Under the Dome: A Novel Page 18

  “I got money, coin of the realm, and I’m takin what’s mine.”

  He started around the counter. Junior grabbed him by the back of the shirt and the seat of the pants, whirled him around, and ran him toward the front of the store.

  “Hey!” Sam shouted as his feet bicycled above the old oiled boards. “Take your hands off me! Take your fucking hands—”

  Out through the door and down the steps, Junior holding the old man out in front of him. He was light as a bag of feathers. And Christ, he was farting ! Pow-pow-pow, like a damn machine gun!

  Stubby Norman’s panel truck was parked at the curb, the one with FURNITURE BOUGHT & SOLD and TOP PRICES FOR ANTIQUES on the side. Stubby himself stood beside it with his mouth open. Junior didn’t hesitate. He ran the blabbering old drunk headfirst into the side of the truck. The thin metal gave out a mellow BONNG!

  It didn’t occur to Junior that he might have killed the smelly fuck until Sloppy Sam dropped like a rock, half on the sidewalk and half in the gutter. But it took more than a smack against the side of an old truck to kill Sam Verdreaux. Or silence him. He cried out, then just began to cry. He got to his knees. Scarlet was pouring down his face from his scalp, where the skin had split. He wiped some away, looked at it with disbelief, then held out his dripping fingers.

  Foot traffic on the sidewalk had halted so completely that someone might have called a game of Statues. Pedestrians stared with wide eyes at the kneeling man holding out a palmful of blood.

  “I’ll sue this whole fuckin town for police brutality!” Sam bawled. “AND I’LL WIN!”

  Freddy came down the store’s steps and stood beside Junior.

  “Go ahead, say it,” Junior told him.

  “Say what?”

  “I overreacted.”

  “The fuck you did. You heard what Pete said: Take no shit from anybody. Partner, that deal starts here and now.”

  Partner! Junior’s heart lifted at the word.

  “You can’t throw me out when I got money!” Sam raved. “You can’t beat me up! I’m an American citizen! I’ll see you in court!”

  “Good luck on that one,” Freddy said. “The courthouse is in Castle Rock, and from what I hear, the road going there is closed.”

  He hauled the old man to his feet. Sam’s nose was also bleeding, and the flow had turned his shirt into a red bib. Freddy reached around to the small of his back for a set of his plastic cuffs (Gotta get me some of those, Junior thought admiringly). A moment later they were on Sam’s wrists.

  Freddy looked around at the witnesses—those on the street, those crowding the doorway of the Gas & Grocery. “This man is being arrested for public disturbance, interfering with police officers, and attempted assault!” he said in a bugling voice Junior remembered well from his days on the football field. Hectoring from the sidelines, it had never failed to irritate him. Now it sounded delightful.

  Guess I’m growing up, Junior thought.

  “He is also being arrested for violating the new no-alcohol rule, instituted by Chief Randolph. Take a good look!” Freddy shook Sam. Blood flew from Sam’s face and filthy hair. “We’ve got a crisis situation here, folks, but there’s a new sheriff in town, and he intends to handle it. Get used to it, deal with it, learn to love it. That’s my advice. Follow it, and I’m sure we’ll get through this situation just fine. Go against it, and …” He pointed to Sam’s hands, plasticuffed behind him.

  A couple of people actually applauded. For Junior Rennie, the sound was like cold water on a hot day. Then, as Freddy began to frog-march the bleeding old man up the street, Junior felt eyes on him. The sensation so clear it might have been fingers poking the nape of his neck. He turned, and there was Dale Barbara. Standing with the newspaper editor and looking at him with flat eyes. Barbara, who had beaten him up pretty good that night in the parking lot. Who’d marked all three of them, before sheer weight of numbers had finally begun to turn things around.

  Junior’s good feelings began to depart. He could almost feel them flying up through the top of his head like birds. Or bats from a belfry.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked Barbara.

  “I’ve a better question,” Julia Shumway said. She was wearing her tight little smile. “What are you doing, brutalizing a man who’s a quarter your weight and three times your age?”

