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  Gretchen tapped the face of her watch lightly. 'If we're going to make that meeting at noon--'

  'Yes, of course,' Helen said, a little apologetically. 'We're on the official Susan Day Welcoming Committee,' she told Ralph, 'and in this case that's not quite as Junior League as it sounds. Our main job really isn't to welcome her but to help protect her.'

  'Is that going to be a problem, do you think?'

  'It'll be tense, let's put it that way,' Gretchen said. 'She's got half a dozen of her own security people, and they've been sending us turn-around faxes of all the Derry-related threats she's received. It's standard operating procedure with them - she's been in a lot of people's faces for a lot of years. They're keeping us in the picture, but they're also making sure we understand that, because we're the inviting group, her safety is WomanCare's responsibility as well as theirs.'

  Ralph opened his mouth to ask if there had been many threats, but he supposed he already knew the answer to that question. He'd lived in Derry for seventy years, off and on, and he knew it was a dangerous machine - there were a lot of sharp points and cutting edges just below the surface. That was true of a lot of cities, of course, but in Derry there had always seemed to be an extra dimension to the ugliness. Helen had called it home, and it was his home, too, but--

  He found himself remembering something which had happened almost ten years ago, shortly after the annual Canal Days Festival had ended. Three boys had thrown an unassuming and inoffensive young gay man named Adrian Mellon into the Kenduskeag after repeatedly biting and stabbing him; it was rumored they had stood there on the bridge behind the Falcon Tavern and watched him die. They'd told the police they hadn't liked the hat he was wearing. That was also Derry, and only a fool would ignore the fact.

  As if this memory had led him to it (perhaps it had), Ralph looked at the photo on the front page of today's paper again - Ham Davenport with his upraised fist, Dan Dalton with his bloody nose and dazed eyes, wearing Ham's sign on his head.

  'How many threats?' he asked. 'Over a dozen?'

  'About thirty,' Gretchen said. 'Of those, her security people take half a dozen seriously. Two are threats to blow up the Civic Center if she doesn't cancel. One - this is a real honey - is from someone who says he's got a Big Squirt water-gun filled with battery acid. "If I make a direct hit, not even your dyke friends will be able to look at you without throwing up," that one says.'

  'Nice,' Ralph said.

  'It brings us to the point, anyway,' Gretchen said. She rummaged in her bag, brought out a small can with a red top, and put it on the table. 'A little present from all your grateful friends at WomanCare.'

  Ralph picked the can up. On one side was a picture of a woman spraying a cloud of gas at a man wearing a slouch hat and a Beagle Boys-type eye-mask. On the other was a single word in bright red capital letters: BODYGUARD

  'What is this?' he asked, shocked in spite of himself. 'Mace?'

  'No,' Gretchen said. 'Mace is a risky proposition in Maine, legally speaking. This stuff is much milder . . . but if you give somebody a faceful, they won't even think of hassling you for at least a couple of minutes. It numbs the skin, irritates the eyes, and causes nausea.'

  Ralph took the cap off the can, looked at the red aerosol nozzle beneath, then replaced the cap. 'Good Christ, woman, why would I want to lug around a can of this stuff?'

  'Because you've been officially designated a Centurion,' Gretchen said.

  'A what?' Ralph asked.

  'A Centurion,' Helen repeated. Nat was fast asleep in her arms, and Ralph realized the auras were gone again. 'It's what The Friends of Life call their major enemies - the ringleaders of the opposition.'

  'Okay,' Ralph said, 'I've got it now. Ed talked about people he called Centurions on the day he . . . assaulted you. He talked about a lot of things that day, though, and all of them were crazy.'

  'Yes, Ed's at the bottom of it, and he is crazy,' Helen said. 'We don't think he's mentioned this Centurion business except to a small inner circle - people who are almost as gonzo as he is. The rest of The Friends of Life . . . I don't think they have any idea. I mean, did you? Until last month, did you have any idea that he was crazy?'

  Ralph shook his head.

  'Hawking Labs finally fired him,' Helen said. 'Yesterday. They held onto him as long as they could - he's great at what he does, and they had a lot invested in him - but in the end they had to let him go. Three months' severance pay in lieu of notice . . . not bad for a guy who beats up his wife and throws dolls loaded with fake blood at the windows of the local women's clinic.' She tapped the newspaper. 'This last demonstration was the final straw. It's the third or fourth time he's been arrested since he got involved with The Friends of Life.'

