Helen stopped crying and looked at him with still, wide eyes, as if she couldn't believe what she had just heard. Then those eyes began to fill with a frightening depth of anger.
'How can you ask? How can you even ask?'
'Well . . . because . . .' He stopped, unable to go on. Ferocity was the last thing he had expected.
'If they stop us now, they win,' Helen said. 'Don't you see that? Gretchen's dead, Merrilee's dead, High Ridge is burning to the ground with everything some of these women own inside, and if they stop us now they win.'
One part of Ralph's mind - a deep part - now made a terrible comparison. Another part, one that loved Helen, moved to block it, but it moved too late. Her eyes looked like Charlie Pickering's eyes when Pickering had been sitting next to him in the library, and there was no reasoning with a mind that could make eyes look like that.
'If they stop us now they win!' she screamed. In her arms, Natalie began to cry harder. 'Don't you get it? Don't you fucking GET it? We'll never let that happen! Never! Never! Never!'
Abruptly she raised the hand she wasn't using to hold the baby and went around the corner of the building. Ralph reached for her and touched the back of her blouse with his fingertips. That was all.
'Don't shoot me!' Helen was crying at the police on the other side of the house. 'Don't shoot me, I'm one of the women! I'm one of the women! I'm one of the women!'
Ralph lunged after her - no thought, just instinct - and Lois seized him by the back of his belt. 'Better not go out there, Ralph. You're a man, and they might think--'
'Hello, Ralph! Hello, Lois!'
They both turned toward this new voice. Ralph recognized it at once, and he felt both surprised and not surprised. Standing beyond the clotheslines with their freight of flaming sheets and garments, wearing a pair of faded flannel pants and an old pair of Converse high-tops which had been mended with electrician's tape, was Dorrance Marstellar. His hair, as fine as Natalie's (but white instead of auburn), blew about his head in the October wind which combed the top of this hill. As usual, he had a book in one hand.
'Come on, you two,' he said, waving to them and smiling. 'Hurry up and hurry along. There's not much time.'
4
He led them down a weedy, little-used path that meandered away from the house in a westerly direction. It wound first through a fair-sized garden-plot from which everything had been harvested but the pumpkins and squashes, then into an orchard where the apples were just coming to full ripeness, then through a dense blackberry tangle where thorns seemed to reach out everywhere to snag their clothes. As they passed out of the blackberry brambles and into a gloomy stand of old pines and spruces, it occurred to Ralph that they must be on the Newport side of the ridge now.
Dorrance walked briskly for a man of his years, and the placid smile never left his face. The book he carried was For Love, Poems 1950-1960, by a man named Robert Creeley. Ralph had never heard of him, but supposed Mr Creeley had never heard of Elmore Leonard, Ernest Haycox or Louis L'Amour, either. He only tried to talk to Old Dor once, when the three of them finally reached the foot of a slope made slick and treacherous with pine-needles. Just ahead of them, a small stream foamed coldly past.
'Dorrance, what are you doing out here? How'd you get here, for that matter? And where the hell are we going?'
'Oh, I hardly ever answer questions,' Old Dor replied, smiling widely. He surveyed the stream, then raised one finger and pointed at the water. A small brown trout jumped into the air, flipped bright drops from its tail, and fell back into the water again. Ralph and Lois looked at each other with identical Did I just see what I thought I saw? expressions.
'Nope, nope,' Dor continued, stepping off the bank and onto a wet rock. 'Hardly ever. Too difficult. Too many possibilities. Too many levels . . . eh, Ralph? The world is full of levels, isn't it? How are you, Lois?'
'Fine,' she said absently, watching Dorrance cross the stream on a number of conveniently placed stones. He did it with his arms held out to either side, a posture which made him look like the world's oldest acrobat. Just as he reached the far bank, there was a violent exhalation from the ridge behind them - not quite an explosion.
There go the oil-tanks, Ralph thought.
Dor turned to face them from the other side of the brook, smiling his placid Buddha's smile. Ralph went up this time without any conscious intention of doing so, and without that sense of a blink inside his mind. Color rushed into the day, but he barely noticed; all his attention was fixed on Dorrance, and for a space of almost ten seconds, he forgot to breathe.
