The Tommyknockers, Page 44

  (la guerre you were thinking la guerre est)

  Goohringer paused, a little expression of surprise and concern touching his face. A close observer might have thought a little gas had bubbled up, and he had paused to stifle an unseemly burp.

  "--I think there is another set of verses she merits. They--"

  (tractor Farmall tractor)

  There was another small hitch in Goohringer's delivery, and that frown touched his face again.

  "--are not the sort of verses, I suppose, that any Christian woman would dare ask for, knowing that a Christian woman must earn them. Listen as I read from the Book of Proverbs and see if you, who knew her, do not agree that this is the case with Ruth McCausland."

  (those are Dixie Field-Boss tires)

  Dick Allison glanced to his left and caught Newt's eye across the aisle. Newt looked dismayed. John Harley's mouth had dropped open; his faded blue eyes shifted back and forth in bewilderment.

  Goohringer found his place, lost it, almost dropped his Bible. Suddenly he was flustered, no longer the master of ceremonies but a divinity student with stage-fright. As it happened, no one noticed; the outsiders were occupied either with physical distress or with mind-boggling ideas. The people of Haven drew together as an alarm went off, jumping from one mind to the next until their heads rang with it--this was a new carillon, one that jangled with discord.

  (someone's looking where they have)

  (have no business)

  Bobby Tremain took Stephanie Colson's hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back, looking at him with wide brown eyes--the alarmed eyes of a doe who hears the slide and click of the bolt in a hunter's gun.

  (out on Route 9)

  (too close to the ship)

  (one's a cop)

  (cop, yes, but a special cop--Ruth's cop, he loved)

  Ruth would have known these rising voices. And now even some of the outsiders began to feel them, although they were relatively new to Haven's infection. A few of them looked around like people coming out of thin dozes. One of these was the lady-friend of Representative Brennan's aide. She had been miles from here, it seemed--she was a minor bureaucrat in Washington, but she had just conceived of a filing system that might well get her a fat promotion. Then a random thought, a thought she would have sworn was not her own

  (somebody has got to stop them quick!)

  slashed across her mind and she looked around to see if someone had actually called out aloud in the church.

  But it was quiet except for the preacher, who had found his place again. She looked at Marty, but Marty was sitting in a glassy daze, looking at one of the stained-glass windows with the fixed gaze of one deeply hypnotized. She supposed this to be boredom and went back to her own thoughts.

  " 'Who can find a virtuous woman?' " Goohringer read, his voice a trifle uneven. He hesitated in the wrong places and stumbled a few times. " 'For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, and he shall have no lack of gain. She doeth him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool--' "

  Now another burst of those alien thoughts came to the single sensitized ear in the church:

  (sorry about that I just couldn't)

  (...)

  (what?)

  (...)

  (holy Christ that's Wheeling! how--)

  (...)

  There are two voices speaking but we are only hearing one, the mind-net thought, and eyes began to focus on Bobbi. There was only one person in Haven who could make his mind opaque to them, and that person wasn't here now. Two voices--is the one we don't hear the voice of your drunken friend?

  Bobbi got up suddenly and worked her way along the pew, horribly aware that people were looking at her. Goohringer, the ass, had paused again.

  "Excuse me," Bobbi muttered. "Excuse me ... excuse me."

  At last she escaped into the vestibule and the street. Others--Bobby Tremain, Newt, Dick, and Bryant Brown among them--began to follow. None of the outsiders noticed. They had lapsed back into their strange dreams.

  13

  "Sorry about that," Butch Dugan said. He pulled the door closed, got a handkerchief out of his back pocket, and began to rub his mouth. "I couldn't seem to help it. I feel better now."

  Ev nodded. "I ain't going to explain. There isn't time. But I want you to listen to something."

  "What?"

  Ev snapped on the Cherokee's radio and dialed across the band. Dugan started. He had never heard so many stations, not even at night when they jumped all over each other, wavering in and out in a sea of voices. Nothing wavery about these; most were bellclear.

  Ev stopped at a C&W station. A song by the Judds was just ending. When it did, there was a station ID. Butch Dugan could hardly believe what he was hearing: "Doubleya-Doubleya-Vee-AYYYY!" a perky girl group sang, to an accompaniment of fiddles and banjos.