  Junior could think of nothing to say. He felt blood rush into his face and fan out on his cheeks. He suddenly saw the newspaper bitch in the McCain pantry, keeping Angie and Dodee company. Barbara, too. Maybe lying on top of the newspaper bitch, as if he were enjoying a little of the old sumpin-sumpin.

  Freddy came to Junior’s rescue. He spoke calmly. He wore the stolid policeman’s face known the world over. “Any questions about police policy should go to the new Chief, ma’am. In the meantime, you’d do well to remember that, for the time being, we’re on our own. Sometimes when people are on their own, examples have to be made.”

  “Sometimes when people are on their own, they do things they regret later,” Julia replied. “Usually when the investigations start.”

  The corners of Freddy’s mouth turned down. Then he hauled Sam down the sidewalk.

  Junior looked at Barbie a moment longer, then said: “You want to watch your mouth around me. And your step.” He touched a thumb deliberately to his shiny new badge. “Perkins is dead and I’m the law.”

  “Junior,” Barbie said, “you don’t look so good. Are you sick?”

  Junior looked at him from eyes that were a little too wide. Then he turned and went after his new partner. His fists were clenched.

  6

  In times of crisis, folks are apt to fall back on the familiar for comfort. That is as true for the religious as it is for the heathen. There were no surprises for the faithful in Chester’s Mill that morning; Piper Libby preached hope at the Congo, and Lester Coggins preached hellfire at Christ the Holy Redeemer. Both churches were packed.

  Piper’s scripture was from the book of John: A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. She told those who filled the pews of the Congo church that prayer was important in times of crisis—the comfort of prayer, the power of prayer—but it was also important to help one another, depend on one another, and love one another.

  “God tests us with things we don’t understand,” she said. “Sometimes it’s sickness. Sometimes it’s the unexpected death of a loved one.” She looked sympathetically at Brenda Perkins, who sat with her head bowed and her hands clasped in the lap of a black dress. “And now it’s some inexplicable barrier that has cut us off from the outside world. We don’t understand it, but we don’t understand sickness or pain or the unexpected deaths of good people, either. We ask God why, and in the Old Testament, the answer is the one He gave to Job: ‘Were you there when I made the world?’ In the New—and more enlightened—Testament, it’s the answer Jesus gave to his disciples: ‘Love one another, as I have loved you.’ That’s what we have to do today and every day until this thing is over: love one another. Help one another. And wait for the test to end, as God’s tests always do.”

  Lester Coggins’s scripture came from Numbers (a section of the Bible not known for optimism): Behold, ye have sinned against the LORD, and be sure your sin will find you out.

  Like Piper, Lester mentioned the testing concept—an ecclesiastical hit during all the great clustermugs of history—but his major theme had to do with the infection of sin, and how God dealt with such infections, which seemed to be squeezing them with His Fingers the way a man might squeeze a troublesome pimple until the pus squirted out like holy Colgate.

  And because, even in the clear light of a beautiful October morning, he was still more than half convinced that the sin for which the town was being punished was his own, Lester was particularly eloquent. There were tears in many eyes, and cries of “Yes, Lord!” rang from one amen corner to the other. When he was this inspired, great new ideas sometimes occurred
to Lester even as he was preaching. One occurred to him this day, and he articulated it at once, without so much as a pause for thought. It needed no thought. Some things are just too bright, too glowing, not to be right.

  “This afternoon I’m going out to where Route 119 strikes God’s mysterious Gate,” he said.

  “Yes, Jesus!” a weeping woman cried. Others clapped their hands or raised them in testimony.

  “I reckon two o’clock. I’m going to get on my knees out there in that dairy field, yea, and I’m going to pray to God to lift this affliction.”

  This time the cries of Yes Lord and Yes Jesus and God knows it were louder.

  “But first—” Lester raised the hand with which he had whipped his bare back in the dark of night. “First, I’m going to pray about the SIN that has caused this PAIN and this SORROW and this AFFLICTION ! If I am alone, God may not hear me. If I am with two or three or even five, God STILL may not hear me, can you say amen.”

  They could. They did. All of them were holding up their hands now, and swaying from side to side, caught up in that good-God fever.

