The Dead Zone
PART ONE The Wheel of Fortune Chapter Fourteen
1.
The man from Inside View showed up on October 16, not long after Johnny had walked up to get the mail.
His father's house was set well back from the road; their graveled driveway was nearly a quarter of a mile long, running through a heavy stand of second-growth spruce and pine. Johnny did the total round trip every day. At first he had returned to the porch trembling with exhaustion, his legs on fire, his limp so pronounced that he was really lurching along. But now, a month and a half after the first time (when the half a mile had taken him an hour to do), the walk had become one of his day's pleasures, something to look forward to. Not the mail, but the walk.
He had begun splitting wood for the coming winter, a chore Herb had been planning to hire out since he himself had landed a contract to do some inside work on a new housing project in Libertyville. 'You know when old age has started lookin over your shoulder, John,' he had said with a smile. 'It's when you start lookin for inside work as soon as fall rolls around.'
Johnny climbed the porch and sat down in the wicker chair beside the glider, uttering a small sound of relief. He propped his right foot on the porch railing, and with a grimace of pain, used his hands to lift his left leg over it. That done, he began to open his mail.
It had tapered off a lot just lately. During the first week he had been back here in Pownal, there had sometimes been as many as two dozen letters and eight or nine packages a day, most of them forwarded through the EMMC, a few of them sent to General Delivery, Pownal (and assorted variant spellings: Pownell, Poenul, and, in one memorable case, Poonuts).
Most of them were from dissociated people who seemed to be drifting through life in search of any rudder. There were children who wanted his autograph, women who wanted to sleep with him, both men and women seeking advice to the lovelorn. Some sent lucky charms. Some sent horoscopes. A great many of the letters were religious in nature, and in these badly spelled missives, usually written in a large and careful handwriting but one step removed from the scrawl of a bright first-grader, he seemed to feel the ghost of his mother.
He was a prophet, these letters assured him, come to lead the weary and disillusioned American people out of the wilderness. He was a sign that the Last Times were at hand. To this date, October 16, he had received eight copies of Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth -his mother surely would have approved of that one. He was urged to proclaim the divinity of Christ and put a stop to the loose morals of youth.
These letters were balanced off by the negative contingent, which was smaller but just as vocal - if usually anonymous. One correspondent, writing in grubby pencil on a sheet of yellow legal paper proclaimed him the Antichrist and urged him to commit suicide. Four or five of the letter writers had inquired about how it felt to murder your own mother. A great many wrote to accuse him of perpetrating a hoax. One wit wrote, 'PRECOGNITION, TELEPATHY, BULLSHIT! EAT MY DONG, YOU EXTRASENSORY TURKEY!'
And they sent things. That was the worst of it.
Every day on his way home from work, Herb would stop at the Pownal post office and pick up the packages that were too big to fit in their mailbox. The notes accompanying the things were all essentially the same; a low-grade scream. Tell me, tell me, tell me.
This scarf belonged to my brother, who disappeared on a fishing trip in the Allagash in 1969. I feel very strongly that he is still alive. Tell me where he is.
This lipstick came from my wife's dressing table. I think she's having an affair, but I'm not sure. Tell me if she is.
This is my son's ID bracelet. He never comes home after school anymore, he stays out until all hours, I'm worried sick. Tell me what he's doing.
A woman in North Carolina - God knew how she had found out about him; the press conference in August had not made the national media - sent a charred piece of wood. Her house had burned down, her letter explained, and her husband and two of her five children had died in the blaze. The Charlotte fire department said it was faulty wiring, but she simply couldn't accept that. It had to be arson. She wanted Johnny to feel the enclosed blackened relic and tell her who had done it, so the monster would spend the rest of his life rotting in prison.
Johnny answered none of the letters and returned all the objects (even the charcoaled hunk of wood) at his cost and with no comment. He did touch some of them. Most, like the charred piece of wallboard from the grief-stricken woman in Charlotte, told him nothing at all. But when he touched a few of them, disquieting images came, like waking dreams. In most cases there was barely a trace; a picture would form and fade in seconds, leaving him with nothing concrete at all, only a feeling. But one of them...
It had been the woman who sent the scarf in hopes of finding out what had happened to her brother. It was a white knitted scarf, no different from a million others. But as he handled it, the reality of his father's house had suddenly been gone, and the sound of the television in the next room rose and flattened, rose and flattened, until it was the sound of drowsing summer insects and the far-away babble of water.
Woods smells in his nostrils. Green shafts of sunlight falling through great old trees. The ground had been soggy for the last three hours or so, squelchy, almost swamplike. He was scared, plenty scared, but he had kept his head. If you were lost in the big north country and panicked, they might as well carve your headstone. He had kept pushing south. It had been two days since he had gotten separated from Stiv and Rocky and Logan. They had been camping near
(but that wouldn't come, it was in the dead zone)
some stream, trout-fishing, and it had been his own damn fault; he had been pretty damn drunk.
Now he could see his pack leaning against the edge of an old and moss-grown blowdown, white deadwood poking through the green here and there like bones, he could see his pack, yes, but he couldn't reach it because he had walked a few yards away to take a leak and he had walked into a really squelchy place, mud almost to the tops of his L.L. Bean's boots, and he tried to back out, find a dryer place to do his business, but he couldn't get out. He couldn't get out because it wasn't mud at all. It was
something else.
He stood there, looking around fruitlessly for something to grab onto, almost laughing at the idiocy of having walked right into a patch of quicksand while looking for a place to take a piss.
He stood there, at first positive that it must be a shallow patch of quicksand, at the very worst over his boot-tops, another tale to tell when he was found.
He stood there, and real panic did not begin to set in until the quicksand oozed implacably over his knees. He began to struggle then, forgetting that if you got your stupid self into quicksand you were supposed to remain very still. In no time at all the quicksand was up to his waist and now it was chest-high, sucking at him like great brown lips, constricting his breathing; he began to scream and no one came, nothing came except for a fat brown squirrel that picked its way down the side of the mossy deadfall and perched on his pack and watched him with his bright, black eyes.
Now it was up to his neck, the rich, brown smell of it in his nose and his screams became thin and gasping as the quicksand implacably pressed the breath out of him. Birds flew swooping and cheeping and scolding, and green shafts of sunlight like tarnished copper fell through the trees, and the quicksand rose over his chin. Alone, he was going to die alone, and he opened his mouth to scream one last time and there was no scream because the quicksand flowed into his mouth, it flowed over his tongue, it flowed between his teeth in thin ribbons, he was swallowing quicksand and the scream was never uttered -Johnny had come out of that in a cold sweat, his flesh marbled into goosebumps, the scarf wrapped tightly between his hands, his breath coming in sh6rt, strangled gasps. He had thrown the scarf on the floor where it lay like a twisted white snake. He would not touch it again. His father had put it in a return envelope and sent it back.
But now, mercifully, the mail was beginning to taper off. The crazies had discovered some fresher object for their public and private obsessions. Newsmen no longer called for interviews, partly because the phone number had been changed and unlisted, partly because the story was old hat.
Roger Dussault had written a long and angry piece for his paper, of which he was the feature editor. He proclaimed the whole thing a cruel and tasteless hoax. Johnny had undoubtedly boned up on incidents from the pasts of several reporters who were likely to attend the press conference, just in case. Yes, he admitted, his sister Anne's nickname had been Terry. She had died fairly young, and amphetamines might have been a contributing cause. But all of that was accessible information to anyone who wanted to dig it up. He made it all seem quite logical. The article did not explain how Johnny, who had not been out of the hospital, could have come by this 'accessible information', but that was a point most readers seemed to have overlooked. Johnny could not have cared less. The incident was closed, and he had no intention of creating new ones. What good could it possibly do to write the lady who had sent the scarf and tell her that her brother had drowned, screaming, in quicksand because he had gone the wrong way while looking for a place to take a piss? Would it ease her mind or help her live her life any better?
Today's mail was a mere six letters. A power bill. A card from Herb's cousin out in Oklahoma. A lady who had sent Johnny a crucifix with MADE IN TAIWAN stamped on Christ's feet in tiny gold letters. There was a brief note from Sam Weizak. And a small envelope with a return address that made him blink and sit up straighter. S. Hazlett, 12 Pond Street, Bangor.
Sarah. He tore it open.
He had received a sympathy card from her two days after the funeral services for his mother. Written on the back of it in her cool, back-slanting hand had been:
'Johnny - I'm so sorry that this has happened. I heard on the radio that your mom had passed away - in some ways that seemed the most unfair thing of all, that your private grief should have been made a thing of public knowledge. You may not remember, but we talked a little about your mom the night of your accident. I asked you what she'd do if you brought home a lapsed Catholic and you said she would smile and welcome me in and slip me a few tracts. I could see your love for her in the way you smiled. I know from your father that she had changed, but much of the change was because she loved you so much and just couldn't accept what had happened. And in the end I guess her faith was rewarded. Please accept my warm sympathy, and if there's anything I can do, now or later on, please count on your friend - Sarah.'
That was one note he had answered, thanking her for both the card and the thought. He had written it carefully, afraid that he might betray himself and say the wrong thing. She was a married woman now, that was beyond his control or ability to change. But he did remember their conversation about his mother - and so many other things about that night. Her note had summoned up the whole evening, and he answered in a bittersweet mood that was more bitter than sweet. He still loved Sarah Bracknell, and he had to remind himself constantly that she was gone, replaced by another woman who was five years older and the mother of a small boy.
