The Dead Zone (43 page)

Chuck snapped the book closed. “There. Last one in the pool's a green banana.”

“Hold it a minute, Chuck.”

“Ahhhhhhh . . .” Chuck sat down again, heavily, his face composing itself into what Johnny already thought of as his
now the questions
expression. Long-suffering good humor predominated, but beneath it he could sometimes see another Chuck: sullen, worried, and scared. Plenty scared. Because it was a reader's world, the unlettered of America were dinosaurs lumbering down a blind alley, and Chuck was smart enough to know it. And he was plenty afraid of what might happen to him when he got back to school this fall.

“Just a couple of questions, Chuck.”

“Why bother? You know I won't be able to answer them.”

“Oh yes. This time you'll be able to answer them all.”

“I can never understand what I read, you ought to know that by now.” Chuck looked morose and unhappy. “I don't even know what you stick around for, unless it's the chow.”

“You'll be able to answer these questions because they're not about the book.”

Chuck glanced up. “Not about the book? Then why ask em? I thought . . .”

“Just humor me, okay?”

Johnny's heart was pounding hard, and he was not totally surprised to find that he was scared. He had been planning this for a long time, waiting for just the right confluence of circumstances. This was as close as he was ever going to get. Mrs. Chatsworth was not hovering around anxiously, making Chuck that much more nervous. None of his buddies were splashing around in the pool, making him feel self-conscious about reading aloud like a backward fourth grader. And most important, his father, the man Chuck wanted to please above all others in the world, was not here. He was in Boston at a New England Environmental Commission meeting on water pollution.

From Edward Stanney's
An Overview of Learning Disabilities:

“The subject, Rupert J., was sitting in the third row of a movie theater. He was closest to the screen by more than six rows, and was the only one in a position to observe that a small fire had started in the accumulated litter on the floor. Rupert J. stood up and cried, ‘F-F-F-F-F—' while the people behind him shouted for him to sit down and be quiet.

“ ‘How did that make you feel?' I asked Rupert J.

“ ‘I could never explain in a thousand years how it made me feel, ' he answered. I was scared, but even more than being scared, I was frustrated. I felt inadequate, not fit to be a member of the human race. The stuttering always made me feel that way, but now I felt impotent, too.'

“ ‘Was there anything else?'

“ ‘Yes, I felt jealousy, because someone else would see the fire and—you know—'

“ ‘Get the glory of reporting it?'

“ ‘Yes, that's right. I saw the fire starting, I was the only one. And all I could say was F-F-F-F like a stupid broken record. Not fit to be a member of the human race describes it best.'

“ ‘And how did you break the block?'

“ ‘The day before had been my mother's birthday. I got her half a dozen roses at the florist's. And I stood there with all of them yelling at me and I thought: I am going to open my mouth and scream ROSES! just as loud as I can. I got that word all ready.'

“ ‘Then what did you do?'

“I
opened my mouth and screamed FIRE! at the top of my lungs. ' ”

It had been eight years since Johnny had read that case history in the introduction to Stanney's text, but he had never forgotten it. He had always thought that the key word in Rupert J.'s recollection of what had happened was
impotent.
If you feel that sexual intercourse is the most important thing on earth at this point in time, your risk of coming up with a limp penis increases ten or a hundredfold. And if you feel that reading is the most important thing on earth . . .

“What's your middle name, Chuck?” he asked casually.

“Murphy,” Chuck said with a little grin. “How's that for bad? My mother's maiden name. You tell Jack or Al that, and I'll be forced to do gross damage to your skinny body.”

“No fear,” Johnny said. “When's your birthday?”

“September 8.”

Johnny began to throw the questions faster, not giving Chuck a chance to think—but they weren't questions you had to think about.

“What's your girl's name?”

“Beth. You know Beth, Johnny . . .”

“What's her middle name?”

Chuck grinned. “Alma. Pretty horrible, right?”

“What's your paternal grandfather's name?”

“Richard.”

“Who do you like in the American League East this year?”

“Yankees. In a walk.”

“Who do you like for president?”