  “But if YOU ALL were to come out—if we were to pray in a circle right there in God’s grass, under God’s blue sky … within sight of the soldiers they say are guarding the work of God’s righteous Hand … if YOU ALL were to come out, if WE ALL were to pray together, then we might be able to get to the bottom of this sin, and drag it out into the light to die, and work a God-almighty miracle! WILL YOU COME? WILL YOU GET KNEEBOUND WITH ME? ”

  Of course they would come. Of course they would get knee-bound. People enjoy an honest-to-God prayer meeting in good times and bad. And when the band swung into “Whate’er My God Ordains is Right” (key of G, Lester on lead guitar), they sang fit to raise the roof.

  Jim Rennie was there, of course; it was Big Jim who made the car-pool arrangements.

  7

  END THE SECRECY!

  FREE CHESTER’S MILL!

  DEMONSTRATE!!!!

  WHERE? The Dinsmore Dairy Farm on Route 119 (Just look for the WRECKED TRUCK and the MILITARY AGENTS OF OPPRESSION)!

  WHEN? 2 PM, EOT (Eastern Oppression Time)!

  WHO? YOU, and every Friend you can bring! Tell them WE WANT TO TELL OUR STORY TO THE MEDIA! Tell them WE WANT TO KNOW WHO DID THIS TO US!

  AND WHY!

  Most of all, tell them WE WANT OUT!!!

  This is OUR TOWN! We need to fight for it!

  WE NEED TO TAKE IT BACK!!!

  Some signs available, but be sure & bring your own (and remember that Profanity is counterproductive).

  FIGHT THE POWER!

  STICK IT TO THE MAN!

  The Committee to Free Chester’s Mill

  8

  If there was one man in town who could take that old Nietzschean saying “Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger” as his personal motto, that man was Romeo Burpee, a hustler with a daddy-cool Elvis pomp and pointed boots with elastic sides. He owed his first name to a romantic Franco-American mother; his last to a hardass Yankee father who was practical to his dry pinchpenny core. Romeo had survived a childhood of merciless taunts—plus the occasional beating—to become the richest man in town. (Well … no. Big Jim was the richest man in town, but much of his wealth was of necessity hidden.) Rommie owned the largest and most profitable indie department store in the entire state. Back in the eighties, his potential backers in the venture had told him he was mad to go with such a frankly ugly name as Burpee’s. Rommie’s response had been that if the name hadn’t hurt Burpee Seeds, it wouldn’t hurt him. And now their biggest summer sellers were tee-shirts reading MEET ME FOR SLURPEES AT BURPEES. Take that, you imagination-challenged bankers!

  He had succeeded, in large measure, by recognizing the main chance and pursuing it ruthlessly. Around ten that Sunday morning—not long after he’d watched Sloppy Sam hauled off to the copshop—another main chance rolled around. As they always did, if you watched for them.

  Romeo observed children putting up posters. Computer-generated and very professional-looking. The kids—most on bikes, a couple on skateboards—were doing a good job of covering Main Street. A protest demonstration out on 119. Romeo wondered whose idea that had been.

  He caught up with one and asked.

  “It was my idea,” Joe McClatchey said.

  “No shit?”

  “No shit whatsoever,” Joe said.

  Rommie tipped the kid five, ignoring his protests and tucking it deep into his back pocket. Information was worth paying for. Rommie thought people would go to the kid’s demonstration. They were crazy to express their fear, frustration, and righteous anger.

  Shortly after sending Scarecrow Joe on his way, Romeo began to hear people talking about an afternoon prayer meeting, to be held by Pastor Coggins. Same by-God time, same by-God place.

  Surely a sign. One reading SALES OPPORTUNITY HERE.

  Romeo went into his store, where business was lackadaisical. The people Sunday-shopping today were either doing it at Food City or Mill Gas & Grocery. And they were the minority. Most were either at church or at home watching the news. Toby Manning was behind the cash register, watching CNN on a little battery-powered TV.

  “Shut off that quack and close down your register,” Romeo said.

  “Really, Mr. Burpee?”

  “Yes. Drag the big tent out of storage. Get Lily to help you.”

  “The Summer Blowout Sale tent?”