Now he pulled a single sheet of stationery out of the envelope and scanned it quickly. She and her boy were headed down to Kennebunk to spend a week with Sarah's freshman and sophomore roommate, a girl named Stephanie Constantine now, Stephanie Carsleigh then. She said that Johnny might remember her, but Johnny didn't. Anyway, Walt was stuck in Washington for three weeks on combined firm and Republican party business, and Sarah thought she might take one afternoon and come by Pownal to see Johnny and Herb, if it was no trouble.
'You can reach me at Steph's number, 814-6219, any time between Oct. 17th and the 23rd. Of course, if it would make you feel uncomfortable in any way, just call me and say so, either up here or down there in K'bunk. I'll understand. Much love to both of you - Sarah.'
Holding the letter in one hand, Johnny looked across the yard and into the woods, which had gone russet and gold, seemingly just in the last week. The leaves would be falling soon, and then it would be time for winter.
Much love to both of you - Sarah. He ran his thumb across the words thoughtfully. It would be better not to call, not to write, not to do anything, he thought. She would get the message. Like the woman who mailed the scarf what possible good could it do? Why kick a sleeping dog? Sarah might be able to use that phrase, much love, blithely, but he could not. He wasn't over the hurt of the past. For him, time had been crudely folded, stapled, and mutilated. In the progression of his own interior time, she had been his girl only six months ago. He could accept the coma and the loss of time in an intellectual way, but his emotions stubbornly resisted. Answering her condolence note had been difficult, but with a note it was always possible to crumple the thing up and start again if it began to go in directions it shouldn't go, if it began to overstep the bounds of friendship, which was all they were now allowed to share. If he saw her, he might do or say something stupid. Better not to call. Better just to let it sink.
But he would call, he thought. Call and invite her over.
Troubled, he slipped the note back into the envelope.
The sun caught on bright chrome, twinkled there, and tossed an arrow of light back into his eyes. A Ford sedan was crunching its way down the driveway. Johnny squinted and tried to make out if it was a familiar car. Company out here was rare. There had been lots of mail, but people had only stopped by on three or four occasions. Pownal was small on the map, hard to find. If the car did belong to some seeker after knowledge, Johnny would send him or her away quickly, as kindly as possible, but firmly. That had been Weizak's parting advice. Good advice, Johnny thought.
'Don't let anyone rope you into the role of consulting swami, John. Give no encouragement and they will forget. It may seem heartless to you at first - most of them are misguided people with too many problems and only the best of intentions - but it is a question of your life, your privacy. So be firm.' And so he had been.
The Ford pulled into the turnaround between the shed and the woodpile, and as it swung around, Johnny saw the small Hertz sticker in the corner of the wind-shield. A very tall man in very new blue jeans and a red plaid hunting shirt that looked as if it had just come out of an L.L. Bean box got out of the car and glanced around. He had the air of a man who is not used to the country, a man who knows there are no more wolves or cougars in New England, but who wants to make sure all the same. A city man. He glanced up at the porch, saw Johnny, and raised one hand in greeting.
'Good afternoon,' he said. He had a flat city accent as well - Brooklyn, Johnny thought - and he sounded as if he were talking through a Saltine box.
'Hi,' Johnny said. 'Lost?'
'Boy, I hope not,' the stranger said, coming over to the foot of the steps. 'You're either John Smith or his twin brother.'
Johnny grinned. 'I don't have a brother, so I guess you found your way to the right door. Can I do something for you?'
'Well, maybe we can do something for each other.' The stranger mounted the porch steps and offered his hand. Johnny shook it. 'My name is Richard Dees. Inside View magazine.'
His hair was cut in a fashionable ear-length style, and it was mostly gray. Dyed gray, Johnny thought with some amusement. What could you say about a man who sounded as if he were talking through a Saltine box and dyed his hair gray?
'Maybe you've seen the magazine.'
'Oh, I've seen it. They sell it at the checkout counters in the supermarket. I'm not interested in being interviewed. Sorry you had to make a trip out here for nothing.' They sold it in the supermarket, all right. The headlines did everything but leap off the pulp-stock pages and try to mug you. CHILD KILLED BY CREATURES FROM SPACE, DISTRAUGHT MOTHER CRIES. THE FOODS THAT ARE POISONING YOUR CHILDREN. 12 PSYCHICS PREDICT CALIFORNIA EARTHQUAKE BY 1978.
'Well now, an interview wasn't exactly what we were thinking of,' Dees said. 'May I sit down?'
'Really, I...'
'Mr. Smith, I've flown all the way up from New York, and from Boston I came on a little plane that had me wondering what would happen to my wife if I died interstate.'
'Portland-Bangor Airways-' Johnny asked, grinning.
'That's what it was,' Dees agreed.
'All right,' Johnny said. 'I'm impressed with your valor and your dedication to your job. I'll listen, but only for fifteen minutes or so. I'm supposed to sleep every afternoon.' This was a small lie in a good cause.
'Fifteen minutes should be more than enough.' Dees leaned forward. 'I'm just making an educated guess, Mr. Smith, but I'd estimate that you must owe somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars. That roll somewhere within putting distance of the pin, does it?'
Johnny's smile thinned. 'What I owe or don't owe,' he said, 'is my business.'
'All right, of course, sure. I didn't mean to offend, Mr. Smith. Inside View would like to offer you a job. A rather lucrative job.'
'No. Absolutely not.'
'If you'll just give me a chance to lay this out for you...
Johnny said, 'I'm not a practicing psychic. I'm not a Jeanne Dixon or an Edgar Cayce or an Alex Tannous. 'That's over with. The last thing I want to do is rake it up again.'
'Can I have just a few moments?'
'Mr Dees, you don't seem to understand what I'm -'
'Just a few moments?' Dees smiled winningly.
'How did you find out where I was, anyway?'
'We have a stringer on a mid-Maine paper called the Kennebec Journal He said that although you'd dropped out of the public view, you were probably staying with your father.'
'Well, I owe him a real debt of thanks, don't I?'
'Sure,' Dees said easily. 'I'm betting you'll think so when you hear the whole deal. May I?'
'All right,' Johnny said. 'But just because you flew up here on Panic Airlines, I'm not going to change my mind.'
'Well, however you see it. It's a free country, isn't it? Sure it is. Inside View specializes in a psychic view of things, Mr. Smith, as you probably know. Our readers, to be perfectly frank, are out of their gourds for this stuff. We have a weekly circulation of three million. Three million readers every week, Mr. Smith, how's that for a long shot straight down the fairway? How do we do it? We stick with the upbeat, the spiritual...'
'Twin Babies Eaten By Killer Bear,' Johnny murmured.
Dees shrugged. 'Sure, well, it's a tough old world, isn't it? People have to be informed about these things. It's their right to know. But for every downbeat article we've got three others telling our readers how to lose weight painlessly, how to find sexual happiness and compatibility, how to get closer to God...
'Do you believe in God, Mr. Dees?'
'Actually, I don't,' Dees said, and smiled his winning smile. 'But we live in a democracy, greatest country on earth, right? Everyone is the captain of his own soul. No, the point is, our readers believe in God. They believe in angels and miracles...
'And exorcisms and devils and Black Masses ...
'Right, right, right. You catch. It's a spiritual audience. They believe all this psychic bushwah. We have a total of ten psychics under contract, including Kathleen Nolan, the most famous seer in America. We'd like to put you under contract, Mr. Smith.'
'Would you?'
'Indeed we would. What would it mean for you? Your picture and a short column would appear roughly twelve times a year, when we run one of our All-Psychic issues. Inside View's Ten Famous Psychics Preview the Second Ford Administration, that sort of thing. We always do a New Year's issue, and one each Fourth of July on the course of America over the next year - that's always a very informative issue, lots of chip shots on foreign policy and economic policy in that one - plus assorted other goodies.'
'I don't think you understand,' Johnny said. He was speaking very slowly, as if to a child. 'I've had a couple of precognitive bursts - I suppose you could say I "saw the future" - but I don't have any control over it. I could no more come up with a prediction for the second Ford administration - if there ever is one - than I could milk a bull.'
Dees looked horrified. 'Who said you could? Staff writers do all those columns.'
'Staff...?' Johnny gaped at Dees, finally shocked.
'Of course,' Dees said impatiently. 'Look. One of our most popular guys over the last couple of years has been Frank Ross, the guy who specializes in natural disasters. Hell of a nice guy, but Jesus Christ, he quit school in the ninth grade. He did two hitches in the Army and was swamping out Greyhound buses at the Port Authority terminal in New York when we found him. You think we'd let him write his own column? He'd misspell cat.
'But the predictions...
'A free hand, nothing but a free hand. But you'd be surprised how often these guys and gals get stuck for a real whopper.
'Whopper,' Johnny repeated, bemused. He was a little surprised to find himself getting angry. His mother had bought inside View for as long as he could remember, all the way back to the days when they had featured pictures of bloody car wrecks, decapitations, and bootlegged execution photos. She had sworn by every word. Presumably the greater part of inside View's other *,999,999 readers did as well. And here sat this fellow with his dyed gray hair and his fortydollar shoes and his shirt with the store-creases still in it, talking about whoppers.
