The Dead Zone Read online

  Chapter 22

  1

  Herb Smith took Charlene MacKenzie as his second wife on the afternoon of January 2, 1977, just as planned. The ceremony took place in the Congregational Church at Southwest Bend. The bride’s father, an eighty-year-old gentleman who was almost blind, gave her away. Johnny stood up with his dad and produced the ring flawlessly at the proper moment. It was a lovely occasion.

  Sarah Hazlett attended with her husband and their son, who was leaving his babyhood behind now. Sarah was pregnant and radiant, a picture of happiness and fulfillment. Looking at her, Johnny was surprised by a stab of bitter jealousy like an unexpected attack of gas. After a few moments it went away, and Johnny went over and spoke to them at the reception following the wedding.

  It was the first time he had met Sarah’s husband. He was a tall, good-looking man with a pencil-line moustache and prematurely graying hair. His canvass for the Maine state senate had been successful, and he held forth on what the national elections had really meant, and the difficulties of working with an independent governor, while Denny pulled at the leg of his trousers and demanded more-drink, Daddy, more-drink, more-drink!

  Sarah said little, but Johnny felt her brilliant eyes on him—an uncomfortable sensation, but somehow not unpleasant. A little sad, maybe.

  The liquor at the reception flowed freely, and Johnny went two drinks beyond his usual two-drink stopping point—the shock of seeing Sarah again, maybe, this time with her family, or maybe only the realization, written on Charlene’s radiant face, that Vera Smith really was gone, and for all time. So when he approached Hector Markstone, father of the bride, some fifteen minutes after the Hazletts had left, he had a pleasant buzz on.

  The old man was sitting in the corner by the demolished remains of the wedding cake, his arthritis-gnarled hands folded over his cane. He was wearing dark glasses. One bow had been mended with black electricians’ tape. Beside him there stood two empty bottles of beer and another that was half-full. He peered closely at Johnny.

  “Herb’s boy, ain’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A longer scrutiny. Then Hector Markstone said, “Boy, you don’t look well.”

  “Too many late nights, I guess.”

  “Look like you need a tonic. Something to build you up.”

  “You were in World War I, weren’t you?” Johnny asked. A number of medals, including a Croix de Guerre, were pinned to the old man’s blue serge suit coat.

  “Indeed I was,” Markstone said, brightening. “Served under Black Jack Pershing. AEF, 1917 and 18. We went through the mud and the crud. The wind blew and the shit flew. Belleau Wood, my boy. Belleau Wood. It’s just a name in the history books now. But I was there. I saw men die there. The wind blew and the shit flew and up from the trenches came the whole damn crew.”

  “And Charlene said that your boy ... her brother ...”

  “Buddy. Yep. Would have been your stepuncle, boy. Did we love that boy? I guess we did. His name was Joe, but everyone called him Buddy almost from the day he was born. Charlie’s mother started to die the day the telegram came.”

  “Killed in the war, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he was,” the old man said slowly. “St. Lô, 1944. Not that far from Belleau Wood, not the way we measure things over here, anyway. They ended Buddy’s life with a bullet. The Nazis.”

  “I’m working on an essay,” Johnny said, feeling a certain drunken cunning at having brought the conversation around to his real object at last. “I’m hoping to sell it to the Atlantic or maybe Harper’s ...”

  “Writer, are you?” The dark glasses glinted up at Johnny with renewed interest.

  “Well, I’m trying,” Johnny said. Already he was beginning to regret his glibness. Yes, I’m a writer. I write in my notebooks, after the dark of night his fallen. “Anyway, the essay’s going to be about Hitler.”

  “Hitler? What about Hitler?”

  “Well ... suppose ... just suppose you could hop into a time machine and go back to the year 1932. In Germany. And suppose you came across Hitler. Would you kill him or let him live?”

  The old man’s blank black glasses tilted slowly up to Johnny’s face. And now Johnny didn’t feel drunk or glib or clever at all. Everything seemed to depend on what this old man had to say.

  “Is it a joke, boy?”

  “No. No joke.”