  "Holy Christ, that's Wheeling!" Dugan cried. "How--"

  Ev snapped off the radio. "Now I want you to listen to my head."

  Dugan stared at him for a moment, utterly flummoxed. Not even Alice in Wonderland had been this mad.

  "What in the name of God are you talking about?"

  "Don't argue with me, just do it." Ev turned his face away from Dugan, presenting him with the back of his head. "I got two pieces of steel plate in my head. War souvenir. Bigger one's back there. See the place where the hair don't grow?"

  "Yes, but--"

  "Time is short! Put your ear up close to that scar and listen!"

  He did ... and felt unreality wash over him. The back of the old man's head was playing music. It was tinny and distant but perfectly identifiable. It was Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York."

  Butch Dugan began to giggle. Soon he was laughing. Then he was roaring, arms wrapped around his stomach. He was out here in the back of the beyond with an old man whose head had just turned into a music-box. By God, this was better than Ripley's Believe It or Not.

  Butch laughed and gasped and wept and roared and--

  The old man's callused palm slammed across his face. The shock of being slapped like a small child surprised Butch out of his hysteria as much as the pain had done. He blinked at Ev, one hand going to his cheek.

  "It started a week and a half before I left town," Ev said grimly. "Blasts of music in my head. They were stronger when I got out this way, and I should have thought about that before now, but I didn't. They're stronger now. Everything is. So I got no time for you to get the screaming yaw-haws. Are you going to be all right?"

  The flush spreading over Dugan's face mostly hid the red mark Ev's hand had made. The screaming yaw-haws. That pretty well described it. First he had puked, and then he had had a fit of hysterics like a teenage girl. This old man wasn't just showing him up; he was pulling past him in second gear.

  "I'll be fine," he said.

  "You believe now that something's going on here? That something in Haven has changed?"

  "Yes. I ..." He swallowed. "Yes," he repeated.

  "Good." Ev stepped on the gas and roared back onto the road. "This ... thing ... it's changing everyone in town, Trooper Dugan. Everyone but me. I get music in my head, but that's all. I don't read minds... and I don't get ideas."

  "What do you mean, 'ideas'? What kind of ideas?"

  "All kinds." The Cherokee's speedometer touched sixty, then began to edge past it. "Thing is, I have no proof of what's going on. None at all. You thought I was right off'n my head, didn't you?"

  Dugan nodded. He was holding on tight to the dashboard in front of him. He felt sick to his stomach again. The sun was too bright, dazzling on the windshield and the chrome.

  "The reporter and the nurses did too. But there's something in the woods, and I'm going to find it, and I'm going to take some pitchers of it, and I'm going to take you out, and we're going to do some loud talking, and maybe we'll find a way to get my grandson David back and maybe we won't, but either way we ought to be able to shut down whatever's going on here before it's
too late. Ought to? We got to."

  Now the speedometer needle hung just below seventy.

  "How far?" Dugan managed through closed teeth. He was going to puke again, and soon; he just hoped he could hold on until they got to wherever they were going.

  "The old Garrick farm," Ev said. "Less than a mile."

  Thank God, Dugan thought.

  14

  "It's not Gard," Bobbi said. "Gard's passed out on the porch of the house."

  "How do you know?" Adley McKeen asked. "You can't read him."

  "I can, though," Bobbi said. "A little more every day. He's still on the porch, I tell you. He's dreaming about skiing."

  They looked at Bobbi silently for a moment--about a dozen men standing across the street from the Methodist church, in front of the Haven Lunch.

  "Who is it, then?" Joe Summerfield asked at last.

  "I don't know," Bobbi said. "Only that it's not Gard." Bobbi was swaying mildly on her feet. Her face was that of a woman who was fifty, not thirty-seven. There were brown circles of exhaustion under her eyes. The men seemed not to notice.

  From the church, voices were raised in "Holy, Holy, We Adore Thee."

  "I know who it is," Dick Allison said suddenly. His eyes had gone strange and dull with hate. "Only one other person it could be. Only one other person I know of in town with metal in his head."