'But it all works out,' Dees was saying. 'If you ever get stuck, all you have to do is call us collect and we all take it into the pro-shop together and come up with something. We have the right to anthologize your columns in our yearly book, Inside Views of Things to Come. You're perfectly free to sign any contract you can get with a book publisher, however. All we get is first refusal on the magazine rights, and we hardly ever refuse, I can tell you. And we pay very handsomely. That's over and above whatever figure we contract for. Gravy on your mashed potatoes, you might say.' Dees chuckled.
'And what might that figure be?' Johnny asked slowly. He was gripping the arms of his rocker. A vein in his right temple pulsed rhythmically.
'Thirty thousand dollars per year for two years,' Dees said. 'And if you prove popular, that figure would become negotiable. Now, all our psychics have some area of expertise. I understand that you're good with objects.' Dees's eyes became half-lidded, dreamy. 'I see a regular feature. Twice monthly, maybe - we don't want to run a good thing into the ground. "John Smith invites inside Viewers to send in personal belongings for psychic examination..." Something like that. We'd make it clear, of course, that they should send in inexpensive stuff because nothing could be returned. But you'd be surprised. Some people are crazy as bedbugs, God love em. You'd be surprised at some of the stuff that would come in, Diamonds, gold coins, wedding rings... and we could attach a rider to the contract specifying that all objects mailed in would become your personal property.
Now Johnny began to see tones of dull red before his eyes. 'People would send things in and I'd just keep them. That's what you're saying.'
'Sure, I don't see any problem with that. It's just a question of keeping the ground rules clear up front. A little extra gravy for those mashed potatoes.'
'Suppose,' Johnny said, carefully keeping his voice even and modulated, 'suppose I got .. . stuck for a whopper, as you put it ... and I just called in and said President Ford was going to be assassinated on September 31, 1976? Not because I felt he was, but because I was stuck?'
'Well, September only has thirty days, you know,' Dees said. 'But otherwise, I think it's a hole in one. You're going to be a natural, Johnny. You think big. That's good. You'd be surprised how many of these people think small. Afraid to put their mouths where their money is' I suppose. One of our guys - Tim Clark out in Idaho -wrote in two weeks ago and said he'd had a flash that Earl Butz was going to be forced to resign next year. Well pardon my French, but who gives a fuck? Who's Earl Butz to the American housewife? But you have good waves, Johnny. You were made for this stuff.'
'Good waves,' Johnny muttered.
Dees was looking at him curiously. 'You feel all right, Johnny? You look a little white.'
Johnny was thinking 6f the lady who had sent the scarf. Probably she read Inside View, too. 'Let me see if I can summarize this,' he said. 'You'd pay me thirty thousand dollars a year for my name...
'And your picture, don't forget.
And my picture, for a few ghostwritten columns. Also a feature where I tell people what they want to know about objects they send in. As an extra added attraction, I get to keep the stuff...
'If the lawyers can work it out..'
'.... as my personal property. That the deal?'
'That's the bare bones of the deal. Johnny. The way these things feed each other, it's just amazing. You'll be a household word in six months, and after that, the sky is the limit. The Carson show. Personal appearances. Lecture tours. Your book, of course, pick your house, they're practically throwing money at psychics along Publisher's Row. Kathy Nolan started with a contract like the one we're offering you, and she makes over two hundred thou a year now. Also, she founded her own church and the IRS can't touch dime-one of her money. She doesn't miss a trick, does our Kathy.' Dees leaned forward, grinning. 'I tell you, Johnny, the sky is the limit.'
'I'll bet.'
'Well? What do you think?'
Johnny leaned forward toward Dees. He grabbed the sleeve of Dees's new L.L. Bean shirt in one hand and the collar of Dees's new L.L. Bean shirt in the other.
'Hey! What the hell do you think you're-...'
Johnny bunched the shirt in both hands and drew Dees forward. Five months of daily exercise had toned up the muscles in his hands and arms to a formidable degree.
'You asked me what I thought,' Johnny said. His head was beginning to throb and ache. 'I'll tell you. I think you're a ghoul. A grave robber of people's dreams. I think someone ought to put you to work at Roto-Rooter. I think your mother should have died of cancer the day after she conceived you. If there's a hell, I hope you burn there.'
'You can't talk to me like that!' Dees cried. His voice rose to a fishwife's shriek. 'You're fucking crazy! Forget it! Forget the whole thing, you stupid hick sonofabitch I You had your chance! Don't come crawling around...'
'Furthermore, you sound like you're talking through a Saltine box,' Johnny said, standing up. He lifted Dees with him. The tails of his shirt popped out of the waist-band of his new jeans, revealing a fishnet undershirt beneath. Johnny began to shake Dees methodically back and forth. Dees forgot about being angry. He began to blubber and roar.
Johnny dragged him to the porch steps, raised one foot and planted it squarely in the seat of the new Levi's. Dees went down in two big steps, still blubbering and roaring. He fell in the dirt and sprawled full length. When he got up and turned around to face Johnny, his country-cousin duds were caked with dooryard dust. It made them look more real, somehow, Johnny thought, but doubted if Dees would appreciate that.
'I ought to put the cops on you,' he said hoarsely. 'And maybe I will.'
'You do whatever turns you on,' Johnny said. 'But the law around here doesn't take too kindly to people who stick their noses in where they haven't been invited.'
Dees's face worked in an uneasy contortion of fear, anger, and shock. 'God help you if you ever need us,' he said.
Johnny's head was aching fiercely now, but he kept his voice even. 'That's just right,' he said. 'I couldn't agree more.
'You're going to be sorry, you know. Three million readers. That cuts both ways. When we get done with you the people in this country wouldn't believe you if you predicted spring in April. They wouldn't believe you if you said the World Series is going to come in October. They wouldn't believe you if ... if .... Dees spluttered, furious.
'Get out of here, you cheap cocksucker,' Johnny said.
'You can kiss off that book!' Dees screamed, apparently summoning up the worst thing he could think of. With his working, knotted face and his dust-caked shirt, he looked like a kid having a class-A tantrum. His Brooklyn accent had deepened and darkened to the point where it was almost a patois. 'They'll laugh you out of every publishing house in New York! Nightstand Readers wouldn't touch you when I get done with you! There are ways of fixing smart guys like you and we got em, fuckhead! We...'
'I guess I'll go get my Remmy and shoot myself a trespasser- Johnny remarked.
Dees retreated to his rental car, still shouting threats and obscenities. Johnny stood on the porch and watched him, his head thudding sickly. Dees got in, revved the car's engine mercilessly, and then screamed out, throwing dirt into the air in clouds. He let the car drift just enough on his way out to knock the chopping block by the shed flying. Johnny grinned a little at that in spite of his bad head. He could set up the chopping block a lot more easily than Dees was going to be able to explain the big dent in that Ford's front fender to the Hertz people.
Afternoon sun twinkled on chrome again as Dees sprayed gravel all the way up the driveway to the road. Johnny sat down in the rocker again and put his forehead in his hand and got ready to wait out the headache.
2.
'You're going to do what?' the banker asked outside and below, traffic passed back and forth along the bucolic main street of Ridgeway, New Hampshire. On the walls of the banker's pine-panelled, third-floor office were Frederick Remington prints and photographs of the banker at local functions. On his desk was a lucite cube, and embedded in this cube were pictures of his wife and son.
'I'm going to run for the House of Representatives next year,' Greg Stillson repeated. He was dressed in khaki suntan pants, a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a black tie with a single blue figure. He looked out of place in the banker's office, somehow, as if at any moment he might rise to his feet and begin an aimless, destructive charge around the room, knocking over furniture, sweeping the expensively framed Remington prints to the floor, pulling the drapes from their rods.
The banker, Charles 'Chuck' Gendron, president of the local Lions Club, laughed - a bit uncertainly. Stillson had a way of making people feel uncertain. As a boy he had been scrawny, perhaps; he liked to tell people that 'a high wind woulda blowed me away'; but in the end his father's genes had told, and sitting here in Gendron's office, he looked very much like the Oklahoma oufield roughneck that his father had been.
He frowned at Gendron's chuckle.
'I mean, George Harvey might have something to say about that, mightn't he, Greg?' George Harvey, besides being a mover and a shaker in town politics, was the third district Republican godfather.
'George won't say boo,' Greg said calmly. There was a salting of gray in his hair, but his face suddenly looked very much like the face of the man who long ago had kicked a dog to death in an Iowa farmyard. His voice was patient. 'George is going to be on the sidelines, but he's gonna be on my side of the sidelines, if you get my meaning. I ain't going to be stepping on his toes, because I'm going to run as an independent. I don't have twenty years to spend learning the ropes and licking boots.'
Chuck Gendron said hesitantly, 'You're kidding, aren't you, Greg?'
Greg's frown returned. It was forbidding. 'Chuck, I never kid. People... they think I kid. The Union-Leader and those yo-yos on the Daily Democrat, they think I kid. But you go see George Harvey. You ask him if I kid around, or if I get the job done. You ought to know better, too. After all, we buried some bodies together, didn't we, Chuck?'
