Brenda? That’s just …” She started to say ridiculous, but that seemed a little strong. “Just silly. I’ve known Brenda for thirty yea—”

“And Mr. Barbara for three months. If, that is, eating a man’s waffles and bacon is a basis for knowing him.”

“I think he’s Colonel Barbara now.”

Big Jim smiled. “Hard to take that seriously when the closest thing he can get to a uniform is a pair of bluejeans and a tee-shirt.”

“You saw the President’s letter.”

“I saw something Julia Shumway could have composed on her own gosh-darn computer. Isn’t that right, Andy?”

“Right,” Andy said without turning around. He was still filing. And then refiling what he’d already filed, from the look of it.

“And suppose it was from the President?” Big Jim said. The smile she hated was spreading on his broad, jowly face. Andrea observed with some fascination that she could see stubble on those jowls, maybe for the first time, and she understood why Jim was always so careful to shave. The stubble gave him a sinister Nixonian look.

“Well …” Worry was now edging into fright. She wanted to tell Jim she’d only been being polite, but it had actually been a little more, and she guessed Jim had seen that. He saw a great deal. “Well, he is the Commander in Chief, you know.”

Big Jim made a pshaw gesture. “Do you know what a commander is, Andrea? I’ll tell you. Someone who merits loyalty and obedience because he can provide the resources to help those in need. It’s supposed to be a fair trade.”

“Yes!” she said eagerly. “Resources like that Cruiser missile thing!”

“And if it works, that’s all very fine.”

“How could it not? He said it might have a thousand-pound war-head!”

“Considering how little we know about the Dome, how can you or any of us be sure? How can we be sure it won’t blow the Dome up and leave nothing but a mile-deep crater where Chester’s Mill used to be?”

She looked at him in dismay. Hands in the small of her back, rubbing and kneading at the place where the pain lived.

“Well, that’s in God’s hands,” he said. “And you’re right, Andrea—it may work. But if it doesn’t, we’re on our own, and a commander in chief who can’t help his citizens isn’t worth a squirt of warm pee in a cold chamberpot, as far as I’m concerned. If it doesn’t work, and if they don’t blow all of us to Glory, somebody is going to have to take hold in this town. Is it going to be some drifter the President taps with his magic wand, or is it going to be the elected officials already in place? Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“Colonel Barbara seemed very capable to me,” she whispered.

“Stop calling him that!” Big Jim shouted. Andy dropped a file, and Andrea took a step backward, uttering a squeak of fear as she did so.

Then she straightened, momentarily recovering some of the Yankee steel that had given her the courage to run for Selectman in the first place. “Don’t you yell at me, Jim Rennie. I’ve known you since you were cutting out Sears catalogue pictures in the first grade and pasting them on construction paper, so don’t you yell.”

“Oh gosh, she’s offended. ” The fierce smile now spread from ear to ear, lifting his upper face into an unsettling mask of jollity. “Isn’t that too cotton-picking bad. But it’s late and I’m tired and I’ve handed out about all the sweet syrup I can manage for one day. So you listen to me now, and don’t make me repeat myself.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s eleven thirty-five, and I want to be home by midnight.”

“I don’t understand what you want of me!”

He rolled his eyes as if he couldn’t believe her stupidity. “In a nutshell? I want to know you’re going to be on my side—mine and Andy’s—if this harebrained missile idea doesn’t work. Not with some dishwashing johnny-come-lately.”

She squared up her shoulders and let go of her back. She managed to meet his eyes, but her lips were trembling. “And if I think Colonel Barbara—Mr. Barbara, if you prefer—is better qualified to manage things in a crisis situation?”

“Well, I have to go with Jiminy Cricket on that one,” Big Jim said. “Let your conscience be your guide.” His voice had dropped to a murmur that was more frightening than his shout had been. “But there’s those pills you take. Those OxyContins.”

Andrea felt her skin go cold. “What about them?”

“Andy’s got a pretty good supply put aside for you, but if you were to back the wrong horse in this-here race, those pills just might disappear. Isn’t that right, Andy?”