  One of Hector Markstone’s hands left the head of his cane. It went to the pocket of his suit pants and fumbled there for what seemed an eternity. At last it came out again. It was holding a bone-handled pocket knife that had been rubbed as smooth and mellow as old ivory over the course of years. The other hand came into play, folding the knife’s one blade out with all the incredible delicacy of arthritis. It glimmered with bland wickedness under the light of the Congregational parish hall: a knife that had traveled to France in 1917 with a boy, a boy who had been part of a boy-army ready and willing to stop the dirty hun from bayoneting babies and raping nuns, ready to show the Frenchies a thing or two in the bargain, and the boys had been machine-gunned, the boys had gotten dysentery and the killer flu, the boys had inhaled mustard gas and phosgene gas, the boys had come out of Belleau Wood looking like haunted scarecrows who had seen the face of Lord Satan himself. And it had all turned out to be for nothing; it turned out that it all had to be done over again.

  Somewhere music was playing. People were laughing. People were dancing. A flashbar popped warm light. Somewhere far away. Johnny stared at the naked blade, transfixed, hypnotized by the play of the light over its honed edge.

  “See this?” Markstone asked softly.

  “Yes,” Johnny breathed.

  “I’d seat this in his black, lying, murderer’s heart,” Markstone said. “I’d put her in as far as she’d go ... and then I’d twist her.” He twisted the knife slowly in his hand, first clock, then counterclock. He smiled, showing baby-smooth gums and one leaning yellow tooth.

  “But first,” he said, “I’d coat the blade with rat poison.”

  2

  “Kill Hitler?” Roger Chatsworth said, his breath coming out in little puffs. The two of them were snowshoeing in the woods behind the Durham house. The woods were very silent. It was early March, but this day was as smoothly and coldly silent as deep January.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Interesting question,” Roger said. “Pointless, but interesting. No. I wouldn’t. I think I’d join the party instead. Try to change things from within. It might have been possible to purge him or frame him, always granting the foreknowledge of what was going to happen.”

  Johnny thought of the sawed-off pool cues. He thought of the brilliant green eyes of Sonny Elliman.

  “It might also be possible to get yourself killed,” he said. “Those guys were doing more than singing beer-hall songs back in 1933.”

  “Yes, that’s true enough.” He cocked an eyebrow at Johnny. “What would you do?”

  “I really don’t know,” Johnny said.

  Roger dismissed the subject. “How did your dad and his wife enjoy their honeymoon?”

  Johnny grinned. They had gone to Miami Beach, hotel-workers’ strike and all. “Charlene said she felt right at home, making her own bed. My dad says he feels like a freak, sporting a sunburn in March. But I think they both enjoyed it.”

  “And they’ve sold the houses?”

  “Yes, both on the same day. Got almost what they wanted, too. Now if it wasn’t for the goddam medical bills still hanging over my head, it’d be plain sailing.”

  “Johnny...”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Nothing. Let’s go back. I’ve got some Chivas Regal, if you’ve got a taste.”

  “I believe I do,” Johnny said.

  3

  They were reading Jude the Obscure now, and Johnny had been surprised at how quickly and naturally Chuck had taken to it (after some moaning and groaning over the first forty pages or so). He confessed he had been reading ahead at night on his own, and h
e intended to try something else by Hardy when he finished. For the first time in his life he was reading for pleasure. And like a boy who has just been initiated into the pleasures of sex by an older woman, he was wallowing in it.

  Now the book lay open but facedown in his lap. They were by the pool again, but it was still drained and both he and Johnny were wearing light jackets. Overhead, mild white clouds scudded across the sky, trying desultorily to coalesce enough to make it rain. The feel of the air was mysterious and sweet; spring was somewhere near. It was April 16.

  “Is this one of those trick questions?” Chuck asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, would they catch me?”

  “Pardon?” That was a question none of the others had asked.

  “If I killed him. Would they catch me? Hang me from a lamppost? Make me do the funky chicken six inches off the ground?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Johnny said slowly. “Yes, I suppose they would catch you.”