The frown metamorphosed into a somehow chilling grin - chilling to Gendron, perhaps, because he had allowed himself to be pulled along on a couple of Greg Stilison's development schemes. They had made money, yes, of course they had, that wasn't the problem. But there had been a couple of aspects of the Sunningdale Acres development (and the Laurel Estates deal as well, to be honest) that hadn't been - well, strictly legal. A bribed EPA agent for one thing, but that wasn't the worst thing.
On the Laurel Estates thing there had been an old man out on the Back Ridgeway Road who hadn't wanted to sell, and first the old man's fourteen-or-so chickens had died of some mysterious ailment and second there had been a fire in the old man's potato house and third when the old man came back from visiting his sister, who was in a nursing home in Keene, one weekend not so long ago, someone bad smeared dogshit all over the old man's living room and dining room and fourth the old man had sold and fifth Laurel Estates was now a fact of life.
And, maybe sixth: That motorcycle spook, Sonny Elliman, was hanging around again. He and Greg were good buddies, and the only thing that kept that from being town gossip was the counterbalancing fact that Greg was seen in the company of a lot of heads, hippies, freaks, and cyclists - as a direct result of the Drug Counselling Center he had set up, plus Ridgeway's rather unusual program for young drug, alcohol, and road offenders. Instead of fining them or locking them up, the town took out their services in trade. It had been Greg's idea - and a good one, the banker would be the first to admit. It had been one of the things that had helped Greg to get elected mayor.
But this - this was utter craziness.
Greg had said something else. Gendron wasn't sure what.
'Pardon me,' he said.
'I asked you how you'd like to be my campaign manager,' Greg repeated.
'Greg ...' Gendron had to clear his throat and start again. 'Greg, you don't seem to understand. Harrison Fisher is the Third District representative in Washington. Harrison Fisher is Republican, respected, and probably eternal.'
'No one is eternal,' Greg said.
'Harrison is damn close,' Gendron said. 'Ask Harvey. They went to school together. Back around 1800, I think.'
Greg took no notice of this thin witticism. 'I'll call myself a Bull Moose or something ... and everyone will think I'm kidding around ... and in the end, the good people of the Third District are going to laugh me all the way to Washington.'
'Greg, you're crazy.'
Greg's smile disappeared as if it had never been there. Something frightening happened to his face. It became very still, and his eyes widened to show too much of the whites. They were like the eyes of a horse that smells bad water.
'You don't want to say something like that, Chuck. Ever.'
The banker felt more than chilled now.
'Greg, I apologize. It's just that...
'No, you don't ever want to say that to me, unless you want to find Sonny Elliman waiting for you some afternoon when you go out to get your big fucking Imperial.'
Gendron's mouth moved but no sound came out.
Greg smiled again, and it was like the sun suddenly breaking through threatening clouds. 'Never mind. We don't want to be kicking sand if we're going to be working together.'
'Greg...
'I want you because you know every damn business man in this part of New Hampshire. We're gonna have plenty good money once we get this thing rolling, but I figure we'll have to prime the pump. Now's the time for me to expand a little, and start looking like the state's man as well as Ridgeway's man. I figure fifty thousand dollars ought to be enough to fertilize the grass roots.
The banker, who had worked for Harrison Fisher in his last four canvasses, was so astounded by Greg's political naivete that at first he was at a loss on how to proceed. At last he said, 'Greg. Businessmen contribute to campaigns not out of the goodness of their hearts but be-cause the winner ends up owing them something. in a close campaign they'll contribute to any candidate who has a chance of winning, because they can write off the loser as a tax loss as well. But the operant phrase is chance of winning. Now Fisher is a...
'Shoo-in,' Greg supplied. He produced an envelope from his back pocket. 'Want you to look at these.'
Gendron looked doubtfully at the envelope, then up at Greg. Greg nodded encouragingly. The banker opened the envelope.
There was a long silence in the pine-panelled office after Gendron's initial gasp for breath. It was unbroken except for the faint hum of the digital clock on the banker's desk and the hiss of a match as Greg lit a Phillies cheroot. On the walls of the office were Frederick Remington pictures. In the lucite cube were family pictures. Now, spread on the desk, were pictures of the banker with his head buried between the thighs of a young woman with black hair - or it might have been red, the pictures were high-grain black-and-white glossies and it was hard to tell. The woman's face was very clear. It was not the face of the banker's wife. Some residents of Ridge. way would have recognized it as the face of one of the waitresses at Bobby Strang's truckstop two towns over.
The pictures of the banker with his head between the legs of the waitress were the safe ones - her face was clear but his was not. In others, his own grandmother would have recognized him. There were pictures of Gendron and the waitress involved in a whole medley of sexual delights - hardly all the positions of the Kama Sutra, but there were several positions represented that had never made the 'Sexual Relationships' chapter of the Ridgeway High health textbook.
Gendron looked up, his face cheesy, his hands trembling. His heart was galloping in his chest. He feared a heart attack.
Greg was not even looking at him. He was looking out the window at the bright blue slice of October sky visible between the Ridgeway Five and Ten and the Ridgeway Card and Notion Shoppe.
'The winds of change have started to blow,' he said, and his face was distant and preoccupied; almost mystical. He looked back at Gendron. 'One of those drugfreaks down at the Center, you know what he gave me?'
Chuck Gendron shook his head numbly. With one of his shaking hands he was massaging the left side if his chest - just in case. His eyes kept falling to the photographs. The damning photographs. What if his secretary came in right now? He stopped massaging his chest and began gathering up the pictures, stuffing them back into the envelope.
'He gave me Chairman Mao's little red book,' Greg said. A chuckle rumbled up from the barrel chest that had once been so thin, part of a body that had mostly disgusted his idolized father. 'And one of the proverbs in there ... I can't remember exactly how it went, but it was something like, "The man who senses the wind of change should build not a windbreak but a windmill." That was the flavor of it, anyway.'
He leaned forward.
'Harrison Fisher's not a shoo-in, he's a has-been. Ford is a has-been. Muskie's a has-been. Humphrey's a has-been. A lot of local and state politicians all the way across this country are going to wake up the day after election day and find out that they're as dead as dodo birds. They forced Nixon out, and the next year they forced out the people who stood behind him in the impeachment hearings, and next year they'll force out Jerry Ford for the same reason.
Greg Stillson's eyes blazed at the banker.
'You want to see the wave of the future? Look up in Maine at this guy Longley. The Republicans ran a guy named Erwin and the Democrats ran a guy named Mitchell and when they counted the votes for governor, they both got a big surprise, because the people went and elected themselves an insurance man from Lewiston that didn't want any part of either party. Now they're talking about him as a dark horse candidate for president.'
Gendron still couldn't talk.
Greg drew in his breath. 'They're all gonna think I'm kiddin, see? They thought Longley was kiddin. But I'm not kiddin. I'm building windmills. And you're gonna supply the building materials.'
He ceased. Silence fell in the office, except for the hum of the clock. At last Gendron whispered, 'Where did you get these pictures? Was it that Elliman?'
'Aw, hey. You don't want to talk about that. You forget all about those pictures. Keep them.'
'And who keeps the negatives?'
'Chuck,' Greg said earnestly, 'you don't understand. I'm offering you Washington. Sky's the limit, boy! I'm not even asking you to raise that much money. Like I said, just a bucket of water to help prime the pump. When we get rolling, plenty of money is going to come in. Now, you know the guys that have money. You have lunch with them down at the Caswell House. You play poker with them. You have written them commercial loans tied to the prime rate at no more than their say so. And you know how to put an armlock on them.'
'Greg you don't understand, you don't...'
Greg stood up. 'The way I just put an armlock on you,' he said.
The banker looked up at him. His eyes rolled helplessly. Greg Stillson thought he looked like a sheep that had been led neatly to the slaughter.
'Fifty thousand dollars,' he said. 'You find it.'
He walked out, closing the door gently behind him. Gendron heard his booming voice even through the thick walls, bandying with his secretary. His secretary was a sixty-year-old flat-chested biddy, and Stillson probably had her giggling like a schoolgirl. He was a buffoon. It was that as much as his programs for coping with youthful crime that had made him mayor of Ridgeway. But the people didn't elect buffoons to Washington.
Well - hardly ever.
That wasn't his problem. Fifty thousand dollars in campaign contributions, that was his problem. His mind began to scurry around the problem like a trained white rat scurrying around a piece of cheese on a plate. It could probably be done. Yes, it could probably be done - but would it end there?
The white envelope was still on his desk. His smiling wife looked at it from her place in the lucite cube. He scooped the envelope up and jammed it into the inner pocket of his suitcoat. It had been Elliman, somehow Elliman had found out and had taken the pictures, he was sure of it.
But it had been Stillson who told him what to do.
Maybe the man wasn't such a buffoon after all. His assessment of the political climate of 1975-76 wasn't completely stupid. Building windmills instead of wind-breaks.. . the sky's the limit.
But that wasn't his problem.
Fifty thousand dollars was his problem.
Chuck Gendron, president of the Lions and all-round good fellow (last year he had ridden one of those small, funny motorcycles in the Ridgeway Fourth of July parade), pulled a yellow legal tablet out of the top drawer of his desk and began jotting down a list of names. The trained white rat at work. And down on Main Street Greg Stillson turned his face up into the strong autumn sunlight and congratulated himself on a job well-done - or well-begun.
