Under the Dome

The crowd is intent upon breaking and entering. They smash against the doors with their stickers reading IN and OUT and EVERYDAY LOW PRICES. The doors hold at first, then the lock snaps under the crowd’s combined weight. The first to arrive are crushed against the doors and suffer injuries: two people with broken ribs, one sprained neck, two broken arms.

Toby Whelan starts to raise the bullhorn again, then just sets it down, with exquisite care, on the hood of the car in which he and Rupe arrived. He picks up his DEPUTY cap, brushes it off, puts it back on. He and Rupe walk toward the store, then stop, helpless. Linda and Marty Arsenault join them. Linda sees Marta and leads her back to the little cluster of cops.

“What happened?” Marta asks, dazed. “Did someone hit me? The side of my face is all hot. Who’s watching Judy and Janelle?”

“Your sister took them this morning,” Linda says, and hugs her. “Don’t worry.”

“Cora?”

“Wendy.” Cora, Marta’s older sister, has been living in Seattle for years. Linda wonders if Marta has suffered a concussion. She thinks that Dr. Haskell should check her, and then remembers that Haskell is either in the hospital morgue or the Bowie Funeral Home. Rusty is on his own now, and today he is going to be very busy.

Carter is half-carrying Georgia toward unit Two. She is still howling those eerie mooseblower cries. Mel Searles has regained some soupy semblance of consciousness. Frankie leads him toward Linda, Marta, Toby, and the other cops. Mel tries to raise his head, then drops it back to his chest. His split forehead is pouring blood; his shirt is soaked.

People stream into the market. They race along the aisles, pushing shopping carts or grabbing baskets from a stack beside the charcoal briquets display (HAVE YOURSELF A FALL COOKOUT! the sign reads). Manuel Ortega, Alden Dinsmore’s hired man, and his good friend Dave Douglas go straight to the checkout cash registers and start punching NO SALE buttons, grabbing money and stuffing it into their pockets, laughing like fools as they do so.

The supermarket is full now; it is sale day. In frozen foods, two women are fighting over the last Pepperidge Farm Lemon Cake. In deli, one man baffs another man with a kielbasa, telling him to leave some of that goddam lunchmeat for other folks. The lunchmeat shopper turns and biffs the kielbasa wielder in the nose. Soon they are rolling on the floor, fists flying.

Other brawls are breaking out. Rance Conroy, proprietor and sole employee of Conroy’s Western Maine Electrical Service & Supplies (“Smiles Our Specialty”), punches Brendan Ellerbee, a retired University of Maine science teacher, when Ellerbee beats him to the last large sack of sugar. Ellerbee goes down, but he holds onto the ten-pound bag of Domino’s, and when Conroy bends to take it, Ellerbee snarls “Here, then!” and smacks him in the face with it. The sugarsack bursts wide open, enveloping Rance Conroy in a white cloud. The electrician falls against one of the shelves, his face as white as a mime’s, screaming that he can’t see, he’s blind. Carla Venziano, with her baby goggling over her shoulder from the carrier on her back, pushes Henrietta Clavard away from the display of Texmati Rice—Baby Steven loves rice, he also loves to play with the empty plastic containers, and Carla means to make sure she has plenty. Henrietta, who was eighty-four in January, goes sprawling on the hard knot of scrawn that used to be her butt. Lissa Jamieson shoves Will Freeman, who owns the local Toyota dealership, out of her way so she can get the last chicken in the coldcase. Before she can grab it, a teenage girl wearing a PUNK RAGE tee-shirt snatches it, sticks out her pierced tongue at Libby, and hies gaily away.

There’s a sound of shattering glass followed by a hearty cheer made up mostly (but not entirely) of men’s voices. The beer cooler has been breached. Many shoppers, perhaps planning on HAVING THEMSELVES A FALL COOKOUT, stream in that direction. Instead of Oh-pun UP, the chant is now “Beer! Beer! Beer!”

Other folks are streaming into the storerooms below and out back. Soon men and women are packing wine out by the jug and the case. Some carry cartons of vino on their heads like native bearers in an old jungle movie.

Julia, her shoes crunching on crumbles of glass, shoots shoots shoots.

Outside, the rest of the town cops are pulling up, including Jackie Wettington and Henry Morrison, who have abandoned their post at the Gas & Grocery by mutual consent. They join the other cops in a huddled worry- cluster off to one side and simply watch. Jackie sees Linda Everett’s stricken face and folds Linda into her arms. Ernie Calvert joins them, yelling “So unnecessary! So completely unnecessary!” with tears streaming down his chubby cheeks.

“What do we do now?” Linda asks, her cheek pressed against Jackie’s shoulder. Marta stands close beside her, gaping at the market and pressing a palm against the discolored, rapidly swelling bruise on the side of her face. Beyond them, Food City surges with yells, laughter, the occasional cry of pain. Objects are thrown; Linda sees a roll of toilet tissue unspooling like a party streamer as it arcs over the housewares aisle.

“Honey,” Jackie says, “I just don’t know.”

11

Anson snatched Rose’s shopping list and went running into the market with it before the lady herself could stop him. Rose hesitated beside the restaurant panel truck, clenching and unclenching her hands, wondering whether or not to go in after him. She had just decided to stay put when an arm slipped around her shoulders. She jumped, then turned her head and saw Barbie. The depth of her relief actually weakened her knees. She clutched his arm—partly for comfort, mostly so she wouldn’t faint.

Barbie was smiling, without much humor. “Some fun, huh, kid?”

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “Anson’s in there… everybody is… and the cops are just standing around. ”

“Probably don’t want to get beat up any worse than they already have been. And I don’t blame them. This was well planned and beautifully executed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind. Want to take a shot at stopping it before it gets any worse?”

“How?”

He lifted the bullhorn, plucked from the hood of the car where Toby Whelan left it. When he tried to hand it to her, Rose drew back, holding her hands to her chest. “You do it, Barbie.”

“No. You’re the one who’s been feeding them for years, you’re the one they know, you’re the one they’ll listen to.”

She took the bullhorn, although hesitantly. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t think of a single thing that will make them stop. Toby Whelan already tried. They didn’t pay any attention.”

“Toby tried to give orders,” Barbie said. “Giving orders to a mob is like giving orders to an anthill.”

“I still don’t know what to—”

“I’m going to tell you.” Barbie spoke calmly, and that calmed her. He paused long enough to beckon Linda Everett. She and Jackie came together, their arms around each other’s waists.

“Can you get in touch with your husband?” Barbie asked.

“If his cell phone’s on.”

“Tell him to get down here—with an ambulance, if possible. If he doesn’t answer his phone, grab a police car and drive on up to the hospital.”

“He’s got patients….”

“He’s got some patients right here. He just doesn’t know it.” Barbie pointed to Ginny Tomlinson, now sitting with her back against the cinderblock side of the market and her hands pressed to her bleeding face. Gina and Harriet Bigelow crouched on either side of her, but when Gina tried to stanch the bleeding from Ginny’s radically altered nose with a folded handkerchief, Ginny cried out in pain and turned her head away. “Starting with one of his two remaining trained nurses, if I’m not mistaken.”

“What are you going to do?” Linda asked, taking her cell phone from her belt.

“Rose and I are going to make them stop. Aren’t we, Rose?”