Andy had begun washing out the coffeemaker. He looked unhappy and he wouldn’t meet Andrea’s brimming eyes, but there was no hesitation in his reply. “Yes,” he said. “In a case like that, I might have to turn them down the pharmacist’s toilet. Dangerous to have drugs like that around with the town cut off and all.”

“You can’t do that!” she cried. “I have a prescription!”

Big Jim said kindly, “The only prescription you need is sticking with the people who know this town best, Andrea. For the present, it’s the only kind of prescription that will do you any good.”

“Jim, I need my pills.” She heard the whine in her voice—so much like her mother’s during the last bad years when she’d been bedridden—and hated it. “I need them!”

“I know,” Big Jim said. “God has burdened you with a great deal of pain.” Not to mention a big old monkey on your back, he thought.

“Just do the right thing,” Andy said. His dark-circled eyes were sad and earnest. “Jim knows what’s best for the town; always has. We don’t need some outsider telling us our business.”

“If I do, will I keep getting my pain pills?”

Andy’s face lit in a smile. “You betcha! I might even take it on myself to up the dosage a little. Say a hundred milligrams more a day? Couldn’t you use it? You look awfully uncomfortable.”

“I suppose I could use a little more,” Andrea said dully. She lowered her head. She hadn’t taken a drink, not even a glass of wine, since the night of the Senior Prom when she’d gotten so sick, had never smoked a joint, had never even seen cocaine except on TV. She was a good person. A very good person. So how had she gotten into a box like this? By falling while she was going to get the mail? Was that all it took to turn someone into a drug addict? If so, how unfair. How horrible. “But only forty milligrams. Forty more would be enough, I think.”

“Are you sure?” Big Jim asked.

She didn’t feel sure at all. That was the devil of it.

“Maybe eighty,” she said, and wiped the tears from her face. And, in a whisper: “You’re blackmailing me.”

The whisper was low, but Big Jim heard it. He reached for her. Andrea flinched, but Big Jim only took her hand. Gently.

“No,” he said. “That would be a sin. We’re helping you. And all we want in return is for you to help us.”

There was a thud.

It brought Sammy wide awake in bed even though she’d smoked half a doob and drunk three of Phil’s beers before falling out at ten o’clock. She always kept a couple of sixes in the fridge and still thought of them as “Phil’s beers,” although he’d been gone since April. She’d heard rumors that he was still in town, but discounted them. Surely if he was still around, she would have seen him sometime during the last six months, wouldn’t she? It was a small town, just like that song said.

Thud!

That got her bolt upright, and listening for Little Walter’s wail. It didn’t come and she thought, Oh God, that damn crib fell apart! And if he can’t even cry—

She threw the covers back and ran for the door. She smacked into the wall to the left of it, instead. Almost fell down. Damn dark! Damn power company! Damn Phil, going off and leaving her like this, with no one to stick up for her when guys like Frank DeLesseps were mean to her and scared her and—

Thud!

She felt along the top of the dresser and found the flashlight. She turned it on and hurried out the door. She started to turn left, into the bedroom where Little Walter slept, but the thud came again. Not from the left, but from straight ahead, across the cluttered living room. Someone was at the trailer’s front door. And now there came muffled laughter. Whoever it was sounded like they had their drink on.

She strode across the room, the tee-shirt she slept in rippling around her chubby thighs (she’d put on a little weight since Phil left, about fifty pounds, but when this Dome shit was over she intended to get on NutriSystem, return to her high school weight) and threw open the door.

Flashlights—four of them, and high-powered—hit her in the face. From behind them came more laughter. One of those laughs was more of a nyuck-nyuck-nyuck, like Curly in the Three Stooges. She recognized that one, having heard it all through high school: Mel Searles.

“Look at you!” Mel said. “All dressed up and no one to blow.”

More laughter. Sammy raised an arm to shield her eyes, but it did no good; the people behind the flashlights were just shapes. But one of the laughers sounded female. That was probably good.

“Turn off those lights before I go blind! And shut up, you’ll wake the baby!”

