by Stephen King
They were screaming his name, chanting it: “GREG ... GREG ... GREG ...”
The young guy who had billeted his family next to Johnny was holding his son up over his head so the kid could see. A young man with a large, puckered burn scar on one side of his face was waving a sign that read: LIVE FREE OR DIE, HERE’S GREG IN YER EYE! An achingly beautiful girl of maybe eighteen was waving a chunk of watermelon, and pink juice was running down her tanned arm. It was all mass confusion. Excitement was humming through the crowd like a series of high-voltage electrical cables.
And suddenly there was Greg Stillson, darting back through the band, back to Johnny’s side of the crowd. He didn’t pause, but still found time to give the tuba player a hearty clap on the back.
Later, Johnny mulled it over and tried to tell himself that there really hadn’t been any chance or time to melt back into the crowd; he tried to tell himself that the crowd had practically heaved him into Stillson’s arms. He tried to tell himself that Stillson had done everything but abduct his hand. None of it was true. There was time, because a fat woman in absurd, yellow clamdiggers threw her arms around Stillson’s neck and gave him a hearty kiss, which Stillson returned with a laugh and a “You bet I’ll remember you, hon.” The fat woman screamed laughter.
Johnny felt the familiar compact coldness come over him, the trance feeling. The sensation that nothing mattered except to know. He even smiled a little, but it wasn’t his smile. He put his hand out, and Stillson seized it in both of his and began to pump it up and down.
“Hey, man, hope you’re gonna support us in ...”
Then Stillson broke off. The way Eileen Magown had. The way Dr. James (just like the soul singer) Brown had. The way Roger Dussault had. His eyes went wide, and then they filled with—fright? No. It was terror in Stillson’s eyes.
The moment was endless. Objective time was replaced by something else, a perfect cameo of time as they stared into each other’s eyes. For Johnny it was like being in that dull chrome corridor again, only this time Stillson was with him and they were sharing ... sharing
(everything)
For Johnny it had never been this strong, never. Everything came at him at once, crammed together and screaming like some terrible black freight train highballing through a narrow tunnel, a speeding engine with a single glaring headlamp mounted up front, and the headlamp was knowing everything, and its light impaled Johnny Smith like a bug on a pin. There was nowhere to run and perfect knowledge ran him down, plastered him as flat as a sheet of paper while that night-running train raced over him.
He felt like screaming, but had no taste for it, no voice for it.
The one image he never escaped
(as the blue filter began to creep in)
was Greg Stillson taking the oath of office. It was being administered by an old man with the humble, frightened eyes of a fieldmouse trapped by a terribly proficient, battlescarred
(tiger)
barnyard tomcat. One of Stillson’s hands clapped over a Bible, one upraised. It was years in the future because Stillson had lost most of his hair. The old man was speaking, Stillson was following. Stillson was saying
(the blue filter is deepening, covering things, blotting them out bit by bit, merciful blue filter, Stillson’s face is behind the blue . . . and the yellow ... the yellow like tiger-stripes)
he would do it “So help him God.” His face was solemn, grim, even, but a great hot joy clapped in his chest and roared in his brain. Because the man with the scared fieldmouse eyes was the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and
(O dear God the filter the filter the blue filter the yellow stripes)
now all of it began to disappear slowly behind that blue filter—except it wasn’t a filter; it was something real. It was
(in the future in the dead zone)
something in the future. His? Stillson’s? Johnny didn’t know.
There was the sense of flying—flying through the blue—above scenes of utter desolation that could not quite be seen. And cutting through this came the disembodied voice of Greg Stillson, the voice of a cut-rate God or a comic-opera engine of the dead: “I’M GONNA GO THROUGH THEM LIKE BUCKWHEAT THROUGH A GOOSE! GONNA GO THROUGH THEM LIKE SHIT THROUGH A CANEBRAKE!”
“The tiger,” Johnny muttered thickly. “The tiger’s behind the blue. Behind the yellow.”