The man from Inside View showed up on October 16, not long after Johnny had walked up to get the mail.
His father's house was set well back from the road; their graveled driveway was nearly a quarter of a mile long, running through a heavy stand of second-growth spruce and pine. Johnny did the total round trip every day. At first he had returned to the porch trembling with exhaustion, his legs on fire, his limp so pronounced that he was really lurching along. But now, a month and a half after the first time (when the half a mile had taken him an hour to do), the walk had become one of his day's pleasures, something to look forward to. Not the mail, but the walk.
He had begun splitting wood for the coming winter, a chore Herb had been planning to hire out since he himself had landed a contract to do some inside work on a new housing project in Libertyville. 'You know when old age has started lookin over your shoulder, John,' he had said with a smile. 'It's when you start lookin for inside work as soon as fall rolls around.'
Johnny climbed the porch and sat down in the wicker chair beside the glider, uttering a small sound of relief. He propped his right foot on the porch railing, and with a grimace of pain, used his hands to lift his left leg over it. That done, he began to open his mail.
It had tapered off a lot just lately. During the first week he had been back here in Pownal, there had sometimes been as many as two dozen letters and eight or nine packages a day, most of them forwarded through the EMMC, a few of them sent to General Delivery, Pownal (and assorted variant spellings: Pownell, Poenul, and, in one memorable case, Poonuts).
Most of them were from dissociated people who seemed to be drifting through life in search of any rudder. There were children who wanted his autograph, women who wanted to sleep with him, both men and women seeking advice to the lovelorn. Some sent lucky charms. Some sent horoscopes. A great many of the letters were religious in nature, and in these badly spelled missives, usually written in a large and careful handwriting but one step removed from the scrawl of a bright first-grader, he seemed to feel the ghost of his mother.
He was a prophet, these letters assured him, come to lead the weary and disillusioned American people out of the wilderness. He was a sign that the Last Times were at hand. To this date, October 16, he had received eight copies of Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth -his mother surely would have approved of that one. He was urged to proclaim the divinity of Christ and put a stop to the loose morals of youth.
These letters were balanced off by the negative contingent, which was smaller but just as vocal - if usually anonymous. One correspondent, writing in grubby pencil on a sheet of yellow legal paper proclaimed him the Antichrist and urged him to commit suicide. Four or five of the letter writers had inquired about how it felt to murder your own mother. A great many wrote to accuse him of perpetrating a hoax. One wit wrote, 'PRECOGNITION, TELEPATHY, BULLSHIT! EAT MY DONG, YOU EXTRASENSORY TURKEY!'
And they sent things. That was the worst of it.
Every day on his way home from work, Herb would stop at the Pownal post office and pick up the packages that were too big to fit in their mailbox. The notes accompanying the things were all essentially the same; a low-grade scream. Tell me, tell me, tell me.
This scarf belonged to my brother, who disappeared on a fishing trip in the Allagash in 1969. I feel very strongly that he is still alive. Tell me where he is.
This lipstick came from my wife's dressing table. I think she's having an affair, but I'm not sure. Tell me if she is.
This is my son's ID bracelet. He never comes home after school anymore, he stays out until all hours, I'm worried sick. Tell me what he's doing.
A woman in North Carolina - God knew how she had found out about him; the press conference in August had not made the national media - sent a charred piece of wood. Her house had burned down, her letter explained, and her husband and two of her five children had died in the blaze. The Charlotte fire department said it was faulty wiring, but she simply couldn't accept that. It had to be arson. She wanted Johnny to feel the enclosed blackened relic and tell her who had done it, so the monster would spend the rest of his life rotting in prison.
Johnny answered none of the letters and returned all the objects (even the charcoaled hunk of wood) at his cost and with no comment. He did touch some of them. Most, like the charred piece of wallboard from the grief-stricken woman in Charlotte, told him nothing at all. But when he touched a few of them, disquieting images came, like waking dreams. In most cases there was barely a trace; a picture would form and fade in seconds, leaving him with nothing concrete at all, only a feeling. But one of them...
It had been the woman who sent the scarf in hopes of finding out what had happened to her brother. It was a white knitted scarf, no different from a million others. But as he handled it, the reality of his father's house had suddenly been gone, and the sound of the television in the next room rose and flattened, rose and flattened, until it was the sound of drowsing summer insects and the far-away babble of water.
Woods smells in his nostrils. Green shafts of sunlight falling through great old trees. The ground had been soggy for the last three hours or so, squelchy, almost swamplike. He was scared, plenty scared, but he had kept his head. If you were lost in the big north country and panicked, they might as well carve your headstone. He had kept pushing south. It had been two days since he had gotten separated from Stiv and Rocky and Logan. They had been camping near
(but that wouldn't come, it was in the dead zone)
some stream, trout-fishing, and it had been his own damn fault; he had been pretty damn drunk.
Now he could see his pack leaning against the edge of an old and moss-grown blowdown, white deadwood poking through the green here and there like bones, he could see his pack, yes, but he couldn't reach it because he had walked a few yards away to take a leak and he had walked into a really squelchy place, mud almost to the tops of his L.L. Bean's boots, and he tried to back out, find a dryer place to do his business, but he couldn't get out. He couldn't get out because it wasn't mud at all. It was
something else.
He stood there, looking around fruitlessly for something to grab onto, almost laughing at the idiocy of having walked right into a patch of quicksand while looking for a place to take a piss.
He stood there, at first positive that it must be a shallow patch of quicksand, at the very worst over his boot-tops, another tale to tell when he was found.
He stood there, and real panic did not begin to set in until the quicksand oozed implacably over his knees. He began to struggle then, forgetting that if you got your stupid self into quicksand you were supposed to remain very still. In no time at all the quicksand was up to his waist and now it was chest-high, sucking at him like great brown lips, constricting his breathing; he began to scream and no one came, nothing came except for a fat brown squirrel that picked its way down the side of the mossy deadfall and perched on his pack and watched him with his bright, black eyes.
Now it was up to his neck, the rich, brown smell of it in his nose and his screams became thin and gasping as the quicksand implacably pressed the breath out of him. Birds flew swooping and cheeping and scolding, and green shafts of sunlight like tarnished copper fell through the trees, and the quicksand rose over his chin. Alone, he was going to die alone, and he opened his mouth to scream one last time and there was no scream because the quicksand flowed into his mouth, it flowed over his tongue, it flowed between his teeth in thin ribbons, he was swallowing quicksand and the scream was never uttered -Johnny had come out of that in a cold sweat, his flesh marbled into goosebumps, the scarf wrapped tightly between his hands, his breath coming in sh6rt, strangled gasps. He had thrown the scarf on the floor where it lay like a twisted white snake. He would not touch it again. His father had put it in a return envelope and sent it back.
But now, mercifully, the mail was beginning to taper off. The crazies had discovered some fresher object for their public and private obsessions. Newsmen no longer called for interviews, partly because the phone number had been changed and unlisted, partly because the story was old hat.
Roger Dussault had written a long and angry piece for his paper, of which he was the feature editor. He proclaimed the whole thing a cruel and tasteless hoax. Johnny had undoubtedly boned up on incidents from the pasts of several reporters who were likely to attend the press conference, just in case. Yes, he admitted, his sister Anne's nickname had been Terry. She had died fairly young, and amphetamines might have been a contributing cause. But all of that was accessible information to anyone who wanted to dig it up. He made it all seem quite logical. The article did not explain how Johnny, who had not been out of the hospital, could have come by this 'accessible information', but that was a point most readers seemed to have overlooked. Johnny could not have cared less. The incident was closed, and he had no intention of creating new ones. What good could it possibly do to write the lady who had sent the scarf and tell her that her brother had drowned, screaming, in quicksand because he had gone the wrong way while looking for a place to take a piss? Would it ease her mind or help her live her life any better?
Today's mail was a mere six letters. A power bill. A card from Herb's cousin out in Oklahoma. A lady who had sent Johnny a crucifix with MADE IN TAIWAN stamped on Christ's feet in tiny gold letters. There was a brief note from Sam Weizak. And a small envelope with a return address that made him blink and sit up straighter. S. Hazlett, 12 Pond Street, Bangor.
Sarah. He tore it open.
He had received a sympathy card from her two days after the funeral services for his mother. Written on the back of it in her cool, back-slanting hand had been:
'Johnny - I'm so sorry that this has happened. I heard on the radio that your mom had passed away - in some ways that seemed the most unfair thing of all, that your private grief should have been made a thing of public knowledge. You may not remember, but we talked a little about your mom the night of your accident. I asked you what she'd do if you brought home a lapsed Catholic and you said she would smile and welcome me in and slip me a few tracts. I could see your love for her in the way you smiled. I know from your father that she had changed, but much of the change was because she loved you so much and just couldn't accept what had happened. And in the end I guess her faith was rewarded. Please accept my warm sympathy, and if there's anything I can do, now or later on, please count on your friend - Sarah.'
That was one note he had answered, thanking her for both the card and the thought. He had written it carefully, afraid that he might betray himself and say the wrong thing. She was a married woman now, that was beyond his control or ability to change. But he did remember their conversation about his mother - and so many other things about that night. Her note had summoned up the whole evening, and he answered in a bittersweet mood that was more bitter than sweet. He still loved Sarah Bracknell, and he had to remind himself constantly that she was gone, replaced by another woman who was five years older and the mother of a small boy.