  "Ev Hillman!" Newt cried. "Christ!"

  "We've got to get moving," Jud Tarkington said. "The bastards are getting close. Adley, get some guns from the hardware store."

  "Okay."

  "Get 'em,.but don't use 'em," Bobbi said. Her eyes swept the men. "Not on Hillman, if it's him, and not on the cop. Particularly not on the cop. We can't afford another mess in Haven. Not before

  (the "becoming")

  it's all finished."

  "I'll get my tube," Beach said. His face was vacant with eagerness.

  Bobbi grabbed his shoulder. "No, you won't," she said. "No more messes includes no more cops disappearing."

  She looked at them all again, then at Dick Allison, who nodded.

  "Hillman's got to disappear," he said. "No way around it. But that's maybe all right. Ev's crazy. A crazy old man might decide to do just about anything. A crazy old man might just decide to haul stakes and drive off to Zion, Utah, or Grand Forks, Idaho, to wait for the end of the world. The cop's going to make a mess, but he's going to make it in Derry, and it's going to be a mess everyone understands. No one else is going to shit in our nest. Go on, Jud. Get the guns. Bobbi, you pull in back of the Lunch with your pickup truck. Newt, Adley, Joe, you ride with me. You go with Bobbi, Jud. Rest of you go in Kyle's Caddy. Come on, hoss y'freight!"

  They got moving.

  15

  Sushhhhh ...

  Same old dream, a few new wrinkles. Damned strange ones. The snow had gone pink. It was soaked with blood. Was it coming from him? Holy hell! Who would have believed how much blood the old tosspot had in him?

  They are skiing the intermediate slope. He knows that he should have stayed on the beginners' slopes for at least one more session, this is too fast for him, and furthermore, all this bloody snow is very distracting, particularly when it's all your blood.

  Now he looks up, sending a rip of pain through his head--and his eyes widen. There's a Jeep on the goddam slope!

  Annmarie screams: "Stem Bobbi, Gard! STEM BOBBI!"

  But he doesn't need to stem Bobbi because this is just a dream, it's become an old friend in the last few weeks, like the erratic bursts of music in his head; this is a dream and that isn't a Jeep and this isn't the Straight Arrow slope, it's--

  --turning into Bobbi's driveway.

  Is this a dream? Or is it real?

  No, he realized; that was the wrong question. A better question would have been How much of this is real?

  The chrome winked blinding arrows of light into Gardener's eyes. He winced and groped for

  (ski poles? no, not a dream, it's summer you're in Haven)

  the porch railing. He could remember almost everything. It was hazy, but he could remember. No blackouts since he had come back to Bobbi's. Music in his head but no blackouts. Bobbi had gone to a funeral. Later on, she'd come back and they would start digging again. He remembered it all, just as he remembered the town-hall clock tower lifting off into the afternoon sky like a big-ass bird. All present and accounted for, sir. Except this.

  He stood with his hands on the railing, bleary, bloodshot eyes watching the Jeep in spite of the glare. He was aware that he must look like a refugee from the Bowery. Thank God there's still some truth in advertising--that's what I feel like.

  Then the man in the passenger seat turned his head and saw Gard. The man was so huge that he looked like a creature from a fairy-tale. He was wearing sunglasses, so Gardener couldn't tell for sure if their eyes actually met or not. He thought they did; it felt that way. Either way, it didn't matter. He knew the look. As a veteran of half a hundred picket lines, he knew it well. He also knew it as a drunk who had awakened in the tank on more than one occasion.

  The Dallas Police have arrived at last, he thought. The thought carried feelings of anger and regret... but what he felt mostly was relief. At least, for the moment.

  He's a cop ... but what's he doing in a Jeep? God, the size of his face... he's as big as a fucking house! Must be a dream. Must be.

  The Jeep didn't stop; it rolled up the driveway and out of sight. Now Gardener could only hear its roaring motor.

  Headed out back. Going up there in the woods. They knew, all right. Oh Christ, if the government gets it--

  All of his earlier dismay rose in him like bile; his dazed relief blew away like smoke. He saw Ted the Power Man throwing his jacket over the littered remains of the levitation machine and saying, What gadget?