Then all of it, pictures, images, and words, broke up in the swelling, soft roar of oblivion. He seemed to smell some sweet, coppery scent, like burning high-tension wires. For a moment that inner eye seemed to open even wider, searching; the blue and yellow that had obscured everything seemed about to solidify into ... into something, and from somewhere inside, distant and full of terror, he heard a woman shriek: “Give him to me, you bastard!”
Then it was gone.
How long did we stand together like that? he would ask himself later. His guess was maybe five seconds. Then Stillson was pulling his hand away, ripping it away, staring at Johnny with his mouth open, the color draining away from beneath the deep tan of the summertime campaigner. Johnny could see the fillings in the man’s back teeth.
His expression was one of revolted horror.
Good! Johnny wanted to scream. Good! Shake yourself to pieces! Total yourself! Destruct! Implode! Disintegrate! Do the world a favor!
Two of the motorcycle guys were rushing forward and now the sawed-off pool cues were out and Johnny felt a stupid kind of terror because they were going to hit him, hit him over the head with their cues, they were going to make believe Johnny Smith’s head was the eight ball and they were going to blast it right into the side pocket, right back into the blackness of coma and he would never come out of it this time, he would never be able to tell anyone what he had seen or change anything.
That sense of destruction—God! It had been everything!
He tried to backpedal. People scattered, pressed back, yelled with fear (or perhaps with excitement). Stillson was turning toward his bodyguards, already regaining his composure, shaking his head, restraining them.
Johnny never saw what happened next. He swayed on his feet, head lowered, blinking slowly like a drunk at the bitter end of a week-long binge. Then the soft, swelling roar of oblivion overwhelmed him and Johnny let it; he gladly let it. He blacked out.
Chapter 21
1
“No,” the Trimbull chief of police said in answer to Johnny’s question, “you’re not charged with anything. You’re not under detention. And you don’t have to answer any questions. We’d just be very grateful if you would.”
“Very grateful,” the man in the conservative business suit echoed. His name was Edgar Lancte. He was with the Boston office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He thought that Johnny Smith looked like a very sick man. There was a puffed bruise above his left eyebrow that was rapidly turning purple. When he blacked out, Johnny had come down very hard—either on the shoe of a marching-bandsman or on the squared-off toe of a motorcycle boot. Lancte mentally favored the latter possibility. And possibly the motorcycle boot had been in motion at the instant of contact.
Smith was too pale, and his hands trembled badly as he drank the paper cup of water that Chief Bass had given him. One eyelid was ticking nervously. He looked like the classic would-be assassin, although the most deadly thing in his personal effects had been a nailclipper. Still, Lancte would keep that impression in mind, because he was what he was.
“What can I tell you?” Johnny asked. He had awakened on a cot in an unlocked cell. He’d had a blinding headache. It was draining away now, leaving him feeling strangely hollow inside. He felt a little as if his legitimate innards had been scooped out and replaced with Reddi Wip. There was a high, constant sound in his ears—not precisely a ringing; more like a high, steady hum. It was nine P.M. The Stihson entourage had long since swept out of town. All the hot dogs had been eaten.
“You can tell us exactly what happened back there,” Bass said.
“It was hot. I
guess I got overexcited and fainted.”
“You an invalid or something?” Lancte asked casually.
Johnny looked at him steadily. “Don’t play games with me, Mr. Lancte. If you know who I am, then say so.”
“I know,” Lancte said. “Maybe you are psychic.”
“Nothing psychic about guessing an FBI agent might be up to a few games,” Johnny said.
“You’re a Maine boy, Johnny. Born and bred. What’s a Maine boy doing down in New Hampshre?”
“Tutoring.”
“The Chatsworth boy?”
“For the second time: if you know, why ask? Unless you suspect me of something.”
Lancte lit a Vantage Green. “Rich family.”
“Yes. They are.”
“You a Stillson fan, are you, Johnny?” Bass asked. Johnny didn’t like fellows who used his first name on first acquaintance, and both of these fellows were doing it. It made him nervous.
“Are you?” he asked.
