“Yes, sometimes writing can be easier. But I never had a high school comp class that would believe it.”
Ngo smiled. “How does it go with Chuck?”
“He's doing quite well.”
“Yes, he is happy now. Not just pretending. He is a good boy. “He stood up. “Take a rest, Johnny. I'm going to take a nap.”
“All right.”
He watched Ngo walk away, small, slim, and lithe in blue jeans and a faded chambray work shirt.
The child in the skin laughs, but he is also growling and biting, because that is the game… I think this Stillson knows that game, too.
That thread of disquiet again.
The pool chair bobbed gently up and down. The sun beat pleasantly on him. He opened his Book Review again, but the article he had been reading no longer engaged him. He put it down and paddled the little rubber float to the edge of the pool and got out. Trimbull was less than thirty miles away. Maybe he would just hop into Mrs. Chatsworth's Mercedes and drive down this Saturday. See Greg Stillson in person. Enjoy the show. Maybe… maybe shake his hand.
No. No!
But why not? After all, he had more or less made politicians his hobby this election year. What could possibly be so upsetting about going to see one more?
But he was upset, no question about that. His heart was knocking harder and more rapidly than it should have been, and he managed to drop his magazine into the pool. He fished it out with a curse before it was saturated.
Somehow, thinking about Greg Stilison made him think about Frank Dodd.
Utterly ridiculous. He couldn't have any feeling at all about Stillson one way or the other from having just seen him on TV.
Stay away.
Well, maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't. May-be he would go down to Boston this Saturday instead. See a film.
But a strange, heavy feeling of fright had settled on him by the time he got back to the guest house and changed his clothes. In a way the feeling was like an old friend-the sort of old friend you secretly hate. Yes, he would go down to Boston on Saturday. That would be better.
Although he relived that day over and over in the months afterward, Johnny could never remember exactly how or why it was that he ended up in Trimbull after all. He had set out in another direction, planning to go down to Boston and take in the Red Sox at Fenway Park, then maybe go over to Cambridge and nose through the book-shops. If there was enough cash left over (he had sent four hundred dollars of Chatsworth's bonus to his father, who in turn sent it on to Eastern Maine Medical-a gesture tantamount to a spit in the ocean) he planned to go to the Orson Welles Cinema and see that reggae movie, The Harder They Come. A good day's program, and a fine day to implement it; that August 19 had dawned hot and dear and sweet, the distillation of the perfect New England summer's day.
He had let himself into the kitchen of the big house and made three hefty ham-and-cheese sandwiches for lunch, put them in an old-fashioned wicker picnic basket he found in the pantry, and after a little soul-searching, had topped off his haul with a sixpack of Tuborg Beer. At that point he had been feeling fine, absolutely first-rate. No thought of either Greg Stillson or his homemade bodyguard corps of iron horsemen had so much as crossed his mind.
He put the picnic basket on the floor of the Mercedes and drove southeast toward 1-95. All clear enough up to that point. But then other things had begun to creep in. Thoughts of his mother on her deathbed first. His mother's face, twisted into a frozen snarl, the hand on the counterpane hooked into a claw, her voice sounding as if it were coming through a big mouthful of cotton wadding.
Didn't I tell you? Didn't I say it was so?
Johnny turned the radio up louder. Good rock “n” roll poured out of the Mercedes's stereo speakers. He had been asleep for four-and-a-half years but rock “n” roll had remained alive and well, thank you very much. Johnny sang along.
He has a job for you. Don't run from him, Johnny.
The radio couldn't drown out his dead mother's voice. His dead mother was going to have her say. Even from beyond the grave she was going to have her say.
Don't hide away in a cave or make him have to send a big fish to swallow you.
But he had been swallowed by a big fish. Its name was not leviathan but coma. He had spent four-and-a-half years in that particular fish's black belly. and that was enough.
The entrance ramp to the turnpike came up-and then slipped behind him. He had been so lost in his thoughts that he had missed his turn. The old ghosts just wouldn't give up and let him alone. Well, he would turn around and go back as soon as he found a good place.
Not the potter but the potter's clay, Johnny.
“Oh, come on,” he muttered. He had to get this crap off his mind, that was all. His mother had been a religious crazy, not a very kind way of putting it, but true all the same. Heaven out in the constellation Orion, angels driving flying saucers, kingdoms under the earth. In her way she had been at least as crazy as Greg Stillson was in his.
Oh for Christ's sake, don't get off on that guy.
“And when you send Greg Stillson to the House of Representatives, you gonna say HOT DOG! SOMEONE GIVES A RIP AT LAST!”
He came to New Hampshire Route 63. A left turn would take him to Concord, Berlin, Ridder's Mill, Trimbull. Johnny made the turn without even thinking about it. His thoughts were elsewhere.
Roger Chatsworth, no babe in the woods, had laughed over Greg Stillson as if he were this year's answer to George Carlin and Chevy Chase all rolled up into one. He's a clown, Johnny.
