Under the Dome

three years, but also in his heart. Big Jim knew how to get things done, and why they should be done. We’re in this for the long haul, he’d say. We’re doing it for the town. For the people. For their own good. And that was good. Doing good was good.

But now… tonight…

“I hated those flying lessons from the first,” he said, and began to cry again. Soon he was sobbing noisily, but that was all right, because Brenda Perkins had left in silent tears after viewing the remains of her husband and the Bowie brothers were downstairs. They had a lot of work to do (Andy understood, in a vague way, that something very bad had happened). Fern Bowie had gone out for a bite at Sweetbriar Rose, and when he came back, Andy was sure Fern would kick him out, but Fern passed down the hall without even looking in at where Andy sat with his hands between his knees and his tie loosened and his hair in disarray.

Fern had descended to what he and his brother Stewart called “the workroom.” (Horrible; horrible!) Duke Perkins was down there. Also that damned old Chuck Thompson, who maybe hadn’t talked his wife into those flying lessons but sure hadn’t talked her out of them, either. Maybe others were down there, too.

Claudette for sure.

Andy voiced a watery groan and clasped his hands together more tightly. He couldn’t live without her; no way could he live without her. And not just because he’d loved her more than his own life. It was Claudette (along with regular, unreported, and ever larger cash infusions from Jim Rennie) who kept the drugstore going; on his own, Andy would have run it into bankruptcy before the turn of the century. His specialty was people, not accounts and ledgers. His wife was the numbers specialist. Or had been.

As the past perfect clanged in his mind, Andy groaned again.

Claudette and Big Jim had even collaborated on fixing up the town’s books that time when the state audited them. It was supposed to be a surprise audit, but Big Jim had gotten advance word. Not much; just enough for them to go to work with the computer program Claudette called MR. CLEAN. They called it that because it always produced clean numbers. They’d come out of that audit shiny side up instead of going to jail (which wouldn’t have been fair, since most of what they were doing—almost all, in fact—was for the town’s own good).

The truth about Claudette Sanders was this: she’d been a prettier Jim Rennie, a kinder Jim Rennie, one he could sleep with and tell his secrets to, and life without her was unthinkable.

Andy started to tear up again, and that was when Big Jim himself put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Andy hadn’t heard him come in, but he didn’t jump. He had almost expected the hand, because its owner always seemed to turn up when Andy needed him the most.

“I thought I’d find you here,” Big Jim said. “Andy—pal—I’m just so, so sorry.”

Andy lurched to his feet, groped his arms around Big Jim’s bulk, and began to sob against Big Jim’s jacket. “I told her those lessons were dangerous! I told her Chuck Thompson was a jackass, just like his father!”

Big Jim rubbed his back with a soothing palm. “I know. But she’s in a better place now, Andy—she had dinner with Jesus Christ tonight—roast beef, fresh peas, mashed with gravy! How’s that for an awesome thought? You hang onto that. Think we should pray?”

“Yes!” Andy sobbed. “Yes, Big Jim! Pray with me!”

They got on their knees and Big Jim prayed long and hard for the soul of Claudette Sanders. (Below them, in the workroom, Stewart Bowie heard, looked up at the ceiling, and observed: “That man shits from both ends.”)

After four or five minutes of we see through a glass darkly and when I was a child I spake as a child (Andy didn’t quite see the relevance of that one, but didn’t care; it was comforting just to be kneebound with Big Jim), Rennie finished up—“ForJesussakeamen”—and helped Andy to his feet.

Face-to-face and bosom to bosom, Big Jim grasped Andy by the upper arms and looked into his eyes. “So, partner,” he said. He always called Andy partner when the situation was serious. “Are you ready to go to work?”

Andy stared at him dumbly.

Big Jim nodded as if Andy had made a reasonable (under the circumstances) protest. “I know it’s hard. Not fair. Inappropriate time to ask you. And you’d be within your rights—God knows you would—if you were to bust me one right in the cotton-picking chops. But sometimes we have to put the welfare of others first—isn’t that true?”

“The good of the town,” Andy said. For the first time since getting the news about Claudie, he saw a sliver of light.

Big Jim nodded. His face was solemn, but his eyes were shining. Andy had a strange thought: He looks ten years younger. “Right you are. We’re custodians, partner. Custodians of the common good. Not always easy, but never unnecessary. I sent the Wettington woman to hunt up Andrea. Told her to bring Andrea to the conference room. In handcuffs, if that’s what it takes.” Big Jim laughed. “She’ll be there. And Pete Randolph’s making a list of all the available town cops. Aren’t enough. We’ve got to address that, partner. If this situation goes on, authority’s going to be key. So what do you say? Can you suit up for me?”

Andy nodded. He thought it might take his mind off this. Even if it didn’t, he needed to make like a bee and buzz. Looking at Gert Evans’s coffin was beginning to give him the willies. The silent tears of the Chief’s widow had given him the willies, too. And it wouldn’t be hard. All he really needed to do was sit there at the conference table and raise his hand when Big Jim raised his. Andrea Grinnell, who never seemed entirely awake, would do the same. If emergency measures of some sort needed to be implemented, Big Jim would see that they were. Big Jim would take care of everything.

“Let’s go,” Andy replied.

Big Jim clapped him on the back, slung an arm over Andy’s thin shoulders, and led him out of the Remembrance Parlor. It was a heavy arm. Meaty. But it felt good.

He never even thought of his daughter. In his grief, Andy Sanders had forgotten her entirely.

2

Julia Shumway walked slowly down Commonwealth Street, home of the town’s wealthiest residents, toward Main Street. Happily divorced for ten years, she lived over the offices of the Democrat with Horace, her elderly Welsh Corgi. She had named him after the great Mr. Greeley, who was remembered for a single bon mot—“Go West, young man, go West”—but whose real claim to fame, in Julia’s mind, was his work as a newspaper editor. If Julia could do work half as good as Greeley’s on the New York Trib, she would consider herself a success.

Of course, her Horace always considered her a success, which made him the nicest dog on earth, in Julia’s book. She would walk him as soon as she got home, then enhance herself further in his eyes by scattering a few pieces of last night’s steak on top of his kibble. That would make them both feel good, and she wanted to feel good—about something, anything—because she was troubled.

This was not a new state for her. She had lived in The Mill for all of her forty-three years, and in the last ten she liked what she saw in her hometown less and less. She worried about the inexplicable decay of the town’s sewer system and waste treatment plant in spite of all the money that had been poured into them, she worried about the impending closure of Cloud Top, the town’s ski resort, she worried that James Rennie was stealing even more from the town till than she suspected (and she suspected he had been stealing a great deal for decades). And of course she was worried about this new thing, which seemed to her almost too big to comprehend. Every time she tried to get a handle on it, her mind would fix on some part that was small but concrete: her increasing inability to place calls on her cell phone, for instance. And she hadn’t received a single one, which was very troubling. Never mind concerned friends and relatives outside of town trying to get in touch; she should have been jammed up with calls from other papers: the Lewiston Sun, the Portland Press Herald, perhaps even the New York Times.