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RIOT AND MURDERS AS CRISIS DEEPENS 2 page

“Too late!” Tony shouted. He gave Julia’s desk, which was now a pillar of fire shooting all the way to the ceiling, a wide berth, raising one arm to shield his face from the heat. “Too late, out the back!”

Pete Freeman needed no further urging. He heaved the bottle at the growing fire and ran.

Carrie Carver rarely had anything to do with Mill Gas & Grocery; although the little convenience store had made her and her husband a pretty good living over the years, she saw herself as Above All That. But when Johnny suggested they might go down in the van and take the remaining canned goods up to the house —“for safekeeping” was the delicate way he put it—she had agreed at once. And although she was ordinarily not much of a worker (watching Judge Judy was more her speed), she had volunteered to help. She hadn’t been at Food City, but when she’d gone down later to inspect the damage with her friend Leah Anderson, the shattered windows and the blood still on the pavement had frightened her badly. Those things had frightened her for the future.

Johnny lugged out the cartons of soups, stews, beans, and sauces; Carrie stowed them in the bed of their Dodge Ram. They were about halfway through the job when fire bloomed downstreet. They both heard the amplified voice. Carrie thought she saw two or three figures running down the alley beside Burpee’s, but wasn’t sure. Later on she would be sure, and would up the number of shadowy figures to at least four. Probably five.

“What does it mean?” she asked. “Honey, what does it mean?”

“That the goddam murdering bastard isn’t on his own,” Johnny said. “It means he’s got a gang.”

Carrie’s hand was on his arm, and now she dug in with her nails. Johnny freed his arm and ran for the police station, yelling fire at the top of his lungs. Instead of following, Carrie Carver continued loading the truck. She was more frightened of the future than ever.

In addition to Roger Killian and the Bowie brothers, there were ten new officers from what was now the Chester’s Mill Hometown Security Force sitting on the bleachers of the middle-school gymnasium, and Big Jim had only gotten started on his speech about what a responsibility they had when the fire whistle went off. The boy’s early, he thought. I can’t trust him to save my soul. Never could, but now he’s that much worse.

“Well, boys,” he said, directing his attention particularly to young Mickey Wardlaw—God, what a bruiser! “I had a lot more to say, but it seems we’ve got ourselves a little more excitement. Fern Bowie, do you happen to know if we have any Indian pumps in the FD barn?”

Fern said he’d had a peek into the firebarn earlier that evening, just to see what sort of equipment there might be, and there were almost a dozen Indian pumps. All full of water, too, which was convenient.

Big Jim, thinking that sarcasm should be reserved for those bright enough to understand what it was, said it was the good Lord looking out for them. He also said that if it was more than a false alarm, he would take charge with Stewart Bowie as his second-in-command.



There, you noseyparker witch, he thought as the new officers, looking bright-eyed and eager, rose from the bleachers. Let’s see how you like getting in my business now.

“Where you going?” Carter asked. He had driven his car—with the lights off—down to where West Street T’d into Route 117. The building that stood here was a Texaco station that had closed up in 2007. It was close to town but offered good cover, which made it convenient. Back the way they had come, the fire whistle was honking six licks to a dozen and the first light of the fire, more pink than orange, was rising in the sky.

“Huh?” Junior was looking at the strengthening glow. It made him feel horny. It made him wish he still had a girlfriend.

“I asked where you’re going. Your dad said to alibi up.”

“I left unit Two behind the post office,” Junior said, taking his eyes reluctantly away from the fire. “Me’n Freddy Denton’s together. And he’ll say we were together. All night. I can cut across from here. Might go back by West Street. Get a look at how it’s catchin on.” He uttered a high-pitched giggle, almost a girl’s giggle, that caused Carter to look at him strangely.

“Don’t look too long. Arsonists are always gettin caught by goin back to look at their fires. I saw that on America’s Most Wanted. ”

“Nobody’s wearing the Golden Sombrero for this motherfucker except Baaarbie, ” Junior said. “What about you? Where you going?”

“Home. Ma’ll say I was there all night. I’ll get her to change the bandage on my shoulder—fuckin dogbite hurts like a bastard. Take some aspirin. Then come on down, help fight the fire.”

“They’ve got heavier dope than aspirin at the Health Center and the hospital. Also the drugstore. We ought to look into that shit.”

“No doubt,” Carter said.

“Or … do you tweek? I think I can get some of that.”

“Meth? Never mess with it. But I wouldn’t mind some Oxy.”

