The Dead Zone (57 page)

“Where we goin, my friend?” George asked.

His fare looked at a slip of paper. “Port Authority Terminal,” he said.

George got going. “You look a little white around the gills, my friend. My brother-in-law looked like that when he was havin his gallstone attacks. You got stones?”

“No.”

“My brother-in-law, he says gallstones hurt worse than anything. Except maybe kidney stones. You know what I told him? I told him he was full of shit. Andy, I says, you're a great guy, I love ya, but you're full of shit. You ever had cancer, Andy? I says. I asks him that, you know, did he ever have cancer. I mean, everybody knows cancer's the worst.”
George took a long look in his rear-view mirror. “I'm asking you sincerely, my friend . . . are you okay? Because, I'm telling you the truth, you look like death warmed over.”

The passenger answered, “I'm fine. I was . . . thinking of another taxi ride. Several years ago.”

“Oh, right,” George said sagely, exactly as if he knew what the man was talking about. Well, New York was full of kooks, there was no denying that. And after this brief pause for reflection, he went on talking about his brother-in-law.

“Mommy, is that man sick?”

“Shhh.”

“Yeah, but is he?”

“Danny, be quiet.”

She smiled at the man on the other side of the Greyhound's aisle, an apologetic, kids-will-say-anything-won't-they smile, but the man appeared not to have heard. The poor guy did look sick. Danny was only four, but he was right about that. The man was looking listlessly out at the snow that had begun to fall shortly after they crossed the Connecticut state line. He was much too pale, much too thin, and there was a hideous Frankenstein scar running up out of his coat collar to just under his jaw. It was as if someone had tried taking his head clean off at sometime in the not-too-distant past—tried and almost succeeded.

The Greyhound was on its way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and they would arrive at 9:30 tonight if the snow didn't slow things down too much. Julie Brown and her son were going to see Julie's mother-in-law, and as usual the old bitch would spoil Danny rotten—and Danny didn't have far to go.

“I wanna go see him.”

“No, Danny.”

“I wanna see if he's sick.”

“No!”

“Yeah, but what if he's
dine,
ma?” Danny's eyes positively glowed at this entrancing possibility. “He might be dine right now!”

“Danny, shut up.”

“Hey, mister!” Danny cried. “You dine, or anything?”

“Danny, you
shut your mouth!”
Julie hissed, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.

Danny began to cry then, not real crying but that snotty, I-can't-get-my-own-way whining that always made her want to grab him and pinch his arms until he
really
had something to cry about. At times like this, riding the bus into evening through another cruddy snowstorm with her son whining beside her, she wished her own mother had sterilized her several years before she had reached the age of consent.

That was when the man across the aisle turned his head and smiled at her—a tired, painful smile, but rather sweet for all that. She saw that his eyes were terribly bloodshot, as if he had been crying. She tried to smile back, but it felt false and uneasy on her lips. That red left eye—and the scar running up his neck—made that half of his face look sinister and unpleasant.

She hoped that the man across the aisle wasn't going all the way to Portsmouth, but as it turned out, he was. She caught sight of him in the terminal as Danny's gram swept the boy, giggling happily, into her arms. She saw him limping toward the terminal doors, a scuffed traveling bag in one hand, a new attaché case in the other. And for just a moment, she felt a terrible chill cross her back. It was really worse than a limp—it was very nearly a headlong lurch. But there was something implacable about it, she told the New Hampshire state police later. It was as if he knew exactly where he was going and nothing was going to stop him from getting there.

Then he passed out into the darkness and she lost sight of him.

Timmesdale, New Hampshire, is a small town west of Durham, just inside the third congressional district. It is kept alive by the smallest of the Chatsworth Mills, which hulks like a soot-stained brick ogre on the edge of Timmesdale Stream. Its one modest claim to fame (according to the local Chamber of Commerce) is that it was the first town in New Hampshire to have electric streetlights.

One evening in early January, a young man with prematurely graying hair and a limp walked into the Timmesdale Pub, the town's only beer joint. Dick O'Donnell, the owner,
was tending the bar. The place was almost empty because it was the middle of the week and another norther was brewing. Two or three inches had piled up out there already, and more was on the way.

