by Stephen King
“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 lolly-gags. 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 th 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 wha 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 a though it might have been lifted straight from the Stillsoi press kit. Below it was the list of towns where Greg would be spending his weekends, and the proposed dates. He wa 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 ol Coorter’s Notch. Want another beer, Johnny?”
“Only if you’ll join me,” Johnny said, and laid a couple o bucks on the bar.
“Well, I don’t care if I do.”
One of the two bar-bags had put some money in the juk and Tammy Wynette, sounding old and tired and not happ to be here, began singing, “Stand By Your Man.”
“Hey Dick!” the other cawed. “You ever hear of servic in this place?”
“Shut your head!” he hollered back.
“Fuck—YOU,” she called, and cackled.
“Goddammit, Clarice, I told you about saying the effwor 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 t Johnny. “Couple of old alky diesel-dykes, that’s what the are. They been here a million years, and I wouldn’t be su prised if they both lived to spit on my grave. It’s a hell of world sometimes.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Pardon me, I’ll be right back. I got a girl, but she onl comes in Fridays and Saturdays in the winter.”
O‘Donnell drew two schooners of beer and brought ther over to the table. He said something to them and Claric replied “Fuck—YOU!” and cackled again. The beerjoin 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.
“You okay, Johnny?” O’Donnell asked.
“Huh? Yeah, sure.”
“You looked sorta funny for just a second there.”
Chuck Chatsworth saying: If I 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 holl
ered. “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.
8
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. RE-PPRESENTATIVE 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.
Chapter 27
1
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 corner, 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 t
o 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.
2
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.