“Oxy!” Junior exclaimed. Why had he never thought of that? It would probably fix his headaches a lot better than Zomig or Imitrix. “Yeah, bro! You talk about it!”

He raised his fist. Carter bumped it, but he had no intention of getting high with Junior. Junior was weird now. “Better get goin, Junes.”

“I’m taillights.” Junior opened the door and walked away, still limping a little.

Carter was surprised at how relieved he was when Junior was gone.

Barbie woke to the sound of the fire whistle and saw Melvin Searles standing outside his cell. The boy’s fly was unzipped and he was holding his considerable cock in his hand. When he saw he had Barbie’s attention, he began to piss. His goal was clearly to reach the bunk. He couldn’t quite make it and settled for a splattery letter S on the concrete instead.

“Go on, Barbie, drink up,” he said. “You gotta be thirsty. It’s a little salty, but what the fuck.”

“What’s burning?”

“As if you didn’t know,” Mel said, smiling. He was still pale—he must have lost a fair amount of blood— but the bandage around his head was crisp and unstained.

“Pretend I don’t.”

“Your pals burned down the newspaper,” Mel said, and now his smile showed his teeth. Barbie realized the kid was furious. Frightened, too. “Trying to scare us into letting you out. But we … don’t… scare. ”

“Why would I burn down the newspaper? Why not the Town Hall? And who are these pals of mine supposed to be?”

Mel was tucking his cock back into his pants. “You won’t be thirsty tomorrow, Barbie. Don’t worry about that. We’ve got a whole bucket of water with your name on it, and a sponge to go with it.”

Barbie was silent.

“You seen that waterboarding shit in I-rack?” Mel nodded as if he knew Barbie had. “Now you’ll get to experience it firsthand.” He pointed a finger through the bars. “We’re gonna find out who your confederates are, fuckwad. And we’re gonna find out what you did to lock this town up in the first place. That waterboarding shit? Nobody stands up to that.”

He started away, then turned back.

“Not fresh water, either. Salt. First thing. You think about it.”

Mel left, clumping up the basement hallway with his bandaged head lowered. Barbie sat on the bunk, looked at the drying snake of Mel’s urine on the floor, and listened to the fire whistle. He thought of the girl in the pickemup. The blondie who almost gave him a ride and then changed her mind. He closed his eyes.

ASHES

Rusty was standing in the turnaround in front of the hospital, watching the flames rise from somewhere on Main Street, when the cell phone clipped to his belt played its little song. Twitch and Gina were with him, Gina holding Twitch’s arm as if for protection. Ginny Tomlinson and Harriet Bigelow were both sleeping in the staff lounge. The old fellow who had volunteered, Thurston Marshall, was making medication rounds. He had turned out to be surprisingly good. The lights and the equipment were back on and, for the time being, things were on an even keel. Until the fire whistle went off, Rusty had actually dared to feel good.

He saw LINDA on the screen and said, “Hon? Everything okay?”

“Here, yes. Kids are asleep.”

“Do you know what’s bur—”

“The newspaper office. Be quiet and listen, because I’m turning my phone off in about a minute and a half so nobody can call me in to help fight the fire. Jackie’s here. She’ll watch the kids. You need to meet me at the funeral home. Stacey Moggin will be there, too. She came by earlier. She’s with us.”

The name, while familiar, did not immediately call up a face in Rusty’s mind. And what resonated was She’s with us. There really were starting to be sides, starting to be with us and with them.

“Lin—”

“Meet me there. Ten minutes. It’s safe as long as they’re fighting the fire, because the Bowie brothers are on the crew. Stacey says so.”

“How did they get a crew together so f—”

“I don’t know and don’t care. Can you come?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Don’t use the parking lot on the side. Go around back to the smaller one.” Then the voice was gone.

“What’s on fire?” Gina asked. “Do you know?”

“No,” Rusty said. “Because nobody called.” He looked at them both, and hard.

Gina didn’t follow, but Twitch did. “Nobody at all.”

“I just took off, probably on a call, but you don’t know where. I didn’t say. Right?”

Gina still looked puzzled, but nodded. Because now these people were her people; she did not question the fact. Why would she? She was only seventeen.Us and them, Rusty thought. Bad medicine, usually. Especially for seventeen-year-olds. “Probably on a call,” she said. “We don’t know where.”

“Nope,” Twitch agreed. “You grasshoppah, we lowly ants.”

