He had succeeded, in large measure, by recognizing the main chance and pursuing it ruthlessly. Around ten that Sunday morning--not long after he'd watched Sloppy Sam hauled off to the copshop--another main chance rolled around. As they always did, if you watched for them.
Romeo observed children putting up posters. Computer-generated and very professional-looking. The kids--most on bikes, a couple on skateboards--were doing a good job of covering Main Street. A protest demonstration out on 119. Romeo wondered whose idea that had been.
He caught up with one and asked.
"It was my idea," Joe McClatchey said.
"No shit?"
"No shit whatsoever," Joe said.
Rommie tipped the kid five, ignoring his protests and tucking it deep into his back pocket. Information was worth paying for. Rommie thought people would go to the kid's demonstration. They were crazy to express their fear, frustration, and righteous anger.
Shortly after sending Scarecrow Joe on his way, Romeo began to hear people talking about an afternoon prayer meeting, to be held by Pastor Coggins. Same by-God time, same by-God place.
Surely a sign. One reading SALES OPPORTUNITY HERE.
Romeo went into his store, where business was lackadaisical. The people Sunday-shopping today were either doing it at Food City or Mill Gas & Grocery. And they were the minority. Most were either at church or at home watching the news. Toby Manning was behind the cash register, watching CNN on a little battery-powered TV.
"Shut off that quack and close down your register," Romeo said.
"Really, Mr. Burpee?"
"Yes. Drag the big tent out of storage. Get Lily to help you."
"The Summer Blowout Sale tent?"
"That's the baby," Romeo said. "We're gonna pitch it in that cowgrass where Chuck Thompson's plane crashed."
"Alden Dinsmore's field? What if he wants money to use it?"
"Then we'll pay him." Romeo was calculating. The store sold everything, including discount grocery items, and he currently had roughly a thousand packs of discount Happy Boy franks in the industrial freezer behind the store. He'd bought them from Happy Boy HQ in Rhode Island (company now defunct, little microbe problem, thank God not E. coli ), expecting to sell them to tourists and locals planning Fourth of July cookouts. Hadn't done as well as he'd expected, thanks to the goddam recession, but had held onto them anyway, as stubbornly as a monkey holding onto a nut. And now maybe ...
Serve them on those little garden-sticks from Taiwan, he thought. I've still got a billion of those bastards. Call them something cute, like Frank-AMa-Bobs. Plus they had maybe a hundred cartons of Yummy Tummy Lemonade and Limeade powder, another discount item on which he'd expected to take a loss.
"We're going to want to pack up all the Blue Rhino, too." Now his mind was clicking away like an adding machine, which was just the way Romeo liked it to click.
Toby was starting to look excited. "Whatcha got in mind, Mr. Burpee?"
Rommie went on inventorying stuff he'd expected to record on his books as a dead loss. Those cheapshit pinwheels ... leftover Fourth of July sparklers ... the stale candy he'd been saving for Halloween ...
"Toby," he said, "we're going to throw the biggest damn cookout and field day this town has ever seen. Get moving. We've got a lot to do."
9
Rusty was making hospital rounds with Dr. Haskell when the walkie-talkie Linda had insisted he carry buzzed in his pocket.
Her voice was tinny but clear. "Rusty, I have to go in after all. Randolph says it looks like half the town is going to be out at the barrier on 119 this afternoon--some for a prayer meeting, some for a demonstration. Romeo Burpee is going to pitch a tent and sell hotdogs, so expect an influx of gastroenteritis patients this evening."
Rusty groaned.
"I'll have to leave the girls with Marta after all." Linda sounded defensive and worried, a woman who knew there was suddenly not enough of her to go around. "I'll fill her in on Jannie's problem."
"Okay." He knew if he told her to stay home, she would ... and all he'd accomplish would be to worry her just when her worries were starting to settle a bit. And if a crowd did show up out there, she'd be needed.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for understanding."
"Just remember to send the dog to Marta's with the girls," Rusty said. "You know what Haskell said."
Dr. Ron Haskell--The Wiz--had come up big for the Everett family this morning. Had come up big ever since the onset of the crisis, really. Rusty never would have expected it, but he appreciated it. And he could see by the old guy's pouched eyes and drooping mouth that Haskell was paying the price. The Wiz was too old for medical crises; snoozing in the third-floor lounge was more his speed these days. But, other than Ginny Tomlinson and Twitch, it was now just Rusty and The Wiz holding the fort. It was bad luck all around that the Dome had crashed down on a beautiful weekend morning when anyone who could get out of town had done so.
