The Dead Zone (58 page)

“You okay, Johnny?” O'Donnell asked.

“Huh? Yeah, sure.”

“You looked sorta funny for just a second there.”

Chuck Chatsworth saying:
If didn't, I'd be afraid all those people he killed would haunt me to my grave.

“Out woolgathering, I guess,” Johnny said. “I want you to know it's been a pleasure drinking with you.”

“Well, the same goes back to you,” O'Donnell said, looking pleased. “I wish more people passing through felt that way. They go through here headed for the ski resorts, you know. The big places. That's where they take their money. If I thought they'd stop in, I'd fix this place up like they'd like. Posters, you know, of Switzerland and Colorado. A fireplace. Load the juke up with rock ‘n' roll records instead of that shitkicking music. I'd . . . you know, I'd like that.” He shrugged. “I'm not a bad guy, hell.”

“Of course not,” Johnny said, getting off the stool and thinking about the dog trained to sic, and the hoped-for hippie junkie burglar.

“Well, tell your friends I'm here,” O'Donnell said.

“For sure,” Johnny said.

“Hey Dick!” one of the bar-bags hollered. “Ever hear of service-with-a-smile in this place?”

“Why don't you get stuffed? O'Donnell yelled at her, flushing.

“Fuck——
YOU!”
Clarice called back, and cackled.

Johnny slipped quietly out into the gathering storm.

He was staying at the Holiday Inn in Portsmouth. When he got back that evening, he told the desk clerk to have his bill ready for checkout in the morning.

In his room, he sat down at the impersonal Holiday Inn writing desk, took out all the stationery, and grasped the Holiday Inn pen. His head was throbbing, but there were letters to be written. His momentary rebellion—if that was what it had been—had passed. His unfinished business with Greg Stillson remained.

I've gone crazy,
he thought.
That's really it. I've gone entirely off my chump.
He could see the headlines now. PSYCHO SHOOTS N.H. REP. MADMAN ASSASSINATES STILLSON. HAIL OF BULLETS CUTS DOWN U.S. REPPRESENTATIVE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. And
Inside View,
of course, would have a field day. SELF-PROCLAIMED “SEER” KILLS STILLSON, 12 NOTED PSYCHIATRISTS TELL WHY SMITH DID IT. With a sidebar by that fellow Dees, maybe, telling how Johnny had threatened to get his shotgun and “shoot me a trespasser.”

Crazy.

The hospital debt was paid, but this would leave a new bill of particulars behind, and his father would have to pay for it. He and his new wife would spend a lot of days in the limelight of his reflected notoriety. They would get the hate mail. Everyone he had known would be interviewed—the Chatsworths, Sam, Sheriff George Bannerman. Sarah? Well, maybe they wouldn't get as far as Sarah. After all, it wasn't as though he were planning to shoot the president. At least, not yet.
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.

Johnny rubbed his temples. The headache came in low, slow waves, and none of this was getting his letters written. He drew the first sheet of stationery toward him, picked up the pen, and wrote
Dear Dad.
Outside, snow struck the window with that dry, sandy sound that means serious business. Finally the pen began to move across the paper, slowly at first, then gaining speed.

Johnny came up wooden steps that had been shoveled clear of snow and salted down. He went through a set of double doors and into a foyer plastered with specimen ballots and notices of a special town meeting to be held here in Jackson on the third of February. There was also a notice of Greg Stillson's impending visit and a picture of The Man Who himself, hard hat cocked back on his head grinning that hard slantwise “We're wise to em ain't we pard?” grin. Set a little to the right of the green door leading into the meeting hall itself was a sign that Johnny hadn't expected, and he pondered it in silence for several seconds, his breath pluming white from his lips. DRIVER EXAMINATIONS TODAY, this sign read. It was set on a wooden easel. HAVE PAPERS READY.

He opened the door, went into the stuporous glow of heat thrown by a big woodstove, and there sat a cop at a desk. The cop was wearing a ski parka, unzipped. There were papers scattered across his desk, and there was also a gadget for examining visual acuity.

The cop looked up at Johnny, and he felt a sinking sensation in his gut.