And if that was all Stillson was, then there was no problem, was there? A charming eccentric, a piece of blank paper on which the electorate could write its message: You other guys are so wasted that we decided to elect this fool for two years instead. That was probably all Stillson was, after all. Just a harmless crazy, there was no need at all to associate him with the patterned, destructive madness of Frank Dodd. And yet… somehow he did.
The road branched ahead. Left branch to Berlin and Ridder's Mill, right branch to Trimbull and Concord. Johnny turned right.
But it wouldn't hurt to just shake his hand, would it?
Maybe not. One more politician for his collection. Some people collected stamps, some coins, but Johnny Smith collects handshakes and -
–and admit it. You've been looking for a wild card in the deck all along.
The thought shook him so badly that he almost pulled over to the side of the road. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rear-view mirror and it wasn't the contented, everything-is-resting-easy face he had gotten up with that morning. Now it was the press conference face, and the face of the man who had crawled through the snow of the Castle Rock town common on his hands and knees. The skin was too white, the eyes circled with bruised-looking brown rings, the lines etched too deep.
No. It isn't true.
But it was. Now that it was out, it couldn't be denied. In the first twenty-three years of his life he had shaken hands with exactly one politician; that was when Ed Muskie had come to talk to his high school government class in 1966. In the last seven months he had shaken hands with over a dozen big names. Arid hadn't the thought flashed across the back of his mind as each one stuck out his hand What's this guy all about? What's he going to tell me?
Hadn't he been looking, all along, for the political equivalent of Frank Dodd?
Yes. It was true.
But the fact was, none of them except Carter had told him much of anything, and the feelings that he had gotten from Carter were not particularly alarming. Shaking hands with Carter had not given him that sinking feeling he had gotten just from watching Greg Stillson on TV. He felt as if Stillson might have taken the game of the Laughing Tiger a step further: inside the beast-skin, a man, yes.
But inside the man-skin, a beast.
Whatever the progression had been, Johnny found himself eating his picnic lunch in the Trimbull town park instead of the Fenway bleachers, He had arrived shortly after noon and had seen a sign on the community notice board announcing the rally at three P. M.
He drifted over to the park, expecting to have the place pretty much to himself so long before the rally was scheduled to begin, but others were already spreading blankets, unlimbering Frisbees, or settling down to their own lunches.
Up front, a number of men were at work on the bandstand. Two of them were decorating the waist-high railings with bunting. Another was on a ladder, hanging colorful crepe streamers from the bandstand's circular eave. Others were setting up the sound system, and as Johnny had guessed when he watched the CBS newsclip, it was no four-hundred-dollar podium PA set. The speakers were Altec-Lansings, and they were being carefully placed to give surround-sound.
The advance men (but the image that persisted was that of roadies setting up for an Eagles or Geils band concert) went about their work with businesslike precision. The whole thing had a practiced, professional quality to it that jarred with Stillson's image of the amiable Wild Man of Borneo.
The crowd mostly spanned about twenty years, from midteens to mid-thirties. They were having a good time. Babies toddled around clutching melting Dairy Queens and Slush Puppies. Women chatted together and laughed. Men drank beer from styrofoam cups. A few dogs bounced around, grabbing what there was to be grabbed, and the sun shone benignly down on everyone.
“Test,” one of the men on the bandstand said laconically into the two mikes. “Test-one, test-two… “One of the speakers in the park uttered a loud feedback whine, and the guy on the podium motioned that he wanted it moved backward.
This isn't the way you set up for a political speech and rally, Johnny thought. They're setting up for a love-feast or a group grope.
“Test-one, test-two… test, test, test.”
They were strapping the big speakers to the trees, Johnny saw. Not nailing them but strapping them. Stillson was an ecology booster, and someone had told his advance men not to hurt so much as one tree in one town park. The operation gave him the feeling of having been honed down to the smallest detail. This was no grab-it-and-run-with-it deal.
Two yellow school buses pulled into the turnaround left of the small (and already full) parking lot. The doors folded open and men and women got out, talking animatedly to one another. They were in sharp contrast to those already in the park because they were dressed in their best-men in suits or sports coats, ladies in crisp
skirt-and-blouse combinations or smart dresses. They were gazing around with expressions of nearly childlike wonder and anticipation, and Johnny grinned. Ngo's citizenship class had arrived.
He walked over to them. Ngo was standing with a tall man in a corduroy suit and two women, both Chinese.
“Hi, Ngo,” Johnny said.
Ngo grinned broadly. “Johnny!” he said. “Good to see you, man! It is being a great day for the state of New Hampshire, right?”
“I guess so,” Johnny said.
Ngo introduced his companions. The man in the corduroy suit was Polish. The two women were sisters from Taiwan. One of the women told Johnny that she was much hoping for shaking hands with the candidate after the program and then, shyly, she showed Johnny the autograph book in her handbag.
“I am so glad to be here in America,” she said. “But it is strange, is it not, Mr. Smith?”