More laughter, louder than ever, but three of the four lights went out. She trained her own flashlight out the door, and wasn’t comforted by what she saw: Frankie DeLesseps and Mel Searles flanking Carter Thibodeau and Georgia Roux. Georgia, the girl who’d put her foot on Sammy’s tit that afternoon and called her a dyke. A female, but not a safe female.

They were wearing their badges. And they were indeed drunk.

“What do you want? It’s late.”

“Want some dope,” Georgia said. “You sell it, so sell some to us.”

“I want to get high as apple pie in a red dirt sky,” Mel said, and then laughed: Nyuck-nyuck-nyuck.

“I don’t have any,” Sammy said.

“Bullshit, the place reeks of it,” Carter said. “Sell us some. Don’t be a bitch.”

“Yeah,” Georgia said. In the light of Sammy’s flash, her eyes had a silvery glitter. “Never mind that we’re cops.”

They all roared at this. They would wake the baby for sure.

“No!” Sammy tried to shut the door. Thibodeau pushed it open again. He did it with just the flat of his hand—easy as could be—but Sammy went stumbling backward. She tripped over Little Walter’s goddam choo-choo and went down on her ass for the second time that day. Her tee-shirt flew up.

“Ooo, pink underwear, are you expecting one of your girlfriends?” Georgia asked, and they all roared again. The flashlights that had gone out now came back on, spotlighting her.

Sammy yanked the tee-shirt down almost hard enough to rip the neck. Then she got unsteadily to her feet, the flashlight beams dancing up and down her body.

“Be a good hostess and invite us in,” Frankie said, barging through the door. “Thank you very much.” His light flashed around the living room. “What a pigsty.”

“Pigsty for a pig!” Georgia bellowed, and they all broke up again. “If I was Phil, I might come back out of the woods just long enough to kick your fuckin ass!” She raised her fist; Carter Thibodeau knuckle-dapped her.

“He still hidin out at the radio station?” Mel asked. “Tweekin the rock? Gettin all paranoid for Jesus?”

“I don’t know what you …” She wasn’t mad anymore, only afraid. This was the disconnected way people talked in the nightmares that came if you smoked weed dusted with PCP. “Phil’s gone!”

Her four visitors looked at each other, then laughed. Searles’s idiotic nyuck-nyuck-nyuck rode above the others.

“Gone! Bugged out!” Frankie crowed.

“Fuckin as if !” Carter replied, and then they bumped knucks.

Georgia grabbed a bunch of Sammy’s paperbacks off the top shelf of the bookcase and looked through them. “Nora Roberts? Sandra Brown? Stephenie Meyer? You read this stuff? Don’t you know fuckin Harry Potter rules?” She held the books out, then opened her hands and dropped them on the floor.

The baby still hadn’t awakened. It was a miracle. “If I sell you some dope, will you go?” Sammy asked.

“Sure,” Frankie said.

“And hurry up,” Carter said. “We got an early call tomorrow. Eee-vack -u-ation detail. So shag that fat ass of yours.”

“Wait here.”

She went into the kitchenette and opened the freezer—warm now, everything would be thawed, for some reason that made her feel like crying—and took out one of the gallon Baggies of dope she kept in there. There were three others.

She started to turn around, but someone grabbed her before she could, and someone else plucked the Baggie from her hand. “I want to check out that pink underwear again,” Mel said in her ear. “See if you got SUNDAY on your ass.” He yanked her shirt up to her waist. “Nope, guess not.”

“Stop it! Quit it!”

Mel laughed: Nyuck-nyuck-nyuck.

A flashlight stabbed her in the eyes, but she recognized the narrow head behind it: Frankie DeLesseps. “You gave me lip today,” he said. “Plus, you slapped me and hurt my little hannie. And all I did was this.” He reached out and grabbed her breast again.

She tried to jerk away. The beam of light that had been trained on her face tilted momentarily up to the ceiling. Then it came down again, fast. Pain exploded in her head. He had hit her with his flashlight.

“Ow! Ow, that hurts! STOP it!”

“Shit, that didn’t hurt. You’re just lucky I don’t arrest you for pushing dope. Stand still if you don’t want another one.”

“This dope smells skanky,” Mel said in a matter-of-fact voice. He was behind her, still holding up her shirt.