  “I don’t get to escape in my time machine to a gloriously changed world, huh? Back to good old 1977?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t matter. I’d kill him anyway.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Sure.” Chuck smiled a little. “I’d rig myself up with one of those hollow teeth filled with quick-acting poison or a razor blade in my shirt collar or something like that. So if I did get caught they couldn’t do anything too gross to me. But I’d do it. If I didn’t, I’d be afraid all those millions of people he ended up killing would haunt me to my grave.”

  “To your grave,” Johnny said a little sickly.

  “Are you okay, Johnny?”

  Johnny made himself return Chuck’s smile. “Fine. I guess my heart just missed a beat or something.”

  Chuck went on with Jude under the mildly cloudy sky.

  4

  May.

  The smell of cut grass was back for yet another return engagement—also those long-running favorites, honeysuckle, dust, and roses. In New England spring really only comes for one priceless week and then the deejays drag out the Beach Boys golden oldies, the buzz of the cruising Honda is heard throughout the land, and summer comes down with a hot thud.

  On one of the last evenings of that priceless spring week, Johnny sat in the guest house, looking out into the night. The spring dark was soft and deep. Chuck was off at the senior prom with his current girl friend, a more intellectual type than the last half-dozen. She reads, Chuck had confided to Johnny, one man of the world to another.

  Ngo was gone. He had gotten his citizenship papers in late March, had applied for a job as head groundskeeper at a North Carolina resort hotel in April, had gone down for an interview three weeks ago, and had been hired on the spot. Before he left, he had come to see Johnny.

  “You worry too much about tigers that are not there, I think,” he said. “The tiger has stripes that will fade into the background so he will not be seen. This makes the worried man see tigers everywhere.”

  “There’s a tiger,” Johnny had answered.

  “Yes,” Ngo agreed. “Somewhere. In the meantime, you grow thin.”

  Johnny got up, went to the fridge, and poured himself a Pepsi. He went outside with it to the little deck. He sat down and sipped his drink and thought how lucky everyone was that time travel was a complete impossibility. The moon came up, an orange eye above the pines, and beat a bloody path across the swimming pool. The first frogs croaked and thumped. After a little while Johnny went inside and poured a hefty dollop of Ron Rico into his Pepsi. He went back outside and sat down again, drinking and watching as the moon rose higher in the sky, changing slowly from orange to mystic, silent silver.

  Chapter 23

  1

  On June the 23rd, 1977, Chuck graduated from high school. Johnny, dressed in his best suit, sat in the hot auditorium with Roger and Shelley Chatsworth and watched as he graduated forty-third in his class. Shelley cried.

  Afterward, there was a lawn party at the Chatsworth home. The day was hot and humid. Thunderheads with purple bellies had formed in the west; they dragged slowly back and forth across the horizon, but seemed to come no closer. Chuck, flushed with three screwdrivers, came over with his girl friend, Patty Strachan, to show Johnny his graduation present from his parents—a new Pulsar watch.

  “I told them I wanted that R2D2 robot, but this was the best they could do,” Chuck said, and Johnny laughed. They talked a while longer and then Chuck said with almost rough abruptness: “I want to thank you, Johnny. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be graduating today at all.”

  “No, that isn’t true,” Johnny said. He was a little alarmed to see that Chuck was on the verge of tears. “Class always tells, man.”

  “That’s what I keep telling him,” Chuck’s girl said. Behind her glasses, a cool and elegant beauty was waiting to come out.

  “Maybe,” Chuck said. “Maybe it does. But I think I know which side my diploma is buttered on. Thanks a hell of a lot.” He put his arms around Johnny and gave him a hug.

  It came suddenly—a hard, bright bolt of image that made Johnny straighten up and clap his hand against the side of his head as if Chuck had struck him instead of hugging him. The image sank into his mind like a picture done by electroplate.

  “No,” he said. “No way. You two stay right away from there.”