  'You have someone inside, don't you?' Ralph said. 'That's how you know all this.'

  Gretchen smiled. 'We're not the only ones who've got someone at least partway inside; we have a running joke that there really are no Friends of Life, just a bunch of double agents. Derry PD's got someone; the State Police do, too. And those are just the ones our . . . our person . . . knows about. Hell, the FBI could be monitoring them, as well. The Friends of Life are eminently infiltratable, Ralph, because they're convinced that, deep down, everyone is on their side. But we believe that our person is the only one who's gotten in toward the middle, and this person says that Dan Dalton is just the tail Ed Deepneau wags.'

  'I guessed that the first time I saw them together on the TV news,' Ralph said.

  Gretchen got up, gathered the coffee cups, took them over to the sink, and began to rinse them. 'I've been active in the women's movement for thirteen years now, and I've seen a lot of crazy shit, but I've never seen anything like this. He's got these dopes believing that women in Derry are undergoing involuntary abortions, that half of them haven't even realized they're pregnant before the Centurions come in the night and take their babies.'

  'Has he told them about the incinerator over in Newport?' Ralph asked. 'The one that's really a baby crematorium?'

  Gretchen turned from the sink, her eyes wide. 'How did you know about that?'

  'Oh, I got the lowdown from Ed himself, up close and in person. Starting in July of '92.' He hesitated for just a moment, then gave them an account of the day he had met Ed out by the airport, and how Ed had accused the man in the pickup of hauling dead babies in the barrels marked WEED-GO. Helen listened silently, her eyes growing steadily wider and rounder. 'He was going on about the same stuff on the day he beat you up,' Ralph finished, 'but he'd embellished it considerably by then.'

  'That probably explains why he's fixated on you,' Gretchen said, 'but in a very real sense, the why doesn't matter. The fact is, he's given his nuttier friends a list of these so-called Centurions. We don't know everyone who's on it, but I am, and Helen is, and Susan Day, of course . . . and you.'

  Why me? Ralph almost asked, then recognized it as another pointless question. Maybe Ed had targeted him because he had called the cops after Ed had beaten Helen; more likely it had happened for no understandable reason at all. Ralph remembered reading somewhere that David Berkowitz - also known as the Son of Sam - claimed to have killed on some occasions under instructions from his dog.

  'What do you expect them to try?' Ralph asked. 'Armed assault, like in a Chuck Norris movie?'

  He smiled, but Gretchen did not answer it. 'The thing is, we don't know what they might try,' she said. 'The most likely answer is nothing at all. Then again, Ed or one of the others might take it into his head to try and push you out your own kitchen window. The spray is basically nothing but watered-down teargas. A little insurance policy, that's all.'

  'Insurance,' he said thoughtfully.

  'You're in very select company,' Helen said with a wan smile. 'The only other male Centurion on their list - that we know about, anyway - is Mayor Cohen.'

  'Did you give him one of these?' Ralph asked, picking up the aerosol can. It looked no more dangerous than the free samples of shaving cream he got in the m
ail from time to time.

  'We didn't need to,' Gretchen said. She looked at her watch again. Helen saw the gesture and stood up with the sleeping baby in her arms. 'He's got a license to carry a concealed weapon.'

  'How would you know a thing like that?' Ralph asked.

  'We checked the files at City Hall,' she said, and grinned. 'Gun permits are a matter of public record.'

  'Oh.' A thought occurred to him. 'What about Ed? Did you check on him? Does he have one?'

  'Nope,' she said. 'But guys like Ed don't necessarily apply for weapons permits once they get past a certain point . . . you know that, don't you?'

  'Yes,' Ralph replied, also getting up. 'I suppose I do. What about you guys? Are you watching out?'

  'You bet, Daddy-O. You bet we are.'

  He nodded, but wasn't entirely satisfied. There was a faintly patronizing tone in her voice that he didn't like, as if the very question were a silly one. But it wasn't silly, and if she didn't know that, she and her friends could be in trouble down the line. Bad trouble.

  'I hope so,' he said. 'I really do. Can I carry Nat downstairs for you, Helen?'