“So does she,” Georgia said.

“Gotta confiscate the weed, bee-yatch,” Carter said. “Sorry.”

Frankie had glommed onto her breast again. “Stand still.” He pinched the nipple. “Just stand still.” His voice, roughening. His breathing, quickening. She knew where this was going. She closed her eyes. Just as long as the baby doesn’t wake up, she thought. And as long as they don’t do more. Do worse.

“Go on,” Georgia said. “Show her what she’s been missing since Phil left.”

Frankie gestured into the living room with his flashlight. “Get on the couch. And spread em.”

“Don’t you want to read her her rights, first?” Mel asked, and laughed:Nyuck-nyuck-nyuck. Sammy thought if she had to hear that laugh one more time, her head would split wide open. But she started for the couch, head down, shoulders slumped.

Carter grabbed her on the way by, turned her, and sprayed the beam of his flashlight up his own face, turning it into a goblin-mask. “Are you going to talk about this, Sammy?”

“N-N-No.”

The goblin-mask nodded. “You hold that thought. Because no one would believe you, anyway. Except for us, of course, and then we’d have to come back and really fuck you up.”

Frankie pushed her onto the couch.

“Do her,” Georgia said excitedly, training her light on Sammy. “Do that bitch!”

All three of the young men did her. Frankie went first, whispering “You gotta learn to keep your mouth shut except for when you’re on your knees” as he pushed into her.

Carter was next. While he was riding her, Little Walter awoke and began to cry.

“Shut up, kid, or I’ll hafta readja your rights!” Mel Searles hollered, and then laughed.

Nyuck-nyuck-nyuck.

It was almost midnight.

Linda Everett lay fast asleep in her half of the bed; she’d had an exhausting day, she had an early call tomorrow (eee-vack -u-ation detail), and not even her worries about Janelle could keep her awake. She didn’t snore, exactly, but a soft queep-queep-queep sound came from her half of the bed.

Rusty had had an equally exhausting day, but he couldn’t sleep, and it wasn’t Jan he was worried about. He thought she was going to be all right, at least for a while. He could keep her seizures at bay if they didn’t get any worse. If he ran out of Zarontin at the hospital dispensary, he could get more from Sanders Drug.

It was Dr. Haskell he kept thinking about. And Rory Dinsmore, of course. Rusty kept seeing the torn and bloody socket where the boy’s eye had been. Kept hearing Ron Haskell telling Ginny, I’m not death. Deaf, I mean.

Except he had been death.

He rolled over in bed, trying to leave these memories behind, and what came in their place was Rory muttering It’s Halloween. Overlapping that, his own daughter’s voice: It’s the Great Pumpkin’s fault! You have to stop the Great Pumpkin!

His daughter had been having a seizure. The Dinsmore kid had taken a ricochet to the eye and a bullet fragment to the brain. What did that tell him?

It tells me nothing. What did the Scottish guy say on Lost? “Don’t mistake coincidence for fate?”

Maybe that had been it. Maybe it had. But Lost had been a long time ago. The Scottish guy could have said Don’t mistake fate for coincidence.

He rolled over the other way and this time saw the black headline of that night’s Democrat one-sheet: EXPLOSIVES TO BE FIRED AT BARRIER!

It was hopeless. Sleep was out of the question for now, and the worst thing you could do in a situation like that was try to flog your way into dreamland.

There was half a loaf of Linda’s famous cranberry-orange bread downstairs; he’d seen it on the counter when he came in. Rusty decided he’d have a piece of it at the kitchen table and thumb through the latest issue of American Family Physician. If an article on whooping cough wouldn’t put him to sleep, nothing would.

He got up, a big man dressed in the blue scrubs that were his usual nightwear, and left quietly, so as not to wake Linda.

Halfway to the stairs, he paused and cocked his head.

Audrey was whining, very soft and low. From the girls’ room. Rusty went down there and eased the door open. The golden retriever, just a dim shape between the girls’ beds, turned to look at him and voiced another of those low whines.