Haskell, although pushing seventy, had stayed at the hospital with Rusty last night until eleven, when Rusty had literally forced him out the door, and he'd been back by seven this morning, when Rusty and Linda arrived with daughters in tow. Also with Audrey, who seemed to take the new environment of Cathy Russell calmly enough. Judy and Janelle had walked on either side of the big golden, touching her for comfort. Janelle had looked scared to death.
"What's with the dog?" Haskell asked, and when Rusty filled him in, Haskell had nodded and said to Janelle: "Let's check you out, hon."
"Will it hurt?" Janelle had asked apprehensively.
"Not unless getting a piece of candy after I look in your eyes hurts."
When the exam was over, the adults left the two girls and the dog in the examining room and went into the hall. Haskell's shoulders were slumped. His hair seemed to have whitened overnight.
"What's your diagnosis, Rusty?" Haskell had asked.
"Petit mal. I'd think brought on by excitement and worry, but Audi's been doing that Whining Thing of hers for months."
"Right. We'll start her on Zarontin. You agree?"
"Yes." Rusty had been touched to be asked. He was beginning to regret some of the mean things he'd said and thought about Haskell.
"And keep the dog with her, yes?"
"Absolutely."
"Will she be all right, Ron?" Linda asked. She'd had no plans to work then; her plan then had been to spend the day in quiet activities with the girls.
"She is all right," Haskell said. "Many children suffer petit mal seizures. Most have only one or two. Others have more, over a course of years, and then stop. There's rarely any lasting damage."
Linda looked relieved. Rusty hoped she would never have to know what Haskell wasn't telling her: that instead of finding their way out of the neurological thicket, some unlucky kids went in deeper, progressing to grand mal. And grand mal seizures could do damage. They could kill.
Now, after finishing morning rounds (only half a dozen patients, one a new mom with no complications) and hoping for a cup of coffee before jetting over to the Health Center, this call from Linda.
"I'm sure Marta will be fine with having Audi," she said.
"Good. You'll have your cop walkie while you're on duty, right?"
"Yes. Of course."
"Then give your personal walkie to Marta. Agree on a com channel. If something should go wrong with Janelle, I'll come on the run."
"All right. Thanks, honeybunch. Is there any chance you could get out there this afternoon?"
As Rusty considered that, he saw Dougie Twitchell coming down the hall. He had a cigarette tucked behind his ear and was walking in his usual don't-give-a-shit amble, but Rusty saw concern on his face.
"I might be able to play hookey for an hour. No promises."
"I understand, but it would be so great to see you."
"You too. Be careful out there. And tell folks not to eat the hotdogs. Burpee's probably had them in cold storage for ten thousand years."
"Those are hi
s mastodon steaks," Linda said. "Over and out, sweet man. I'll look for you."
Rusty stuck the walkie in the pocket of his white coat and turned to Twitch. "What's up? And get that cigarette out from behind your ear. This is a hospital."
Twitch plucked the cigarette from its resting place and looked at it. "I was going to smoke it out by the storage shed."
"Not a good idea," Rusty said. "That's where the extra propane's stored."
"That's what I came to tell you. Most of the tanks are gone."
"Bullshit. Those things are huge. I can't remember if they hold three thousand gallons each or five thousand."
"So what are you saying? I forgot to look behind the door?"
Rusty began to rub his temples. "If it takes them--whoever they are--more than three or four days to short out that force field, we're going to need mucho LP."
"Tell me something I don't know," Twitch said. "According to the inventory card on the door, there's supposed to be seven of those puppies, but there are only two." He stowed the cigarette in the pocket of his own white coat. "I checked the other shed just to make sure, thought somebody might have moved the tanks--"
"Why would anyone do that?"
"I dunno, O Great One. Anyway, the other shed's for the really important hospital supplies: gardening and landscaping shit. In that one the tools are present and accounted for, but the fucking fertilizer's gone."
Rusty didn't care about the fertilizer; he cared about the propane. "Well--if push comes to shove, we'll get some from the town supplies."
"You'll get a fight from Rennie."