  Dismay was replaced by the old, sick fury.

  HEY BOBBI GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE! he shrieked in his mind as loudly and clearly as he could.

  Fresh blood burst from his nose and he staggered weakly back, grimacing in disgust and groping for his handkerchief. What does it matter, anyway? Let them have it. It's the devil on either hand, and you know it. So what if the Dallas Police get it? It's turning Bobbi and everyone in town into the Dallas Police. Particularly her company. The ones she brings out late at night, when she thinks I'm asleep. The ones she takes into the shed.

  This had happened twice, both times around three in the morning. Bobbi thought Gardener was sleeping heavily--a combination of hard work, too much booze, and Valium. The level of pills in the Valium bottle was going steadily down, that was true, but not because Gardener was swallowing them. Each night's pill was actually going down the toilet.

  Why this stealth? He didn't know, any more than he knew why he had lied to Bobbi about what he had seen on Sunday afternoon. Flushing a Valium tablet every night wasn't really lying, because Bobbi hadn't asked him outright if he was taking them; she had simply looked at the decreasing level of the tablets and drawn an erroneous conclusion Gardener hadn't bothered to correct.

  Just as he had not bothered to correct her idea that he was sleeping heavily. In fact, he had been plagued by insomnia. No amount of drink seemed to put him under for long. The result was a kind of constant, muddled consciousness across which thin gray veils of sleep were sometimes drawn, like unwashed stockings.

  The first time he had seen lights splash across the wall of the guestroom in the early hours of the morning, he had looked out to see a large Cadillac pulling into the driveway. He had looked at his watch and thought: Must be the Mafia... who else would show up at a farm way out in the woods in a Caddy at three in the morning?

  But when the porch light went on, he had seen the vanity plate, KYLE-1, and doubted if even the Mafia went for vanity plates.

  Bobbi had joined the four men and one woman who had gotten out. Bobbi was dressed but barefoot. Gardener knew two of the men--Dick Allison, head of the local volunteer fire department, and Kyle Archinbourg, a local realtor who drove a fat-
ass Cadillac. The two others were vaguely familiar. The woman was Hazel McCready.

  After a few moments Bobbi had led them to her back shed. The one with the big Kreig lock on the door.

  Gardener thought: Maybe I ought to go out there. See what's going on. Instead, he'd lain down again. He didn't want to go near the shed. He was afraid of it. Of what might be in there.

  He had dozed off again.

  The next morning there had been no Caddy, no sign of Bobbi's company. Bobbi had in fact seemed more cheerful, more her old self on that morning than at any time since Gardener had returned. He had convinced himself it was a dream, or perhaps something--not the DTs, exactly, but close--that had crawled out of a bottle. Then, not four nights ago, KYLE-1 had arrived again. Those same people had gotten out, met with Bobbi, and gone around to the shed.

  Gard collapsed into Bobbi's rocking chair and felt for the bottle of Scotch he had brought out here this morning. The bottle was there. Gardener raised it slowly; drank, and felt liquid fire hit his belly and spread. The sound of the Jeep was fading now, like something in a dream. Perhaps that was all it had been. Everything seemed that way now. What was that line in the Paul Simon song? Michigan seems likea dream to me now.Yes, sir. Michigan, weird ships buried in the ground, Jeep Cherokees, and Cadillacs in the middle of the night. Drink enough and it all faded into a dream.

  Except it's no dream. They're the take-charge people, those people who come in the Cadillac with the KYLE-1 plates. Just like the Dallas Police. Just like good old Ted, with his reactors. What kind of shot are you giving them, Bobbi? How are you souping them up even more than the rest of the resident geniuses? The old Bobbi wouldn't have pulled that kind of shit but the New Improved Bobbi does, and what's the answer to all of this? Is there one?

  "Devils on every side!" Gardener cried out grandly. He slugged back the last of the Scotch and threw the bottle over the porch railing and into the bushes. "Devils on every side!" he repeated, and passed out.

  16

  "That guy saw us," Butch said as the Jeep bulled across Anderson's garden on a diagonal, knocking over huge cornstalks and sunflowers that towered high over the Cherokee's roof.