Ralph had seen auras of many shades in the last month or so, but none even remotely approached the splendid envelope that enclosed the old man Don Veazie had once described as 'nice as hell, but really sort of a fool'. It was as if Dorrance's aura had been strained through a prism . . . or a rainbow. He tossed off light in dazzling arcs: blue followed by magenta, magenta followed by red, red followed by pink, pink followed by the creamy yellow-white of a ripe banana.
He felt Lois's hand groping for his and enfolded it.
['My God, Ralph, do you see? Do you see how beautiful he is?']
['I sure do.']
['What is he? Is he even human?']
['I don't kn--']
['Stop it, both of you. Come back down.']
Dorrance was still smiling, but the voice they heard in their heads was commanding and not a bit vague. And before Ralph could consciously think himself down, he felt a push. The colors and the heightened quality of the sounds dropped out of the day at once.
'There's no time for that now,' Dor said. 'Why, it's noon already.'
'Noon?' Lois asked. 'It can't be! It wasn't even nine when we got here, and that can't have been half an hour ago!'
'Time goes faster when you're high,' Old Dor said. He spoke solemnly, but his eyes twinkled. 'Just ask anyone drinking beer and listening to country music on Saturday night. Come on! Hurry up! The clock is ticking! Cross the stream!'
Lois went first, stepping carefully from stone to stone with her arms held out, as Dorrance had done. Ralph followed with his hands poised to either side of her hips, ready to catch her if she showed signs of wavering, but he was the one who ended up almost tumbling in. He managed to avoid it, but only at the cost of wetting one foot all the way to the ankle. It seemed to him that someplace in the far reaches of his head, he could hear Carolyn laughing.
'Can't you tell us anything, Dor?' he asked as they reached the far side. 'We're pretty lost here.' And not just mentally or spiritually, either, he thought. He had never been in these woods in his life, not even hunting partridge or deer as a young man. If the path they were on petered out, or if Old Dor lost whatever passed for his bearings, what then?
'Yes,' Dor responded at once. 'I can tell you one thing, and it's absolutely for sure.'
'What?'
'These are the best poems Robert Creeley ever wrote,' Old Dor said, holding up his copy of For Love, and before either of them could respond to that, he turned around and once again began tracing his way along the faint path which ran west through the woods.
Ralph looked at Lois. Lois looked back at him, equally at a loss. Then she shrugged. 'Come on, old buddy,' she said. 'We better not lose him now. I forgot the breadcrumbs.'
5
They climbed another hill, and from the top of it Ralph could see that the path they were on led down to an old woods road with a strip of grass running up the middle. It dead-ended in an overgrown gravel-pit about fifty yards further along. There was a car idling just outside the entrance to the pit, a perfectly anonymous late model Ford which Ralph nevertheless felt he knew. When the door opened and the driver got out, everything fell into place. Of course he knew the car; he had last seen it from Lois's living room window on Tuesday night. Then it had been slued around in the middle of Harris Avenue with the driver kneeling in the glow of the headlights . . . kneeling beside the dying dog he had struck. Joe Wyzer heard them coming, looked up, and waved.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
* * *
1
'He said he wanted me to drive,' Wyzer told them as he carefully turned his car around at the entrance to the gravel-pit.
'Where to?' Lois asked. She was sitting in the back with Dorrance. Ralph was in the front seat with Joe Wyzer, who looked as if he weren't quite sure where or even who he was. Ralph had slid up - just the tiniest bit - as he shook hands with the pharmacist, wanting to get a look at Wyzer's aura. Both it and his balloon-string were there, and both looked perfectly healthy . . . but the bright yellow-orange looked slightly muted to him. Ralph had an idea that was very likely Old Dor's influence.
'Good question,' Wyzer said. He voiced a small, confused laugh. 'I don't have the slightest idea, really. This has been the weirdest day of my entire life. Absolutely no doubt about it.'