Now he pulled a single sheet of stationery out of the envelope and scanned it quickly. She and her boy were headed down to Kennebunk to spend a week with Sarah's freshman and sophomore roommate, a girl named Stephanie Constantine now, Stephanie Carsleigh then. She said that Johnny might remember her, but Johnny didn't. Anyway, Walt was stuck in Washington for three weeks on combined firm and Republican party business, and Sarah thought she might take one afternoon and come by Pownal to see Johnny and Herb, if it was no trouble.
'You can reach me at Steph's number, 814-6219, any time between Oct. 17th and the 23rd. Of course, if it would make you feel uncomfortable in any way, just call me and say so, either up here or down there in K'bunk. I'll understand. Much love to both of you - Sarah.'
Holding the letter in one hand, Johnny looked across the yard and into the woods, which had gone russet and gold, seemingly just in the last week. The leaves would be falling soon, and then it would be time for winter.
Much love to both of you - Sarah. He ran his thumb across the words thoughtfully. It would be better not to call, not to write, not to do anything, he thought. She would get the message. Like the woman who mailed the scarf what possible good could it do? Why kick a sleeping dog? Sarah might be able to use that phrase, much love, blithely, but he could not. He wasn't over the hurt of the past. For him, time had been crudely folded, stapled, and mutilated. In the progression of his own interior time, she had been his girl only six months ago. He could accept the coma and the loss of time in an intellectual way, but his emotions stubbornly resisted. Answering her condolence note had been difficult, but with a note it was always possible to crumple the thing up and start again if it began to go in directions it shouldn't go, if it began to overstep the bounds of friendship, which was all they were now allowed to share. If he saw her, he might do or say something stupid. Better not to call. Better just to let it sink.
But he would call, he thought. Call and invite her over.
Troubled, he slipped the note back into the envelope.
The sun caught on bright chrome, twinkled there, and tossed an arrow of light back into his eyes. A Ford sedan was crunching its way down the driveway. Johnny squinted and tried to make out if it was a familiar car. Company out here was rare. There had been lots of mail, but people had only stopped by on three or four occasions. Pownal was small on the map, hard to find. If the car did belong to some seeker after knowledge, Johnny would send him or her away quickly, as kindly as possible, but firmly. That had been Weizak's parting advice. Good advice, Johnny thought.
'Don't let anyone rope you into the role of consulting swami, John. Give no encouragement and they will forget. It may seem heartless to you at first - most of them are misguided people with too many problems and only the best of intentions - but it is a question of your life, your privacy. So be firm.' And so he had been.
The Ford pulled into the turnaround between the shed and the woodpile, and as it swung around, Johnny saw the small Hertz sticker in the corner of the wind-shield. A very tall man in very new blue jeans and a red plaid hunting shirt that looked as if it had just come out of an L.L. Bean box got out of the car and glanced around. He had the air of a man who is not used to the country, a man who knows there are no more wolves or cougars in New England, but who wants to make sure all the same. A city man. He glanced up at the porch, saw Johnny, and raised one hand in greeting.
'Good afternoon,' he said. He had a flat city accent as well - Brooklyn, Johnny thought - and he sounded as if he were talking through a Saltine box.
'Hi,' Johnny said. 'Lost?'
'Boy, I hope not,' the stranger said, coming over to the foot of the steps. 'You're either John Smith or his twin brother.'
Johnny grinned. 'I don't have a brother, so I guess you found your way to the right door. Can I do something for you?'
'Well, maybe we can do something for each other.' The stranger mounted the porch steps and offered his hand. Johnny shook it. 'My name is Richard Dees. Inside View magazine.'
His hair was cut in a fashionable ear-length style, and it was mostly gray. Dyed gray, Johnny thought with some amusement. What could you say about a man who sounded as if he were talking through a Saltine box and dyed his hair gray?
'Maybe you've seen the magazine.'
'Oh, I've seen it. They sell it at the checkout counters in the supermarket. I'm not interested in being interviewed. Sorry you had to make a trip out here for nothing.' They sold it in the supermarket, all right. The headlines did everything but leap off the pulp-stock pages and try to mug you. CHILD KILLED BY CREATURES FROM SPACE, DISTRAUGHT MOTHER CRIES. THE FOODS THAT ARE POISONING YOUR CHILDREN. 12 PSYCHICS PREDICT CALIFORNIA EARTHQUAKE BY 1978.
'Well now, an interview wasn't exactly what we were thinking of,' Dees said. 'May I sit down?'
'Really, I...'
'Mr. Smith, I've flown all the way up from New York, and from Boston I came on a little plane that had me wondering what would happen to my wife if I died interstate.'
'Portland-Bangor Airways-' Johnny asked, grinning.
'That's what it was,' Dees agreed.
'All right,' Johnny said. 'I'm impressed with your valor and your dedication to your job. I'll listen, but only for fifteen minutes or so. I'm supposed to sleep every afternoon.' This was a small lie in a good cause.
'Fifteen minutes should be more than enough.' Dees leaned forward. 'I'm just making an educated guess, Mr. Smith, but I'd estimate that you must owe somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars. That roll somewhere within putting distance of the pin, does it?'
Johnny's smile thinned. 'What I owe or don't owe,' he said, 'is my business.'
'All right, of course, sure. I didn't mean to offend, Mr. Smith. Inside View would like to offer you a job. A rather lucrative job.'
'No. Absolutely not.'
'If you'll just give me a chance to lay this out for you...
Johnny said, 'I'm not a practicing psychic. I'm not a Jeanne Dixon or an Edgar Cayce or an Alex Tannous. 'That's over with. The last thing I want to do is rake it up again.'
'Can I have just a few moments?'
'Mr Dees, you don't seem to understand what I'm -'
'Just a few moments?' Dees smiled winningly.
'How did you find out where I was, anyway?'
'We have a stringer on a mid-Maine paper called the Kennebec Journal He said that although you'd dropped out of the public view, you were probably staying with your father.'
'Well, I owe him a real debt of thanks, don't I?'
'Sure,' Dees said easily. 'I'm betting you'll think so when you hear the whole deal. May I?'
'All right,' Johnny said. 'But just because you flew up here on Panic Airlines, I'm not going to change my mind.'
'Well, however you see it. It's a free country, isn't it? Sure it is. Inside View specializes in a psychic view of things, Mr. Smith, as you probably know. Our readers, to be perfectly frank, are out of their gourds for this stuff. We have a weekly circulation of three million. Three million readers every week, Mr. Smith, how's that for a long shot straight down the fairway? How do we do it? We stick with the upbeat, the spiritual...'
'Twin Babies Eaten By Killer Bear,' Johnny murmured.
Dees shrugged. 'Sure, well, it's a tough old world, isn't it? People have to be informed about these things. It's their right to know. But for every downbeat article we've got three others telling our readers how to lose weight painlessly, how to find sexual happiness and compatibility, how to get closer to God...
'Do you believe in God, Mr. Dees?'
'Actually, I don't,' Dees said, and smiled his winning smile. 'But we live in a democracy, greatest country on earth, right? Everyone is the captain of his own soul. No, the point is, our readers believe in God. They believe in angels and miracles...
'And exorcisms and devils and Black Masses ...
'Right, right, right. You catch. It's a spiritual audience. They believe all this psychic bushwah. We have a total of ten psychics under contract, including Kathleen Nolan, the most famous seer in America. We'd like to put you under contract, Mr. Smith.'
'Would you?'
'Indeed we would. What would it mean for you? Your picture and a short column would appear roughly twelve times a year, when we run one of our All-Psychic issues. Inside View's Ten Famous Psychics Preview the Second Ford Administration, that sort of thing. We always do a New Year's issue, and one each Fourth of July on the course of America over the next year - that's always a very informative issue, lots of chip shots on foreign policy and economic policy in that one - plus assorted other goodies.'
'I don't think you understand,' Johnny said. He was speaking very slowly, as if to a child. 'I've had a couple of precognitive bursts - I suppose you could say I "saw the future" - but I don't have any control over it. I could no more come up with a prediction for the second Ford administration - if there ever is one - than I could milk a bull.'
Dees looked horrified. 'Who said you could? Staff writers do all those columns.'
'Staff...?' Johnny gaped at Dees, finally shocked.
'Of course,' Dees said impatiently. 'Look. One of our most popular guys over the last couple of years has been Frank Ross, the guy who specializes in natural disasters. Hell of a nice guy, but Jesus Christ, he quit school in the ninth grade. He did two hitches in the Army and was swamping out Greyhound buses at the Port Authority terminal in New York when we found him. You think we'd let him write his own column? He'd misspell cat.
'But the predictions...
'A free hand, nothing but a free hand. But you'd be surprised how often these guys and gals get stuck for a real whopper.
'Whopper,' Johnny repeated, bemused. He was a little surprised to find himself getting angry. His mother had bought inside View for as long as he could remember, all the way back to the days when they had featured pictures of bloody car wrecks, decapitations, and bootlegged execution photos. She had sworn by every word. Presumably the greater part of inside View's other *,999,999 readers did as well. And here sat this fellow with his dyed gray hair and his fortydollar shoes and his shirt with the store-creases still in it, talking about whoppers.