  'Better not - you'd wake her.' She looked at him gravely. 'Would you carry that spray for me, Ralph? I can't stand the thought of you being hurt just because you tried to help me and he's got some crazy bee in his bonnet.'

  'I'll think about it very seriously. Will that do?'

  'I guess it will have to.' She looked at him closely, her eyes searching his face. 'You look much better than the last time I saw you - you're sleeping again, aren't you?'

  He grinned. 'Well, to tell you the truth, I'm still having my problems, but I must be getting better, because people keep telling me that.'

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed the corner of his mouth. 'We'll be in touch, won't we? I mean, we'll stay in touch.'

  'I'll do my part if you'll do yours, sweetie.'

  She smiled. 'You can count on that, Ralph - you're the nicest male Centurion I know.'

  They all laughed at that, so hard that Natalie woke up and looked around at them in sleepy surprise.

  6

  After he had seen the women off (I'M PRO-CHOICE, AND I VOTE! read the sticker on the rear bumper of Gretchen Tillbury's Accord fastback), Ralph climbed slowly up to the second floor again. Weariness dragged at his heels like invisible weights. Once in the kitchen he looked first at the vase of flowers, trying to see that strange and gorgeous green mist rising from the stems. Nothing. Then he picked up the aerosol and re-examined the cartoon on the side of the can. One Menaced Woman, heroically warding off her attacker; one Bad Man, complete with eye-mask and slouch hat. No shades of gray here; just a case of go ahead, punk, make my day.

  It occurred to Ralph that Ed's madness was catching. There were women all over Derry - Gretchen Tillbury and his own sweet Helen among them - walking around with these little spray-cans in their purses, and all the cans really said the same thing: I'm afraid. The bad men in the masks and the slouch hats have arrived in Derry and I'm afraid.

  Ralph wanted no part of it. Standing on tiptoe, he put the can of Bodyguard on top of the kitchen cabinet beside the sink, then shrugged into his old gray leather jacket. He would go up to the picnic area near the airport and see if he could find a game of chess. Lacking that, maybe a few rounds of cribbage.

  He paused in the kitchen doorway, looking fixedly at the flowers, trying to make that sizzling green mist come. Nothing happened.

  But it was there. You saw it; Natalie did, too.

  But had she? Had she really? Babies were always goggling at stuff, everything amazed them, so how could he know for sure?

  'I just do,' he said to the empty apartment. Correct. The green mist rising from the stems of the flowers had been there, all the auras had been there, and . . .

  'And they're still there,' he said, and did not know if he should be relieved or appalled by the firmness he heard in his own voice.

  For right now, why don't you try being neither, sweetheart?

  His thought, Carolyn's voice, good advice.

  Ralph locked up his apartment and went out into the Derry of the Old Crocks, looking for a game of chess.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  * * *

  1

  When Ralph came walking up Harris Avenue to his apartment on October 2nd, with a couple of recycled Elmer Kelton Westerns from Back Pages in one hand, he saw that someone was sitting on the porch steps with his own book. The visitor wasn't reading, however; he was watching with dreamy intensity as the warm wind which had been blowing all day harvested the yellow and gold leaves from the oaks and the three surviving elms across the street.

  Ralph came closer, observing the thin white hair flying around the skull of the man on the porch, and the way all his bulk seemed to have run into his belly, hips, and bottom. That wide center section, coupled with the scrawny neck, narrow chest, and spindly legs clad in old green flannel pants, gave him the look of a man wearing an inner tube beneath his clothes. Even from a hundred and fifty yards away, there was really no question about who the visitor was: Dorrance Marstellar.

  Sighing, Ralph walked the rest of the way up to his building. Dorrance, seemingly hypnotized by the bright falling leaves, did not look around until Ralph's shadow dropped across him. Then he turned, craned his neck, and smiled his sweet, strangely vulnerable smile.

  Faye Chapin, Don Veazie, and some of the other oldtimers who hung out at the picnic area up by Runway 3 (they would retire to the Jackson Street Billiard Emporium once Indian summer broke and the weather turned cold) saw that smile as just another indicator that Old Dor, poetry books or no poetry books, was essentially brainless. Don Veazie, nobody's idea of Mr Sensitivity, had fallen into the habit of calling Dorrance Old Chief Dumbhead, and Faye had once told Ralph that he, Faye, wasn't in the least surprised that Old Dor had lived to the age of half-past ninety. 'People who don't have any furniture on their upper storey always live the longest,' he had explained to Ralph earlier that year. 'They don't have anything to worry about. That keeps their blood-pressure down and they ain't so likely to blow a valve or throw a rod.'