“I'd like to see Jerry Brown get it.”

“You planning to trade that Vette?”

“Not this year. Maybe next.”

“Your mom's idea?”

“You bet. She says it outraces her peace of mind.”

“How did Red Hawk get past the guards and kill Danny Juniper?”

“Sherburne didn't pay enough attention to that trapdoor leading into the jail attic,” Chuck said promptly, without thinking, and Johnny felt a sudden burst of triumph that hit him like a knock of straight bourbon. It had worked. He had gotten Chuck talking about roses, and he had responded with a good, healthy yell of
fire!

Chuck was looking at him in almost total surprise.

“Red Hawk got into the attic through the skylight. Kicked
open the trapdoor. Shot Danny Juniper. Shot Tom Kenyon, too.”

“That's right, Chuck.”

“I remembered,” he muttered, and then looked up at Johnny, eyes widening, a grin starting at the corners of his mouth. “You tricked me into remembering!”

“I just took you by the hand and led you around the side of whatever has been in your way all this time,” Johnny said. “But whatever it is, it's still there, Chuck. Don't kid yourself. Who was the girl Sherburne fell for?”

“It was . . .” His eyes clouded a little, and he shook his head reluctantly. “I don't remember.” He struck his thigh with sudden viciousness. I can't remember
anything!
I'm so fucking
stupid!”

“Can you remember ever having been told how your dad and mom met?”

Chuck looked up at him and smiled a little. There was an angry red place on his thigh where he had struck himself. “Sure. She was working for Avis down in Charleston, South Carolina. She rented my dad a car with a flat tire.” Chuck laughed. “She still claims she only married him because number two tries harder.”

“And who was that girl Sherburne got interested in?”

“Jenny Langhorne. Big-time trouble for him. She's Gresham's girl. A redhead. Like Beth. She . . .” He broke off, staring at Johnny as if he had just produced a rabbit from the breast pocket of his shirt. “You did it again!”

“No. You did it. It's a simple trick of misdirection. Why do you say Jenny Langhorne is big-time trouble for John Sherburne?”

“Well, because Gresham's the big wheel there in that town . . .”

“What town?”

Chuck opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Suddenly he cut his eyes away from Johnny's face and looked at the pool. Then he smiled and looked back. “Amity. The same as in the flick
Jaws.”

“Good! How did you come up with the name?”

Chuck grinned. “This makes no sense at all, but I started thinking about trying out for the swimming team, and there it was. What a trick. What a great trick.”

“Okay. That's enough for today, I think.” Johnny felt tired, sweaty, and very, very good. “You just made a breakthrough,
in case you didn't notice. Let's swim. Last one in's a green banana.”

“Johnny?”

“What?”

“Will that always work?”

“If you make a habit of it, it will,” Johnny said. “And every time you go around that block instead of trying to bust through the middle of it, you're going to make it a little smaller. I think you'll begin to see an improvement in your word-to-word reading before long, also. I know a couple of other little tricks.” He fell silent. What he had just given Chuck was less the truth than a kind of hypnotic suggestion.

“Thanks,” Chuck said. The mask of long-suffering good humor was gone, replaced by naked gratitude. “If you get me over this, I'll . . . well, I guess I'd get down and kiss your feet if you wanted me to. Sometimes I get so scared, I feel like I'm letting my dad down . . .”

“Chuck, don't you know that's part of the problem?”

“It is?”

“Yeah. You're . . . you're overswinging. Overthrowing. Overeverything. And it may not be just a psychological block, you know. There are people who believe that some reading problems, Jackson's Syndrome, reading phobias, all of that, may be some kind of . . . mental birthmark. A fouled circuit, a faulty relay, a d . . .” He shut his mouth with a snap.

“A what?” Chuck asked.

“A dead zone,” Johnny said slowly. “Whatever. Names don't matter. Results do. The misdirection trick really isn't a trick at all. It's educating a fallow part of your brain to do the work of that small faulty section. For you, that means getting into an oral-based train of thought every time you hit a snag. You're actually changing the location in your brain from which your thought is coming. It's learning to switch-hit.”