“Can I help you, sir?”

Johnny fingered the camera slung around his neck. “Well, I wondered if it would be all right to look around a little bit,” he said. “I'm on assignment from
Yankee
magazine. We're doing a spread on town hall architecture in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Taking a lot of pictures, you know.”

“Go right to it,” the cop said. “My wife reads
Yankee
all the time. Puts me to sleep.”

Johnny smiled. “New England architecture has a tendency toward . . . well, starkness.”

“Starkness,” the cop repeated doubtfully, and then let it go. “Next please.”

A young man approached the desk the cop was sitting behind. He handed an examination sheet to the cop, who took it and said, “Look into the viewer, please, and identify the traffic signs and signals which I will show you.”

A young man peered into the viewing machine. The cop put an answer-key over the young man's exam sheet. Johnny moved down the center aisle of the Jackson town hall and clicked a picture of the rostrum at the front.

“Stop sign,” the young man said from behind him. “The next one's a yield sign . . . and the next one is a traffic information sign . . . no right turn, no left turn, like that . . .”

He hadn't expected a cop in the town hall; he hadn't even bothered to buy film for the camera he was using as a prop. But now it was too late to back out anyway. This was Friday, and Stillson would be here tomorrow if things went the way they were supposed to go. He would be answering questions and listening to suggestions from the good people of Jackson. There would be a fair-sized entourage with him. A couple of aides, a couple of advisors—and several others, young men in sober suits and sports jackets who had been wearing jeans and riding motorcycles not so long ago. Greg Stillson was still a firm believer in guards for the body. At the Trimbull rally they had been carrying sawed-off pool cues. Did they carry guns now? Would it be so difficult for a U.S. representative to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon? Johnny didn't think so. He could count on one good chance only; he would have to make the most of it. So it was important to look the place over, to try and decide if he could take Stillson in here or if it would be better to wait in the parking lot with the window rolled down and the rifle on his lap.

So he had come and here he was, casing the joint while a state cop gave driver-permit exams not thirty feet away.

There was a bulletin board on his left, and Johnny snapped his unloaded camera at it—why in God's name hadn't he taken another two minutes and bought himself a roll of film? The board was covered with chatty small-town intelligence concerning baked-bean suppers, an upcoming high school play, dog-licensing information, and, of course, more on Greg. A file card said that Jackson's first selectman was looking for someone who could take shorthand, and Johnny studied this
as though it were of great interest to him while his mind moved into high gear.

Of course if Jackson looked impossible—or even chancy—he could wait until next week, where Stillson would be doing the whole thing all over again in the town of Upson. Or the week after, in Trimbull. Or the week after that. Or never.

It should be this week. It ought to be tomorrow.

He snapped the big woodstove in the comer, and then glanced upward. There was a balcony up there. No—not precisely a balcony, more like a gallery with a waist-high railing and wide, white-painted slats with small, decorative diamonds and curlicues cut into the wood. It would be very possible for a man to crouch behind that railing and look through one of those doodads. At the right moment, he could just stand up and—

“What kind of camera is that?”

Johnny looked around, sure it was the cop. The cop would ask to see his filmless camera—and then he would want to see some ID—and then it would be all over.

But it wasn't the cop. It was the young man who had been taking his driver's permit test. He was about twenty-two, with long hair and pleasant, frank eyes. He was wearing a suede coat and faded jeans.

“A Nikon,” Johnny said.

“Good camera, man. I'm a real camera nut. How long have you been working for
Yankee?”

“Well, I'm a free lance,” Johnny said. “I do stuff for them, sometimes for
Country Journal,
sometimes for
Downeast,
you know.”

“Nothing national, like
People
or
Life?”

“No. At least, not yet.”

“What f-stop do you use in here?”

What in hell is an f-stop?

Johnny shrugged. “I play it mostly by ear.”

“By eye, you mean,” the young man said, smiling.

“That's right, by eye.”
Get lost, kid, please get lost.

“I'm interested in free-lancing myself,” the young man said, and grinned. “My big dream is to take a picture some day like the flag-raising at Iwo Jima.”