Judy was lying on her side with one hand tucked under her cheek, breathing long and slow. Jannie was a different story. She rolled restlessly from one side to the other, kicking at the bed-clothes and muttering. Rusty stepped over the dog and sat down on her bed, under Jannie’s latest boy-band poster.

She was dreaming. Not a good dream, by her troubled expression. And that muttering sounded like protests. Rusty tried to make out the words, but before he could, she ceased.

Audrey whined again.

Jan’s nightdress was all twisted. Rusty straightened it, pulled up the covers, and brushed Jannie’s hair off her forehead. Her eyes were moving rapidly back and forth beneath her closed lids, but he observed no trembling of the limbs, no fluttering fingers, no characteristic smacking of the lips. REM sleep rather than seizure, almost certainly. Which raised an interesting question: could dogs also smell bad dreams?

He bent and kissed Jan’s cheek. When he did, her eyes opened, but he wasn’t entirely sure she was seeing him. This could have been a petit mal symptom, but Rusty just didn’t believe it. Audi would have been barking, he felt sure.

“Go back to sleep, honey,” he said. “He has a golden baseball, Daddy.”

“I know he does, honey, go back to sleep.”

“It’s a bad baseball.”

“No. It’s good. Baseballs are good, especially golden ones.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Okay, Daddy.” She rolled over and closed her eyes. There was a moment of settling beneath the covers, and then she was still. Audrey, who had been lying on the floor with her head up, watching them, now put her muzzle on her paw and went to sleep herself.

Rusty sat there awhile, listening to his daughters breathe, telling himself there was really nothing to be frightened of, people talked their way in and out of dreams all the time. He told himself that everything was fine—he only had to look at the sleeping dog on the floor if he doubted—but in the middle of the night it was hard to be an optimist. When dawn was still long hours away, bad thoughts took on flesh and began to walk. In the middle of the night thoughts became zombies.

He decided he didn’t want the cranberry-orange bread after all. What he wanted was to snuggle against his bedwarm sleeping wife. But before leaving the room, he stroked Audrey’s silky head. “Pay attention, girl,” he whispered. Audi briefly opened her eyes and looked at him.

He thought, Golden retriever. And, following that—the perfect connection: Golden baseball. A bad baseball.

That night, despite the girls’ newly discovered feminine privacy, Rusty left their door open.

Lester Coggins was sitting on Rennie’s stoop when Big Jim got back. Coggins was reading his Bible by flashlight. This did not inspire Big Jim with the Reverend’s devotion but only worsened a mood that was already bad.

“God bless you, Jim,” Coggins said, standing up. When Big Jim offered his hand, Coggins seized it in a fervent fist and pumped it.

“Bless you too,” Big Jim said gamely.

Coggins gave his hand a final hard shake and let go. “Jim, I’m here because I’ve had a revelation. I asked for one last night—yea, for I was sorely troubled—and this afternoon it came. God has spoken to me, both through scripture and through that young boy.”

“The Dinsmore kid?”

Coggins kissed his clasped hands with a loud smack and then held them skyward. “The very same. Rory Dinsmore. May God keep him for all eternity.”

“He’s eating dinner with Jesus right this minute,” Big Jim said automatically. He was examining the Reverend in the beam of his own flashlight, and what he was seeing wasn’t good. Although the night was cooling rapidly, sweat shone on Coggins’s skin. His eyes were wide, showing too much of the whites. His hair stood out in wild curls and bumbershoots. All in all, he looked like a fellow whose gears were slipping and might soon be stripping.

Big Jim thought, This is not good.

“Yes,” Coggins said, “I’m sure. Eating the great feast … wrapped in the everlasting arms …”

Big Jim thought it would be hard to do both things at the same time, but kept silent on that score.

“And yet his death was for a purpose, Jim. That’s what I’ve come to tell you.”

“Tell me inside,” Big Jim said, and before the minister could reply: “Have you seen my son?”

“Junior? No.”

“How long have you been here?” Big Jim flicked on the hall light, blessing the generator as he did so.

“An hour. Maybe a little less. Sitting on the steps … reading … praying … meditating.”

Rennie wondered if anyone had seen him, but did not ask. Coggins was upset already, and a question like that might upset him more.