“Don’t make a big deal of it, either of you,” Rusty said. But it was a big deal, he knew that already. It was trouble. Gina wasn’t the only kid in the picture; he and Linda had a pair, now fast asleep and with no knowledge that Mom and Dad might be sailing into a storm much too big for their little boat.

And still.

“I’ll be back,” Rusty said, and hoped that wasn’t just wishful thinking.

Sammy Bushey drove the Evanses’ Malibu down Catherine Russell Drive not long after Rusty headed for the Bowie Funeral Parlor; they passed each other going in opposite directions on Town Common Hill.

Twitch and Gina had gone back inside and the turnaround in front of the hospital’s main doors was deserted, but she didn’t stop there; having a gun on the seat beside you made you wary. (Phil would have said paranoid.) She drove around back instead, and parked in the employees’ lot. She grabbed the.45, pushed it into the waistband of her jeans, and bloused her tee-shirt over it. She walked across the lot and stopped at the laundry room door, reading the sign that said SMOKING HERE WILL BE BANNED AS OF

JANUARY 1ST. She looked at the doorknob, and knew that if it didn’t turn, she’d give this up. It would be a sign from God. If, on the other hand, the door was unlocked—

It was. She slipped in, a pale and limping ghost.

Thurston Marshall was tired—exhausted, more like it—but happier than he had been in years. It was undoubtedly perverse; he was a tenured professor, a published poet, the editor of a prestigious literary magazine. He had a gorgeous young woman to share his bed, one who was smart and thought he was wonderful. That giving pills, slapping on salve, and emptying bedpans (not to mention wiping up the Bushey kid’s beshitted bottom an hour ago) would make him happier than those things almost had to be perverse, and yet there it was. The hospital corridors with their smells of disinfectant and floorpolish connected him with his youth. The memories had been very clear tonight, from the pervasive aroma of patchouli oil in David Perna’s apartment to the paisley headband Thurse had worn to the candlelight memorial service for Bobby Kennedy. He went his rounds humming “Big Leg Woman” very softly under his breath.

He peeped in the lounge and saw the nurse with the busted schnozz and the pretty little nurse’s aide— Harriet, her name was—asleep on the cots that had been dragged in there. The couch was vacant, and soon he’d either catch a few hours’ racktime on it or go back to the house on Highland Avenue that was now home. Probably back there.

Strange developments.

Strange world.

First, though, one more check of what he was already thinking of as his patients. It wouldn’t take long in this postage stamp of a hospital. Most of the rooms were empty, anyway. Bill Allnut, who’d been forced to stay awake until nine because of the injury he’d suffered in the Food City melee, was now fast asleep and snoring, turned on his side to take the pressure off the long laceration at the back of his head.

Wanda Crumley was two doors down. The heart monitor was beeping and her BP was a little better, but she was on five liters of oxygen and Thurse feared she was a lost cause. Too much weight; too many cigarettes. Her husband and youngest daughter were sitting with her. Thurse gave Wendell Crumley a V-for­victory (which had been the peace sign in his salad days), and Wendell, smiling gamely, gave it back.

Tansy Freeman, the appendectomy, was reading a magazine. “What’s the fire whistle blowing for?” she asked him.

“Don’t know, hon. How’s your pain?”

“A three,” she said matter-of-factly. “Maybe a two. Can I still go home tomorrow?”

“It’s up to Dr. Rusty, but my crystal ball says yes.” And the way her face lit up at that made him feel, for no reason he could understand, like crying.

“That baby’s mom is back,” Tansy said. “I saw her go by.”

“Good,” Thurse said. Although the baby hadn’t been much of a problem. He had cried once or twice, but mostly he slept, ate, or lay in his crib, staring apathetically up at the ceiling. His name was Walter (Thurse had no idea the Little preceding it on the door card was an actual name), but Thurston Marshall thought of him as The Thorazine Kid.

Now he opened the door of room 23, the one with the yellow BABY ON BOARD sign attached to it with a plastic sucker, and saw that the young woman—a rape victim, Gina had whispered to him—was sitting in the chair beside the bed. She had the baby in her lap and was feeding him a bottle.

“Are you all right”—Thurse glanced at the other name on the doorcard—“Ms. Bushey?”

He pronounced it Bouchez, but Sammy didn’t bother to correct him, or to tell him that boys called her Bushey the Tushie. “Yes, Doctor,” she said.

Nor did Thurse bother to correct her misapprehension. That undefined joy—the kind that comes with tears hidden in it—swelled a little more. When he thought of how close he’d come to not volunteering … if Caro hadn’t encouraged him … he would have missed this.