Bass made an obscene blowing sound. “About five years ago we had a day-long folk-rock concert in Trimbull. Out on Hake Jamieson’s land. Town council had their doubts, but they went ahead because the kids have got to have something. We thought we were going to have maybe two hundred local kids in Hake’s east pasture listening to music. Instead we got sixteen hundred, all of em smoking pot and drinking hard stuff straight out from the neck of the bottle. They made a hell of a mess and the council got mad and said there’d never be another one and they turned around all hurt and wet-eyed and said, ‘Whassa matter? No one got hurt, did they?’ It was supposed to be okay to make a helluva mess because no one got hurt. I feel the same way about this guy Stillson. I remember once . . .”
“You don’t have any sort of grudge against Stillson, do you, Johnny?” Lancte asked. “Nothing personal between you and him?” He smiled a fatherly, you-can-get-it-off-your-chest-if-you-want-to smile.
“I didn’t even know who he was until six weeks ago.”
“Yes, well, but that really doesn’t answer my question, does it?”
Johnny sat silent for a little while. “He disturbs me,” he said finally.
“That doesn’t really answer my question, either.”
“Yes, I think it does.”
“You’re not being as helpful as we’d like,” Lancte said regretfully.
Johnny glanced over at Bass. “Does anybody who faints in your town at a public gathering get the FBI treatment, Chief Bass?”
Bass looked uncomfortable. “Well . . . no. Course not.”
“You were shaking hands with Stillson when you keeled over,” Lancte said. “You looked sick. Stillson himself looked scared green. You’re a very lucky young man, Johnny. Lucky his goodbuddies there didn’t turn your head into a votive urn. They thought you’d pulled a piece on him.”
Johnny was looking at Lancte with dawning surprise. He looked at Bass, then back to the FBI man. “You were there,” he said. “Bass didn’t call you up on the phone. You were there. At the rally.”
Lancte crushed out his cigarette. “Yes. I was.”
“Why is the FBI interested in Stillson?” Johnny nearly barked the question.
“Let’s talk about you, Johnny. What’s your . . .”
“No, let’s talk about Stillson. Let’s talk about his goodbuddies, as you call them. Is it legal for them to carry around sawed-off pool cues?”
“It is,” Bass said. Lancte threw him a warning look, but Bass either didn’t see it or ignored it. “Cues, baseball bats, golf clubs. No law against any of them.”
“I heard someone say those guys used to be iron riders. Bike gang members.”
“Some of them used to be with a New Jersey club, some used to be with a New York club, that’s ...”
“Chief Bass,” Lancte interrupted, “I hardly think this is the time ...”
“I can’t see the harm of telling him,” Bass said. “They’re bums, rotten apples, hairbags. Some of them ganged together in the Hamptons back four or five years ago, when they had the bad riots. A few of them were affiliated with a bike club called the Devil’s Dozen that disbanded in 1972. Stillson’s ramrod is a guy named Sonny Elliman. He used to be the president of the Devil’s Dozen. He’s been busted half a dozen times but never convicted of anything.”
“You’re wrong about that, Chief,” Lancte said, lighting a fresh cigarette. “He was cited in Washington State in 1973 for making an illegal left turn against traffic. He signed the waiver and paid a twenty-five-dollar fine.”
Johnny got up and went slowly across the room to the water cooler, where he drew himself a fresh cup of water. Lancte watched him go with interest.
“So you just fainted, right?” Lancte said.
“No,” Johnny said, not turning around. “I was going to shoot him with a bazooka. Then, at the critical moment, all my bionic circuits blew.”
Lancte sighed.
Bass said, “You’re free to go any time.”
“Thank you.”
“But I’ll tell you just the same way Mr. Lancte here would tell you. In the future, I’d stay away from Stillson rallies, if I were you. If you want to keep a whole skin, that is. Things have a way of happening to people Greg Stillson doesn’t like . . .”
“Is that so?” Johnny asked. He drank his water.
“Those are matters outside your bailiwick, Chief Bass,” Lancte said. His eyes were like hazy steel and he was looking at Bass very hard.
“All right,” Bass said mildly.