'But it all works out,' Dees was saying. 'If you ever get stuck, all you have to do is call us collect and we all take it into the pro-shop together and come up with something. We have the right to anthologize your columns in our yearly book, Inside Views of Things to Come. You're perfectly free to sign any contract you can get with a book publisher, however. All we get is first refusal on the magazine rights, and we hardly ever refuse, I can tell you. And we pay very handsomely. That's over and above whatever figure we contract for. Gravy on your mashed potatoes, you might say.' Dees chuckled.
'And what might that figure be?' Johnny asked slowly. He was gripping the arms of his rocker. A vein in his right temple pulsed rhythmically.
'Thirty thousand dollars per year for two years,' Dees said. 'And if you prove popular, that figure would become negotiable. Now, all our psychics have some area of expertise. I understand that you're good with objects.' Dees's eyes became half-lidded, dreamy. 'I see a regular feature. Twice monthly, maybe - we don't want to run a good thing into the ground. "John Smith invites inside Viewers to send in personal belongings for psychic examination..." Something like that. We'd make it clear, of course, that they should send in inexpensive stuff because nothing could be returned. But you'd be surprised. Some people are crazy as bedbugs, God love em. You'd be surprised at some of the stuff that would come in, Diamonds, gold coins, wedding rings... and we could attach a rider to the contract specifying that all objects mailed in would become your personal property.
Now Johnny began to see tones of dull red before his eyes. 'People would send things in and I'd just keep them. That's what you're saying.'
'Sure, I don't see any problem with that. It's just a question of keeping the ground rules clear up front. A little extra gravy for those mashed potatoes.'
'Suppose,' Johnny said, carefully keeping his voice even and modulated, 'suppose I got .. . stuck for a whopper, as you put it ... and I just called in and said President Ford was going to be assassinated on September 31, 1976? Not because I felt he was, but because I was stuck?'
'Well, September only has thirty days, you know,' Dees said. 'But otherwise, I think it's a hole in one. You're going to be a natural, Johnny. You think big. That's good. You'd be surprised how many of these people think small. Afraid to put their mouths where their money is' I suppose. One of our guys - Tim Clark out in Idaho -wrote in two weeks ago and said he'd had a flash that Earl Butz was going to be forced to resign next year. Well pardon my French, but who gives a fuck? Who's Earl Butz to the American housewife? But you have good waves, Johnny. You were made for this stuff.'
'Good waves,' Johnny muttered.
Dees was looking at him curiously. 'You feel all right, Johnny? You look a little white.'
Johnny was thinking 6f the lady who had sent the scarf. Probably she read Inside View, too. 'Let me see if I can summarize this,' he said. 'You'd pay me thirty thousand dollars a year for my name...
'And your picture, don't forget.
And my picture, for a few ghostwritten columns. Also a feature where I tell people what they want to know about objects they send in. As an extra added attraction, I get to keep the stuff...
'If the lawyers can work it out..'
'.... as my personal property. That the deal?'
'That's the bare bones of the deal. Johnny. The way these things feed each other, it's just amazing. You'll be a household word in six months, and after that, the sky is the limit. The Carson show. Personal appearances. Lecture tours. Your book, of course, pick your house, they're practically throwing money at psychics along Publisher's Row. Kathy Nolan started with a contract like the one we're offering you, and she makes over two hundred thou a year now. Also, she founded her own church and the IRS can't touch dime-one of her money. She doesn't miss a trick, does our Kathy.' Dees leaned forward, grinning. 'I tell you, Johnny, the sky is the limit.'
'I'll bet.'
'Well? What do you think?'
Johnny leaned forward toward Dees. He grabbed the sleeve of Dees's new L.L. Bean shirt in one hand and the collar of Dees's new L.L. Bean shirt in the other.
'Hey! What the hell do you think you're-...'
Johnny bunched the shirt in both hands and drew Dees forward. Five months of daily exercise had toned up the muscles in his hands and arms to a formidable degree.
'You asked me what I thought,' Johnny said. His head was beginning to throb and ache. 'I'll tell you. I think you're a ghoul. A grave robber of people's dreams. I think someone ought to put you to work at Roto-Rooter. I think your mother should have died of cancer the day after she conceived you. If there's a hell, I hope you burn there.'
'You can't talk to me like that!' Dees cried. His voice rose to a fishwife's shriek. 'You're fucking crazy! Forget it! Forget the whole thing, you stupid hick sonofabitch I You had your chance! Don't come crawling around...'
'Furthermore, you sound like you're talking through a Saltine box,' Johnny said, standing up. He lifted Dees with him. The tails of his shirt popped out of the waist-band of his new jeans, revealing a fishnet undershirt beneath. Johnny began to shake Dees methodically back and forth. Dees forgot about being angry. He began to blubber and roar.
Johnny dragged him to the porch steps, raised one foot and planted it squarely in the seat of the new Levi's. Dees went down in two big steps, still blubbering and roaring. He fell in the dirt and sprawled full length. When he got up and turned around to face Johnny, his country-cousin duds were caked with dooryard dust. It made them look more real, somehow, Johnny thought, but doubted if Dees would appreciate that.
'I ought to put the cops on you,' he said hoarsely. 'And maybe I will.'
'You do whatever turns you on,' Johnny said. 'But the law around here doesn't take too kindly to people who stick their noses in where they haven't been invited.'
Dees's face worked in an uneasy contortion of fear, anger, and shock. 'God help you if you ever need us,' he said.
Johnny's head was aching fiercely now, but he kept his voice even. 'That's just right,' he said. 'I couldn't agree more.
'You're going to be sorry, you know. Three million readers. That cuts both ways. When we get done with you the people in this country wouldn't believe you if you predicted spring in April. They wouldn't believe you if you said the World Series is going to come in October. They wouldn't believe you if ... if .... Dees spluttered, furious.
'Get out of here, you cheap cocksucker,' Johnny said.
'You can kiss off that book!' Dees screamed, apparently summoning up the worst thing he could think of. With his working, knotted face and his dust-caked shirt, he looked like a kid having a class-A tantrum. His Brooklyn accent had deepened and darkened to the point where it was almost a patois. 'They'll laugh you out of every publishing house in New York! Nightstand Readers wouldn't touch you when I get done with you! There are ways of fixing smart guys like you and we got em, fuckhead! We...'
'I guess I'll go get my Remmy and shoot myself a trespasser- Johnny remarked.
Dees retreated to his rental car, still shouting threats and obscenities. Johnny stood on the porch and watched him, his head thudding sickly. Dees got in, revved the car's engine mercilessly, and then screamed out, throwing dirt into the air in clouds. He let the car drift just enough on his way out to knock the chopping block by the shed flying. Johnny grinned a little at that in spite of his bad head. He could set up the chopping block a lot more easily than Dees was going to be able to explain the big dent in that Ford's front fender to the Hertz people.
Afternoon sun twinkled on chrome again as Dees sprayed gravel all the way up the driveway to the road. Johnny sat down in the rocker again and put his forehead in his hand and got ready to wait out the headache.
2.
'You're going to do what?' the banker asked outside and below, traffic passed back and forth along the bucolic main street of Ridgeway, New Hampshire. On the walls of the banker's pine-panelled, third-floor office were Frederick Remington prints and photographs of the banker at local functions. On his desk was a lucite cube, and embedded in this cube were pictures of his wife and son.
'I'm going to run for the House of Representatives next year,' Greg Stillson repeated. He was dressed in khaki suntan pants, a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a black tie with a single blue figure. He looked out of place in the banker's office, somehow, as if at any moment he might rise to his feet and begin an aimless, destructive charge around the room, knocking over furniture, sweeping the expensively framed Remington prints to the floor, pulling the drapes from their rods.
The banker, Charles 'Chuck' Gendron, president of the local Lions Club, laughed - a bit uncertainly. Stillson had a way of making people feel uncertain. As a boy he had been scrawny, perhaps; he liked to tell people that 'a high wind woulda blowed me away'; but in the end his father's genes had told, and sitting here in Gendron's office, he looked very much like the Oklahoma oufield roughneck that his father had been.
He frowned at Gendron's chuckle.
'I mean, George Harvey might have something to say about that, mightn't he, Greg?' George Harvey, besides being a mover and a shaker in town politics, was the third district Republican godfather.
'George won't say boo,' Greg said calmly. There was a salting of gray in his hair, but his face suddenly looked very much like the face of the man who long ago had kicked a dog to death in an Iowa farmyard. His voice was patient. 'George is going to be on the sidelines, but he's gonna be on my side of the sidelines, if you get my meaning. I ain't going to be stepping on his toes, because I'm going to run as an independent. I don't have twenty years to spend learning the ropes and licking boots.'
Chuck Gendron said hesitantly, 'You're kidding, aren't you, Greg?'
Greg's frown returned. It was forbidding. 'Chuck, I never kid. People... they think I kid. The Union-Leader and those yo-yos on the Daily Democrat, they think I kid. But you go see George Harvey. You ask him if I kid around, or if I get the job done. You ought to know better, too. After all, we buried some bodies together, didn't we, Chuck?'