  “That’s the baby,” Romeo said. “We’re gonna pitch it in that cowgrass where Chuck Thompson’s plane crashed.”

  “Alden Dinsmore’s field? What if he wants money to use it?”

  “Then we’ll pay him.” Romeo was calculating. The store sold everything, including discount grocery items, and he currently had roughly a thousand packs of discount Happy Boy franks in the industrial freezer behind the store. He’d bought them from Happy Boy HQ in Rhode Island (company now defunct, little microbe problem, thank God not E. coli ), expecting to sell them to tourists and locals planning Fourth of July cookouts. Hadn’t done as well as he’d expected, thanks to the goddam recession, but had held onto them anyway, as stubbornly as a monkey holding onto a nut. And now maybe …

  Serve them on those little garden-sticks from Taiwan, he thought. I’ve still got a billion of those bastards. Call them something cute, like Frank-AMa-Bobs. Plus they had maybe a hundred cartons of Yummy Tummy Lemonade and Limeade powder, another discount item on which he’d expected to take a loss.

  “We’re going to want to pack up all the Blue Rhino, too.” Now his mind was clicking away like an adding machine, which was just the way Romeo liked it to click.

  Toby was starting to look excited. “Whatcha got in mind, Mr. Burpee?”

  Rommie went on inventorying stuff he’d expected to record on his books as a dead loss. Those cheapshit pinwheels … leftover Fourth of July sparklers … the stale candy he’d been saving for Halloween …

  “Toby,” he said, “we’re going to throw the biggest damn cookout and field day this town has ever seen. Get moving. We’ve got a lot to do.”

  9

  Rusty was making hospital rounds with Dr. Haskell when the walkie-talkie Linda had insisted he carry buzzed in his pocket.

  Her voice was tinny but clear. “Rusty, I have to go in after all. Randolph says it looks like half the town is going to be out at the barrier on 119 this afternoon—some for a prayer meeting, some for a demonstration. Romeo Burpee is going to pitch a tent and sell hot-dogs, so expect an influx of gastroenteritis patients this evening.”

  Rusty groaned.

  “I’ll have to leave the girls with Marta after all.” Linda sounded defensive and worried, a woman who knew there was suddenly not enough of her to go around. “I’ll fill her in on Jannie’s problem.”

  “Okay.” He knew if he told her to stay home, she would … and all he’d accomplish would be to worry her just when her worries were starting to settle a bit. And if a crowd did show up out there, she’d be needed.

 
; “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for understanding.”

  “Just remember to send the dog to Marta’s with the girls,” Rusty said. “You know what Haskell said.”

  Dr. Ron Haskell—The Wiz—had come up big for the Everett family this morning. Had come up big ever since the onset of the crisis, really. Rusty never would have expected it, but he appreciated it. And he could see by the old guy’s pouched eyes and drooping mouth that Haskell was paying the price. The Wiz was too old for medical crises; snoozing in the third-floor lounge was more his speed these days. But, other than Ginny Tomlinson and Twitch, it was now just Rusty and The Wiz holding the fort. It was bad luck all around that the Dome had crashed down on a beautiful weekend morning when anyone who could get out of town had done so.

  Haskell, although pushing seventy, had stayed at the hospital with Rusty last night until eleven, when Rusty had literally forced him out the door, and he’d been back by seven this morning, when Rusty and Linda arrived with daughters in tow. Also with Audrey, who seemed to take the new environment of Cathy Russell calmly enough. Judy and Janelle had walked on either side of the big golden, touching her for comfort. Janelle had looked scared to death.

  “What’s with the dog?” Haskell asked, and when Rusty filled him in, Haskell had nodded and said to Janelle: “Let’s check you out, hon.”

  “Will it hurt?” Janelle had asked apprehensively.

  “Not unless getting a piece of candy after I look in your eyes hurts.”

  When the exam was over, the adults left the two girls and the dog in the examining room and went into the hall. Haskell’s shoulders were slumped. His hair seemed to have whitened overnight.

  “What’s your diagnosis, Rusty?” Haskell had asked.

  “Petit mal. I’d think brought on by excitement and worry, but Audi’s been doing that Whining Thing of hers for months.”