"When Cathy Russell might be his only option if that ticker of his vapor-locks? I doubt it. You think there's any chance I can get away for a while this afternoon?"
"That'd be up to The Wiz. He now appears to be the ranking officer."
"Where is he?"
"Sleeping in the lounge. Snores like a mad bastard, too. You want to wake him up?"
"No," Rusty said. "Let him sleep. And I'm not going to call him The Wiz anymore. Given how hard he's worked since this shit came down, I think he deserves better."
"Ah so, sensei. You have reached a new level of enlightenment."
"Blow me, grasshopper," Rusty said.
10
Now see this; see it very well.
It's two forty PM on another eye-bustingly gorgeous autumn day in Chester's Mill. If the press were not being kept away they'd be in photo-op heaven--and not just because the trees are in full flame. The imprisoned people of the town have migrated to Alden Dinsmore's dairy field en masse. Alden has struck a use-fee deal with Romeo Burpee: six hundred dollars. Both men are happy, the farmer because he jacked the businessman up considerable from Burpee's starting offer of two hundred, Romeo because he would have gone to a thousand, if pressed.
From the protestors and Jesus-shouters Alden collected not a single crying dime. That doesn't mean he isn't charging them, however; Farmer Dinsmore was born at night, but not last night. When this opportunity came along, he marked out a large parking area just north of the place where the fragments of Chuck Thompson's plane came to rest the day before, and there he has stationed his wife (Shelley), his older son (Ollie; you remember Ollie), and his hired man (Manuel Ortega, a no-greencard Yankee who can ayuh with the best of them). Alden's knocking down five dollars a car, a fortune for a shirttail dairyman who for the last two years has been keeping his farm out of Keyhole Bank's hands by the skin of his teeth. There are complaints about the fee, but not many; they charge more to park at the Fryeburg Fair, and unless folks want to park by the side of the road--which has already been lined on both sides by early arrivals--and then walk half a mile to where all the excitement is, they have no choice.
And what a strange and varied scene! A three-ring circus for sure, with the ordinary citizens of The Mill in all the starring roles. When Barbie arrives with Rose and Anse Wheeler (the restaurant is closed again, will reopen for supper--just cold sandwiches, no grill orders), they stare in openmouthed silence. Both Julia Shumway and Pete Freeman are taking pictures. Julia stops long enough to give Barbie her attractive but somehow inward-turning smile.
"Some show, wouldn't you say?"
Barbie grins. "Yessum."
In the first ring of this circus, we have the townsfolk who have responded to the posters put up by Scarecrow Joe and his cadre. The protest turnout has been quite satisfying, almost two hundred, and the sixty signs the kids made (the most popular: LET US OUT, DAMN IT!!) were gone in no time. Luckily, many people did bring their own signs. Joe's favorite is the one with prison bars inked over a map of The Mill. Lissa Jamieson is not just holding it but pumping it aggressively up and down. Jack Evans is there, looking pale and grim. His sign is a collage of photographs featuring the woman who bled to death the day before. WHO KILLED MY WIFE? it screams. Scarecrow Joe feels sorry for him ... but what an awesome sign! If the press could see that one, they'd fill their collective pants with joyshit.
Joe organized the protestors into a big circle that rotates just in front of the Dome, which is marked by a line of dead birds on the Chester's Mill side (those on the Motton side have been removed by the military personnel). The circle gives all of Joe's people--for so he thinks of them--a chance to wave their signs at the posted guards, who stand with their backs resolutely (and maddeningly) turned. Joe also gave out printed "chant-sheets." He wrote these with Benny Drake's skateboarding idol, Norrie Calvert. Besides being balls-to the-wall on her Blitz deck, Norrie's rhymes are simple but tight, yo? One chant goes, Ha-ha-ha! Hee-hee-hee! Chester's Mill must be set free! Another: You did it! You did it! Come on out and just admit it! Joe has--with real reluctance--vetoed another Norrie masterpiece that goes Take off the gags! Take off the gags! Let us talk to the press, you fags! "We have to be politically correct about this," he told her. What he's wondering just now is if Norrie Calvert is too young to kiss. And if she would slip him any tongue if he did. He has never kissed a girl, but if they're all going to die like starving bugs trapped under a Tupper-ware bowl, he probably should kiss this one while there's still time.