“Dr. Rusty will be glad you’re back. And so is Walter. Do you need any pain medication?”

“No.” This was true. Her privates still ached and throbbed, but that was far away. She felt as if she were floating above herself, tethered to earth by the thinnest of strings.

“Good. That means you’re getting better.”

“Yes,” Sammy said. “Soon I’ll be well.”

“When you’ve finished feeding him, climb on into bed, why don’t you? Dr. Rusty will be in to check on you in the morning.”

“All right.”

“Good night, Ms. Bouchez.”

“Good night, Doctor.”

Thurse closed the door softly and continued down the hall. At the end of the corridor was the Roux girl’s room. One peek in there and then he’d call it a night.

She was glassy but awake. The young man who’d been visiting her was not. He sat in the corner, snoozing in the room’s only chair with a sports magazine on his lap and his long legs sprawled out in front of him.

Georgia beckoned Thurse, and when he bent over her, she whispered something. Because of the low voice and her broken, mostly toothless mouth, he only got a word or two. He leaned closer.

“Doh wake im.” To Thurse, she sounded like Homer Simpson. “He’th the oney one who cay to visih me.”

Thurse nodded. Visiting hours were long over, of course, and given his blue shirt and his sidearm, the young man would probably be gigged for not responding to the fire whistle, but still—what harm? One firefighter more or less probably wouldn’t make any difference, and if the guy was too far under for the sound of the whistle to wake him, he probably wouldn’t be much help, anyway. Thurse put a finger to his lips and blew the young woman a shhh to show they were conspirators. She tried to smile, then winced.

Thurston didn’t offer her pain medication in spite of that; according to the chart at the end of the bed, she was maxed until two AM. Instead he just went out, closed the door softly behind him, and walked back down the sleeping hallway. He didn’t notice that the door to the BABY ON BOARD room was once more ajar.

The couch in the lounge called to him seductively as he went by, but Thurston had decided to go back to Highland Avenue after all.

And check the kids.

Sammy sat by the bed with Little Walter in her lap until the new doctor went by. Then she kissed her son on both cheeks and the mouth. “You be a good baby,” she said. “Mama is going to see you in heaven, if they let her in. I think they will. She’s done her time in hell.”

She laid him in his crib, then opened the drawer of the bedtable. She had put the gun inside so Little Walter wouldn’t feel it poking into him while she held him and fed him for the last time. Now she took it out.

Lower Main Street was blocked off by nose-to-nose police cars with their jackpot lights flashing. A crowd, silent and unexcited—almost sullen—stood behind them, watching.

Horace the Corgi was ordinarily a quiet dog, limiting his vocal repertoire to a volley of welcome-home barks or the occasional yap to remind Julia he was still present and accounted for. But when she pulled over to the curb by Maison des Fleurs, he let out a low howl from the backseat. Julia reached back blindly to stroke his head. Taking comfort as much as giving it.

“Julia, my God,” Rose said.

They got out. Julia’s original intention was to leave Horace behind, but when he uttered another of those small, bereft howls—as if he knew, as if he really knew—she fished under the passenger seat for his leash, opened the rear door for him to jump out, and then clipped the leash to his collar. She grabbed her personal camera, a pocket-sized Casio, from the seat pocket before closing the door. They pushed through the crowd of bystanders on the sidewalk, Horace leading the way, straining at his leash.

Piper Libby’s cousin Rupe, a part-time cop who’d come to The Mill five years ago, tried to stop them. “No one beyond this point, ladies.”

“That’s my place,” Julia said. “Up top is everything I own in the world—clothes, books, personal possessions, the lot. Underneath is the newspaper my great-grandfather started. It’s only missed four press dates in over a hundred and twenty years. Now it’s going up in smoke. If you want to stop me from watching it happen—at close range—you’ll have to shoot me.”

Rupe looked unsure, but when she started forward again (Horace now at her knee and looking up at the balding man mistrustfully), Rupe stood aside. But only momentarily.

“Not you,” he told Rose.

“Yes, me. Unless you want ex-lax in the next chocolate frappe you order.”

“Ma’am … Rose … I have my orders.”

“Devil take your orders,” Julia said, with more weariness than defiance. She took Rose by the arm and led her down the sidewalk, stopping only when she felt the shimmer against her face rise from preheat to bake.