The man with the limp stamped off his shoes, came to the bar, and ordered a Pabst. O'Donnell served him. The fellow had two more, making them last, watching the TV over the bar. The color was going bad, had been for a couple of months now, and The Fonz looked like an aging Rumanian ghoul. O'Donnell couldn't remember having seen this guy around.

“Like another?” O'Donnell asked, coming back to the bar after serving the two old bags in the corner.

“One more won't hurt,” the fellow said. He pointed to a spot above the TV. “You met him, I guess.”

It was a framed blowup of a political cartoon. It showed Greg Stillson, his construction helmet cocked back on his head throwing a fellow in a business suit down the Capitol steps. The fellow in the business suit was Louis Quinn, the congressman who had been caught taking kickbacks in the parking-lot scam some fourteen months ago. The cartoon was titled GIVING EM THE BUM'S RUSH, and across the corner it had been signed in a scrawling hand:
For Dick O'Donnell, who keeps the best damn saloon in the third district! Keep drawing them, Dick—Greg Stillson.

“Betcha butt I did,” O'Donnell said. “He gave a speech in here the last time he canvassed for the House. Had signs out all over town, come on into the Pub at two o'clock Saturday afternoon and have one on Greg. That was the best damn day's business I've ever done. People was only supposed to have one on him, but he ended up grabbing the whole tab. Can't do much better than that, can you?”

“Sounds like you think he's one hell of a guy.”

“Yeah, I do,” O'Donnell said. “I'd be tempted to put my bare knuckles on anyone who said the other way.”

“Well, I won't try you.” The fellow put down three quarters. “Have one on me.”

“Well, okay. Don't mind if I do. Thanks, mister . . . ?”

“Johnny Smith is my name.”

“Why, pleased to meet you, Johnny. Dicky O'Donnell, that's me.” He drew himself a beer from the tap. “Yeah, Greg's done this part of New Hampshire a lotta good. And there's a lotta people afraid to come right out and say it, but
I'm not. I'll say it right out loud. Some day Greg Stillson's apt to be president.”

“You think so?”

“I do,” O'Donnell said, coming back to the bar. “New Hampshire's not big enough to hold Greg. He's one hell of a politician, and coming from me, that's something. I thought the whole crew was nothin but a bunch of crooks and lollygags. I still do, but Greg's an exception to the rule. He's a square shooter. If you told me five years ago I'd be sayin somethin like that, I woulda laughed in your face. You'd be more likely to find me readin poitry than seein any good in a politician, I woulda said. But, goddammit, he's a man.”

Johnny said, “Most of these guys want to be your buddy while they're running for office, but when they get in it's fuck you, Jack, I got mine until the next election. I come from Maine myself, and the one time I wrote Ed Muskie, you know what I got? A form letter!”

“Ah, that's a Polack for you,” O'Donnell said. “What do you expect from a Polack? Listen, Greg comes back to the district every damn weekend! Now does that sound like fuck you, Jack, I got mine, to you?”

“Every weekend huh?” Johnny sipped his beer. “Where? Trimbull? Ridgeway? The big towns?”

“He's got a system,” O'Donnell said in the reverent tones of a man who has never quite been able to work one out for himself. “Fifteen towns, from the big places like Capital City right down to the little burgs like Timmesdale and Coorter's Notch. He hits one a week until he's gone through the whole list and then he starts at the top again. You know how big Coorter's Notch is? They got eight hundred souls up there. So what do you think about a guy who takes a weekend off from Washington and comes down to Coorter's Notch to freeze his balls off in a cold meetin hall? Does that sound like fuck you, Jack, I got mine, to you?”

“No, it doesn't,” Johnny said truthfully. “What does he do? Just shake hands?”

“No, he's got a hall in every town. Reserves it for all day Saturday. He gets in there about ten in the morning, and people can come by and talk to him. Tell him their idears, you know. If they got questions, he answers them. If he can't answer them, he goes back to Washington and
finds
the answer!” He looked at Johnny triumphantly.

“When was he here in Timmesdale last?”

