Timmesdale, New Hampshire, is a small town west of Durham, just inside the third congressional district. It is kept alive by the smallest of the Chatsworth Mills, which hulks like a soot-stained brick ogre on the edge of Timmesdale Stream. Its one modest claim to fame (according to the local Chamber of Commerce) is that it was the first town in New Hampshire to have electric streetlights.
One evening in early January, a young man with prematurely graying hair and a limp walked into the Timmesdale Pub, the town's only beer joint. Dick O'Donnell, the owner, was tending the bar. The place was almost empty because it was the middle of the week and another norther was brewing. Two or three inches had piled up out there already, and more was on the way.
The man with the limp stamped off his shoes, came to the bar, and ordered a Pabst. O'Donnell served him. The fellow had two more, making them last, watching the TV over the bar. The color was going bad, had been for a couple of months now, and The Fonz looked like an aging Rumanian ghoul. O'Donnell couldn't remember having seen this guy around.
“Like another?” O'Donnell asked, coming back to the bar after serving the two old bags in the corner.
“One more won't hurt,” the fellow said. He pointed to a spot above the TV. “You met him, I guess.”
It was a framed blowup of a political cartoon. It showed Greg Stilison, his construction helmet cocked back on his head, throwing a fellow in a business suit down the Capitol steps. The fellow in the business suit was Louis Quinn, the congressman who had been caught taking kickbacks in the parking-lot scam some fourteen months ago. The cartoon was titled GIVING EM THE BUM'S RUSH, and across the corner it had been signed in a scrawling hand: For Dick O'Donnell, who keeps the best damn saloon in the third district! Keep drawing them, Dick-Greg Stillson.
“Betcha butt I did,” O'Donnell said. “He gave a speech in here the last time he canvassed for the House. Had signs out all over town, come on into the Pub at two o'clock Saturday afternoon and have one on Greg. That was the best damn day's business I've ever done. People was only supposed to have one on him, but he ended up grabbing the whole tab. Can't do much better than that, can you?”
“Sounds like you think he's one hell of a guy.
“Yeah, I do,” O'Donnell said. “I'd be tempted to put my bare knuckles on anyone who said the other way.”
“Well, I won't try you. “The fellow put down three quarters. “Have one on me.
“Well, okay. Don't mind if I do. Thanks, mister…?”
“Johnny Smith is my name.
“Why, pleased to meet you, Johnny. Dicky O'Donnell, that's me. “He drew himself a beer from the tap. “Yeah, Greg's done this part of New Hampshire a lotta good. And 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”
“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 lollygags. 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 its 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 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 the 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 what you think.”
The clipping was from the Ridgeway paper. It was fairly old now. The story was headlined STILLS ON ANNOUNCES “FEEDBACK CENTERS”. The first paragraph looked as though it might have been lifted straight from the Stillson press kit. Below it was the list of towns where Greg would be spending his weekends, and the proposed date's. He was 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 dipping, he must have been ill Goorter's Notch just last weekend.”
“That's right,” O'Donnell said, and laughed. “Good old Coorter's Notch. Want another beer, Johnny?”
“Only if you'll join me,” Johnny said, and laid a couple of bucks on the bar.
“Well, I don't care if I do.”
One of the two bar-bags had put some money in the juke and Tammy Wynette, sounding old and tired and not happy to be here, began singing, “Stand By Your Man.”
“Hey Dick!” the other cawed. “You ever hear of service in this place?”
“Shut your head! “he hollered back.
“Fuck-YOU,” she called, and cackled.
“Goddammit, Clarice, I told you about saying the eff-word 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 to Johnny. “Couple of old alky diesel-dykes, that's what they are. They been here a million years, and I wouldn't be surprised if they both lived to spit on my grave. It's a hell of a world sometimes.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Pardon me, I'll be right back. I got a girl, but she only comes in Fridays and Saturdays in the winter.”
O'Donnell drew two schooners of beer and brought them over to the table. He said something to them and Clarice replied “Fuck-YOU!” and cackled again. The beerjoint 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 dipping. “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 dipping said that Greg Stillson would meet with interested persons at the town hall.
“Guess you came down for 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 Stilison 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 hollered. “Ever hear of service-with-a-smile in this place?”
“Why don't you get stuffed?” O'Donnell yelled at her, flushing.
“Fuck-YO U!” 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.