  Ralph, however, was not so sure. The sweetness in Dorrance's smile did not make the old man look empty-headed to him; it made him look somehow ethereal and knowing at the same time . . . sort of like a small-town Merlin. None the less, he could have done without a visit from Dor today; this morning he had set a new record, waking at 1:58 a.m., and he was exhausted. He only wanted to sit in his own living room, drink coffee, and try to read one of the Westerns he had picked up downtown. Maybe later on he would take another stab at napping.

  'Hello,' Dorrance said. The book he was holding was a paperback - Cemetery Nights, by a man named Stephen Dobyns.

  'Hello, Dor,' he said. 'Good book?'

  Dorrance looked down at the book as if he'd forgotten he had one, then smiled and nodded. 'Yes, very good. He writes poems that are like stories. I don't always like that, but sometimes I do.'

  'That's good. Listen, Dor, it's great to see you, but the walk up the hill kind of tired me out, so maybe we could visit another t--'

  'Oh, that's all right,' Dorrance said, standing up. There was a faint cinnamony smell about him that always made Ralph think of Egyptian mummies kept behind red velvet ropes in shadowy museums. His face was almost without lines except for the tiny sprays of crow's feet around his eyes, but his age was unmistakable (and a little scary): his blue eyes were faded to the watery gray of an April sky and his skin had a translucent clarity that reminded Ralph of Nat's skin. His lips were loose and almost lavender in color. They made little smacking sounds when he spoke. 'That's all right, I didn't come to visit; I came to give you a message.'

  'What message? From who?'

  'I don't know who it's from,' Dorrance said, giving Ralph a look that suggested he thought Ralph was either being foolish or playing dumb. 'I don't mess in with longtime business. I told you not to, either, don't you remember?'

  Ralph did remember something, b
ut he was damned if he knew exactly what. Nor did he care. He was tired, and he had already had to listen to a fair amount of tiresome proselytizing on the subject of Susan Day from Ham Davenport. He had no urge to go round and round with Dorrance Marstellar on top of that, no matter how beautiful this Saturday morning was. 'Well then, just give me the message,' he said, 'and I'll toddle along upstairs - how would that be?'

  'Oh, sure, good, fine.' But then Dorrance stopped, looking across the street as a fresh gust of wind sent a funnel of leaves storming into the bright October sky. His faded eyes were wide, and something in them made Ralph think of the Exalted & Revered Baby again - of the way she had snatched at the gray-blue marks left by his fingers, and the way she had looked at the flowers sizzling in the vase by the sink. Ralph had seen Dor stand watching airplanes take off and land on Runway 3 with that same slack-jawed expression, sometimes for an hour or more.

  'Dor?' he prompted.

  Dorrance's sparse eyelashes fluttered. 'Oh! Right! The message! The message is . . .' He frowned slightly and looked down at the book which he was now bending back and forth in his hands. Then his face cleared and he looked up at Ralph again. 'The message is,"Cancel the appointment."'

  It was Ralph's turn to frown. 'What appointment?'

  'You shouldn't have messed in,' Dorrance repeated, then heaved a big sigh. 'But it's too late now. Done-bun-can't-be-undone. Just cancel the appointment. Don't let that fellow stick any pins in you.'

  Ralph had been turning to the porch steps; now he turned back to Dorrance. 'Hong? Are you talking about Hong?'

  'How would I know?' Dorrance asked in an irritated tone of voice. 'I don't mess in, I told you that. Every now and then I carry a message, is all, like now. I was supposed to tell you to cancel the appointment with the pin-sticker man, and I done it. The rest is up to you.'

  Dorrance was looking up at the trees across the street again, his odd, lineless face wearing an expression of mild exaltation. The strong fall wind rippled his hair like seaweed. When Ralph touched his shoulder the old man turned to him willingly enough, and Ralph suddenly realized that what Faye Chapin and the others saw as foolishness might actually be joy. If so, the mistake probably said more about them than it did about Old Dor.