Under the Dome

“That it’s going to hurt,” Barbie said. “Right, Rev?”

She nodded. “Go on. Coach Gromley did it right on the sidelines, and she was a total dope. Just hurry. And please don’t screw it up.”

Barbie said: “Julia, grab a sling from the first aid kit, then help me lie her down on her back.”

Julia, very pale and feeling ill, did as she was told.

Barbie sat down on the floor to Piper’s left, slipped off one shoe, and then grasped her forearm just above her wrist with both hands. “I don’t know Coach Gromley’s method,” he said, “but this is how a medic I knew in Iraq did it. You’re going to count to three and then yell wishbone.”

“Wishbone,” Piper said, bemused in spite of the pain. “Well okay, you’re the doctor.”

No, Julia thought—Rusty Everett was now the closest thing the town had to a doctor. She’d contacted Linda and gotten his cell phone number, but her call had been immediately shunted to voicemail.

The room was silent. Even Carter Thibodeau was watching. Barbie nodded to Piper. Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead, but she had her game-face on, and Barbie respected the shit out of that. He slipped his sock- foot into her left armpit, snugging it tight. Then, while pulling slowly but steadily on her arm, he applied counter pressure with his foot.

“Okay, here we go. Let’s hear you.”

“One… two… three… WISHBONE! ”

When Piper shouted, Barbie pulled. Everyone in the room heard the loud thunk as the joint went back into place. The hump in Piper’s blouse magically disappeared. She screamed but didn’t pass out. He slipped the sling over her neck and around the arm, immobilizing it as well as he could.

“Better?” he asked.

“Better,” she said. “Much, thank God. Still hurts, but not as bad.”

“I’ve got some aspirin in my purse,” Julia said.

“Give her the aspirin and then get out,” Randolph said. “All of you except for Carter, Freddy, the Reverend, and me.”

Julia looked at him unbelievingly. “Are you kidding? The Reverend is going to the hospital. Can you walk, Piper?”

Piper stood up shakily. “I think so. A little way.”

“Sit down, Reverend Libby,” Randolph said, but Barbie knew she was already gone. He could hear it in Randolph’s voice.

“Why don’t you make me?” She gingerly lifted her left arm and the sling holding it. The arm trembled, but it was working. “I’m sure you can dislocate it again, very easily. Go on. Show these… these boys… that you’re just like them.”

“And I’ll put it all in the paper!” Julia said brightly. “Circulation will double!”

Barbie said, “Suggest you defer this business until tomorrow, Chief. Allow the lady to get some painkillers stronger than aspirin, and have those knee lacerations checked by Everett. Given the Dome, she’s hardly a flight risk.”

“Her dog tried to kill me,” Carter said. In spite of the pain, he sounded calm again.

“Chief Randolph, DeLesseps, Searles, and Thibodeau are guilty of rape.” Piper was swaying now—Julia put an arm around her—but her voice was firm and clear. “Roux is an accessory to rape.”

“The hell I am!” Georgia squawked.

“They need to be suspended immediately.”

“She’s lying,” Thibodeau said.

Chief Randolph looked like a man watching a tennis match. He finally settled his gaze on Barbie. “Are you telling me what to do, kiddo?”

“No, sir, just making a suggestion based on my enforcement experience in Iraq. You’ll make your own decisions.”

Randolph relaxed. “Okay, then. Okay.” He looked down, frowning in thought. They all watched him notice his fly was still unzipped and take care of that little problem. Then he looked up again and said, “Julia, take Reverend Piper to the hospital. As for you, Mr. Barbara, I don’t care where you go but I want you out of here. I’ll take statements from my officers tonight, and from Reverend Libby tomorrow.”

“Wait,” Thibodeau said. He extended his crooked fingers to Barbie. “Can you do anything about these?”

“I don’t know,” Barbie said—pleasantly enough, he hoped. The initial ugliness was over, and now came the political aftermath, which he remembered well from dealing with Iraqi cops who were not all that different from the man on the couch and the others crowding the doorway. What it came down to was making nice with people you wished you could spit on. “Can you say wishbone?”

10

Rusty had turned his cell phone off before knocking on Big Jim’s door. Now Big Jim sat behind his desk, Rusty in the seat before it—the chair of supplicants and applicants.

The study (Rennie probably called it a home office on his tax returns) had a pleasant, piney smell, as if it had recently been given a good scrubbing, but Rusty still didn’t like it. It wasn’t just the picture of an aggressively Caucasian Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount, or the self-congratulatory plaques, or the hardwood floor that really should have had a rug to protect it; it was all those things and something else as well. Rusty Everett had very little use for or belief in the supernatural, but nevertheless, this room felt almost haunted.

It’s because he scares you a little, he thought. That’s all it is.

Hoping that how he felt didn’t show in his voice or face, Rusty told Rennie about the hospital’s missing propane tanks. About how he had found one of them in the supply shed behind the Town Hall, currently running the Town Hall’s generator. And how it was the only one.

“So I have two questions,” Rusty said. “How did a tank from the hospital supply wander downtown? And where did the rest go?”

Big Jim rocked back in his chair, put his hands behind his neck, and looked up at the ceiling meditatively. Rusty found himself staring at the trophy baseball sitting on Rennie’s desk. Propped in front of it was a note from Bill Lee, once of the Boston Red Sox. He could read the note because it was turned outward. Of course it was. It was for guests to see, and marvel over. Like the pictures on the wall, the baseball proclaimed that Big Jim Rennie had rubbed elbows with Famous People: Look on my autographs, ye mighty, and despair. To Rusty, the baseball and the note turned outward seemed to sum up his bad feelings about the room he was in. It was window-dressing, a tinny testimonial to smalltown prestige and smalltown power.

“I wasn’t aware you had anyone’s permission to go poking around in our supply shed,” Big Jim remarked to the ceiling. His hammy fingers were still laced together behind his head. “Perhaps you’re a town official, and I wasn’t aware of it? If so, my mistake—my bad, as Junior says. I thought you were basically a nurse with a prescription pad.”

Rusty thought this was mostly technique—Rennie trying to piss him off. To divert him.

“I’m not a town official,” he said, “but I am a hospital employee. And a taxpayer.”

“So?”

Rusty could feel blood rushing to his face.

“So those things make it partly my supply shed.” He waited to see if Big Jim would respond to this, but the man behind the desk remained impassive. “Besides, it was unlocked. Which is all beside the point, isn’t it? I saw what I saw, and I’d like an explanation. As a hospital employee.”

“And a taxpayer. Don’t forget that.”

Rusty sat looking at him, not even nodding.

“I can’t give you one,” Rennie said.

Rusty raised his eyebrows. “Really? I thought you had your fingers on the pulse of this town. Isn’t that what you said the last time you ran for Selectman? And now you’re telling me you can’t explain where the town’s propane