The Dead Zone (32 page)

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 drug-freaks 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 of 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 Demos 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 windbreaks . . . 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.

Later, Johnny supposed that the reason he ended up finally making love to Sarah—almost five years to the day after the fair—had a lot to do with the visit of Richard Dees, the man from
Inside View.
The reason he finally weakened and called Sarah and invited her to come and visit was little more than a wistful urge to have someone nice come to call and take the nasty taste out of his mouth. Or so he told himself.

He called her in Kennebunk and got the former roommate, who said Sarah would be right with him. The phone clunked down and there was a moment of silence when he contemplated (but not very seriously) just hanging up and closing the books for good. Then Sarah's voice was in his ear.

“Johnny? Is it you?”

“The very same.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. How's by you?”

“I'm fine,” she said. “Glad you called. I . . . didn't know if you would.”

“Still sniffin that wicked cocaine?”

“No, I'm on heroin now.”

“You got your boy with you?”

“I sure do. Don't go anywhere without him.”

“Well, why don't the two of you truck on out here some day before you have to go back up north?”

“I'd like that, Johnny,” she said warmly.

“Dad's working in Westbrook and I'm chief cook and bottlewasher. He gets home around four-thirty and we eat around five-thirty. You're welcome to stay for dinner, but be warned: all my best dishes use Franco-American spaghetti as their base.”

She giggled. “Invitation accepted. Which day is best?”

“What about tomorrow or the day after, Sarah?”

“Tomorrow's fine,” she said after the briefest of hesitations. “See you then.”

“Take care, Sarah.”

“You too.”

He hung up thoughtfully, feeling both excited and guilty—for no good reason at all. But your mind went where it wanted to, didn't it? And where his mind wanted to go now was to examine possibilities maybe best left unconsidered.

Well, she knows the thing she needs to know. She knows what time dad comes home—what else does she need to know?

And his mind answered itself:
What you going to do if she shows up at noon?

Nothing,
he answered, and didn't wholly believe it. Just thinking about Sarah, the set of her lips, the small, upward tilt of her green eyes—those were enough to make him feel weak and sappy and a little desperate.

Johnny went out to the kitchen and slowly began to put together this night's supper, not so important, just for two. Father and son batching it. It hadn't been all that bad. He was still healing. He and his father had talked about the four-and-a-half years he had missed, about his mother—working around that carefully but always seeming to come a little closer to the center, in a tightening spiral. Not needing to understand, maybe, but needing to come to terms. No, it hadn't been that bad. It was a way to finish putting things together. For both of them. But it would be over in January when he returned to Cleaves Mills to teach. He had gotten his half-year contract from Dave Pelsen the week before, had signed it and sent it back. What would his father do then? Go on, Johnny supposed. People had a way of doing that, just going on, pushing through with no particular drama, no big drumrolls. He would get down to visit Herb as often as he could, every weekend, if that felt like the right thing to do. So many things had gotten strange so fast that all he could do was feel his way slowly along, groping like a blind man in an unfamiliar room.

He put the roast in the oven, went into the living room, snapped on the TV, then snapped it off again. He sat down and thought about Sarah.
The baby,
he thought.
The baby will be our chaperon if she comes early.
So that was all right, after all. All bases covered.

But his thoughts were still long and uneasily speculative.

She came at quarter past twelve the next day, wheeling a snappy little red Pinto into the driveway and parking it, getting out, looking tall and beautiful, her dark blonde hair caught in the mild October wind.

“Hi, Johnny!” she called, raising her hand.

“Sarah!” He came down to meet her; she lifted her face and he kissed her cheek lightly.

“Just let me get the emperor,” she said, opening the passenger door.

“Can I help?”

“Naw, we get along just fine together, don't we, Denny? Come on, kiddo.” Moving deftly, she unbuckled the straps holding a pudgy little baby in the car seat. She lifted him out. Denny stared around the yard with wild, solemn interest, and then his eyes fixed on Johnny and held there. He smiled.

“Vig!” Denny said, and waved both hands.

“I think he wants to go to you,” Sarah said. “Very unusual. Denny has his father's Republican sensibilities—he's rather standoffish. Want to hold him?”

“Sure,” Johnny said, a little doubtfully.

Sarah grinned. “He won't break and you won't drop him,” she said, and handed Denny over. “If you did, he'd probably bounce right up like Silly Putty.
Disgustingly
fat baby.”

“Vun bunk!” Denny said, curling one arm nonchalantly around Johnny's neck and looking comfortably at his mother.

“It really is amazing,” Sarah said. “He never takes to people like . . . Johnny?
Johnny?”

When the baby put his arm around Johnny's neck, a confused rush of feelings had washed over him like mild warm water. There was nothing dark, nothing troubling. Everything was very simple. There was no concept of the future in the baby's thoughts. No feeling of trouble. No sense of past unhappiness. And no words, only strong images: warmth, dryness, the mother, the man that was himself.

“Johnny?” She was looking at him apprehensively.

“Hmmmm?”

“Is everything all right?”

She's asking me about Denny, he realized. Is everything all right with Denny? Do you see trouble? Problems?

“Everything's fine,” he said. “We can go inside if you want, but I usually roost on the porch. It'll be time to crouch around the stove all day long soon enough.”

“I think the porch will be super. And Denny looks as if he'd like to try out the yard.
Great
yard, he says. Right, kiddo?” She ruffled his hair and Denny laughed.

“He'll be okay?”

“As long as he doesn't try to eat any of those woodchips.”

“I've been splitting stove-lengths,” Johnny said, setting Denny down as carefully as a Ming vase. “Good exercise.”

“How are you? Physically?”

“I think,” Johnny said, remembering the heave-ho he had given Richard Dees a few days ago, “that I'm doing as well as could be expected.”

“That's good. You were kinda low the last time I saw you.”

Johnny nodded. “The operations.”

“Johnny?”

He glanced at her and again felt that odd mix of speculation, guilt, and something like anticipation in his viscera. Her eyes were on his face, frankly and openly.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember . . . about the wedding ring?”

He nodded.

“It was there. Where you said it would be. I threw it away.”

“Did you?” He was not completely surprised.

“I threw it away and never mentioned it to Walt.” She shook her head. “And I don't know why. It's bothered me ever since.”

“Don't let it.”

They were standing on the steps, facing each other. Color had come up in her cheeks, but she didn't drop her eyes.

“There's something I'd like to finish,” she said simply. “Something we never had the chance to finish.”

“Sarah . . .” he began, and stopped. He had absolutely no idea what to say next. Below them, Denny tottered six steps and then sat down hard. He crowed, not put out of countenance at all.

“Yes,” she said. “I don't know if it's right or wrong. I love Walt. He's a good man, easy to love. Maybe the one thing I know is a good man from a bad one. Dan—that guy I went with in college—was one of the bad guys. You set my mouth for the other kind, Johnny. Without you, I never could have appreciated Walt for what he is.”

“Sarah, you don't have to . . .”

“I
do
have to,” Sarah contradicted. Her voice was low and
intense. “Because things like this you can only say once. And you either get it wrong or right, it's the end either way, because it's too hard to ever try to say again.” She looked at him pleadingly. “Do you understand?”