Under the Dome

  Down the street, at the north end of the town common, the bell in the steeple of the First Congregational Church began to ring, summoning the faithful to worship.

  5

  Junior Rennie felt great. He had not so much as a shadow of a headache this morning, and breakfast was sitting easy in his stomach. He thought he might even be able to eat lunch. That was good. He hadn't had much use for food lately; half the time just looking at it made him feel throw-uppy. Not this morning, though. Flapjacks and bacon, baby.

  If this is the apocalypse, he thought, it should have come sooner.

  Each Special Deputy had been partnered with a regular full-time officer. Junior drew Freddy Denton, and that was also good. Denton, balding but still trim at fifty, was known as a serious hardass ... but there were exceptions. He had been president of the Wildcat Boosters Club during Junior's high school football years, and it was rumored he had never given a varsity football player a ticket. Junior couldn't speak for all of them, but he knew that Frankie DeLesseps had been let off by Freddy once, and Junior himself had been given the old "I'm not going to write you up this time but slow down" routine twice. Junior could have been partnered with Wettington, who probably thought a first down was finally letting some guy into her pants. She had a great rack, but can you say loser ? Nor had he cared for the cold-eyed look she gave him after the swearing-in, as he and Freddy passed her on their way to the street.

  Got a little leftover pantry space for you, if you fuck with me, Jackie, he thought, and laughed. God, the heat and light on his face felt good! How long since it had felt so good?

  Freddy looked over. "Something funny, Junes?"

  "Nothing in particular," Junior said. "I'm just on a roll, that's all."

  Their job--this morning, at least--was to foot-patrol Main Street ("To announce our presence," Randolph had said), first up one side and down the other. Pleasant enough duty in the warm October sunshine.

  They were passing Mill Gas & Grocery when they heard raised voices from inside. One belonged to Johnny Carver, the manager and part owner. The other was too slurry for Junior to make out, but Freddy Denton rolled his eyes.

  "Sloppy Sam Verdreaux, as I live and breathe," he said. "Shit! And not even nine-thirty."

  "Who's Sam Verdreaux?" Junior asked.

  Freddy's mouth tightened down to a white line Junior recognized from his football days. It was Freddy's Ah fuck, we're behind look. Also his Ah fuck, that was a bad call look. "You've been missing the better class of Mill society, Junes. But you're about to get introduced."

  Carver was saying, "I know it's past nine, Sammy, and I see you've got money, but I still can't sell you any wine. Not this morning, not this afternoon, not tonight. Probably not tomorrow either, unless this mess clears itself up. That's from Randolph himself. He's the new Chief."

  "Like fuck he is!" the other voice responded, but it was so slurry it came to Junior's ears sounding as Li-fuh hizz. "Pete Randolph ain't but shitlint on Duke Perkins' asshole."

  "Duke's dead and Randolph says no booze sales. I'm sorry, Sam."

  "Just one bottle of T-Bird," Sam whined. Juz one barf T-Burr. "I need it. Annd, I can pay for it. Come on. How long I been tradin here?"

  "Well shit." Although he sounded disgusted with himself, Johnny was turning to look at the wall-long case of beer and vino as Junior and Freddy came up the aisle. He had probably decided a single bottle of Bird would be a small price to get the old rumpot out of his store, especially since a number of shoppers were watching and avidly awaiting further developments.

  The hand-printed sign on the case said absolutely NO ALCOHOL SALES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, but the wussy was reaching for the booze just the same, the stuff in the middle. That was where the cheapass popskull lived. Junior had been on the force less than two hours, but he knew that was a bad idea. If Carver caved in to the straggle-haired wino, other, less disgusting customers would demand the same privilege.

  Freddy Denton apparently agreed. "Don't do that," he told Johnny Carver. And to Verdreaux, who was looking at him with the red eyes of a mole caught in a brushfire: "I don't know if you have enough working brain cells left to read the sign, but I know you heard the man: no alcohol today. So get in the breeze. Quit smelling up the place."

  "You can't do that, Officer," Sam said, drawing himself up to his full five and a half feet. He was wearing filthy chinos, a Led Zeppelin tee-shirt, and old slippers with busted backs. His hair looked as if it had last been cut while Bush II was riding high in the polls. "I got my rights. Free country. Says so right in the Constitution of Independence."

  "The Constitution's been canceled in The Mill," Junior said, with absolutely no idea that he was speaking prophecy. "So put an egg in your shoe and beat it." God, how fine he felt! In barely a day he had gone from doom and gloom to boom and zoom!

  "But ..."

  Sam stood there for a moment with his lower lip trembling, trying to muster more arguments. Junior observed with disgust and fascination that the old fuck's eyes were getting wet. Sam held out his hands, which were trembling far worse than his loose mouth. He only had one more argument to make, but it was a hard one to bring out in front of an audience. Because he had to, he did.

  "I really need it, Johnny. No joke. Just a little, to stop the shakes. I'll make it last. And I won't get up to no dickens. Swear on my mother's name. I'll just go home." Home for Sloppy Sam was a shack sitting in a gruesomely bald dooryard dotted with old auto parts.

  "Maybe I ought to--" Johnny Carver began.

  Freddy ignored him. "Sloppy, you never made a bottle last in your life."

  "Don't you call me that!" Sam Verdreaux cried. The tears over-spilled his eyes and slid down his cheeks.

  "Your fly's unzipped, oldtimer," Junior said, and when Sam looked down at the crotch of his grimy chinos, Junior stroked a finger up the flabby underside of the old man's chin and then tweaked his beak. A grammar school trick, sure, but it hadn't lost its charm. Junior even said what they'd said back then: "Dirty clothes, gotcha nose!"

  Freddy Denton laughed. So did a couple of other people. Even Johnny Carver smiled, although he didn't look as if he really wanted to.

  "Get outta here, Sloppy," Freddy said. "It's a nice day. You don't want to spend it in a cell."

  But something--maybe being called Sloppy, maybe having his nose tweaked, maybe both--had relit some of the rage that had awed and frightened Sam's mates when he'd been a lumber-jockey on the Canadian side of the Merimachee forty years before. The tremble disappeared from his lips and hands, at least temporarily. His eyes lighted on Junior, and he made a phlegmy but undeniably contemptuous throat-clearing sound. When he spoke, the slur had left his voice.

  "Fuck you, kid. You ain't no cop, and you was never much of a football player. Couldn't even make the college B-team is what I heard."

  His gaze switched to Officer Denton.

  "And you, Deputy Dawg. Sunday sales legal after nine o'clock. Has been since the seventies, and that's the end of that tale."

  Now it was Johnny Carver he was looking at. Johnny's smile was gone, and the watching customers had grown very silent. One woman had a hand to her throat.

  "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 i
n 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!