  Chuck drew back uneasily. He had felt something. Something cold and dark and incomprehensible. Suddenly he didn’t want to touch Johnny; at that moment he never wanted to touch Johnny again. It was as if he had found out what it would be like to lie in his own coffin and watch the lid nailed down.

  “Johnny,” he said, and then faltered. “What ... what’s ...”

  Roger had been on his way over with drinks, and now he paused, puzzled. Johnny was looking over Chuck’s shoulder, at the distant thunderheads. His eyes were vague and hazy.

  He said: “You want to stay away from that place. There are no lightning rods.”

  “Johnny ...” Chuck looked at his father, frightened. “It’s like he’s having some kind of ... fit. or something.”

  “Lightning,” Johnny proclaimed in a carrying voice. People turned their heads to look at him. He spread his hands. “Flash fire. The insulation in the walls. The doors ... jammed. Burning people smell like hot pork.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Chuck’s girl cried, and conversation trickled to a halt. Now everyone was looking at Johnny, as they balanced plates of food and glasses.

  Roger stepped over. “John! Johnny! What’s wrong? Wake up” He snapped his fingers in front of Johnny’s vague eyes. Thunder muttered in the west, the voice of giants over gin rummy, perhaps. “What’s wrong?”

  Johnny’s voice was clear and moderately loud, carrying to each of the fifty-some people who were there—businessmen and their wives, professors and their wives, Durham’s upper middle class. “Keep your son home tonight or he’s going to burn to death with the rest of them. There is going to be a fire, a terrible fire. Keep him away from Cathy’s. It’s going to be struck by lightning and it will burn flat before the first fire engine can arrive. The insulation will burn. They will find charred bodies six and seven deep in the exits and there will be no way to identify them except by their dental work. It ... it ...”

  Patty Strachan screamed then, her hand going to her mouth, her plastic glass tumbling to the lawn, the ice cubes spilling out onto the grass and gleaming there like diamonds of improbable size. She stood swaying for a moment and then she fainted, going down in a pastel billow of party dress, and her mother ran forward, crying at Johnny as she passed: “What’s wrong with you? What in God’s name is wrong with you?”

  Chuck stared at Johnny. His face was paper-white.

  Johnny’s eyes began to clear. He looked around at the staring knots of people. “I’m sorry,” he muttered.

  Patty’s mother was on her knees, holding her daughter’s head in her arms and patting her cheeks ligh
tly. The girl began to stir and moan.

  “Johnny?” Chuck whispered, and then, without waiting for an answer, went to his girl.

  It was very still on the Chatsworth back lawn. Everyone was looking at him. They were looking at him because it had happened again. They were looking at him the way the nurses had. And the reporters. They were crows strung out on a telephone line. They were holding their drinks and their plates of potato salad and looking at him as if he were a bug, a freak. They were looking at him as if he had suddenly opened his pants and exposed himself to them.

  He wanted to run, he wanted to hide. He wanted to puke.

  “Johnny,” Roger said, putting an arm around him. “Come on in the house. You need to get off your feet for ...”

  Thunder rumbled, far off.

  “What’s Cathy’s?” Johnny said harshly, resisting the pressure of Roger’s arm over his shoulders. “It isn’t someone’s house, because there were exit signs. What is it? Where is it?”

  “Can’t you get him out of here?” Patty’s mother nearly screamed. “He’s upsetting her all over again!”

  “Come on, Johnny.”

  “But ...”

  “Come on.”

  He allowed himself to be led away toward the guest house. The sound of their shoes on the gravel drive was very loud. There seemed to be no other sound. They got as far as the pool, and then the whispering began behind them.

  “Where’s Cathy’s?” Johnny asked again.

  “How come you don’t know?” Roger asked. “You seemed to know everything else. You scared poor Patty Strachan into a faint.”

  “I can’t see it. It’s in the dead zone. What is it?”

  “Let’s get you upstairs first.”

  “I’m not sick!”

  “Under strain, then,” Roger said. He spoke softly and soothingly, the way people speak to the hopelessly mad. The sound of his voice made Johnny afraid. And the headache started to come. He willed it back savagely. They went up the stairs to the guest house.