“Let’s go in my study,” he said, and led the way, head down, lumbering slowly along in his big flat strides. Seen from behind, he looked a bit like a bear dressed in human clothes, one who was old and slow but still dangerous.

In addition to the picture of the Sermon on the Mount with his safe behind it, there were a great many plaques on the walls of Big Jim’s study, commending him for various acts of community service. There was also a framed picture of Big Jim shaking hands with Sarah Palin and another of him shaking with the Big Number 3, Dale Earnhardt, when Earnhardt had done a fundraiser for some children’s charity at the annual Oxford Plains Crash-A-Rama. There was even a picture of Big Jim shaking hands with Tiger Woods, who had seemed like a very nice Negro.

The only piece of memorabilia on his desk was a gold-plated baseball in a Lucite cradle. Below it (also in Lucite) was an autograph reading: To Jim Rennie, with thanks for your help in putting on the Western Maine Charity Softball Tournament of 2007! It was signed Bill “Spaceman” Lee.

As he sat behind his desk in his high-backed chair, Big Jim took the ball from its cradle and began tossing it from hand to hand. It was a fine thing to toss, especially when you were a little upset: nice and heavy, the golden seams smacking comfortably against your palms. Big Jim sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a solid gold ball. Perhaps he would look into that when this Dome business was over.

Coggins seated himself on the other side of the desk, in the client’s chair. The supplicant’s chair. Which was where Big Jim wanted him. The Reverend’s eyes went back and forth like the eyes of a man watching a tennis match. Or maybe a hypnotist’s crystal.

“Now what’s this all about, Lester? Fill me in. But let’s keep it short, shall we? I need to get some sleep. Got a lot to do tomorrow.”

“Will you pray with me first, Jim?”

Big Jim smiled. It was the fierce one, although not turned up to maximum chill. At least not yet. “Why don’t you fill me in before we do that? I like to know what I’m praying about before I get kneebound.”

Lester did not keep it short, but Big Jim hardly noticed. He listened with growing dismay that was close to horror. The Reverend’s narrative was disjointed and peppered with Biblical quotations, but the gist was clear: he had decided that their little business had displeased the Lord enough for Him to clap a big glass bowl over the whole town. Lester had prayed on what to do about this, scourging himself as he did so (the scourging might have been metaphorical—Big Jim certainly hoped so), and the Lord had led him to some Bible verse about madness, blindness, smiting, etc., etc.

“The Lord said he would shew me a sign, and—”

“Shoe?” Big Jim raised his tufted eyebrows.

Lester ignored him and plunged on, sweating like a man with malaria, his eyes still following the golden ball. Back … and forth.

“It was like when I was a teenager and I used to come in my bed.”

“Les, that’s … a little too much information.” Tossing the ball from hand to hand.

“God said He would shew me blindness, but not my blindness. And this afternoon, out in that field, He did! Didn’t he?”

“Well, I guess that’s one interpretation—”

“No!” Coggins leaped to his feet. He began to walk in a circle on the rug, his Bible in one hand. With the other he tugged at his hair. “God said that when I saw that sign, I had to tell my congregation exactly what you’d been up to—”

“Just me?” Big Jim asked. He did so in a meditative voice. He was tossing the ball from hand to hand a little faster now. Smack. Smack. Smack. Back and forth against palms that were fleshy but still hard.

“No,” Lester said in a kind of groan. He paced faster now, no longer looking at the ball. He was waving the Bible with the hand not busy trying to tear his hair out by the roots. He did the same thing in the pulpit sometimes, when he really got going. That stuff was all right in church, but here it was just plain infuriating. “It was you and me and Roger Killian the Bowie brothers and …” He lowered his voice. “And that other one. The Chef. I think that man’s crazy. If he wasn’t when he started last spring, he sure is now.”

Look who’s talking, little buddy, Big Jim thought.

“We’re all involved, but it’s you and I who have to confess, Jim. That’s what the Lord told me. That’s what the boy’s blindness meant; it’s what he died for. We’ll confess, and we’ll burn that Barn of Satan behind the church. Then God will let us go.”

“You’ll go, all right, Lester. Straight to Shawshank State Prison.”