The Democrat was an inferno. The dozen or so cops weren’t even trying to put it out, but they had plenty of Indian pumps (some still bearing stickers she could read easily in the firelight: ANOTHER BURPEE’S SALE DAYS SPECIAL!) and they were wetting down the drugstore and the bookstore. Given the windless conditions, Julia thought they might save both … and thus the rest of the business buildings on the east side of Main.

“Wonderful that they turned out so quick,” Rose said.

Julia said nothing, only watched the flames whooshing up into the dark, blotting out the pink stars. She was too shocked to cry.

Everything, she thought. Everything.

Then she remembered the one bundle of newspapers she had tossed in her trunk before leaving to meet with Cox and amended that to Almost everything.

Pete Freeman pushed through the ring of police who were currently dousing the front and north side of Sanders Hometown Drug. The only clean spots on his face were where tears had cut through the soot.

“Julia, I’m so sorry!” He was nearly wailing. “We almost had it stopped … would have had it stopped … but then the last one … the last bottle the bastards threw landed on the papers by the door and …” He wiped his remaining shirtsleeve across his face, smearing the soot there. “I’m so goddam sorry!”

She took him in her arms as if he were a baby, although Pete was six inches taller and outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She hugged him, trying to mind his hurt arm, and said: “What happened?”

“Firebombs,” he sobbed. “That fucking Barbara.”

“He’s in jail, Pete.”

“His friends! His goddam friends ! They did it!”

“What? You saw them?”

“Heard em,” he said, pulling back to look at her. “Would’ve been hard not to. They had a bullhorn. Said if Dale Barbara wasn’t freed, they’d burn the whole town.” He grinned bitterly. “Free him? We ought to hang him. Give me a rope and I’ll do it myself.”

Big Jim came strolling up. The fire painted his cheeks orange. His eyes glittered. His smile was so wide that it stretched almost to his earlobes.

“How do you like your friend Barbie now, Julia?”

Julia stepped toward him, and there must have been something on her face, because Big Jim fell back a step, as if afraid she might take a swing at him. “This makes no sense. None. And you know it.”

“Oh, I think it does. If you can bring yourself to consider the idea that Dale Barbara and his friends were the ones who set up the Dome in the first place, I think it makes perfect sense. It was an act of terrorism, pure and simple.”

“Bullshit. I was on his side, which means the newspaper was on his side. He knew that.”

“But they said—” Pete began.

“Yes,” she said, but she didn’t look at him. Her eyes were still fixed on Rennie’s firelit face. “They said, they said, but who the hell is they ? Ask yourself that, Pete. Ask yourself this: if it wasn’t Barbie—who had no motive—then who did have a motive? Who benefits by shutting Julia Shumway’s troublesome mouth?”

Big Jim turned and motioned to two of the new officers—identifiable as cops only by the blue bandannas knotted around their biceps. One was a tall, hulking bruiser whose face suggested he was still little more than a child, no matter his size. The other could only be a Killian; that bullet head was as distinctive as a commemorative stamp. “Mickey. Richie. Get these two women off the scene.”

Horace was crouched at the end of his leash, growling at Big Jim. Big Jim gave the little dog a contemptuous look.

“And if they won’t go voluntarily, you have my permission to pick them up and throw them over the hood of the nearest police car.”

“This isn’t finished,” Julia said, pointing a finger at him. Now she was beginning to cry herself, but the tears were too hot and painful to be those of sorrow. “This isn’t done, you son of a bitch.”

Big Jim’s smile reappeared. It was as shiny as the finish on his Hummer. And as black. “Yes it is,” he said. “Done deal.”

Big Jim started back toward the fire—he wanted to watch it until there was nothing left of the noseyparker’s newspaper but a pile of ashes—and swallowed a mouthful of smoke. His heart suddenly stopped in his chest and the world seemed to go swimming past him like some kind of special effect. Then his ticker started again, but in a flurry of irregular beats that made him gasp. He slammed a fist against the left side of his chest and coughed hard, a quick-fix for arrhythmia that Dr. Haskell had taught him.

At first his heart continued its irregular galloping (beat … pause … beatbeatbeat … pause), but then it settled back to its normal rhythm. For just a moment he saw it encased in a dense globule of yellow fat, like a living thing that has been buried alive and struggles to get free before the air is all gone. Then he pushed the image away.

I’m all right. It’s just overwork. Nothing seven hours of sleep won’t cure.

Chief Randolph came over, an Indian pump strapped to his broad back. His face was running with sweat. “Jim? You all right?”