The woods road ended in a T-junction with a stretch of two-lane blacktop. Wyzer stopped, looked for traffic, then turned left. They passed a sign reading TO 1-95 almost right away, and Ralph guessed that Wyzer would turn north as soon as they reached the turnpike. He knew where they were now - just about two miles south of Route 33. From here they could be back in Derry in less than half an hour, and Ralph had no doubt that was just where they were going.
He abruptly began to laugh. 'Well, here we are,' he said. 'Just three happy folks out for a midday drive. Make that four. Welcome to the wonderful world of hyper-reality, Joe.'
Joe gave him a sharp look, then relaxed into a grin. 'Is that what this is?' And before either Ralph or Lois could reply: 'Yeah, I suppose it is.'
'Did you read that poem?' Dorrance asked from behind Ralph. 'The one that starts "Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else"?'
Ralph turned and saw that Dorrance was still smiling his wide, placid smile. 'Yes, I did. Dor--'
'Isn't it a crackerjack? It's so good. Stephen Dobyns reminds me of Hart Crane without the pretensions. Or maybe I mean Stephen Crane, but I don't think so. Of course he doesn't have the music of Dylan Thomas, but is that so bad? Probably not. Modern poetry is not about music. It's about nerve - who has it and who doesn't.'
'Oh boy,' Lois said. She rolled her eyes.
'He could probably tell us everything we need to know if we went up a few levels,' Ralph said, 'but you don't want that, do you, Dor? Because time goes faster when you're high.'
'Bingo,' Dorrance replied. The blue signs marking the north and south entrances to the turnpike glimmered up ahead. 'You'll have to go up later, I imagine, you and Lois both, and so it's very important to save as much time as you can now. Save . . . time.' He made a queerly evocative gesture, drawing a gnarled thumb and forefinger down in the air, bringing them together as he did, as if to indicate some narrowing passage.
Joe Wyzer put on his blinker, turned left, and headed down the northbound ramp to Derry.
'How did you get involved in this, Joe?' Ralph asked him. 'Of all the people on the west side, why did Dorrance draft you as chauffeur?'
Wyzer shook his head, and when the car reached the turnpike it drifted immediately over into the passing lane. Ralph reached out quickly and made a midcourse correction, reminding himself that Joe probably hadn't been getting much sleep himself just lately. He was very happy to see the highway was mostly deserted, at least this far out of town. It would save some anxiety, and God knew he would take whatever he could get in that department today.
'We are all bound together by the Purpose,' Dorrance said abruptly. 'That's ka-tet, which means one made of many. The way that many rhymes make up a single poem. You see?'
'No.' Ralph, Lois, and Joe said it at the same time, in perfect, unrehearsed chorus, and then laughed nervously together. The Three Insomniacs of the Apocalypse, Ralph thought. Jesus save us.
'That's okay,' Old Dor said, smiling his wide smile. 'Just take my word for it. You and Lois . . . Helen and her little daughter . . . Bill . . . Faye Chapin . . . Trigger Vachon . . . me! All part of the Purpose.'
'That's fine, Dor,' Lois said, 'but where's the Purpose taking us now? And what are we supposed to do when we get there?'
Dorrance leaned forward and whispered in Joe Wyzer's ear, guarding his lips with one puffy, age-spotted hand. Then he sat back again, looking deeply satisfied with himself.
'He says we're going to the Civic Center,' Joe said.
'The Civic Center!' Lois exclaimed, sounding alarmed. 'No, that can't be right! Those two little men said--'
'Never mind them right now,' Dorrance said. 'Just remember what it's about - nerve. Who has it, and who doesn't.'
2
Silence in Joe Wyzer's Ford for almost the space of a mile. Dorrance opened his book of Robert Creeley poems and began to read one, tracing his way from line to line with the yellowed nail of one ancient finger. Ralph found himself remembering a game they had sometimes played as kids - not a very nice one. Snipe Hunt, it had been called. You got kids who were a little younger and a lot more gullible than you were, fed them a cock-and-bull story about the mythical snipe, then gave them towsacks and sent them out to spend a strenuous afternoon wandering around in the damps and the willywags, looking for nonexistent birds. This game was also called Wild Goose Chase, and he suddenly had the inescapable feeling that Clotho and Lachesis had been playing it with him and Lois up on the hospital roof.