“I heard that was staged,” Johnny said.

“Well, maybe. Maybe. But it's a classic. Or how about the first picture of a UFO coming in for a landing? I'd sure like
that. Anyway, I've got a portfolio of stuff I've taken around here. Who's your contact at
Yankee?”

Johnny was sweating now. “Actually, they contacted me on this one,” he said. “It was a . . .”

“Mr. Clawson, you can come over now,” the cop said, sounding impatient. “I'd like to go over these answers with you.”

“Whoops, his master's voice,” Clawson said. “See you later, man.” He hurried off and Johnny let out his breath in a silent, whispering sigh. It was time to get out, and quickly.

He snapped another two or three “pictures” just so it wouldn't look like a complete rout, but he was barely aware of what he was looking at through the viewfinder. Then he left.

The young man in the suede jacket—Clawson—had forgotten all about him. He had apparently flunked the written part of his exam. He was arguing strenuously with the cop, who was only shaking his head.

Johnny paused for a moment in the town hall's entryway. To his left was a cloakroom. To his right was a closed door. He tried it and found it unlocked. A narrow flight of stairs led upward into dimness. The actual offices would be up there, of course. And the gallery.

He was staying at the Jackson House, a pleasant little hotel on the main drag. It had been carefully renovated and the renovations had probably cost a lot of money, but the place would pay for itself, the owners must have reckoned, because of the new Jackson Mountain ski resort. Only the resort had gone bust and now the pleasant little hotel was barely hanging on. The night clerk was dozing over a cup of coffee when Johnny went out at four o'clock on Saturday morning, the attaché case in his left hand.

He had slept little last night, slipping into a short, light doze after midnight. He had dreamed. It was 1970 again. It was carnival time. He and Sarah stood in front of the Wheel of Fortune and again he had that feeling of crazy, enormous power. In his nostrils he could smell burning rubber.

“Come on,” a voice said softly behind him, “I love to watch this guy take a beatin.” He turned and it was Frank Dodd,
dressed in his black vinyl raincoat, his throat slit from ear to ear in a wide red grin, his eyes sparkling with dead viva-ciousness. He turned back to the booth, scared—but now the pitchman was Greg Stillson, grinning knowingly at him, his yellow hard hat tipped cockily back on his skull. “Hey-hey-hey,” Stillson chanted, his voice deep and resonant and ominous. “Lay em down where you want em down fella. What do you say! Want to shoot the moon?”

Yes, he wanted to shoot the moon. But as Stillson set the Wheel in motion he saw that the entire outer circle had turned green. Every number was double-zero. Every number was a house number.

He had jerked awake and spent the rest of the night looking out the frost-rimmed window into darkness. The headache he'd had ever since arriving in Jackson the day before was gone, leaving him feeling weak but composed. He sat with his hands in his lap. He didn't think about Greg Stillson; he thought about the past. He thought about his mother putting a Band-Aid on a scraped knee; he thought about the time the dog had torn off the back of Grandma Nellie's absurd sundress and how he had laughed and how Vera had swatted him one and cut his forehead with the stone in her engagement ring; he thought about his father showing him how to bait a fishing hook and saying.
It doesn't hurt the worms, Johnny . . . at least, I don't think it does.
He thought about his father giving him a pocketknife for Christmas when he was seven and saying very seriously,
I'm trusting you, Johnny.
All those memories had come back in a flood.

Now he stepped off into the deep cold of the morning, his shoes squeaking on the path shoveled through the snow. His breath plumed out in front of him The moon was down but the stars were sprawled across the black sky in idiot's profusion. God's jewel box, Vera always called it. You're looking into God's jewel box, Johnny.

He walked down Main Street, and he stopped in front of the tiny Jackson post office and fumbled the letters out of his coat pocket. Letters to his father, to Sarah, to Sam Weizak, to Bannerman. He set the attaché case down between his feet, opened the mailbox that stood in front of the neat little brick building, and after one brief moment of hesitation, dropped them in. He could hear them drop down inside, surely the first letters mailed in Jackson this new day, and the sound
gave him a queer sense of finality. The letters were mailed, there was no stopping now.