“But can I do it? You think I can do it?”

“I know you can,” Johnny said.

“All right. Then I will.” Chuck dived low and flat into the pool and came up, shaking water out of his long hair in a fine spray of droplets. “Come on in! It's fine!”

“I will,” Johnny said, but for the moment he was content just to stand on the pool's tile facing and watch Chuck swim powerfully toward the pool's deep end and to savor this success. There had been no good feeling like this when he had
suddenly known Eileen Magown's kitchen curtains were taking fire, no good feeling like this when he had uncovered the name of Frank Dodd. If God had given him a talent, it was teaching, not knowing things he had no business knowing. This was the sort of thing he had been made for, and when he had been teaching at Cleaves Mills back in 1970, he had known it. More important, the kids had known it and responded to it, as Chuck had done just now.

“You gonna stand there like a dummy?” Chuck asked. Johnny dived into the pool.

Warren Richardson came out of his small office building at quarter to five as he always did. He walked around to the parking lot and hoisted his two-hundred-pound bulk behind the wheel of his Chevy Caprice and started the engine. All according to routine. What was not according to routine was the face that appeared suddenly in the rear-view mirror—an olive-skinned, stubbled face framed by long hair and set off by eyes every bit as green as those of Sarah Hazlett or Chuck Chatsworth. Warren Richardson had not been so badly scared since he was a kid, and his heart took a great, unsteady leap in his chest.

“Howdy,” said Sonny Elliman, leaning over the seat.

“Who . . .” was all Richardson managed, uttering the word in a terrified hiss of breath. His heart was pounding so hard that dark specks danced and pulsed before his eyes in rhythm with its beat. He was afraid he might have a heart attack.

“Easy,” the man who had been hiding in his back seat said. “Go easy, man. Lighten up.”

And Warren Richardson felt an absurd emotion. It was gratitude. The man who had scared him wasn't going to scare him anymore. He must be a nice man, he must be—

“Who are you?” he managed this time.

“A friend,” Sonny said.

Richardson started to turn and fingers as hard as pincers bit into the sides of his flabby neck. The pain was excruciating. Richardson drew breath in a convulsive, heaving whine.

“You don't need to turn around, man. You can see me as well as you need to see me in your rear-view. Can you dig that?”

“Yes,” Richardson gasped. “Yes yes yes just let go!”

The pincers began to ease up, and again he felt that irrational sense of gratitude. But he no longer doubted that the man in the back seat was dangerous, or that he was in this car on purpose although he couldn't think why anyone would—

And then he
could
think why someone would, at least why someone
might,
it wasn't the sort of thing you'd expect any ordinary candidate for office to do, but Greg Stillson wasn't ordinary, Greg Stillson was a crazy man, and—

Very softly, Warren Richardson began to blubber.

“Got to talk to you, man,” Sonny said. His voice was kind and regretful, but in the rear-view mirror his eyes glittered green amusement. “Got to talk to you like a Dutch uncle.”

“It's Stillson, isn't it? It's . . .”

The pincers were suddenly back, the man's fingers were buried in his neck, and Richardson uttered a high-pitched shriek.

“No names,” the terrible man in the back seat told him in that same kind-yet-regretful voice. “You draw your own conclusions, Mr. Richardson, but keep the names to yourself. I've got one thumb just over your carotid artery and my fingers are over by your jugular, and I can turn you into a human turnip, if I want to.”

“What do you want?” Richardson asked. He did not exactly moan, but it was a near thing; he had never felt more like moaning in his life. He could not believe that this was happening in the parking lot behind his real estate office in Capital City, New Hampshire, on a bright summer's day. He could see the clock set into the red brick of the town hall tower. It said ten minutes to five. At home, Norma would be putting the pork chops, nicely coated with Shake ‘n Bake, into the oven to broil. Sean would be watching Sesame Street on TV. And there was a man behind him threatening to cut off the flow of blood to his brain and turn him into an idiot. No, it wasn't real; it was like a nightmare. The sort of nightmare that makes you moan in your sleep.