“Fine,” Big Jim said. And he was. He was. This was the high point of his life, his chance to achieve the greatness of which he knew he’d always been capable. No dickey ticker was going to take that away from him. “Just tired. I’ve been running pretty much nonstop.”

“Go home,” Randolph advised. “I never thought I’d say thank God for the Dome, and I’m not saying it now, but at least it works as a windbreak. We’re going to be all right. I’ve got men on the roofs of the drugstore and the bookstore in case any sparks jump, so go on and—”

“Which men?” His heartbeat smoothing out, smoothing out. Good.

“Henry Morrison and Toby Whelan on the bookstore. Georgie Frederick and one of those new kids on the drug. A Killian brat, I think. Rommie Burpee volunteered to go up with em.”

“Got your walkie?”

“Course I do.”

“And Frederick’s got his?”

“All the regulars do.”

“Tell Frederick to keep an eye on Burpee.”

“Rommie? Why, for Lord sake?”

“I don’t trust him. He could be a friend of Barbara’s.” Although it wasn’t Barbara Big Jim was worried about when it came to Burpee. The man had been a friend of Brenda’s. And the man was sharp.

Randolph’s sweaty face was creased. “How many do you think there are? How many on the sonofabitch’s side?”

Big Jim shook his head. “Hard to say, Pete, but this thing is big. Must’ve been in the planning stages for a long time. You can’t just look at the newbies in town and say it’s got to be them. Some of the people in on it could have been here for years. Decades, even. It’s what they call deep cover.”

“Christ. But why, Jim? Why, in God’s name?”

“I don’t know. Testing, maybe, with us for guinea pigs. Or maybe it’s a power grab. I wouldn’t put it past that thug in the White House. What matters is we’re going to have to beef up security and watch for the liars trying to undermine our efforts to keep order.”

“Do you think she—” He inclined his head toward Julia, who was watching her business go up in smoke with her dog sitting beside her, panting in the heat.

“I don’t know for sure, but the way she was this afternoon? Storming around the station, yelling to see him? What does that tell you?”

“Yeah,” Randolph said. He was looking at Julia Shumway with flat-eyed consideration. “And burning up your own place, what better cover than that?”

Big Jim pointed a finger at him as if to say You could have a bingo there. “I have to get off my feet. Get on the horn to George Frederick. Tell him to keep his good weather eye on that Lewiston Canuck.”

“All right.” Randolph unclipped his walkie-talkie.

Behind them, Fernald Bowie shouted: “Roof’s comin down! You on the street, stand back! You men on top of those other buildings at the ready, at the ready!”

Big Jim watched with one hand on the driver’s door of his Hummer as the roof of the Democrat caved in, sending a gusher of sparks straight up into the black sky. The men posted on the adjacent buildings checked that their partners’ Indian pumps were primed and then stood at parade rest, waiting for sparks with their nozzles in their hands.

The expression on Shumway’s face as the Democrat ’s roof let go did Big Jim’s heart more good than all the cotton-picking medicines and pacemakers in the world. For years he’d been forced to put up with her weekly tirades, and while he wouldn’t admit he had been afraid of her, he surely had been annoyed.

But look at her now, he thought. Looks like she came home and found her mother dead on the pot.

“You look better,” Randolph said. “Your color’s coming back.”

“I feel better,” Big Jim said. “But I’ll still go home. Grab some shuteye.”

“That’s a good idea,” Randolph said. “We need you, my friend. Now more than ever. And if this Dome thing doesn’t go away …” He shook his head, his basset-hound eyes never leaving Big Jim’s face. “I don’t know how we’d get along without you, put it that way. I love Andy Sanders like a brother but he doesn’t have much in the way of brains. And Andrea Grinnell hasn’t been worth a tin shit since she fell and hurt her back. You’re the glue that holds Chester’s Mill together.”

Big Jim was moved by this. He gripped Randolph’s arm and squeezed. “I’d give my life for this town. That’s how much I love it.”

“I know. Me too. And no one’s going to steal it out from under us.”

“Got that right,” Big Jim said.

He drove away, mounting the sidewalk to get past the roadblock that had been placed at the north end of the business district. His heart was steady in his chest again (well, almost), but he was troubled, nonetheless. He’d have to see Everett. He didn’t like the idea; Everett was another noseyparker bent on causing trouble at a time when the town had to pull together. Also, he was no doctor. Big Jim would almost have felt better about trusting a vet with his medical problems, except there was none in town. He’d have to hope that if he needed medicine, something to regularize his heartbeat, Everett would know the right kind.


Date: 2015-12-17; view: 595


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