The frown metamorphosed into a somehow chilling grin - chilling to Gendron, perhaps, because he had allowed himself to be pulled along on a couple of Greg Stilison's development schemes. They had made money, yes, of course they had, that wasn't the problem. But there had been a couple of aspects of the Sunningdale Acres development (and the Laurel Estates deal as well, to be honest) that hadn't been - well, strictly legal. A bribed EPA agent for one thing, but that wasn't the worst thing.
On the Laurel Estates thing there had been an old man out on the Back Ridgeway Road who hadn't wanted to sell, and first the old man's fourteen-or-so chickens had died of some mysterious ailment and second there had been a fire in the old man's potato house and third when the old man came back from visiting his sister, who was in a nursing home in Keene, one weekend not so long ago, someone bad smeared dogshit all over the old man's living room and dining room and fourth the old man had sold and fifth Laurel Estates was now a fact of life.
And, maybe sixth: That motorcycle spook, Sonny Elliman, was hanging around again. He and Greg were good buddies, and the only thing that kept that from being town gossip was the counterbalancing fact that Greg was seen in the company of a lot of heads, hippies, freaks, and cyclists - as a direct result of the Drug Counselling Center he had set up, plus Ridgeway's rather unusual program for young drug, alcohol, and road offenders. Instead of fining them or locking them up, the town took out their services in trade. It had been Greg's idea - and a good one, the banker would be the first to admit. It had been one of the things that had helped Greg to get elected mayor.
But this - this was utter craziness.
Greg had said something else. Gendron wasn't sure what.
'Pardon me,' he said.
'I asked you how you'd like to be my campaign manager,' Greg repeated.
'Greg ...' Gendron had to clear his throat and start again. 'Greg, you don't seem to understand. Harrison Fisher is the Third District representative in Washington. Harrison Fisher is Republican, respected, and probably eternal.'
'No one is eternal,' Greg said.
'Harrison is damn close,' Gendron said. 'Ask Harvey. They went to school together. Back around 1800, I think.'
Greg took no notice of this thin witticism. 'I'll call myself a Bull Moose or something ... and everyone will think I'm kidding around ... and in the end, the good people of the Third District are going to laugh me all the way to Washington.'
'Greg, you're crazy.'
Greg's smile disappeared as if it had never been there. Something frightening happened to his face. It became very still, and his eyes widened to show too much of the whites. They were like the eyes of a horse that smells bad water.
'You don't want to say something like that, Chuck. Ever.'
The banker felt more than chilled now.
'Greg, I apologize. It's just that...
'No, you don't ever want to say that to me, unless you want to find Sonny Elliman waiting for you some afternoon when you go out to get your big fucking Imperial.'
Gendron's mouth moved but no sound came out.
Greg smiled again, and it was like the sun suddenly breaking through threatening clouds. 'Never mind. We don't want to be kicking sand if we're going to be working together.'
'Greg...
'I want you because you know every damn business man in this part of New Hampshire. We're gonna have plenty good money once we get this thing rolling, but I figure we'll have to prime the pump. Now's the time for me to expand a little, and start looking like the state's man as well as Ridgeway's man. I figure fifty thousand dollars ought to be enough to fertilize the grass roots.
The banker, who had worked for Harrison Fisher in his last four canvasses, was so astounded by Greg's political naivete that at first he was at a loss on how to proceed. At last he said, 'Greg. Businessmen contribute to campaigns not out of the goodness of their hearts but be-cause the winner ends up owing them something. in a close campaign they'll contribute to any candidate who has a chance of winning, because they can write off the loser as a tax loss as well. But the operant phrase is chance of winning. Now Fisher is a...
'Shoo-in,' Greg supplied. He produced an envelope from his back pocket. 'Want you to look at these.'
Gendron looked doubtfully at the envelope, then up at Greg. Greg nodded encouragingly. The banker opened the envelope.
There was a long silence in the pine-panelled office after Gendron's initial gasp for breath. It was unbroken except for the faint hum of the digital clock on the banker's desk and the hiss of a match as Greg lit a Phillies cheroot. On the walls of the office were Frederick Remington pictures. In the lucite cube were family pictures. Now, spread on the desk, were pictures of the banker with his head buried between the thighs of a young woman with black hair - or it might have been red, the pictures were high-grain black-and-white glossies and it was hard to tell. The woman's face was very clear. It was not the face of the banker's wife. Some residents of Ridge. way would have recognized it as the face of one of the waitresses at Bobby Strang's truckstop two towns over.
The pictures of the banker with his head between the legs of the waitress were the safe ones - her face was clear but his was not. In others, his own grandmother would have recognized him. There were pictures of Gendron and the waitress involved in a whole medley of sexual delights - hardly all the positions of the Kama Sutra, but there were several positions represented that had never made the 'Sexual Relationships' chapter of the Ridgeway High health textbook.
Gendron looked up, his face cheesy, his hands trembling. His heart was galloping in his chest. He feared a heart attack.
Greg was not even looking at him. He was looking out the window at the bright blue slice of October sky visible between the Ridgeway Five and Ten and the Ridgeway Card and Notion Shoppe.
'The winds of change have started to blow,' he said, and his face was distant and preoccupied; almost mystical. He looked back at Gendron. 'One of those drugfreaks down at the Center, you know what he gave me?'
Chuck Gendron shook his head numbly. With one of his shaking hands he was massaging the left side if his chest - just in case. His eyes kept falling to the photographs. The damning photographs. What if his secretary came in right now? He stopped massaging his chest and began gathering up the pictures, stuffing them back into the envelope.
'He gave me Chairman Mao's little red book,' Greg said. A chuckle rumbled up from the barrel chest that had once been so thin, part of a body that had mostly disgusted his idolized father. 'And one of the proverbs in there ... I can't remember exactly how it went, but it was something like, "The man who senses the wind of change should build not a windbreak but a windmill." That was the flavor of it, anyway.'
He leaned forward.
'Harrison Fisher's not a shoo-in, he's a has-been. Ford is a has-been. Muskie's a has-been. Humphrey's a has-been. A lot of local and state politicians all the way across this country are going to wake up the day after election day and find out that they're as dead as dodo birds. They forced Nixon out, and the next year they forced out the people who stood behind him in the impeachment hearings, and next year they'll force out Jerry Ford for the same reason.
Greg Stillson's eyes blazed at the banker.
'You want to see the wave of the future? Look up in Maine at this guy Longley. The Republicans ran a guy named Erwin and the Democrats ran a guy named Mitchell and when they counted the votes for governor, they both got a big surprise, because the people went and elected themselves an insurance man from Lewiston that didn't want any part of either party. Now they're talking about him as a dark horse candidate for president.'
Gendron still couldn't talk.
Greg drew in his breath. 'They're all gonna think I'm kiddin, see? They thought Longley was kiddin. But I'm not kiddin. I'm building windmills. And you're gonna supply the building materials.'
He ceased. Silence fell in the office, except for the hum of the clock. At last Gendron whispered, 'Where did you get these pictures? Was it that Elliman?'
'Aw, hey. You don't want to talk about that. You forget all about those pictures. Keep them.'
'And who keeps the negatives?'
'Chuck,' Greg said earnestly, 'you don't understand. I'm offering you Washington. Sky's the limit, boy! I'm not even asking you to raise that much money. Like I said, just a bucket of water to help prime the pump. When we get rolling, plenty of money is going to come in. Now, you know the guys that have money. You have lunch with them down at the Caswell House. You play poker with them. You have written them commercial loans tied to the prime rate at no more than their say so. And you know how to put an armlock on them.'
'Greg you don't understand, you don't...'
Greg stood up. 'The way I just put an armlock on you,' he said.
The banker looked up at him. His eyes rolled helplessly. Greg Stillson thought he looked like a sheep that had been led neatly to the slaughter.
'Fifty thousand dollars,' he said. 'You find it.'
He walked out, closing the door gently behind him. Gendron heard his booming voice even through the thick walls, bandying with his secretary. His secretary was a sixty-year-old flat-chested biddy, and Stillson probably had her giggling like a schoolgirl. He was a buffoon. It was that as much as his programs for coping with youthful crime that had made him mayor of Ridgeway. But the people didn't elect buffoons to Washington.
Well - hardly ever.
That wasn't his problem. Fifty thousand dollars in campaign contributions, that was his problem. His mind began to scurry around the problem like a trained white rat scurrying around a piece of cheese on a plate. It could probably be done. Yes, it could probably be done - but would it end there?
The white envelope was still on his desk. His smiling wife looked at it from her place in the lucite cube. He scooped the envelope up and jammed it into the inner pocket of his suitcoat. It had been Elliman, somehow Elliman had found out and had taken the pictures, he was sure of it.
But it had been Stillson who told him what to do.
Maybe the man wasn't such a buffoon after all. His assessment of the political climate of 1975-76 wasn't completely stupid. Building windmills instead of wind-breaks.. . the sky's the limit.
But that wasn't his problem.
Fifty thousand dollars was his problem.
Chuck Gendron, president of the Lions and all-round good fellow (last year he had ridden one of those small, funny motorcycles in the Ridgeway Fourth of July parade), pulled a yellow legal tablet out of the top drawer of his desk and began jotting down a list of names. The trained white rat at work. And down on Main Street Greg Stillson turned his face up into the strong autumn sunlight and congratulated himself on a job well-done - or well-begun.