“Couple of months ago,” O'Donnell said. He went to the cash register and rummaged through a pile of papers beside it. He came up with a dog-eared clipping and laid it on the bar beside Johnny.

“Here's the list. You just take a look at that and see what you think.”

The clipping was from the Ridgeway paper. It was fairly old now. The story was headlined STILLSON ANNOUNCES “FEEDBACK CENTERS.” The first paragraph looked as though it might have been lifted straight from the Stillson press kit. Below it was the list of towns where Greg would be spending his weekends, and the proposed dates. He was not due in Timmesdale again until mid-March.

“I think it looks pretty good,” Johnny said.

“Yeah, I think so. Lotta people think so.”

“By this clipping, he must have been in Coorter's Notch just last weekend.”

“That's right,” O'Donnell said and laughed. “Good old Coorter's Notch. Want another beer, Johnny?”

“Only if you'll join me,” Johnny said, and laid a couple of bucks on the bar.

“Well, I don't care if I do.”

One of the two bar-bags had put some money in the juke and Tammy Wynette, sounding old and tired and not happy to be here, began singing, “Stand By Your Man.”

“Hey Dick!” the other cawed. “You ever hear of service in this place?”

“Shut your head!” he hollered back.

“Fuck——
YOU,”
she called, and cackled.

“Goddammit, Clarice, I told you about saying the effword in my bar! I told you . . .”

“Oh get off it and let's have some beer.”

“I hate those two old cunts,” O'Donnell muttered to Johnny. “Couple of old alky diesel-dykes, that's what they are. They been here a million years, and I wouldn't be surprised if they both lived to spit on my grave. It's a hell of a world sometimes.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Pardon me, I'll be right back. I got a girl, but she only comes in Fridays and Saturdays in the winter.”

O'Donnell drew two schooners of beer and brought them over to the table. He said something to them and Clarice replied “Fuck——
YOU!
” and cackled again. The beerjoint
was filled with the ghosts of dead hamburgers. Tammy Wynette sang through the popcorn-crackle of an old record. The radiators thudded dull heat into the room and outside snow spatted dryly against the glass. Johnny rubbed his temples. He had been in this bar before, in a hundred other small towns. His head ached. When he had shaken O'Donnell's hand he knew that the barkeep had a big old mongrel dog that he had trained to sic on command. His one great dream was that some night a burglar would break into his house and he would legally be able to sic that big old dog onto him and there would be one less goddam hippie pervo junkie in the world.

Oh, his head ached.

O'Donnell came back, wiping his hands on his apron. Tammy Wynette finished up and was replaced with Red Sovine, who had a CB call for the Teddy Bear.

“Thanks again for the suds,” O'Donnell said, drawing two.

“My pleasure,” Johnny said, still studying the clipping. “Coorter's Notch last week, Jackson this coming weekend. I never heard of that one. Must be a pretty small town, huh?”

“Just a burg,” O'Donnell agreed. “They used to have a ski resort, but it went broke. Lotta unemployment up that way. They do some wood-pulping and a little shirttail farming. But he goes up there, by the Jesus. Talks to em. Listens to their bitches. Where you from up in Maine, Johnny?”

“Lewiston,” Johnny lied. The clipping said that Greg Stillson would meet with interested persons at the town hall.

“Guess you came down from the skiing, huh?”

“No, I hurt my leg a while back. I don't ski anymore. Just passing through. Thanks for letting me look at this.” Johnny handed the clipping back. “It's quite interesting.”

O'Donnell put it carefully back with his other papers. He had an empty bar, a dog back home that would sic on command, and Greg Stillson. Greg had been in his bar.

Johnny found himself abruptly wishing himself dead. If this talent was a gift from God, then God was a dangerous lunatic who ought to be stopped. If God wanted Greg Stillson dead, why hadn't he sent him down the birth canal with the umbilical cord wrapped around his throat? Or strangled him on a piece of meat? Or electrocuted him while he was changing the radio station? Drowned him in the ole swimming hole? Why did God have to have Johnny Smith to do his dirty work? It wasn't his responsibility to save the world, that was
for the psychos and only psychos would presume to try it. He suddenly decided he would let Greg Stillson live and spit in God's eye.