He turned around in his seat and looked directly at Old Dor. Dorrance folded over the top corner of the page he was reading, closed his book, and looked back at Ralph with polite interest.
'They told us we weren't to go near either Ed Deepneau or Doc #3,' Ralph said. He spoke slowly and with great clarity. 'They told us very specifically that we weren't even to think of doing that, because the situation had invested both of them with great power and we were apt to get swatted like flies. In fact, I think Lachesis said that if we tried getting near either Ed or Atropos, we might end up having a visit from one of the upper-level honchos . . . someone Ed calls the Crimson King. Not a very nice fellow, either, by all reports.'
'Yes,' Lois said in a faint voice. 'That's what they told us on the hospital roof. They said we had to convince the women in charge to cancel Susan Day's appearance. That's why we went out to High Ridge.'
'And did you succeed in convincing them?' Wyzer asked.
'No. Ed's crazy friends came before we could get there, set the place on fire, and killed at least two of the women. Shot them. One was the woman we really wanted to talk to.'
'Gretchen Tillbury,' Ralph said.
'Yes,' Lois agreed. 'But surely we don't need to do any more - I can't believe they'll go ahead with the rally now. I mean, how could they? My God, at least four people are dead! Probably more! They'll have to cancel her speech or at least postpone it. Isn't that so?'
Neither Dorrance nor Joe replied. Ralph didn't reply, either - he was thinking of Helen's red-rimmed, furious eyes. How can you even ask? she'd said. If they stop us now, they win.
If they stop us now, they win.
Was there any legal way the police could stop them? Probably not. The City Council, then? Maybe. Maybe they could hold a special meeting and revoke WomanCare's rally permit. But would they? If there were two thousand angry, grief-stricken women marching around the Municipal Building and yelling If they stop us now they win in unison, would the Council revoke the permit?
Ralph began to feel a deep sinking sensation in his gut.
Helen clearly considered tonight's rally more important than ever, and she wouldn't be the only one. It was no longer just about choice and who had the right to decide what a woman did with her own body; now it was about causes important enough to die for and honoring the friends who had done just that. Now they were talking not just about politics but about a kind of secular requiem mass for the dead.
Lois had grabbed his shoulder and was shaking it hard. Ralph came back to the here and now, but slowly, like a man being shaken awake in the middle of an incredibly vivid dream.
'They will cancel it, won't they? And even if
they don't, if for some crazy reason they don't, most people will stay away, right? After what happened at High Ridge, they'll be afraid to come!'
Ralph thought about that and then shook his head. 'Most people will think the danger's over. The news reports are going to say that two of the radicals who attacked High Ridge are dead, and the third is catatonic, or something.'
'But Ed! What about Ed?' she cried. 'He's the one who got them to attack, for heaven's sake! He's the one who sent them out there in the first place!'
'That may be true, probably is true, but how would we prove it? Do you know what I think the cops will find at wherever Charlie Pickering's been hanging his hat? A note saying it was all his idea. A note exonerating Ed completely, probably in the guise of an accusation . . . how Ed deserted them in their time of greatest need. And if they don't find a note like that in Charlie's rented room, they'll find it in Frank Felton's. Or Sandra McKay's.'
'But that . . . that's . . .' Lois stopped, biting at her lower lip. Then she looked at Wyzer with hopeful eyes. 'What about Susan Day? Where is she? Does anybody know? Do you? Ralph and I will call her on the telephone and--'
'She's already in Derry,' Wyzer said, 'although I doubt if even the police know for sure where she is. But what I heard on the news while the old fella and I were driving out here is that the rally is going to happen tonight . . . and that's supposedly straight from the woman herself.'
Sure, Ralph thought. Sure it is. The show's going on, the show has to go on, and she knows it. Someone who's ridden the crest of the women's movement all these years - hell, since the Chicago convention in '68 - knows a genuine watershed moment when she sees it. She's evaluated the risks and found them acceptable. Either that or she's evaluated the situation and decided that the credibility-loss involved in walking away would be unacceptable. Maybe both. In any case, she's as much a prisoner of events - of ka-tet - as the rest of us.