“I will take the punishment God metes out. And gladly.”

“And me? Andy Sanders? The Bowie brothers? And Roger Killian! He’s got I think nine kids to support! What if we’re not so glad, Lester?”

“I can’t help that.” Now Lester began to whack himself on the shoulders with his Bible. Back and forth; first one side and then the other. Big Jim found himself synchronizing his tosses of the golden baseball to the preacher’s blows. Whack … and smack. Whack … and smack. Whack … and smack. “It’s sad about the Killian children, of course, but … Exodus twenty, verse five: ‘For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.’ We have to bow to that. We have to clean out this chancre however much it may hurt; make right what we have made wrong. That means confession and purification. Purification by fire.”

Big Jim raised the hand not currently holding the gold baseball. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Think about what you’re saying. This town depends on me—and you, of course—in ordinary times, but in times of crisis, it needs us.” He stood up, pushing his chair back. This had been a long and terrible day, he was tired, and now this. It made a man angry.

“We have sinned.” Coggins spoke stubbornly, still whacking himself with his Bible. As if he thought treating God’s Holy Book like that was perfectly okay.

“What we did, Les, was keep thousands of kids from starving in Africa. We even paid to treat their hellish diseases. We also built you a new church and the most powerful Christian radio station in the northeast.”

“And lined our own pockets, don’t forget that!” Coggins shrilled. This time he smacked himself full in the face with the Good Book. A thread of blood seeped from one nostril. “Lined em with filthy dope-money!” He smacked himself again. “And Jesus’s radio station is being run by a lunatic who cooks the poison that children put into their veins!”

“Actually, I think most of them smoke it.”

“Is that supposed to be funny ?”

Big Jim came around the desk. His temples were throbbing and a bricklike flush was rising in his cheeks. Yet he tried once more, speaking softly, as if to a child doing a tantrum. “Lester, the town needs my leadership. If you go opening your gob, I won’t be able to provide that leadership. Not that anyone will believe you—”

“They’ll all believe!” Coggins cried. “When they see the devil’s workshop I’ve let you run behind my church, they’ll all believe! And Jim—don’t you see—once the sin is out … once the sore’s been cleansed … God will remove His barrier! The crisis will end! They won’t need your leadership!”

That was when James P. Rennie snapped. “They’ll always need it!” he roared, and swung the baseball in his closed fist.

It split the skin of Lester’s left temple as Lester was turning to face him. Blood poured down the side of Lester’s face. His left eye glared out of the gore. He lurched forward with his hands out. The Bible flapped at Big Jim like a blabbery mouth. Blood pattered down onto the carpet. The left shoulder of Lester’s sweater was already soaked. “No, this is not the will of the Lor—”

“It’s my will, you troublesome fly.” Big Jim swung again, and this time connected with the Reverend’s forehead, dead center. Big Jim felt the shock travel all the way up to his shoulder. Yet Lester staggered forward, wagging his Bible. It seemed to be trying to talk.

Big Jim dropped the ball to his side. His shoulder was throbbing. Now blood was pouring onto the carpet, and still the son-of-a-buck wouldn’t go down; still he came forward, trying to talk and spitting scarlet in a fine spray.

Coggins bumped into the front of the desk—blood splattered across the previously unmarked blotter—and then began to sidle along it. Big Jim tried to raise the ball again and couldn’t.

I knew all that high school shotputting would catch up with me someday, he thought.

He switched the ball to his left hand and swung it sideways and upward. It connected with Lester’s jaw, knocking his lower face out of true and spraying more blood into the not-quite-steady light of the overhead fixture. A few drops struck the milky glass.

“Guh!” Lester cried. He was still trying to sidle around the desk. Big Jim retreated into the kneehole.

“Dad?”

Junior was standing in the doorway, eyes wide, mouth open.

“Guh!” Lester said, and began to flounder around toward the new voice. He held out the Bible. “Guh … Guh … Guh-uhODD—”

“Don’t just stand there, help me!” Big Jim roared at his son.

Lester began to stagger toward Junior, flapping the Bible extravagantly up and down. His sweater was sodden; his pants had turned a muddy maroon; his face was gone, buried in blood.