“I don’t see any harm in telling you that there have been other rally incidents,” Lancte said. “In Ridgeway a young pregnant woman was beaten so badly she miscarried. This was just after the Stillson rally there that CBS filmed. She said she couldn’t ID her assailant, but we feel it may have been one of Stillson’s bikies. A month ago a kid, he was fourteen, got himself a fractured skull. He had a little plastic squirtgun. He couldn’t ID his assailant, either. But the squirtgun makes us believe it may have been a security overreaction.”
How nicely put, Johnny thought.
“You couldn’t find anyone who saw it happen?”
“Nobody who would talk.” Lancte smiled humorlessly and tapped the ash off his cigarette. “He’s the people’s choice.”
Johnny thought of the young guy holding his son up so that the boy could see Greg Stillson Who the hell cares? They’re just for show, anyway:
“So he’s got his own pet FBI agent.”
Lancte shrugged and smiled disarmingly. “Well, what can I say? Except, FYI, it’s no tit assignment, Johnny. Sometimes I get scared. The guy generates one hell of a lot of magnetism. If he pointed me out from the podium and told the crowd at one of those rallies who I was, I think they’d run me up the nearest lamppost.”
Johnny thought of the crowd that afternoon, and of the pretty girl hysterically waving her chunk of watermelon. “I think you might be right,” he said.
“So if there’s something you know that might help me . . .” Lancte leaned forward. The disarming smile had become slightly predatory. “Maybe you even had a psychic flash about him. Maybe that’s what messed you up.”
“Maybe I did,” Johnny said, unsmiling.
“Well?”
For one wild moment Johnny considered telling them everything. Then he rejected it. “I saw him on TV. I had nothing in particular to do today, so I thought I’d come over here and check him out in person. I bet I wasn’t the only out-of-towner who did that.
“You sure wasn’t,” Bass said vehemently.
“And that’s all?” Lancte asked.
“That’s all,” Johnny said, and then hesitated. “Except ... I think he’s going to win his election.”
“We’re sure he is,” Lancte said. “Unless we can get something on him. In the meantime, I’m in complete agreement with Chief Bass. Stay away from Stillson rallies.”
“Don’t worry.” Johnny crumpled up his paper cup and threw it away. “It’s been nice talking to you two gentlemen, but I’ve got a lo
ng drive back to Durham.”
“Going back to Maine soon, Johnny?” Lancte asked casually.
“Don’t know.” He looked from Lancte, slim and impeccable, tapping out a fresh cigarette on the blank face of his digital watch, to Bass, a big, tired man with a basset hound’s face. “Do either of you think he’ll run for a higher office? If he gets this seat in the House of Representatives?”
“Jesus wept,” Bass uttered, and rolled his eyes.
“These guys come and go,” Lancte said. His eyes, so brown they were nearly black, had never stopped studying Johnny. “They’re like one of those rare radioactive elements that are so unstable that they don’t last long. Guys like Stillson have no permanent political base, just a temporary coalition that holds together for a little while and then falls apart. Did you see that crowd today? College kids and mill hands yelling for the same guy? That’s not politics, that’s something on the order of hula hoops or coonskin caps or Beatle wigs. He’ll get his term in the House and he’ll free-lunch until 1978 and that’ll be it. Count on it.”
But Johnny wondered.
2
The next day, the left side of Johnny’s forehead had become very colorful. Dark purple—almost black—above the eyebrow shaded to red and then to a morbidly gay yellow at the temple and hairline. His eyelid had puffed slightly, giving him a leering sort of expression, like the second banana in a burlesque revue.
He did twenty laps in the pool and then sprawled in one of the deck chairs, panting. He felt terrible. He had gotten less than four hours’ sleep the night before, and all of what he had gotten had been dream-haunted.
“Hi, Johnny ... how you doing, man?”
He turned around. It was Ngo, smiling gently. He was dressed in his work clothes and wearing gardening gloves. Behind him was a child’s red wagon filled with small pine trees, their roots wrapped in burlap. Recalling what Ngo called the pines, he said: “I see you’re planting more weeds.”