In the second ring is Pastor Coggins's prayer circle. They are really getting God-sent. And, in a fine show of ecclesiastical detente, the Holy Redeemer choir has been joined by a dozen men and women from the Congo church choir. They're singing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and a good number of unaffiliated townsfolk who know the words have joined in. Their voices rise to the blameless blue sky, with Lester's shrill exhortations and the prayer circle's supporting cries of amen and hallelujah weaving in and out of the singing in perfect counterpoint (although not harmony--that would be going too far). The prayer circle keeps growing as other townsfolk drop to their knees and join in, laying their signs temporarily aside so they can raise their clasped hands in supplication. The soldiers have turned their backs; perhaps God has not.
But the center ring of this circus is the biggest and most bodacious. Romeo Burpee pitched the End of Summer Blowout Sale tent well back from the Dome and sixty yards east of the prayer circle, calculating the location by testing the faint gasp of breeze that's blowing. He wants to make sure that the smoke from his rank of Hibachis reaches both those praying and those protesting. His only concession to the afternoon's religious aspect is to make Toby Manning turn off his boombox, which was blaring that James McMurtry song about living in a small town; it didn't mix well with "How Great Thou Art" and "Won't You Come to Jesus." Business is good and will only get better. Of this Romeo is sure. The hotdogs--thawing even as they cook--may gripe some bellies later, but they smell perfect in the warm afternoon sun; like a county fair instead of chowtime in prison. Kids race around waving pinwheels and threatening to set Dinsmore's grass on fire with leftover Fourth of July sparklers. Empty paper cups that held either citrus-powder drinks (foul) or hastily brewed coffee (fouler still) are littered everywhere. Later on, Romeo will have Toby Manning pay some kid, maybe Dinsmore's, ten bucks to pick up the litter. Community relations, always important. Right
now, though, Romeo's totally focused on his jackleg cash register, a carton that once contained Charmin toilet paper. He takes in long green and returns short silver: it's the way America does business, honeybunch. He's charging four bucks per dog, and he's goddamned if people aren't paying it. He expects to clear at least 3K by sundown, maybe a lot more.
And look! Here's Rusty Everett! He got away after all! Good for him! He almost wishes he'd stopped to get the girls--they would surely enjoy this, and it might allay their fears to see so many people having a good time--but it might be a little too much excitement for Jannie.
He spots Linda at the same time she spots him and starts waving frantically, practically jumping up and down. With her hair done in the stubby Fearless Police Girl braids she almost always wears when she's working, Lin looks like a junior high school cheerleader. She's standing with Twitch's sister Rose and the young man who short-orders at the restaurant. Rusty's a little surprised; he thought Barbara had left town. Got on Big Jim Rennie's bad side. A bar fight is what Rusty heard, although he wasn't on duty when the participants came in to get patched up. Fine by Rusty. He's patched up his share of Dipper's customers.
He hugs his wife, kisses her mouth, then plants a kiss on Rose's cheek. Shakes hands with the cook, and gets reintroduced.
"Look at those hotdogs," Rusty mourns. "Oh dear."
"Better line up the bedpans, Doc," Barbie says, and they all laugh. It's amazing to be laughing under these circumstances, but they aren't the only ones ... and good God, why not? If you can't laugh when things go bad--laugh and put on a little carnival--then you're either dead or wishing you were.
"This is fun," Rose says, unaware of how soon the fun is going to end. A Frisbee floats past. She plucks it out of the air and wings it back to Benny Drake, who leaps to catch it and then spins to throw it on to Norrie Calvert, who catches it behind her back--show-off! The prayer circle prays. The mixed choir, really finding its voice now, has moved on to that all-time chart topper "Onward, Christian Soldiers." A child no more than Judy's age bops past, skirt flapping around her chubby knees, a sparkler clutched in one hand and a cup of the awful limeade in the other. The protestors turn and turn in a widening gyre, chanting Ha-ha-ha! Hee-hee-hee! Chester's Mill must be set free! Overhead, puffy clouds with shady bottoms float northward from Motton ... and then divide as they near the soldiers, skirting around the Dome. The sky directly overhead is a cloudless, flawless blue. There are those in Dinsmore's field who study those clouds and wonder about the future of rain in Chester's Mill, but nobody speaks of this aloud.