Junior hurried to meet him. When Lester started to collapse, Junior grabbed him and held him up. “I gotcha, Reverend Coggins—I gotcha, don’t worry.”

Then Junior clamped his hands around Lester’s blood-sticky throat and began to squeeze.

Five interminable minutes later.

Big Jim sat in his office chair—sprawled in his office chair—with his tie, put on special for the meeting, pulled down and his shirt unbuttoned. He was massaging his hefty left breast. Beneath it, his heart was still galloping and throwing off arrhythmias, but showed no signs of actually going into cardiac arrest.

Junior left. Rennie thought at first he was going to get Randolph, which would have been a mistake, but he was too breathless to call the boy back. Then he came back on his own, carrying the tarp from the back of the camper. He watched Junior shake it out on the floor—oddly businesslike, as if he had done this a thousand times before. It’s all those R-rated movies they watch now, Big Jim thought. Rubbing the flabby flesh that had once been so firm and so hard.

“I’ll … help,” he wheezed, knowing he could not.

“You’ll sit right there and get your breath.” His son, on his knees, gave him a dark and unreadable look. There might have been love in it—Big Jim certainly hoped there was—but there were other things, too.

Gotcha now? Was Gotcha now part of that look?

Junior rolled Lester onto the tarp. The tarp crackled. Junior studied the body, rolled it a little farther, then flipped the end of the tarp over it. The tarp was green. Big Jim had bought it at Burpee’s. Bought it on sale. He remembered Toby Manning saying, You’re getting a heckuva good deal on that one, Mr. Rennie.

“Bible,” Big Jim said. He was still wheezing, but he felt a little better. Heartbeat slowing, thank God. Who knew the climb would get so steep after fifty? He thought: I have to start working out. Get back in shape. God only gives you one body.

“Right, yeah, good call,” Junior murmured. He grabbed the bloody Bible, wedged it between Coggins’s thighs, and began rolling up the body.

“He broke in, Son. He was crazy.”

“Sure.” Junior did not seem interested in that. What he seemed interested in was rolling the body up … just so.

“It was him or me. You’ll have to—” Another little taradiddle in his chest. Jim gasped, coughed, pounded his breast. His heart settled again. “You’ll have to take him out to Holy Redeemer. When he’s found, there’s a guy … maybe …” It was the Chef he was thinking of, but maybe arranging for Chef to carry the can for this was a bad idea. Chef Bushey knew stuff. Of course, he’d probably resist arrest. In which case he might not be taken alive.

“I’ve got a better place,” Junior said. He sounded serene. “And if you’re talking about hanging it on someone, I’ve got a better idea. ”

“Who?”

“Dale Fucking Barbara.”

“You know I don’t approve of that language—”

Looking at him over the tarp, eyes glittering, Junior said it again. “Dale … Fucking … Barbara.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. But you better wash off that damn gold ball if you mean to keep it. And get rid of the blotter.”

Big Jim got to his feet. He was feeling better now. “You’re a good boy to help your old dad this way, Junior.”

“If you say so,” Junior replied. There was now a big green burrito on the rug. With feet sticking out the end. Junior tucked the tarp over them, but it wouldn’t stay. “I’ll need some duct tape.”

“If you’re not going to take him to the church, then where—”

“Never mind,” Junior said. “It’s safe. The Rev’ll keep until we figure out how to put Barbara in the frame.”

“Got to see what happens tomorrow before we do anything.”

Junior looked at him with an expression of distant contempt Big Jim had never seen before. It came to him that his son now had a great deal of power over him. But surely his own son …

“We’ll have to bury your rug. Thank God it’s not the wall-to-wall carpet you used to have in here. And the upside is it caught most of the mess.” Then he lifted the big burrito and bore it down the hall. A few minutes later Rennie heard the camper start up.

Big Jim considered the golden baseball. I should get rid of that, too, he thought, and knew he wouldn’t. It was practically a family heirloom.

And besides, what harm? What harm, if it was clean?

When Junior returned an hour later, the golden baseball was once again gleaming in its Lucite cradle.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 602